*Note- So... I haven't posted in a while. I apologize if I'm a little rusty. Feel free to give as much criticism as possible, I need it!*
“But the loneliness will stay with me
and hold me till I fall asleep.”
the lonely - Christina Perri
it was then when you pounced
down and devoured the beating heart
I had revealed to you long ago--
once we had luminescent pulses
that beat brightly in the dark velvet blackness
that covered the god-forsaken public grounds
as nicotine and faded dreams
became our inspiration as
we painted the picture of passion
for the entire world to see
savages calling out in triumph,
we worked as one to create
a place of passion all our own.
each passing moment let time
print the memory of love upon our
skin that lay exposed and free.
little did I know, Mr. Assassin
had been planning to annihilate
the light that shone inside me,
exposing me to darkness.
and when you had found that target,
the one that had me weak
and vulnerable to enemy lines,
you fired away the missiles
that have left me who I am today;
broken and left to raise the white flag
that let society know I was defeated
and no longer pursuing to survive
the battle that is known as love
that night you leaped from the window
and flew away with midnight’s
moonlight to guide you home
as I lay injured from your crime
and you better understand I had no choice
but to lay trapped in hiding from people,
for you had left scars exposed on skin
that lay sore underneath
pale starlight that very same night
yes, I was pinned against the filthy floor
with nothing but dirty thoughts flooding
and covering any innocence left inside me.
and sometimes the heart evaporates into
poison that strikes at your mind,
digging just out of reach as though
to taunt what was once sanity.
drowning in salty tears from tired eyes,
you left me without a trace.
and with nothing left but sorrow
I let the whispers of yesterday
carry me into a tortured tomorrow
-- every fucking time
I hear that name of yours I break down
and crumble into mere particles
of a girl who once fought alongside
what she thought was her partner in crime
but was instead her biggest threat
(b.m.)
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,734 Reviews
Hey retro here!
And if you're rusty it doesn't really show at all! You've got some great stuff in this poem
With some incredibly powerful imagery, so kudos.
My only, problem shall we say. Is that the poem is very detached. I don't feel the connection to the speaker of the poem. And I think that might be because you use "the" a lot. For example at the start you say "pounced down and devoured the beating heart". I feel like the use of my rather than the in this instance would great a hook for the reader for them to go, wow this guy was a monster. Because you've got the imagery to show this and parts are absolutely stunning, but I feel as though the detached nature makes it slightly flat.
Great poem though, well done.
~retro
This is an amazing, amazing love poem, with lots of potential. Every aspect of the imagery was just magical, detailed, and complex. My favorite part would have to be,
"and sometimes the heart evaporates into
poison that strikes at your mind,
digging just out of reach as though
to taunt what was once sanity.".
I did realize the way you described the other person, the one you love that betrayed you, was a little all of the place. You use lots of metaphors, and even an over used phrase (Mr. Assassin) to describe this person, when it would work better to stick to one of them, and just go deeper with that thought. At first you seem to describe them as a beast, animal, or other wild creature, using words like "devoured", then you move on to war-like words, "defeated", lastly it turns into being about mental traits, using words like "sanity", and even "innocence" could fit with that.
With all the changing description it sounds like you could take those different ways of describing the situation, and put them into separate poems, and just expand on each description, one at a time.
I also just realized, the second stanza does not make sense.
"it was then when you pounced
down and devoured the beating heart
I had revealed to you long ago--"
That sounds like it belongs at the end. The tense of the story that you used does not go with that stanza, and it would sound better if you fix the tense some how, or add it to the end. Maybe just take the last line out, that would sound much better, also consider changing the beating heart to my beating heart.
This poem has a lot of potential! Keep writing!
- Phoenix
Ooh! This was a long one and very melodrama. The very intense imagery and flourishes of prose make the story sort of murky, and I'll tell you how I've read it in case I have misinterpreted your writing.
First, passion in god-forsaken public grounds sounds like sex in an empty park. After bouts of this, this "partner in crime" took off, and there is the classic story of use/abuse/abandon and "But this still hurts because I still love you."
I apologize in advance if the summary sounded flippant! What I really came to critique wasn't the story line, anyway. I did want to get that correct, but what I was thrown off by was the mismatched metaphors used to describe this "parter in crime" and yourself (or your narrator).
You've got, first, an animalistic description, starting: "pounced," "devoured," "leaped," "flew."
Then, you've got this militaristic description: "target," "enemy lines," "fired away the missiles," "raise the white flag," "battle."
You'll bring in elements of this us-versus-them theme with the words: "society" and "partner in crime."
Is this person whose name breaks you down... like an animal? Or are they like a criminal? Think: Have you ever seen... an animal criminal? Does that make sense? Maybe you'll say, "A criminal can be animalistic!" But the person, here, isn't an -actual- criminal, so that disagreement couldn't work! The metaphors clash.
Because of this - these repeatedly changing metaphors for how you describe this other person and the actions with them - the poem looks all over the place and becomes almost incoherent. If you chose one or the other expression, if you kept yourself to one type of analogy, I think the work would become far more fluid and express better what you're attempting to get across. It would be a good writing exercise, too, if you tried to set that limit!