Personal Space

Flamingo, love the name. Let's jam for a while.

Alright, so you have a whole lot of fact-making here. Let's call it Statementing. Another way of phrasing it would be showing versus telling. It's a ratio in poetry where you compare your images and sensations to your statements and see if you have a good mix. Let's take inventory.

Nine Statements: someone is always there, judging, commenting, breathing down your neck; you can't move a muscle; you always have to justify; you feel like punching, slaying; you can't; outsiders won't see the truth; they see a child throwing a tantrum; you must endure.

versus

Four images: trapped in a cage; in a zoo (so captive animal image--good); battlefield of questions; a storm; sunshine.

You state your emotions and sentiments plainly nine times, and create four lines of real poetry. This creates a case where you need to take a step away from the piece and analyze your statements and emotions. How are they represented in the real world? In nature? Are there other images or sensations that relate to being caged, being a captive animal, or being on a battlefield? What about storms? They seem furious, raging. And the sunlight is calm in this context. Work in reverse from that point. Once you take these boring vanilla statements and turn them into something new, you've created poetry. It's the matter of making the reader feel something in a new way, almost like translating a language. Anyway, my point is that you aren't really sitting on poetry at the moment, but rather a cathartic list of grievances.

Regarding the flow of this piece, your line breaks are simply placed at the end of each sentence, which renders them pointless. Line breaks were mechanized into poetry for the purpose of creating and resolving tension, occasionally allowing the reader to speak the lines in a way that made human speech flow more freely; they've even been used as memory devices. The raw truth is that poetry doesn't need line breaks, and seeing their pointless nature here, I'm inclined to give an ultimatum: read the piece aloud and find where the stresses and releases are, or eliminate your line breaks. Otherwise, you just have sentences in a list.

If I'm being picky, I'd change up the words 'slaying', 'shall', 'Til', etc. They don't belong with the atmosphere you've created. On a final note, your title doesn't exactly equate to the prisoner-breaking-free feel of the poem. Personal space is a matter of anxiety when a person is just too close; hatred of being scrutinized is completely different. Find a new title in your images.

Lumi

Hey,

I really loved this poem!!!!

Keep up the amazing work!!!!

~Pinkdinosaurs

Hi! Great figurative language and description! And also a late welcome to YWS!

Might I suggest stanzas to break up your thoughts? Each idea changes rapidly, so you might want to give your readers a chance to breath before moving onto another idea.

I only have a few suggestions for you.

1. "punching, slaying"- Instead of a comma, an 'and' might fare better in this sentence. The first clause of the line seems very incomplete when simply ending at "punching".

2. "seeing it will not see what I see."- This line sounds a bit too repetitive to me. Maybe "who sees will not/won't agree"?

3. "They will see"- Reading this in my head, I feel as if the present tense might suit this line better. Especially since the next line is in present tense instead of the future.

4. The three lines before the last one don't need to have commas explicitly, but if you're doing it for a paused effect and like the way it sounds, feel free to keep them.

This is a nice piece! It's very determined and proud and sends a message to stay strong when facing adversity. Can't wait to read more of your stuff! And once again, welcome!