I am in a room full of people.
I know I am speaking, but they are not listening.
My words flee from my mouth with purpose.
They enter one of their ears and are heard,
then pushed out the other ear where they fall
and shatter onto the ground.
I see the broken pieces and grit my teeth with malice.
Too many times I picked up the pieces of my broken words.
Now I pray they cut into the bottoms of their feet
so they may be felt more sharply than I ever dared say them.
The hurt in my eyes is unseen, however,
by the people with the deep-set scowls.
The lenses they balance carefully on their eyes
tilt my frown into a smile.
Truly, they have grown thick skin on the bottoms of their feet
so they may walk over my shattered sentences
while their hands are too soft to piece them back together.
And the lenses they wear to distort the world
make it not better to them than it is
but only more comfortable.
Even as you read this
through lenses of your own
you believe that you are me.
Who else shall you play
in this abstract poetry
than the victim who goes unheard.
Truly I tell you
that you are more than correct.
As I put on my glasses,
and step on your words,
while your frown looks to me, a smile.
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Canary word: Present
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,733 Reviews
Hi, I think this is really nice! You used some really powerful phrases in this poem, and it also flows very well!
My only criticism would be this: in the line where you write ‘And the lenses they wear to distort the world make it not better to them then it is but only more comfortable’, I feel that this is a little vague. For instance, in what aspects would the world be more comfortable to them, and why? And what lenses are they wearing? Are they wearing invisible lenses that nobody can see; or if their lenses can be seen, how do they look like?
Anyways, this is a wonderful poem overall; and I hope to see more of your work at YWS soon!
Hey, this is a neat concept, I really like what you did at the end, turning it around. Reminds me of a quote I read the other day, "I realized for the first time that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo, against Dumbo’s tormentors…How did they not know? They didn’t know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. Everyone thought they were Dumbo." (source)
There are some really good images and thoughts in this piece, of sharp, shattered words and glass lenses that distort, and I especially like the lines
and
But this doesn't feel as strong as it could be. I would love to see more broken-glass, shattering type imagery, and more explanation of the lenses. Are they like rose-tinted glasses, or are these the actual lenses of their eyes? Are they thick and translucent and convex, causing the distortion of reality into what they want to see? The more concrete imagery you use, the more I can feel that I am inside the poem, experiencing it along with the narrator.
Also, I was kind of distracted by the thick skin/soft skin thing, and I couldn't figure out how that fits with the main message of the poem, because from the impression I've gotten from the rest of the poem, the people wouldn't care enough to want to try and piece the words back together anyways. I would recommend giving that a bit more context, and maybe weaving it more fully into the rest of the poem, if you keep that bit.
Lastly, these lines confused me a bit:
Wouldn't a more comfortable world be a better world, to these people who don't listen? If you want to say that more comfortable isn't better, then I would recommend explaining it, and expanding that idea more into the rest of the poem.
Overall, I really like the message of this poem, and my favourite lines are these:
They're very mind-bending in the way you turn it all upside down, and yet it still makes sense, and it's a great end to this neat poem!
Thanks for the tips! they'll come in really handy when I get to editing this.
Wow, are you sure you don't write poetry? If not, you should. This is a really, really nice effort. Really crisp and interesting choices in imagery, very thought-provoking and emotionally gritting.
The most obvious suggestion to make would be to split your poem into separate stanzas. Right now, its just one long wall of text, and it makes it a lot harder for your reader to find times to take breaths. That would be fine in a more tense and anxious poem, but in a poem with a lot of abstract and thought-provoking concepts like this one, you want to allow your reader chances to take in what you're writing, which separate stanzas would allow.
The less obvious suggestion would be to look more closely at who the narrator is addressing -- it starts out with them in a room full of people, but suddenly it shifts to addressing someone specifically. Why is this jump there, and who exactly is the narrator speaking to? It's fine to have such a jump, but there should be a more clear-cut method of transition, like a line as to why the narrator is done talking about these people and is now going to address someone in particular.
I also think the poem could benefit from playing around with the very first line "I'm in a room full of people" What kind of room is this? Dark? Big? Empty? Crowded? Overall I think the lack of location detail makes me picture floating in a void, because you have all of these interesting things happening at once but no clear indication of where we are apart from a "room". Maybe that's what you're going for, but it wouldn't hurt to play around with location and giving the reader a clearer sense of where we actually are.
Thanks for the tips! The original is actually in separate stanzas, just when I copy/pasted this from my google docs to here the spaces were deleted as well. I'll get on that as soon as I'm not swamped with my other projects. As for the room thing, you made a pretty good point, I'll think about it when I get to editing this.
This is good