Pencil eraser shavings on the floor
the evidence of the past.
The outline is still faint on my paper
like a child who had obviously done wrong saying
"I didn't do it." with a mischevious smile on their face.
Whatever is done cannot be undone
the consequences like side-effects of a medicine.
The empty chair next to me asks the question if we really can change our fate
or if I'm just a train on my path to destruction.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,561 Literary Works • 673,435 Reviews
This was amazing. I don't say that lightly because I don't like poetry usually. It was a little long for a poem though, so I almost stopped reading it but decided I enjoyed the start so much I should stick through to the end. But to be honest the last half wasnt as good as the first half and I almost felt like they were two differe
Hey!
So first things first, I liked this work and the idea of this work but I felt like it still had room for improvement (as most work does).
The first three lines flowed nicely and had similar number of syllables making it easy to read. It really rolled off the tongue and didn't feel forced. It felt elegant. I can't say the same about the next two lines, I was rather confused by how you worded them.
"like a child who had obviously done wrong saying
"I didn't do it." with a mischevious smile on their face."
1) mischievous was spelt wrong
2) "obviously done wrong saying" I found this confusing, maybe, at least add a comma after 'wrong'.
3) you don't need a period after 'do it', it makes the sentence look weird and adds an awkward pause.
The last line I felt was not as strong as it could have been. I think you could have ended on a note that left your readers thinking about the message of you poem, rather than just talking about a train. I would have liked to see you add more to the simile you created on 'side-effects of medicine' I really liked that and found it original and interesting.
I hope my review was helpful,
Alice
Hello, Yams!
eraser shavings:
Eraser shavings are evidence of the past.
I like that you use imagery to drive this poem. You give readers a nice visual of what's literally happening in the poem, and also metaphorical images to expand on the ideas of the poem.
I might be wrong, but this review is going to operate under the assumption that this poem's meaning is that the past dictates the future. If the meaning is that simple, then I think you communicated the idea effectively enough for me to understand. If that's not what you were going for, you might want to step back and ask yourself what it does mean and how to convey that idea.
While I think that the above meaning is illustrated in this poem, I also feel like we're missing part of it. The empty chair is the question here. I think you should focus more on the chair and why it's empty rather than the doodle or whatever it was. When in doubt, focus on people more than anything else. Or the absence of people.
I think that this is quite wordy, as in it has a lot of words that don't necessarily bring more value to the poem. Generally in poetry, unless a word has a specific function, it's best not to use it. The way to get rid of wordiness is to get rid of any unneeded words, and then if you figure out they are needed (to make the poem better), put as little as you can back in. I'll show you this time because I think it's the first time I've talked about streamlining a poem with you. This is just a suggestion below, and I don't expect you'll do exactly what I do, but it's how you do it.
Step 1: remove all unneeded words
Spoiler
evidence of the past.
The outline is still faint on my paper
like a child who had done wrong, saying,
"I didn't do it," with a smile.
Whatever is done cannot be undone
the consequences like side-effects of medicine.
The empty chair next to me asks if we can change our fate
or if I'm a train on my path to destruction.
Step 2: reword and add words back in for flavor
Spoiler
A faint outline on paper remains
like a mischievous child saying,
"I didn't do it," with a smile.
Whatever is done cannot be undone;
the consequences are like medicinal side-effects.
The empty chair next to me asks if we can change our fate,
or if I'm on the train tracks to destruction.
The wording is more direct and less fluffed up with extra words. Try it for yourself and see what you can come up with.
Anyway, I think you have a good draft here, and with a little extra work, it'll be a really nice piece. I hope that this review proves useful to you! Happy writing!
Hi!
This was short, sweet, and relatable! In the beginning of my review, I'll go over some grammar mistakes that i noticed that would improve the flow and read of the poem, and then I'll go on to give my overall impression of your piece of work.
"Pencil eraser shavings on the floor
the evidence of the past."
This isn't a full sentence, but I'm not saying every line in poetry has to be a complete sentence. It's just that with the way this poem is set up punctuation wise, it would make more sense for this to be complete. Maybe add the word there's to the beginning of line one? Just an option I'm throwing out there.
"The outline is still faint on my paper
like a child who had obviously done wrong saying
"I didn't do it." with a mischevious smile on their face."
There should be a comma after paper in line one of this quotation because line one is a complete sentence and line two is a phrase. The period after it in the third line should be a comma because the sentence continues after the quotation marks.
"Whatever is done cannot be undone
the consequences like side-effects of a medicine."
There should be a comma after undone in the first line because line one is a complete sentence and line two is a phrase.
"The empty chair next to me asks the question if we really can change our fate
or if I'm just a train on my path to destruction."
The first line is really long and fits oddly in the flow of your poem. Maybe break up this line into multiple lines. There should be a comma after question and quotation marks before if and after destruction. There should also be a question mark after destruction because even though it's the chair asking the question, it's still being asked.
I love the unsteadiness of the ending of this poem, the empty, left undone feeling I get from this resonates with the message of the poem so well. I'm really glad you ended it with a question. I can't wait to see more of your work, and I wish you the best of luck!
~Rascalover