last night you scratched sins
onto my painted walls:
fingernail-thin trails spelling histories
you could not have known,
that you must have plucked from photo albums
or read from my lips through the confessional screen.
My own words spill across the wall,
made of chipped paint
but it looks like shattered glass.
Angry words next to hieroglyphics
of me, on a mountain, or a cliff top,
always above the clouds, always facing east.
lies are repeated twice:
once for the story, once for the truth.
I don’t like either.
I wonder if you mean this as a medal,
tokens of heads severed and hearts eaten,
like that tribe we read about in school,
the ones with the patchwork faces.
Or if now you’re rubbing my face in the mud
until my eyelashes are heavy with clumps of guilt.
but these wrongs were committed by reflections,
echoes to you heard only through the mouths of others,
or me, when I’m generous.
I shouldn’t owe you penance, you false priest
your feet are not holy and your path is not straight.
Perhaps if I stare long enough at my scraped sins,
they will burn themselves into my retinas
so I can bless you with fire.
Hey, Pix here to review!
I find this very interesting. I honestly can't say I disliked anything in the poem. It's detailed, has good spelling grammar, and you tell the story in a precise, and straight to the point matter.
But a few things I should point out.
- At the beggining of your lines, you switch of with capitalization. Stay consistent so that you can actually not get destracted. xD
- Your punctuation is exactly the same. It doesn't stay conistent, but I don't think that it has to be either, so just ignore this. ;3
Overall, this is a very good poem that just needs a little extra work on the Captalization and punctuation.
~Katie
Hey Jenni,
Okay, I was a bit borderline on figuring out whether I liked this or not... but right now I think I do! It's a great idea.
The only thing I am going to complain about it the use of your words. You are describing everything that is happening, and that ruins it.
When writing poetry, no matter what genre or meaning, you shouldn't be completely telling. We need some sort of mystery. If you re-word a few things, add a few things and take away some other things then you could have an awesome piece of writing here.
But don't get me wrong, I did enjoy reading it, I would have just preferred to have to read inbetween the lines more. I'd rather go into it blindly and figure out for myself what everything is all about.
Don't worry whether people will understand what you mean, use metaphors! They're extremely effective.
Your detail is amazing... just too literal.
Overall, I liked it and want to read more.
Well done, keep writing.
-Clarity'xo
Okay, Jenni. You have a heck of a lot going on in this little poem. It feels to me like a quilt with squares of all different sizes and textures and shapes. A concrete square here, and a soft rabbit's fur oval there, and somehow you were inspired to try to shove them all together because they eat gave you a vivid emotion. I like a lot of these pieces individually. And I have to say you had me on your side from your first strong stanza:
I highlight the moments I particularly liked, which all focused on texture or the fingers and kept this stanza close-knit and clear. It seems we kind of tend to lose focus after the first stanza. Maybe 'cause we know we have to break the poem up into parts, but a line break makes us think we have to change the topic, and suddenly we don't know how close is too close to the original and how far out we have to go to deserve a stanza break.
But you have to try to keep it together if you want to polish this for publication. You can deal with a couple of textures. I'm not saying you have to limit yourself to just one and hammer it the whole way through. But you're all over the place.
From that tight first stanza to:
paint, heiroglyphics, mountains, medal, heads, pathwork, mud, mouths, penance, scraped, retinas, and fire.
Each of these have their own texture and theme. Which would you pick if you could only pick two? Do these relate tightly to your first stanza? Can you build a second draft that way?
I hope this was helpful!
Please PM me with questions or comments about my review.
Good luck and keep writing!
really good use of words. deep poem and well set out. good quality of writen words and good description. i understand it and its very well writen and soo good!please write again its so good! <3 <3
WELL DONE!:)
That was beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed this poem. Yeah, as the guy said above me, to be consistent with your capitalization. This poem has a very distinct vibe to it, sort of like a cross between horror story and romance (maybe that's just me). But I really liked it, I'd like to see more!
This is a very good and descriptive poem.
A couple of things:
Be consistent in your capitalization. In the first paragraph everything was lowercase then you started adding capitals.
This line really confused me "I wonder if you mean this as a medal," I don't understand what it means, unless its a religious reference then its hard to understand.
I came here planning a full on review but the poem was very good I don't have much else to say. Happy writing.