Poetry critique thread

post em chaps

get a job `

American flag
Is red with blood, blue with tears
And white with privilege

The air is still -
the light has almost faded

and thunder sounds like giants
stepping forward
through the clouds

ode to autumn boys:

once born to die: kamikaze boys.
flat on a brick wall—over-ripe tomatoes.

cherry petals land in the drains
to find their footing—but they slip.

turning pale from pink,
to flower-paste in the rainwater.

leaf-eating junebugs.
the tailored blossoms of spring:

wasting beads of pollen
hiding—useless with fallen leaves.

a harvest left to die on the straw.

the rising sun bows deep
to the rising tides of famine.

I really like the descending rhythm at the end of this one. I kinda wish you'd included something else though. Another image to contrast/compare the sky. Otherwise it feels like you aren't saying much: you're just describing an ultimately very pedestrian scene in a nice way

Go to Sleep, Child

All through the day a TV creaks.
When it does at night, a demon speaks.
Keep the TV on, but cover your eyes.
The voices in your head tell no lies.

The Saturnine Pantomime
A dramatic poetic form intended to amuse the audience concering the future.
The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. the poem is three quintains. Use of ambiguity and simile is characteristic of the form. Forms of parallelism are common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often share an underlying meaning and they sometimes have reversed word orders. Each line has two syllables. The Rhyme scheme of the poem is 1AA1B, where numbers indicate a refrain. As a rule throughout the poem, the end rhymes don't generally match perfectly.

next Rupi Kaur right here

Your poem reminds of air in that its light and pleasant and wholly unsubstantial

Interesting images although the execution could be better; too much punctuation; please dont leave that one line by itself, i get that its a structural choice, but it doesnt work given the two line stanzas

that last line is painful to read. its just too edgy. the second line could have more finesse

Is this meant to be a poem? if so you've won the pseud of the year award

The end of WWII it seems, and the beginning of its aftermath.

This land is mine now, thanks for the kek

It's pretty clear what it's meant to be.

Forgive this attempt at verse,
Which is evidently poorly terse,
For that I am bound by rhyme,
Your beauty isn't e'en bound by time,
But, I saw your smile today,
And to all my worries did this allay;
Therefore, to you my thanks I give,
So that I may once again live
Without that harsh bind,
Which shackled my mind.

>m'lady

everything poem i write seems to be cringey in some way. i think i've been reading too many romantics and now my writing is just filled with platitudes, should i just end it?

I only write in German and am a pleb. I wrote this one just now:

Der Nachbar bohrt und lässt mir keine Ruh´,
Ich geh zu ihm und schlage kräftig zu.
Der Nachbar schreit, der Nachbar weint,
Ich gehe heim und schlafe ein.

another one:

Einst kam ein Mann und meinte,
dass ein kleines Kind zu weinen scheinte.
Er schlug es tot und bekannte
dass es nicht mehr weiter weine.

Das Kind tippt ihn von hinten an
fragt: "Warum hast du das getan?"
Der Mann schaut sich den Jungen an
Und mordet ihn zum zweiten Mal

I am writing a poem
put it not, in the friend zone.
For I love thee truly
and plainly ache to woo thee.

Thine hair, burnished by yon dainty hand
puts in mind, my distaste for sand.
'Tis coarse and vulgar
quite unlike thy voluptuous vulva
which, as mine heart does, pulse
with the passionate temper of unbridled lust.

Pray respond to me my truest love
And we shall live, as turtle doves.
M'lady

Ok guys, pls r8 my baby-tier proemio, wrote it while being drunk af.

Hermes-
Venid aquellos dispuestos a exponerse al fuego de Hefesto
Puesto que sólo aquellos que ardan en las llamas eternas de Zeus
Y quienes accedan a descender a las profundidades del Tártaro
Son los únicos con un alma dispuesta
A alcanzar el conocimiento de la cerdad nomádica

Apolo-
La única verdad que existe
Es la unión del ser y el no ser
Puesto que para la existencia misma
Es necesario que el no ser sea
Y que el ser sea

Hermes-
La naturaleza del conocimiento
Así ha dispuesto
Una existencia ficticia
Englobaora del universo

Apolo-
En esta ficción todo calza
Aquella ficción que rebalsa
Todo aquello que existe

Hermes-
Y todo engloba
La limitada verdad
Del universo ficcional

Apolo-
Las fronteras de la exploración
Se regirán por vuestra creación

Won't critique people in this same post since I don't want my shitty opinions to influence what other people think of my poetry.

Du schreibst gut. Ich mag.

PEDAL

Come now, your liveborn and
languorous foot,
into my breath, into
the dark warmth of my open mouth
And with the close-eyed confidence
of a retired cobbler, the
tongue will interrogate
the parting toes
suss out where you have
reckoned that time

Imperfect strides that rip forth
the moss, neatly beside boots in the
passenger’s footwell
lifted as from bathwater to glisten at a
height that is lit

Just a reminder that it's common courtesy for these thread to give critique before you get critique, otherwise it'll end up being full of unreviewed work.

>Come now, your liveborn and
>languorous foot,

Should be

>Come now- your liveborn,
>languorous foot,

It flows better. Also, remove "open" from line 4, it's unnecessary. If something is entering a mouth, it implies that the mouth is open. Remove "And" from line 5 to bring it more rhythmically in time with the lines around it. Move "the" from 6 to 7.

You're getting weird with the enjambment in places, but the weirdness doesn't seem to serve a purpose.

Mine-

Slick rush in the nose, head back, to the mirror—
catch it drop by drip by splash till it slows, look up.
Red stream wetting the desert, iron taste seeping
down into the mud to nourish and be reclaimed.

Fingers of the unsullied hand dip into the pool,
precious gore now lost but given new purpose—
not to fuel the vehicle of flesh but challenge
the master, with crest and spiral traced on skin
unsunned and hidden but for here, these letters
dredged from nothing spell words said nowhere,
but in the corners of the mind– lorn and fey–
that no thoughts reach.

Sedent in the dark now, decoration done, painted,
in that ink shared common to beast and borne.
Cryptic signs, drying, play and whisper-
set in memory without meaning, so now to rest,
to nest, to lay in the dark, to chase those mad signs,
to dream.

Take out all the commas except the ones in line five of the second stanza, and swap out "to me" for a comma. I got a chuckle out of it too.

My poem under the break:

- - -

In a grey mountain land, searching for God,
I happened on a cave, toothy and cold.
Shouting, anguished, within. I turned to my guide,
facing somber dissent. Heedless, I entered.
Where the small den halted, bleak light fell through the rock,
on a thin brackish pool, in which a figure lay.
That tormented wraith writhed, bones in black water,
endless life lamenting— one it could not take.
An ending I offered, a fool's pity.
It shrank from me in fear— by this I left.

Returning to the guide, I bid us continue the search.
Met with my ignorance, their gaze sought the ground in dismay.

I rock gucci, pants on the loosey
she toss the asphault
cross jesus face tarnished
blessed with urine and varnish
wood harder than the Amish
their sundry woolen faces that beat the sun back
with the vengeance of 1000 dead whores
back from the gulags of sanctimony
(the church of churches
where gravity weighs in on thoughtful matters)
and so the pogrom imperils the meek
mass of children hearts and semen
drying up in Tim Wheeler's sky
where rain runs from the game
hating the players, hating the fame.

Sand and Krabben holes
Papillon words, gentle Reden
Windless and quite waves
Sweetness and amber day
Smidgeon-part Moon. . . simple. . . schön.

I didn't expect real criticism but yeah you're completely right the "to me" doesn't work at all.

As for your poem it's really good. I think you already knew that though. I like the idea of the guide, like Dante but God is found in Purgatorio. Only things I could critique are personal taste like I'd probably change dissent to something that implies more of a warning than disagreement.

I am become King, destroyer of purity
Water turns brown between my feet
Air loses comfort as I sit.
Surrounded by decrees
The whitest and cleanest
They cleanse all my sins
Becoming filth at its finest.
But my times is due and so I rise
Im king no more, to the throne I say bye
Sone other will claim, sitting unseathing their laps.
Their rightful place, as the King of crap.

-A laughing pinecot

Red with the blood of Native Americans, blue with the tears of Native Americans, and white for the menace that came to destroy everything they builded.

Fixed.

Fixed your poem. Sorry.
___

I got a nosebleed, fuck yeah
blood has iron and its falling into the ground
oh right, i forgot about the circle of life. deep.

So I'm fingerbanging this chick right, ok
but she's not a virgin, but i dont care
and im only doing it to make her dad mad
ha rhymes, in my mind its all 'lorn' and 'fey'
Harry potter was pretty important to me growing up
oh the subsconscious (am i using it right?)

I'm alone in my room now, mummy tucked me in
but she didnt leave the lights on like i like them
so i can remember the animals are similars to me
they nest, i rest (ha rhymes, or is it rhythm)
i want to dream a dream where some savage
philistine piece of shit didnt degrade my poetry
on a yugoslavian cuttlefish appreciation website.

_______

Sorry again. Imagine how pathetic a human being I am. I'm sure your work
has promise (but what do I know)

To me I think it often seems
The point of university
Is to get high and miss my classes
Stare at girls with jiggly asses

Whine about my future woes
Spite the gifts I've been bestowed
Fortune would be better found
In someone who wont sit around

kek

Ich mag das zweite Gedicht.

Sounds nice to the ear, but it's pseudery extreme.

Perhaps the staggering gray shadows that follow us

Are the knotty pinings of the forests we have passed

The shrieking wind through the needling is not always loud;

The barking of past days may never be softened.

Something has taken root;

Clawed its way into once virgin soil

Leeching what was,

Dulling what’s left.

Dark, smoldering, contorting orange morbid light emanating from a bathroom window
Tactless aficionado, tracing bullets gleam from a field of fire, and that line shines through the haze. Pray it be here that I die. I feel my marrow getting weaker in the gray, the sound of shores and of broken glass under a wet boot. Hold it now.
Tasteless dreams pervade me, a urinating dog corrupts my view. The sky as grey as the coarse cement I lay my hand across, everything is so grey. A color so lost in space, prism shine down from my window light and break the mold. Cold from where I came, tossed and spiked with all of God's might. I climb from the shore and reach for the core, uproariously laughing, cackling, that orange light! Oh that orange light from the window! I see trails of bullets sting the flesh on my leg. Green tracers. I am going to die here in the sand, may the light shine fourth on this grey day and the color lay back into a beautiful spire. Let my blood shine brightly on this concrete.

Don't apologize for writing "verse," just do it and be confident. Make the poems self-awareness a little more clever and meaningful. Make sure you stay on topic; don't digress unless you have a very specific purpose in mind. Be deliberate with every word, not just filling space or searching for a rhyme. Make each word tie into the message you want to communicate, and make sure the message is worth sharing-- good poetry comes with conviction.

It's neat, but it's hard to follow and your vocabulary seems a bit forced at points