The Ocean of Expectations

hey bro.
Saw this a loooong time ago, needed to review something, and realized I've never reviewed this!
So off I go.

this has a good message. it's quite relate-able, especially to someone who understands exactly why you wrote this...

now, suggestions for improvement.
first of all, please break this up into stanzas. just something that sticks out from the get-go and makes it unappealing to the reader's eye. not something I feel like reading by simply looking at it.
secondly, you have some lines/phrases with really nice language, but the rest is quite...casual. this is poetry! a language all its own! turning normal phrases into something different, beautiful, comparing it, contrasting it, relating and replacing it from ordinary things. If you want the language to be ordinary/casual, I suggest calling these song lyrics. I could expound on this but I'm tired. I trust you'll get it.
lastly, I'd like to suggest a different title. To me, basing a title off a line in the poem can be pretty standard and cliche, especially if it's one of the last/first phrases. Hannah once told me (and I live by this now) that a good title gives a taste of what's to come in the poem, part of the gist, if you will, while still leaving mystery. something seemingly unrelated can catch a reader off-guard but bring them full-circle once they've finished and, perhaps reread, your poem, going 'aha! it all makes sense!' A little imagery in the title never hurt.

that's all for now.
thanks for sharing yer stuff:) hope I helped

i love this piece of poem. I definitely can relate to this. Thank you for writing this such wonderful poem. I have no criticism. This is just beyond amazing. The words and phrases were captivating, which made me want to read more. The beginning was totally a hook too. I also agree that in life you have to start over when you know you made a mess and you just learn from your mistakes. Again this poem is great. Loved it.

Keep up the fabulous work!

Dear Rissymay,
As I was searching the contents of new material of YWS, I came along and saw your poem, and thought.

"I haven't read a poem in a while, how about this one?"

Now I can say that I have not only read a poem, but a good poem. I like this piece, and strikes a cord with me, its heart felt, its melancholy, its blue. A felling a lot of people face, especially writers. and honestly I don't have much to say, its an all around good poem. I however, being a critic, have two comments, something I liked, and something that I feel could improve and make the piece stronger.

Lets get the part you could use out of the way first. You could use stronger word choice, as writers, words are our paint, bricks, or whatever analogy you prefer, to work with, and paint the best picture we can to the audience. For example, lets take your sentence of "You wonder why you traded sugar for vile food" vile is a good word, and it does get the idea to the reader but instead lets change it with "You wonder why you traded sugar for decaying food" just that one word changes the entire image to the readers head, a more disgusting word that just is more image creating to people.

A great way that I've fond to help with one's vocabulary, is just learn a word a day. Just look up a word in the dictionary and use it in a sentence. A good app to help you, if you have a smart phone, is dictionary.com's word of the day. Just a suggestion that personally helps me.

Now to what I really like about this piece, that fact that it doesn't rhyme. Now I explain this, because I feel, in fact I know, someone will say that this is a detriment to a poem, and to be honest, this is not the case. A rhyme is a nice mechanic, its clever word tricks to show off as a writer, but what I feel, and I could be a million miles away from this, is that you didn't want to distract with a little trick. This work is bare, hard, and a scream of sorts, to show the dissatisfaction of the world that you inhibit, its not meant to impress, its something more. To shout out with the wind "IM NOT A PEICE OF WORK, IM A HUMAN WITH FAULTS, AND PROUD OF IT!" and that, to me, is why its strong by not rhyming.

I'm sorry if I rambled, but I get passionate over literature. I do like it and will look forward to future work.
Sincerely,
Nick Catanzaro/MrTalljoker

It’s relatable, feeling overwhelmed by others’ expectations of yourself.

You try your best to meet all of their expectations, but you never do enough. You’re over the edge, emotionally. Your burdened, weighed down, and can no longer find joy in what your do. You become stuck in a terrible cycle of not doing enough and not doing, even, what you want to do.

I understand.

The issue is, you came in too quick. You gave us the entire poem in the first two lines. In that question you asked, I had all of the knowledge of what you wanted to say, and I didn’t need to read the rest of the poem. I think you should strike those two lines. Start at the third. Start with something like,

“And you thought you were floating?
You were sinking all along.
You swam up ’til exhaustion,
but the water kept rising
Above your head.
Tears escaped.”

Excess words (“But,” “stopped your limbs,” “level of the ocean of expectation, “Rose so far past,” “your submerged eyes”) have been stricken, and this creates the drama. The lines are a lot shorter, and so they read a little clipped and so bring the tension you need to build to really convey that under-pressure feeling.

I don’t want to be asked if I’ve ever felt like I was drowning. What if I’ve never had the experience? You, as the writer, should bring the experience to me, like a good film maker. Make me feel like I was there. Make me feel like I’m going under. Don’t ask me if I ever remember feeling that way. Give me the feeling! This is under the category “Dramatic,” so bring the drama!

Agh! Punch a wall! Get into it!

Ha, er.. I got too into it, but you feel what I mean?

Find that feeling deep in your gut, about how you really -feel- in this situation, and then write. Don’t think about it. Feel. Write. Feel. Write.

Hey geeky here

first: I couldn't find any errors so congrats on that, but it could also be I didn't scan well enough!!

do you write music? because this could be a very well written song!

second: I want to say I really enjoyed this! I love how you went into deep thought of the weight on someone's shoulders when everyone has high expectations for someone else!

I also think this is a good way to show people the side affects of having too high expectations for friends, family, kids etc. so this should be read by the world!!

all together good job!:)