critique my poetry?
Replies
so i'm a terrible teen poet (aren't we all?) and i'm looking for some crit on my work that i've done over about the last 8-ish months. i'm going to put each one under a spoiler because i have ten bajillion poems to have looked at and some of them could be pretty upsetting as they can get a bit raw - that's acceptable, right?
untitled
you are the damp hand, the blowtorch, the crackling and ozone-tasting flame,
that sets my cheeks afire and constricts my throat
until the only sounds escaping are ‘pleases’ and ‘your name heres’.
you slink along my mind like a shoestring around a throat —
you are my metaphorical garrote, choking the life out of me one ill-gotten moan at a time.
you built me up like a brick wall by toddler-tight fingers
that was only designed to be destroyed and rise again as someone else.
what you did not see coming was my fingers plunging
deep within your brain and squeezing
until something that should have been in your heart breaks with a wet noise,
and they all see you.
you did not expect me to remove your mask,
leave you exposed
like so many dirty rags left after a killing.
sky-god
a great chasm
in the clouds
like the mouth of some god spills
light
like the drool, hanging in pearly stands, from the great beast’s maw.
we are beyond
sitting in a lecture,
hands shaking/aura flicking.
cheeks are hot, tears hotter.
i am an inferno
burning inside crisp skin and warped metal.
you are the blaze to match my own.
our fingers meld like magma.
our breath is, together,
as the carcinogenic volcano spew.
we are the goddess Pele.
we are here every day.
we exist as a starfield.
we are beyond natural, are above that.
we love like death.
we love like infinity’s grip.
equatable
sometimes, i wonder if
the curl of your fingers can be summed up
by a parabolic formula
as they curve against my neck.
could i mathematically engineer a body
as (in my eyes) perfect as yours?
if i were given the chemical formula for bone,
could i create a collarbone that my lips
fit into more painfully right?
are you just a vessel for a thousand eyed angelic being?
does the golden ratio apply to you?
i feel like you are somehow beyond a number
so understandable by simple humans.
no: i believe that
the millions of synapses, firing at lightning speed
in my circuitboards,
could not hope to calculate your existence
down to a simple combination of letters, numbers, symbols
you: a summation
you make my chakras align
as you anoint my crown, my heart, my root
with the sacral foods that are the ambrosia, the nectar.
(your kiss, you touch, your gaze, breath, being)
you are the reason i can put my feet to floor in the morning
without the fear of it phasing out of existence (into nothing, into empty)
and me falling into the abyss my own mind creates.
you are my anchor in the sky.
you are how i know to back out of the dead end zone
instead of screaming, instead of crying, vomiting, aching
with my forehead or toes or fingers, jaw to the finish line.
you are my world 3, level 2 checkpoint.
in the end,
maybe i make too much out of a 14-and-change kid,
slogging through their own swamp.
then again —
maybe no one else makes enough of you.
the young man and the sea
you are as vast and unknowable as the ocean
and i am the lone explorer
on his shaky niña, pinta, santa maria.
you are they of great coral reefs,
resplendent in the colors they never named in school.
maybe i’ll be devoured by your cherybdis;
maybe i’ll be swallowed down too deep by your scylla;
maybe i’ll lust too far after your sirens.
but maybe
i’ll find a sweet old island.
name it Gilligan’s; name it the moon.
maybe i’ll stay there for all eternity,
soaking in the gentle surf of you fingers.
when i die, i shall sink into your depths
where the man in the moon’s reflection is but a memory;
where twenty thousand leagues under seems like baby steps,
and fill my lungs, my nasals, my ears
with your blood-brine
so you are all i am/so we are wholly one.
untitled
i am watching, through the glass,
snow cover the sad ground.
the trees are all skeletons with probing fingers,
reaching towards a sun they’re blind to through the soup-thick atmosphere.
i blink and all too soon i see that
the garden is covered in three inches
of the sky god’s powdery efforts. do you remember digging your fingers
through the dead bits
to hold my own?
there is no movement. it is too cold for birds.
i turn and hold a pillow close, breathing in the way you could smell.
some say
that I am Too Young, Too Small, Too Much Of A Child to know love
But in return,
i say that they are just too old and large and much of an adult
to know passion.
you will not linger forever, as they wish,
but you are here now, and your heart-heat is melting open all the burrows
of cold spring creatures.
I
I am ten thousand microprocessors on a motherboard
whirring away at lightning speed. I am
a million crystal-light LEDs that flash with every beat
of your heart.
I am so in tune with your bodybreathing,
with your pulse drumming a primordial tattoo on my temples,
with your lungs’ ebb-flow moon cycling, that every breath you take
is threefold my own.
I am a fingerprint whorl swirling so endlessly on your canvas,
your skin, your cells. I am this tiny endless pattern and
you are the same pattern to the power of eighteen
and you are the arms of our spiraling galaxy.
I will never know how I am expected to
succeed breathe live exist in anyways at all
knowing that you, this unknowable and familiar infinity,
exist on the same plane.
angels
they say angels
are not pretty. they are not
what we call gorgeous here on earth. they are so
much more than what we can fathom.
and i know this
because when i see you, sillhouetted,
back facing me as you breathe in the moon,
i see six wings
and a thousand thousand eyes.
you
your tongue was mercury —
blood poison and silver quick-smooth.
you ran it up the shell of my ear
and drank in my shudders and screams.
your fingers were tree branches:
the kind that catch snagged my shirt that night.
the thing is, now im unraveling and the thorns are still sunk
and they’re not even attached to you anymore.
your breath was like fire’s dying oxygen.
i needed it to breathe, i ate it right up.
then you took it away
and suddenly i was suffocating/choking on too much/little all at once.
you were never built for the flaws i had.
your demons never got along with mine.
you were perfection in all the wrong ways
and jagged clumps of WRONG and TURN BACK in just as bad manner.
my scabs ooze yet; my bruises show like peacock eyes
and the ointment is still just sticky and too slick.
one day, though, i swear
it will sink in, it will leave me.
it will sink in, it will leave me.
just like you.
just like you.
down, down after eight (could be upsetting i think)
i gotta know if do you think about me
when you realize you’ve nowhere to turn
in those alleys of your burgh?
do you think about boys
with palest brown watery eyes
who can’t pick up more than twenty-five pounds
or their arms go all weak?
is my name the one on your chapped lips
when you wake from a cold dark place where fractals sprout from your veins
and feel warmth pooling when you realize you’re Real?
do you think for a moment
all we coulda become
if we’d’ve left our caution to the cold and the birds
where we could never see it’s drawn face again?
cause yeah, shit, i know and i care
and fuck if i know
how to get over this 8-month-affliction
that’s two parts suicidal, 3 parts washed out pale boy
so just tell me.
do you think about how
my knees looked
after scrubbing your floors, kicked to the ground?
cause i think about you kicking your docs.
that connection with my skull, a perfect round bullseye.
"It's her,"
it is 12:28 AM,
and i am queuing eddie vedder to play
over the same speakers that once housed naught
but your voice.
between the sheets, i am choking
on a tongue swollen with blood
and unsaid words.
the lips against my own love me, i know,
from how gently they trace the lines of my jaw
and from those fingers on my spine like a piano of bone.
the guilt is overwhelming as i open my eyes
with my teeth pressed to a collarbone that i can only imagine
with a ring of deep magic bruises
in my mind, there was blue, blue crystal peering down at me
and it was you on my breath as i gasped
he sighs. "it’s her, isn’t it?†i know it breaks his heart that you are all that is on my mind, on my breath.
[tot=ironymaiden] [tp=ironymaiden] [flower=ironymaiden]
Hey there! I don't usually write a lot in the forums but I was skimming and noticed your post. Figured I would respond since I love writing poetry. I've written over 500 pieces last count.
Our styles are a bit different. I write mostly rhyming poetry, but freeverse occasionally.
One thing I noticed right away is the passion in your words. You use a variety of words to describe how you are feeling. This is good because it does not bore me.
My favorite part was: "soaking in the gentle surf of you fingers. when i die, i shall sink into your depths where the man in the moon’s reflection is but a memory; where twenty thousand leagues under seems like baby steps, and fill my lungs, my nasals, my ears with your blood-brine so you are all i am/so we are wholly one"
I liked this part a lot because of the metaphorical nature of it. One thing that can make a poem more affecting is when the writer makes it visual.
Hope this helps. You're doing great. Keep expressing yourself. It helps make you a well rounded person.
PS. (nasals? maybe nostrils?)