Patches

by creativityrules

Published November 30, 2012

In Poetry

It hurts like hell
to feel my petals wilt.

Starting out, I was purity,
childish babble drowning in tears,
finding a high in the rush of self-destruction.
 
                            And I've gone on.
                             I've existed until I craved inexistence,
                            been brave enough to frighten myself.
 
                                                 Changed from a flower into a skeleton,
                                                  a collection of bruises clinging to a savage frame.


                             And now, I have to convince myself
                                that there is some sort of beauty
                                               in my scars,
                                              in my patches,
                    in the knotted thread I've used to sew myself together.

         I don't know if I can love the places where I've become more than me
                                             and less than me
                                             at the same time.
Comments & reviews · 5
User avatar
ivyLeonora
Review
ivyLeonora wrote a review Review · May 9, 2014

First off! The structure of your poem is amazing, really enhances the feeling of everything going downhill, falling apart. I love it. Here is it basically. You're a complete stranger to me but this poem is as if you can read my mind. I'm at this point where perfection is really bugging me. The will to have no flaws and staring at yourself and knowing you are not. I've spent my time reading cliche poetry about this particular feelings, but it never really hit home. This does.
"And now, I have to convince myself
that there is some sort of beauty
in my scars,
in my patches,
in the knotted thread I've used to sew myself together.

I don't know if I can love the places where I've become more than me
and less than me
at the same time.
Trying to convince yourself"
This is my favorite bit. Telling yourself you have to love yourself, you have to feel comfortable with the fake facade, but it doesn't work. because when you're alone and thinking, you're train of thoughts lead back to being imperfect.
The last stanza really reads my mind. They way I interpreted it, is as if people don't realize how fucked up you are. They see half of you thinking they have you figured out, but they don't. The worst part is you don't really know who you are anyway.

User avatar
Kale
Review
Kale wrote a review Review · Dec 30, 2012

Hello there creativityrules! I, Murtle, usually known as Kyllorac, will be reviewing you today, on this very fine Review Day. I don't think I've ever reviewed one of your poems. Unless I have and am just forgetting it.

In any case, onto the review!

This poem just doesn't really do it for me. I'm not quite sure what you were trying to accomplish with this, much less the main subject. You start out talking about feeling pain, and yet, by the end, you're talking about loving places. There's a disconnect in the ideas, and they weren't bridged by the other parts of the poem. Or, to use a more appropriate analogy for this poem, they weren't patched together well enough. Some pieces have no thread connecting them to the others, and it makes for a rather disparate experience.

On the one hand, you could really use the disconnection between the fragments to really reinforce the patched-up theme going on, but you also need to have at least one strong connection between the pieces otherwise they're not so much patches as a pile of pieces that fell apart and just so happened to land on top of each other.

Basically, you have a few threads in place that do this (such as the flower imagery), but there aren't enough to patch together the poem as a whole. It's mainly the last stanza with its reference to places that sticks out as not being sewn to the others, but the other pieces could use a bit more thread and careful stitching to make them feel a bit more connected.

You could also probably exploit the use of spacing a bit more than you have. The spacing feels a bit more regular than it could be, and considering the broken, tattered feeling you seemed to be aiming for, a bit more irregular spacing would really reinforce that.

Overall, there's quite a few things I like about this piece (namely the second and last stanzas), but they really don't work as a whole, which is a shame. This piece could be quite interesting and thought-provoking, if only there were a bit more cohesion to its tatteredness.

Thanks for your input, Murtle! I agree with many of the things you said. Thank you for pointing them out; I'll definitely take them into consideration.

User avatar
aouther2b
Review
aouther2b wrote a review Review · Dec 1, 2012

Very well written. Its got so much raw emotion, and great ideas expressed. It doesn't have much imagry though. I can't really picture the baby or the flower and skeleton because you go so fast into the next image. The one i can picture is "And now, I have to convince myself/ that there is some sort of beauty/ in my scars,/ in my patches,/ in the knotted thread I've used to sew myself together" And I love that part. I think it needs some work but it flows nicely and has strong ideas. Great piece! :)

Thank you very much! :D



not to be woke but i just can't go around eating houses
— chi