Broken Love

by misstoria

Published January 6, 2012

In Dramatic Poetry

They used to be so in love,
like two birds of a feather,
tethered together forever.
She hovered protectively,
meeting his every need,
loving him faithfully.
He held her tight and
called her his.
Every day was but
a moment to them.
Then the pain rushed in
on a northwestern wind
swallowing them.
Lies surrounded
their perfect world
and all was lost.
She cheated
broke his trust,
for the lust.
The voices of doubt
screamed louder,
to the beat of
china plate shatters.
The D word flew quicker
than 747 in winter.
All hope was lost,
with such high cost,
the family dynamic dead.
The Christmas tree
lies silently
waiting for attention
it will never get again.
No more will they laugh
and be merry,
for life is over
for this family.

Comments & reviews · 2
User avatar
ghostie
Review
ghostie wrote a review Review · Jan 8, 2012

-

User avatar
Rydia
Review
Rydia wrote a review Review · Jan 6, 2012

Hai! Looks like you need a review :D (and I'm avoiding work so hey, why not?)

First thing's first, your title could use some improvement. It's not very original and I almost skipped over it while looking for something to review because it make me expect something emo or poorly written or just really angsty and bad. Which this isn't. So do yourself a favour and find a title that tells the reader what to expect from your poem or intrigues them or at least something that's not going to scare us away?

Specific Comments

1.

like two birds of a feather,
tethered together forever.


This is awkward to read. I'm not sure if it's the association of feather and together, which of course just makes me think of the 'birds of a feather flock together' rhyme, or if it's that you've then tagged forever on there. For one, the sounds don't mesh together very well because the rhymes jar against each other, but more importantly, the content isn't working. Forever is a big word and unless you set it up right, it ends up of having the opposite effect. Instead of imprinting on readers this sense of endless, infiniteness, its become so age old that forever feels like next week.

2.
She hovered protectively,
meeting his every need,
loving him faithfully.
He held her tight and
called her his.


Where's the poetry? What's to stop this from being prose other than the line breaks? At the moment, if you took those away, this would just be a couple of lines from your average romance scene. Who are these characters? What makes them special and why should we care about them? And where's the poetry? If I wanted prose, I'd go look in the fiction section. What I'm looking for is interesting metaphors or a clever use of fragmentation. Poetry isn't just about the words, but also the way they sound and the way you place set sounds beside each other. If you want to create the sound of rain you use syllables in sets of two. If you want to create a sinister tone you use sibilance which is where you string together words that have a ssss sound.

What I Like

Okay so what I like in this poem is that part at the end with the personification of the Christmas tree and the idea that it won't have attention any more. I'd have liked to see you go further with that and instead of switching to talking about how the family is dead which is mundane and obvious, instead show their loss and their sorrow through the media of the tree. Describe how the floor is littered with its pine needles, how it start to wilt, how one decoration has slipped to the floor and smashed. There's a lot you could work with there and I think that should be your angle for the poem. The rest was pretty dull - it was too simply stated and while I feel you have the working of something here somewhere, it's really struggling to come out.

If you started again though and put all attention on the christmas tree and used that as a metaphor of this family's 'love' then it would work really well.

Hopefully I've given you an idea or two, drop me a pm if you've got any questions,

Heather xxx



"And the rest is rust and stardust."
— Vladimir Nabokov