i am sorry
for every time i was mean to you.
all my life,
i've felt so weak
i never knew all the pain i could inflict
with my mouth pressed up to your heart
and all the broken glass around it.
it's funny because
all i ever wanted to be
was beautiful
not in the way people smile on their first dates
but the feeling of a long drive on a summer night
windows down - and nothing but the road ahead.
instead i have become malevolent
when i was younger, i wondered how fish saw the sea
the water weighing down their glassy eyes
was it beautiful?
i see through people, they say
i can pull back curtains and shades, and
i hope i can break locks and chains
but then i see the the "joke" i made
and it's hidden behind a curtain in your eyes
i realize i cannot pull back words
that soften your soul and tighten the bolts
when you think no one else can see.
i'm not a good person
because this letter was for you,
and it was supposed to be beautiful.
i made it about me.
all i ever wanted was to be beautiful.
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125,013 Literary Works • 672,844 Reviews
This poem gets better as it goes on, however I think you need to be careful to avoid cliches like 'locks and chains' however there are some quite interesting thoughts, especially when you talk about the thoughts you had at childhood. Ultimately, though, I think it has a lot of potential, I would just keep revising it until you have ironed out all the creases.
Hi! Thanks for your comment c: I agree with your idea about 'locks and chains'. It was my first thought, and I didn't change it before posting. If anyone could help me out (I'm new here), how do you edit a work after you've posted it? Or is that impossible?
Hi there, aeresky. Welcome to YWS! It's great to see new faces.
I really like this poem. You put your images in well, and they do what they're supposed to do; support the ideas in the poem. The images themselves are lovely as well.
That being said, there is always room for improvement.
The beginning of the poem should grab the reader's attention. But this beginning does not grab my attention. The beginning lines are too plain, and they don't set up my expectations for the rest of the poem. Near the end of this part, you do have an image. I suggest you incorporate the image in your apology in the beginning. Perhaps say something like this:
"i am sorry
for the times i inflicted pain
because my broken glass mouth
was pressed against your heart."
That creates a stronger image, and gets more attention. Though you should find your own words to put that into; you've got a distinct style.
The end of the poem needs a bit of a tweak as well. The last two lines are very tell-y. You need to cut those out. We can infer that you made it about yourself because you say that "this letter was for you." And the last line makes you seem petulant and unapologetic. It doesn't matter if you didn't mean it that way. It came off that way. So take out the last two lines and you'll be fine.
Now, since "beautiful" is such a big concept in this poem, perhaps you should capitalize it. It would add emphasis.
The last piece of advice I'll leave you with is to break this big block of text up into stanzas a little. Here's how I would do it:
Spoiler
for every time i was mean to you.
all my life,
i've felt so weak
i never knew all the pain i could inflict
with my mouth pressed up to your heart
and all the broken glass around it.
it's funny because
all i ever wanted to be
was beautiful;
not in the way people smile on their first dates,
but the feeling of a long drive on a summer night,
windows down - and nothing but the road ahead.
instead, i have become malevolent.
when i was younger, i wondered how fish saw the sea,
the water weighing down their glassy eyes.
was it beautiful?
i see through people, they say.
i can pull back curtains and shades, and
i hope i can break locks and chains,
but then i see the the "joke" i made
and it's hidden behind a curtain in your eyes
i realize i cannot pull back words
that soften your soul and tighten the bolts
when you think no one else can see.
i'm not a good person
because this letter was for you,
and it was supposed to be beautiful.
i made it about me.
all i ever wanted was to be beautiful
Now, if you think that there is a better way to break it up, then do it that way. But break it up. The way it is, it's hard to make it all the way through when it's all in one block of text.
Altogether, you've got a great start to this poem. I hope that this review was helpful. Happy poeting!
Thank you so so so much for your detailed review! I'll definitely consider your thoughts. I appreciate your time
Hello there,
I liked the concept behind your poem - simple, straight-forward and relating to everyday things. The emotions are quite powerful as well. It's just the grammatical side of things that are a bit difficult to read. Paragraphing would be a good start and your punctuation as well as capitalizing 'I'. But overall, a good clenching poem and the title of it really hits home! Keep on writing!
Hi,
I understand what you mean about the grammar. Truth is, I never meant for it to be particularly correct. Maybe I'm just pretentious, but I always had the idea that poetry didn't have to be grammatically correct. I will definitely break it up into stanzas, but I like my little lowercase i's. Thank you for your thoughts!
Hello, it appears as though I'll be your reviewer for today. First enough, I likr the whole concept behind this. It is wholesome and honest, and I commend you for that. I admit I might have had troubling recording all of this as a journal entry. Now, onto the substance. What you have is good, but it could be better.
I'm really only referring to the ending. "I'm not a good person". Well okay, but how can you make that better?
For one, the lines from there on lacked imagery, originality and figurative language. I feel like this could be so much more with more imagination, imagery, and figurative language.
Also, this was a bit hard to follow simply because of the lack of spacing and stanzas.
Now, this is off to a good start, but not great, but that's okay. If you had the ability to write the beginning; surely you can revise the ending. Good luck!
Thank you for leaving a review! Yeah, I always lose steam somewhere in my poetry. I get really close to the idea I'm trying to convey and then...I lose it. Hmph. I don't like my ending much, and I'm toying with ways to say it differently. Also, I will definitely add stanzas.
Hey aeresky!
I found some mistakes so here goes.
1. You haven't got any capital letter.
2. You don't have any paragraphs.
3. You sentences are too long.
4. When you have the letter "I" alone it's always capital.
5. In this poem there are no rhymes.
Here are the good things I found.
1. This is an open letter because everything in this relates to your title.
2. Most of your words are correctly spelled.
3. This poem is great.
Hello! I'm going to respond to each of your points individually:
1. I didn't mean for my poem to have any capital letters. I'm fully aware of how this bothers some (most) people, but I like it with lowercase. Don't think I'm incapable of using capital I. See? IIIII
2. Yes, I mean to break it into stanzas. I kind of wrote this quickly and posted it before I chickened out. This is an extremely rough draft.
3. This is kind of like the i's. I don't mean for this poem to be completely grammatically correct. Personally, I like the style of long sentences. Do you think you could point out specifically which sentences bother you?
4. Yep, I kind of talked about that in 1. BUT I AM VERY CAPABLE OF CAPITAL LETTERS. I'm not yelling at you; I just needed to make a point heh.
5. Mmm poetry doesn't have to rhyme. There are plenty of poems that don't rhyme. I know a lot of people enjoying reading poetry with rhymes, but mine would probably turn out to be: the fat cat sat on the mat with a hat saying, "What a drat!" :S
1. Yeah I'm usually bad at titles, but I gave myself a little pat on the back for this one c:
2. Thank you for noticing!
3. Oh stop. I'm blushing