Ever bound our minds are torn,
From nothingness ideas are born,
We create a blueprint within our mind,
Of the world, we are confined,
A self fulfilling prophecy,
Inescapable, never free,
A Humunculus in our every thought,
Free will and mind, it must thwart,
At the mercy of its grasp so tight,
Messing up to its delight,
Our conscious mind is ever sleeping,
Bent and cracked, our soul is seeping,
Through of the holes of our psyche,
What remains is foul and spiky,
What we see is wrong and sin,
An infection deep within our skin,
Shame and guilt build up around us,
Thoughts and theory ever pound us,
I am confined,
To my mind,
For am I blind,
I cannot find,
The contract I had signed,
I would have declined,
This curse on mankind,
Was I designed,
So unrefined?
Perspective holding,
Knowledge molding,
Ideas withholding,
My thoughts are scolding,
My brain is folding!
But really we create ourselves,
No goul, god or little elves,
We have the power to be free,
No thought is real, don’t you see,
Ideas exists outside our brains,
But knowledge seems to cause us pains,
Release yourself from their power,
For eventually they will turn sour,
Freedom is our only choice,
Listen to your inner voice,
The breath-self is what remains,
When you remove all the stains,
Of all the other personalities,
For they are just fatalities,
Lingering in your delicate head,
Dangling from a single thread.
Fill yourself with nothingness,
For this I really have to stess,
A deeper issue I must address,
Stimulated from much distress,
Emotions you must not oppress.
To yourself you must confess,
The extent of which you digress.
With the self you must coalesce,
For only you can possess,
A fervency for success,
Only then can you convalesce.
Rjdstewart,
I want to welcome you to YWS and I hope that you are enjoying the site so far! C: I think the title for this piece is very apt - I love how you took this poem and went exploring with it. I can definitely feel and sense your exploration with rhythm, rhyme, and just an overall playing with words - so this poem was fun to read! And with that said, the nitpicks...
Your first stanza kind of goes on and on and on, essentially a long run-on that keeps going and leaves us running for breath. I see that you're trying to create some forward momentum with your lines - especially how you have that first stanza getting shorter and shorter, it's like you're trying to create this big momentum that is going to roll down a hill and get faster, and faster, and faster - and that's great! But don't forsake grammar in the process!
Here's a challenge for you - now this may strike you as odd or unnecessary. With an exercise like this, you're going to need some distance - maybe look at the poem some weeks or something later and see if you agree then, but what I'm mainly interested in is what effect would be achieved if you actually vary your breaks. See, all your breaks are end-rhymes. The trick is that instead of focusing on end-rhymes -- maybe try shifting that line so that the rhyme falls in the middle and the end of the line - by doing that, you're actually creating more momentum and it allows you space to pause, breathe, and reflect while still keeping everything moving.
For example, compare the above with this:
Anyway, try experimenting with line breaks and see what you come up with - sometimes you really do end up with interesting movement and all I did there was move some lines. Don't worry about whether some lines are shorter or longer - worry instead about breath and movement.
The second technical thing I would advise for is to try trimming the poem down some. You do have some compelling words and rhythms and some interesting rhymes - but it's all a bit overwhelming, so it ends up bogging each other down - almost like there's too much static, too much noise being created, so you can barely see the poem clearly.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions as I know this review is kind of technical in nature. But I would love to chat you up and discuss this a bit more.
~ as always, Audy
This is awesome.
It has a really nice flow to it, as in it all fits together really well. I'm not the best at poetry, but I can see and love the story line you chose. Awesome vocabulary too. I can easily imagine this poem in a literary book or in some professional-wattama-thingy with a bunch of literature in it.
I LOVE IT!