I told the stars all my secrets,
In the velvet cloak of night's embrace,
Whispered confessions to their twinkling light,
Unburdening my soul in the vast expanse of space.
I told the moon my thoughts,
As it hung suspended in the indigo sky,
Its gentle glow a silent listener,
To the tangled mess within my mind’s eye.
I told the sun my wishes,
Beneath its golden rays that warm the day,
Dreams and desires shared with its fiery presence,
Hoping they’d be carried by solar winds away.
I told the planets my pain,
In the quiet solitude of cosmic dance,
Each orbit a reminder of life's complexities,
And the scars I bear in this earthly trance.
I wanted to tell my father the hurt he caused,
But words faltered in the face of bitter memories,
Echoes of a past stained with unspoken grievances,
Lost in the chasm between us, like forgotten stories.
I wanted to tell my mother the pain I'd felt,
In the lines etched upon her weary face,
A reflection of the battles fought within,
Yet fear held my tongue, trapping me in disgrace.
I wanted to tell my sister, what made me tick,
In the language of shared childhood dreams,
But distance grew between us like a silent canyon,
And the bridge of understanding collapsed at its seams.
I wanted to tell my friends I wasn't okay,
Beneath the facade of laughter and disguise,
But fear of judgment held me captive,
In a prison of smiles, where truth had died.
I wished more than ever to explain,
The tangled web of emotions woven deep,
But fear's icy grip held tight,
And my voice remains silenced in troubled sleep.
I wished people would stop saying I was okay,
When the storm raged fierce within my chest,
Yearning for validation of the pain I bare,
In a world where vulnerability is often suppressed.
I wished I didn't fake my sane,
Masking the chaos that churns inside,
For fear of rejection and misunderstanding,
In a society that demands flawless pride.
I wished they would just see my pain,
Beyond the facade of strength I portray,
To recognize the silent screams that echo,
In the depths of my soul, night and day.
Thus, amidst the silent symphony of the universe,
I pour out my heart in whispered refrain,
"I told, I wanted, I wished," echoes the plea,
For understanding, solace, and release from pain.
I enjoy how the poem is writen and the feelings conveyed it it. I can tell that you put time and effort into the lines. :3
This is deep in emotion and really hits close to home with me.
Honestly a beautiful piece. I will get my friend that live poetry to read it so she can leave a review too!
“People cry, not because they are weak. It’s because they’ve been strong for too long.” -Johnny Depp
First review and I have to say, you did extremely well on this.
It was well formatted, short enough to not bore me, and long enough that I didn't get distracted.
Also the message was very clear and your wordplay and analogies were magnifique.
^ Very very good wording and also very very true :joy:
^This hit home for me, and actually made me cry a bit, not only because my father passed away last year, Dec 24th, but also because he never hurt me in anyway, and now he is gone.
#FFD700 ">Overall amazing poem. 5/5 stars
#FFD700 ">T. Scott
I take my reviews very seriously, but that doesn't mean you should. I am, as you are, just another aspiring artist seeking to create life from pen and paper, and everything I have to say is a matter of opinion, so please use my review as insight. This is also not an editorial, I don't like to nitpick specifics, but rather provide my honest, but perhaps biased, reviewal of your wonderful work!
- a general overview of my impression taken from your work -
Spoiler
- what immediately stands out when reading this piece -
In some ways, nothing specifically stood out. Not because there isn't much for merit here, but purely because the chosen poetic voice, as well as the grammar and cadence, are all very methodically placed together. There wasn't any "kapow", but I will say I believe that some sort of wow factor at any point here would ruin the piece. The general theme supports the message being displayed in more than just rythm.
- is there too much or too little of anything -
At first I was a bit worried about the rigidly structured format for each stanza, and the seemingly repetitive cadence. But, once you read through the entire thing and look at the greater picture, I came to appreciate the continued 4x4x4 concept tying it all together. It creates a very powerful energy without needing to ram anything home.
As the title suggests, wishing and wanting are often done in solitude and quiet pain, and I quite like the appropriate style. Not too hot, not too cold, just a perfect melancholy.
- a look at the writing style, grammar, rhetoric and verbiage -
Spoiler
- how consistent and connected is the prose -
I personally shy away from repetitive phrasing as it often detracts from the brain's natural ability to imagine, but in the case of this poem, it is most certainly a necessity and also a stylistic choice that I approve of all the way.
There are a couple unnecessary repetitions I noticed, which don't take too much away but perhaps could be altered in word choice just to make it both coherent and flowing.
- is the choice of words and grammar effective at delivering a vision, rather than just words -
Here I have both a praise and a qualm. This piece is well crafted in it's word choice as each stanza has both simplistic expressions of some truth, and added descriptions that invoke both an emotional and visual connection. Nothing is too aggressively advanced in terms of language, but still balanced in complexity. This I appreciate very much.
But my small, and probably menial, issue is that much of these colorful descriptors feel very...unoriginal. It's not that they aren't effective means of communicating the necessary message of emotional impact, but rather that they have been said before, in the same way and place, for the same reasons. I have a clear and well rounded understanding of what I'm reading, but because it's coming short of a purely unique and singular scenario, I struggle to connect with the narrator a little.
To me, this is such a simple yet dramatic thing, because it can mean the difference between life changing art, and pretty pictures.
- notes on the completion and believability of the piece -
Spoiler
- is the information/story creditable -
Nothing really to say here, as I have no reason to disbelieve anything being said, nor do I have any reason to seek facts as proof. The obvious attention to drilling down each concept in a staggered pattern tells me that either this is written in a pure first person, and what I am reading is exactly what is felt, or that some greater understanding of these "wantings" and "wishings" was most certainly found.
- how vibrant and rich is the picture being painted -
Similar to my previous note, it's not that I see a lack of vibrant language to help paint more than just a black and white photocopy, but rather that it feels a bit "pre-owned." I would love to see continued growth in the ability to pull from the heart the emotions which can't be told, spin them in the mind until they latch onto the words that haven't yet been said, and then paint the pictures that only your hands can.
- an insight into the impact your work creates on my mind and my emotions as I seek meaning and purpose in the words -
Spoiler
- was I impacted in any way by this piece -
Oh, how we have all wanted and wished for most of our days...and not just in general, but I would dare say in the exact way as this narrator expresses. So many lost and forgotten opportunities for things to be done right, or even be undone so that perhaps they could become right. And so many destructively silent hours lost...trapped in the internal battle that is telling oneself there is purpose and reason, while the other half demands proof because it knows there is none....
Yes, yes I find myself very impacted at this moment, not because I feel this way, but because I have and I know I will again and I know that the vast majority of our peers will as well. It does not take dark times or even dark days to cause dark things to come creeping into the soul, and sadly there are so few prepared to fight those demons, hence why we must exist in silence, smile through our masks, and press forward.
But, knowing that there are more that understand and know, will always provide for me some more light by which to see.
- did I find any subtle or hidden messages that caused me to think beyond -
Subtlety is obviously not the chosen path for this poem, so I didn't go looking.
- R33SE
Hey, what do you use for your reviews, like how did you make those rating stars, your insignia, basically everything. I like it.
It's pretty simple actually, if you know the steps. I just created some really basic PNGs using Inkscape, but you can even use Microsoft Publisher. Make them the right size, export to PNG image, upload to Imgur (since it's free and easy) and then use BBCode in your review/message to paste them in and change the formatting of the rest!
I'm actually going to post a guide on all this in the near future and drop some cool templates with custom graphics!!
Thats good to know, Now I can make a better custom one. Thanks R33SES.
Hello again friend! I’m back from the dead and once again prepared to offer some (hopefully useful) feedback.
To start off, I have to appreciate your choice of analogy. The night sky, mystical, constant, universal as it is, resonates deeply and intimately within many people. It is an inseparable part of the human experience without being burdened with the complication of society (granted, that is also changing now, what with space exploration and all, but for now the universe is still mostly just a bunch of question marks as far as science and society are concerned, so it’s all good). The relationship of an individual with the night sky and all it holds is separate from the relationship of their peers, and vice versa. As such, having space be a sort of stand in for emotional support and communication is entirely fitting, relatable, and easily imaginable, whilst still retaining emotional depth via the individual emotional associations of the reader.
(Though, I had a astronomy phase when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, so maybe I’m biased.)
The second thing I must applaud is the way you communicated the theme itself. “Thus, amidst the silent symphony of the universe, / I pour out my heart in whispered refrain,”, for example, utilises a form of musical expression to represent the wider universe, the wider world, wider reality, and then adds on the expressions of the speaker’s heart as a sort of footnote, a “whispered refrain” – an important part of the whole, but overlooked on account of its softness. There are too many specific instances for me to effectively list here, but on almost every occasion where the stanza begins with “I wished” (also very nice, by the way… adds to the sense of being overwhelmed, which, you know, overall isn’t great but for the purpose of the piece, absolutely perfect) the thought flows from hope of confrontation (physical reality) to emotional experiences related to reality, to pure emotional experience, and then into how all of that manifests back into the real world. Order can seem constrictive, but alas, we are a pattern seeking species, and when communicating complicated, often chaotic emotional experiences, it is nice to have some sense of structure.
What I did notice throughout the poem that grated on me a little bit was the rhythm. If this had been a poem without rhyme, I wouldn’t even mention it… it’s in the name, after all, FREE-VERSE … freedom-of-verse, and many rules of rhythm as a result. This piece, however, follows a consistent ABCB rhyme scheme, prompting the mind to read it with the corresponding hard and soft beats, automatically prompting the brain to predict a certain rhythm. Here, there was a general (though not fixed) trend of shorter first two verses and longer second two verses. The last verse often had the longest syllable count. Had the number of verses and the rhyme scheme been different, and had the general syllable ratio been consistent, this wouldn’t have been a problem. As it is, the expected rhythm and the real rhythm of the poem do not align at almost any point, and the real rhythm itself changed often enough that the brain was not allowed to adapt. A rhymed poem is a little bit like a song. Because of the aforementioned cognitive dissonance I had to read this one more like a piece of poetic prose.
Of course, I am but one small human and my experience is entirely subjective to myself and my present state of mind. As with any other constructive criticism, you are well within your right to take this with a grain of salt : )
Overall, the imagery and emotion of the poem outweighed almost everything else. Reading it was a very pleasant experience.
I will leave you here, now. Have a lovely rest of your day, and, as always, happy writing!
The Blob.