I'm Ready To Leave
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I'm Ready To Leave
I hate to say it
But I'm already dead.
I'm walking around
But I'm full of lead.
My lungs are black
From the air I breathe.
My brain is empty
And I'm ready to leave.
My ears are jammed with sounds
But I don't hear a thing.
I'm carrying around this crown
And I don't have a king.
I find the taste of nothing
To be really tart,
I can't play my role
But I'll do my part.
My soul has worn thin
And my feet start to blister
My fingers are bone
Children are calling me mister
I lost track of her whispers
And my heart starts to seize.
I've lost the desire to love
And I'm ready to leave.
I'm running on ignorance
Through tired city streets.
Making nice with nobody
Who's everybody I meet.
I know they say
Nobody gets out alive.
But if this keeps up
There's no way to survive.
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Discussion
Overall, I liked this piece. It flows very well in most parts, and is almost sing-song. You definitely put emotion through... as a general note, if you can come up with more concrete ways to make the reader really feel where you're coming from, it would improve things a lot. That's a pretty standard issue with most poems out there, however.
The meaning that I get out of this as a reader suggests that the author is weary and frustrated with life. There are, in my opinion, quite a few sort of cliched expressions, which is hard to escape in poetry sometimes. The bits that kind of caught me were as follows:
My lungs are black
From the air I breathe.
and
I know they say
Nobody gets out alive.
I think if you reworked those phrases a bit, there would be improvement to the overall effect. When reading them, I didn't really feel like I was there with you. It sort of became just words on a page.
The poem does create a mood of sadness, anger, and frustration with the world. I think that this was probably written either because you were going through an emotional time at that moment, or were drawing on one from your past. I didn't, to be honest, really get drawn in. I could see that you were upset, but you didn't make me feel upset as well. It didn't evoke a lot of emotion from my standpoint as the reader.
In general, I think that this area is where the poem is at its weakest. I didn't really get drawn in, and as I said earlier, at times it became simply some words on a page. If you tried experimenting with sensory imagery, it could make your poem a lot more effective. One good example of this you did use was:
My fingers are bone
That's a really strong metaphor, and your poem could benefit greatly from searching for other places you could edit to give such a stark image. For instance, in the line about your lungs being black -- how else would you describe them? Are they burned or charred? What else is a similar black? Could you compare them to somewhere the reader could go, instead of just a color we see? Just a thought, and maybe something to kick around and play with a bit.
The poem flows very well... it seems like you're going for a very sing-song effect, which is actually kind of ironic from the mood of the poem, but works rather well. My only advice in this arena would be to maybe pare down a couple of your lines that were 8 syllables long to 5-7 syllables if you want to really keep that sing-song effect. Maybe you could start your poem with 5-6 syllable lines, and work into longer lines as it goes on. That could also have some interesting results.
In closing, I apologize for the scattered mess that my critique sort of became. I like to go through and pick out things as I see them, and was just trying the 'form critique' for the first time... and probably won't use it again as I like the free flowing option better. Overall, I thought that this poem had some good raw emotion and feeling to it. My main suggestion would be to play with those emotions more instead of simply laying them down on the page. How can you make your reader feel true empathy? Can you use metaphors and imagery to place your reader into the situation? It's a good start, and I look forward to seeing what you may come up with if you choose to revise this! Keep writing!!



overall i liked what you had to say. it made alot of sense to me.
it is very easy to grasp the theme in this poem. in the first stanza, everything that needs to be said to understand the poem is said.
for me, it was depressing.
when i read it i pictured a lonely looking guy walking around a war zone. and then a girl leaving the town towards the end.
the symbolism in this poem is evident throughout. if you read it youll understand what im saying.
the liked the way it ryhmed. at times, it was simple, at times, i thought it was more complex. i enjoyed it.
the vocabulary is varied.
the only thing i might change is this:
id change it to:
I carry this crown,
but i don't have a king.
just a suggestion.
i enjoyed it and will be reading your future works.