Black and amber,
Gold and gray,
The smoke of our souls
In branching trails.
The brilliance of our passion
Threw into grim relief
The pieces of our peace,
Broken, bleeding.
...
And we welcomed it,
Sang out:
Surround us
You brilliant chorus of lights
Tapestry of sound
Cast shards of daylight
Across our upturned countenances
Burst bombs in air
A celebration of a nation
A foundation of oppression
Was there blood in the gutters
When we
Were too focused on the sky
The rushing, roaring sky
The bursting, living sky,
To see it?
...
And we spun under the stars,
The heavens made dim
By the spectacle of earth,
We
Set fire to the sky.
We aimed for the moon
We burned out halfway up
In a colored kiss.
And we
Went mad for it
This circus of lights
Silenced by the majesty
Of a fractured thing
...
And we knew
That the dream was twisted
Don’t think
We hadn’t seen the cracks,
We knew
What a nightmare
We had created in our blindness
We were not oblivious
We had not gone deaf
We had only heard it
A thousand times before
And that was worse
But we knew,
Oh yes, we knew,
What horrors this dream
Could bring.
But in this hopeful, hazy moment
It was beautiful.
...
And we reveled in it
We whooped and cried out,
We threw our arms wide,
Knowing,
That all across
This land of bruised hearts:
The lifting of weary heads,
From the mourning of the dead
Cheering, cursing, begging
Deliver us!
You land of a thousand dreams
Take this burden
Keep your promise
Set us free!
...
And we heard them,
And yet,
We were so transfixed
That when
The rockets fell to earth
We only stumbled
Drunk on a thousand colored flames
Back to the silver quiet of our homes
And for all our wonder
We could not help but ask:
How many more lives will that passion take?
That screaming, self-important passion
That we so cheered for,
Barely a breath ago
How many must fall
For this countries sake,
With so many already gone?
...
Black and amber,
Gold and gray,
The smoke of our souls
In branching trails.
The brilliance of our passion
Threw into grim relief
The pieces of our peace,
Broken, bleeding.
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,027 Literary Works • 672,774 Reviews
The irony and subtle sarcasm in your poem was commendable.I really loved how you interwined the American dream and celebration of excellence with the evils plaguing the society like rascism, mass school shootings etc. I really enjoyed every stanza of the poem, and as the poem progressed it kept getting darker and darker, ending with a thundering crescendo.
Hi there! Your poem was pretty powerful and interesting to read. I'm pretty sure you're trying to bring light to current events and it's amazing that you're expressing it creatively in a way many people can enjoy. The imagery you included in the poem was pretty powerful overall. One thing is that you started new lines in a few places unnecessarily, but aside from that it was a great poem overall!
Keep up the great writing!
Ah this definitely went in a direction I wasn't expecting - there's a lot of complexity between the comparison of the fireworks to the nation's founding and you get at some of the bitter themes of revolution and violence within the independence day nationhood story.
Strangely enough when I first joined YWS I wrote a poem with very similar themes and your poem reminded me of it -> A Long Time Ago
A couple formatting things:
You had some really short/awkward line breaks, you don't want to break a line so that there isn't any important content in it - you want to break lines in more natural places where you would pause in speech - like in clauses, or phrases, unless you're purposely breaking them for effect like with enjambment.
Some examples of awkward linebreaks:
"And we/"
went mad"
"we knew
what a nightmare"
"sang out
surround us"
^ those are just not natural places to pause, I'd try reading the poem outloud and try hitting a table or take a 1 second pause at each line break and you'll see sort of how that is effecting the flow of the piece.
Another formatting thing - is when you use a formatting method for emphasis - like italics or bold or underline, it looses it's emphatic effect if overused. So I think when you have such a large section in italics it really loses it's usefullness.
Now for the content of the poem itself - it seems to be told from the perspective of someone considering the fourth of july fireworks and then reflecting on all the violence and bloodshed between not just independence day but also other violence conflicts the nation has been involved in. I think you could be a bit more specific actually on what conflicts you're trying to bring attention to; that would give a bit more weight to your piece. I did like that the light / firework / drama theme sort of carried through the rest of the poem, and then you had good continuity at the end by closing with a piece about fireworks and a broken peace. That really made the poem come full circle and gave good closure to the piece.
I think my favorite passage is this one:
I love the turn of imagery there and the metaphor of goals that are not realized but instead really don't work out at all how they are planned - sort of like nation forming. I'd love to see a few more of these creative imagery turns in the poem. I think it felt a bit long in the middle section, because it didn't feel like new things were being said after the premise was revealed, but I did really like that section which seemed to move the poem back towards specificity.
Overall, a unique theme for a poem, and some good imagery and phrasing throughout. I'd like to read more of your work!
Keep writing!
~alliyah