Maybe I’m blind, Maybe I’m foolish,
But you can’t expect much from a human.
Maybe I’m cold, Maybe I’m brute,
But you can’t expect much from a demon.
Maybe I’m unknown, Maybe I’m unholy,
But you can’t expect much from a silent sinner.
You can’t expect much from a human,
A human that doesn't know who she is,
A human who doesn't know what she wants,
You can’t expect much from a human,
Especially one that makes mistakes,
Especially one who gets the blame put on them.
You can’t expect much from a demon,
A demon that doesn't care how people feel,
A demon that hates everyone,
You can’t expect much from a demon,
Especially one that tries to create chaos,
Especially one that never shuts her mouth.
You can’t expect much from a silent sinner,
A sinner which in under the radar,
A sinner who never cares for the consequences,
You can’t expect much from a silent sinner,
Especially one who sins on purpose,
Especially one who has the real problems.
Maybe I’m blind, Maybe I’m foolish,
But that doesn't mean you put everything off on me,
That doesn't mean you need to look at me any other way,
You can’t expect much from a human,
Especially one who struggles within herself,
Especially one who never shares her secrets.
You can’t expect much from a demon,
Especially one who wreaks havoc,
Especially one who has a storm starting within herself,
You can’t expect much from a silent sinner,
Especially one who makes you cry,
Especially one who is alive.
I’m only human after all.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,006 Literary Works • 672,809 Reviews
Hey, welcome to YWS!
Well, the title of this poem caught my eye right away, and I wasn't disappointed by the poem itself. It's a pretty good effort, and you definitely get a thumbs-up from me.
Overall, I enjoyed how you kept switching from demon to sinner to human and back again. It had a fairly solid flow and there were no rocky bits. However, the excessive use of commas taints your good work. You don't need to end each line with a comma; while that may be a style of writing, you've kinda overdone it. Try replacing some of those commas with semicolons and fullstops, like this:
These are two different sentences, and each time I came across this kind of pairing I was both confused and put off. Use a fullstop after "everyone."
The repetition got a little tiring as well. The excessive use of "especially" makes the word lose whatever power it has by the end of the poem. I understand that as of now it is necessary to guide the flow of the poem, so I suggest tweaking the entire poem a little bit and not overly constraining yourself with rigid patterns. As of now, they hold your talent in an iron grip, and I don't think your whole potential has come out in this poem.
What is the reason for both "m"s being capitalized in this line/sentence?
Again, this is an example of how you've used commas in place of other punctuation. It just makes your poem look a little messy and confusing, so...
The ending was quite good but abrupt.
The meaning in each line was pretty good. There isn't a great deal of depth in this poem from what I can see, but what is conveyed has been conveyed well. Still, like I said, your potential is obstructed, so break free!
If my review was too harsh, I apologise. I'm only trying to be helpful.
I hope you keep writing! Good luck!
- Lee
Ayy there. Welcome to YWS, great to see a new poet here. I am Buranko, ready with a review for you.
I am 100% you used Rag'n'Bone Man-----Human as a starting point to make your poem. There is nothing wrong with that, I love seeing you make your own versoon from that as a starting point. It is alright as long as you don't plagiarize.
The poem does a great job at outlining the persona's inner thoughts and personality. I love how you created these layers of the soul, introduced them and then explained. However, I feel that it is a little too simple for a poem in terms of composition. You should use more figures of speech. That way the reality you creats makes sense and is so much better. What you did was a really simplified text, barely reaching the dimension of a poem. You got the structure, now add those flavours and details to make it whole. For example:
You said "especially one who never shares her secrets". This phrase is really basic. First we set the mood. To achieve that I use some imagery: "especially one whose secrets/belong to the dark realm of silence". From that I would try to develop and make it a little nicer as a composition "her secrets are/under the bloody mark of silence". It may seem a little different from the first basic idea but the essence is the same. Try to show not tell. Get the essence of what you want to express and from there work on creating a nice effect on the reader.
Good luck, keep writing, you will get the hang of it. Sorry if I was a little harsh.
Hello f_priestly,
First off, welcome to YWS, I hope your enjoying your time here. But let's get onto the review.
Meaning
I'm going to try to find the meaning of your poem. Now I think it's pretty clear, but I could be wrong. Throughout the poem, I got a very negative vibe. Almost as if the narrator felt as if they weren't enough. As if they weren't happy with who they were.
But when the narrator says "You can't expect much from a..." It gave me the sense that they know that they aren't enough and there's nothing they can do about it. I feel that the last line,
sums it all up. They are sinful and broken, countless scars are on their body, but they are only human after all. What do you expect?
Tips
It would've been nice to have some kind of order between the beginnings of each stanza. Such as "You can't expect much from a human......You can't expect much from a demon.....You can't expect much from a silent sinner.." And then start from the beginning again. Since you already have a similar lines in each stanza, it would read better like this. But then again, it's a style choice.
Brute doesn't really fit here. You'd use that word in a sentence like "he's a brute." Other words you could use are, harsh, mean etc. But it's your choice.
I hope my review was helpful! If you have any questions feel free to ask! Keep on writing and have a great rest of your day!
Stellarjay
Wow.
I had to take a moment there to process what I’d just read. That’s truly how much it impacted me. Those phrases “doesn’t know who she is”/“what she wants”, “a storm starting within herself”, “I’m only human after all” and the like resonated with me so much I stared in shock, unable to comprehend what I was reading.
Anyway, I’m Alice, and I’m not awfully skilled at reviewing, but here we go. As I’ve already mentioned, this poem deeply impacted me and I am still in a slight state of shock due to that.
In terms of the structure of the poem, though, I am enjoying the repetition of the phrase “maybe I’m” and the word “especially”. I’m finding this makes the poem easier to read, although I feel separation of different stanzas would help add on to the ease of reading it. The capitalisation of the “maybe” in the middle of each line is also slightly annoying me, but now I’m really just being petty.
Although the ideas behind the poem and the way you portrayed these ideas were both excellent, I found the poem not to flow as easily as it could have done. Again, separation of stanzas could help with this, as well as a slight re-think of line order. I feel a more flowing poem would make the reader feel the impact you have so wonderfully put across even more.
That’s all I can really say about this poem. It’s very impactful, but perhaps a clean-up of line order or stanzas would be beneficial to the flow of the poem.
Have a wonderful day/night, and I hope to read more of your work in the future!
Wow, this poem is amazing! The parallelism makes this extremely powerful. It outlines the darkness this girl has hidden deep within herself, and every time I read this, it gets better and better! I believe this is one of the best poems I have read in a while- it is possibly one of the best I have seen in my life (that is not an exaggeration). I do not have any criticism at all, well done!
~Admim