Hi! Hello! Let's look at what you've written!
So, the message of this poem is pretty clear: we all can never measure up to the ideals that society pushes upon us. Like another reviewer said, this has become a white noise. We all want to be perfect, and because of our, as you put it, "unrealistic society" we never can measure up to that idea of perfect. And Jumpyspot is right. It has become a sort of "white noise". Yet you still manage to deliver a good poem.
Now, first of all, I'm going to say that this is not really my style of poetry. I love reading free verse with short, snappy lines that skirt around the idea using metaphors and similes so that the reader can draw their own conclusions. But you com out and state exactly what needs to be said from the minute you start out and provide examples, which, even though is not exactly what I always like to read, is what needs to be said here. You provide examples. And you use some of these things within your poem. By straight-out telling the truth but also using these devices and examples, you turn a usually "white noise" sort of plea into something that is very much your own, and very good. When you mention the mother who looks at her children, I was SO freaking sad. And I will be melancholy the whole day because of that (which is good!). But the thing is, that was all your writing, your ideas. And THAT is what made the poem more than just white noise; that is what made the poem your own thing, and beautiful.
Now, there are parts that I think you could improve on. Flow. Punctuation. And a few parts that confuse me. I'll go over the bits that confuse me, first.
Confusion:
Yet we’ve been told many times before they’re all lies
But what else are we left to believe?
That first line there just muddled so much for me. We've been told the lies many times...before they're lies? This may be me being dense, but that just confused the heck out of me.
Now, this next bit isn't so much confusing as awkward.
Because somewhere there’s a girl who cries herself to sleep,
A boy who’s afraid to be weak and so he bottles it in
Until it explodes like a can of hot soda, shaken and left in a car
Because there’s a mother who struggles...
That "because" before the mother's line makes it look like the boy explodes BECAUSE the mother looks at her children. I know this isn't true from the context, but it still needs to be fixed. And this comes round back to punctuation. If you used different punctuation in that stanza, that would have been made more clear. Here's how I would have fixed that stanza:
Because somewhere there’s a girl who cries herself to sleep;
A boy who’s afraid to be weak and so he bottles it in
Until it explodes like a can of hot soda, shaken and left in a car;
Because there’s a mother who struggles...
The semicolons are perfect here, y'know why? Because they connect the poem together while keeping each phrase it's own independent thing.
The other punctuation blip I noticed was:
Cause beauty it’s deception.
That first line needs something between the "cause beauty" and the "it's deception". I think either a hyphen or a comma is best, but it just confuses me and shines at me like a spotlight. You're obstructing your own flow, and I think this is because it was one of those spur-of-the-moment totally-inspired poems. The kind that gets you writing and throwing all laws of grammar and punctuation to the wind. And that's fine, but you still need to fix it. I'll show you both ways of how I would do it.
Cause beauty--it’s deception.
(and)
Cause beauty, it’s deception.
I'd honestly go with the second one.
Overall for punctuation, I think you just need to read the poem out loud the way it's written. No comma or period is just one big, elongated sentence. Here's the most helpful link I could find: http://lamonaca.deviantart.com/art/Punc ... -103788331
I know I can be brutal, and I'm sorry for that. But I hope this helped!
Points: 1590
Reviews: 44
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