z

Young Writers Society


12+

Grey Sweater

by jumpingsheep


A/N: Today, my school was hit by our second death in two years, both people who brought overwhelming joy into our lives.  I wrote this poem in my biology class.

.

There's a knitted grey sweater folded in my closet.

The material is tough, all softness washed out of it

A hand-me-down from a friend.

.

Grey sweater, grey sweater

I wear it today.

Sleeves wet

Front buttoned up tight

Suffocating.

.

What can eyes speak as we pass in the corridors? What work can we pantomime to pass the hours? When it seems our warriors get hit the hardest, who carries them to safety?When we leave and walk towards each our own sanctuaries, who will have the final word?

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Grey sweater, grey sweater, what have you seen?

Four hours of wear in four years

But you've weathered more tempests than any other thread i possess.

.

I know some of us can't help but think of the other time we donned our grey armor

For me, the same person to speak first, the same words, the same room, and even some of the same blank faces.

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The same silence that stretched beyond when the stillness ceased and the music started.

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The same murmuring mourners in the halls.

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Grey sweater, grey sweater

I never thought we'd have to meet again

And yet

Here we go

Back into battle.


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User avatar
59 Reviews


Points: 5328
Reviews: 59

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Sun Apr 03, 2016 4:55 pm
PusheenTheCat wrote a review...



I like the way you start you poem and there are somethings I would like to tell you

somethings that I think you should know.One of the is that you need to make more

interesting things happen in your poem and have a bit more action to the story.

One of the things I would like to tell you is that you need to have more I see right now you

have 2 stars but if you do what I ask you you might be able to get more stars from what you

write.

Also I like the way you write but you could challenge yourself to make it more bigger and

better.And with what I tell you is that you need to have more things going on at once even

tough I am new I know how to write and read a review.

One of the things before I go I would like you to keep writing and if you want to write

another poem based on this tell me.

Also one of the things that I like is that you write everything and you put it all together.

Also I would like to tell you you have a different way of writing.And I quote

"What can eyes speak as we pass in the corridors? What work can we pantomime to pass the hours? When it seems our warriors get hit the hardest, who carries them to safety?When we leave and walk towards each our own sanctuaries, who will have the final word?"

this is one of the parts that other people wouldn't understand because it isn't in stanzas but

what they don't know is that there are different ways of writing but for me I understand that

and I get what you are saying.




User avatar
806 Reviews


Points: 1883
Reviews: 806

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Fri Mar 18, 2016 3:38 pm
Aley wrote a review...



Hey Jumpingsheep,

This is a really beautiful peace. You have such a wonderful way to capture the motions and stillness of loss with your word choice, descriptors, and flow that it really does make this poem wonderful. This poem really has emotion to it because you're speaking from a personal experience and speaking in a personal way describing specifics about what your experience was, but not going over-detailed with things the world can't understand.

I do think you could make this poem better by breaking up the long lines or getting rid of some of the shorter ones or getting rid of so many stanzas. The reason I say this is because it feels like there's a break in the poem from the different styles and this poem doesn't need that. All it needs is to be plainly presented as words from you to us. So let me go over the two options that I think could improve this.

1) Break up lines

To do this you would be breaking up lines according to chunks of information you present. Find an interesting or complete chunk, and split the lines up. This is like the beginning and end of your poem. If you do that with the middle you're going to have a more concise poem even though you don't change any words to do it. This is because the look of a poem is very important and right now this poem looks jumbled because you have some sections which are broken up into lines, and others which are not. To be consistent and break everything up into lines would present the poem in what looks like a cleaner way.

2) Take out the lines

This is to be consistent with the middle rather than the end, however, if you do this you're going to have to take away some of the lines that are just long enough to stretch only half way across the screen and not hit the end by combining stanzas. This would make it look more like prose-poetry, but if you wanted to leave the middle how it is, this is the way I'd go.

Personally I think you should do option 1.

Also I noticed that you have capitals at the beginning of each line, this isn't necessary. A lot of poets today don't use that any more and to make this modern and serious, you can remove that and just have capitals where a sentence starts or when it's necessary for sentence punctuation. Here's a guide about Capitalization in Poetry

And lastly, here's a formatting guide for on YWS in case you were having some problems with it. How to Format Poetry

I'm sorry for your loss,
keep writing,
Aley.





Life is about losing everything.
— Isabel Allende