Anxiety

Hi!

Ok so I love the first line. It sounds nice, it work well with your topic, it draws the readers attention...its got all the things a good hook and first line needs!

The poem overall is very strong. You have extremely powerful imagery like

"Cut me open like I was a farm animal

To be butchered and killed

But I lived

I escaped from your hold"

The feelings are all there; there's passion and fear and anger. Your work brought back memories of feelings I've had tied to anxiety, and I love that you're able to capture them through words. That's what poetry is, right? Being able to make words be felt.

I don't really have any problems with this poem. I think the length is perfect, and the last line is just as strong as the first. I've read a few of your other poems, and they're all really really soulful and strong. Keep writing with your heart, not just your head!

-E

Oh my goodness, Atsmai. The name of this poem caught my attention because I'm currently seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety issues--but I didn't think this would hit home so deeply. I'm absolutely astonished and rather trying to collect myself now to make this review make sense. This is like an exact description of what I experienced. Every line. Honestly, every line--I keep going back and re-reading it, and every word puts an image in my mind from my own past.

If I talked about this line by line, I might reveal too much of myself on the Internet, but I have to mention some phrases that really stood out. (I do, however, want to note, so that people won't make assumptions, that the person who hurt me wasn't a boyfriend, but a teacher/mentor...)

"You spat poison like a snake's tongue..." You know the old saying, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me"? That saying isn't true. Words can leave injuries more long-lasting than any stick or stone. And "spat" is a word that could usually describe how that person talked to me...

"Ruined memories..." "Cut me open..." There was manipulation...at times, I would share things with that person that were close to my heart, including childhood memories--and every time, whether sooner or later, those things were dragged out and half-beaten to death. I'm still trying to restore them. A song that I used to love, which was deeply connected to my family, is now hard for me to listen to because it's connected to that person too.

"I escaped from your hold..." I don't know if you meant a literal escape as in running away, but for me it was a literal escape. On the day I realized I was being manipulated, I snuck out and midnight and caught a taxi away.

"Every once in a while (by the way, typo--you wrote "it" instead of "in)
It accelerates like a sudden change in gears
And you gave me anxiety"
Exactly. Exactly so. Took me over a year to decide I needed a psychologist because a lot of the time, I could feel fine. But when certain situations triggered memories, that person's voice would suddenly be in my head, and I'd experience crippling anxiety, then long stretches of guilt. It's something that can lie dormant, but "every once in a while"--when it appears, it's really bad.

The other lines resonate with me too, but that's all I'll mention specifically. The only thing I would do is maybe change "Ruined memories by the smallest" to "Ruined memories by the smallest degrees"--because I think that's the assumed noun "smallest" is modifying, and I think it still flows with the rhythm. Of course, I don't know anything about the technical aspects of poetry, so that's up to you. The hanging adjective was a bit jarring to me--and maybe you intended it to be jarring, to create a more uneasy mood. If that was your intention, don't change it, but otherwise, consider adding a noun there.

It sounds like you might've written this poem from experience--since it is so true to experience. Whatever else people say about this poem, don't let them say it isn't realistic, because it is. It absolutely is. That's the main thing I want you to take away from this review.

Thank you so much for writing this poem.

~Sing-song XD

Hi there, Atsmai! cleverclogs here to review!

Spat poison like a snake's tongue

I didn't bleed from my arms, legs, or even heart

And you set a bowling ball where my heart was supposed to be

And you gave me anxiety

Dear Atsmai,

EccentricRose has dropped by to review your poetry! =)

The very first line made me curious for the rest of the poem, it was very good. You also kept of the lovely tension as you described being cut up like a farm animal. I think my favorite part of this is how you were sure to mention you didn't bleed from your body, not even your heart, but it was a very piercing kind of pain...that of your soul. A lot of people usually write the heart and soul as the same thing, but it's not. You carried it to a whole line deeper by specifying it was your soul, giving us a better depth of how bad it actually was.

The bowling ball description was very unique! I got a very clear vision of what you were trying to describe.

Thank you for posting this and please keep up the great work! I quite enjoyed it. : )

~Rose

Wow! That was great poem! That is what anxiety feels like for me! I like how you compared a near death situation to anxienty feelings. It feels like your in a tornado or something! This was very moving poem and it told me the true meaning of being anxious. One thing you could work on is adding commas to your poems. Either way this was good poem and I hope other people like it too.