--Perilous Plays Ploy Plights-- A loud crack rips through the air. A child screams as a man grips and pulls her by the hair. She is forced to sit and watch as her father is tortured. Her mother already lies on the ground, brutally butchered. Piercing screams rattle her tiny ears. Her fragile face crumbles under an onslaught of salted tears. Her eyes closed, the sounds suddenly stop. A punishing blow across the face causes her tiny and fragile body to drop. "If you can't sit back and watch, then why don't you join me Hun?" The man drags her in front of her father and gives her a handgun. He grips her tiny hands and makes her put pressure on the trigger. He aims at her father's head, causing her tiny body to quiver. Her father looks deep into her distraught eyes, and says "I love you." Her lips quiver as she begins to wail almost as if it was on cue. A loud sound slows down time, as blood splashes against the wall. Time gets even slower as she watches her father's lifeless body begin fall. The man lets go and she falls to the ground. She opens her mouth, yet she's not able to release a sound. The man had picked up the gun and had thoughtlessly shot her. Blood spills from her mouth as she crawls over to her father. She curls up in a ball under her father's arms. With her final breath she whispers, "I love you too daddy... and you too mommy..." gripping her family’s charm... A gust of wind rattles a window. The little girl opens her eyes and feels her pillow. She begins to cry as any little girl would. Her parents rushed in and did what any parent could. They held her tightly and said "It was only a dream honey," and that everything would be alright. But she looks over at the window and froze as she was terrified at who was there in her sight... Grim Verses By: DRTJ
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,804 Reviews
Hello!
This was quite grim.
One thing that I feel you really didn't need was the rhyme. I feel like rhyme should be used for children's books, songs, and those poems in fantasy novels. And a few other exceptions. With this poem, the rhyme wasn't essential to the tone, and I really think you could have told a more gripping story that had the readers more emotionally connected if you had just dropped the rhyme and told the story you had wanted to tell.
Not all poetry has to rhyme, and I feel like most of it shouldn't. It makes the author feel the need to say things they wouldn't normally say if they hadn't had the rhyme bossing them around. A lot of the lines in here are awkward because you were trying to bend things to fit the rhyme.
The story you told wasn't unique. I didn't identify enough with the little girl to feel anything when she shot her father or anything. You need more poetic language, more sensory details, more emotion to make us feel like we're actually there, witnessing the horror of this event. It would be quite a good poem if you were able to do that. As it is now, it reads almost like a newspaper article.
You might also check your commas a bit. You were missing several. Other grammar aspects too. If you would like me to point those out, just tell me.I think you could catch them on your own though, by just going carefully through it. Perhaps reading it out loud. But if you purposefully did it for poetic reasons, that's okay too.
I don't understand your title. It seems like you just wanted to have as much alliteration as you could, but it doesn't make sense.
And I think that's all I have to tell you. I hope that this review helped you somewhat. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
Keep writing! You'll only get better and better!
~fortis
Hi Cara,
Is there something going a bit wrong with your formatting? It seems like your final two lines are a cut off at the end there.
This is an interesting poem, a bit violent and a bit over the top in some ways. Why did you decide to make this a rhyming poem? I want to say that the rhyme doesn't work, but that isn't necessarily true. The rhyme in this case gives the poem a singsong quality that sounds a lot like a child's bedtime story or a narrative at a campfire, it suits the telling of the story. However, I do think you have some pretty simplistic or dodgy rhymes going on that you could consider revising.
The fourth stanza from the bottom seems to end in the middle of nowhere without any rhyme either. I'm not sure if this is another formatting issue, but it doesn't suit what you're doing. This may be a case of making sure you proof read your work once it's been posted - but then we always miss something, don't we!
It's a good poem across the board, if you can fix those formatting issues and reconsider some of your more tenuous rhymes (tortured/butchered is a thin rhyme indeed) then you've got a really solid poem. Thanks for posting this. Let me know if you change it at all, I'd love to have another look at it.
- Penguin.
You may want to shorten “A punishing blow across the face causes her tiny and fragile body to drop.” a bit because to me it disrupted the flow of the words.
“"If you can't sit back and watch, then why don't you join me Hun?"
The man drags her in front of her father and gives her a handgun.” When the man talks to her it seemed to disrupt the flow, you may want to reword this part a little.
“body begin fall.” Did you mean “begin to fall” or “body fall”? It seems like you left out a word after “begin”.
I really like this! I especially like the ending with "But she looks over at the window and froze as she was terrified at who was there in her sight..."