Tom:  I did enjoy your poem  Death of the West.  Very in-depth descriptions of the downfall of our world and then the progress toward a future.  

Lady Dragonwyck

Wonderful work!

The opening is spectacular.

A harsh, black burlap sack is draped across a shattered civilization - no light responds.

It is a very good objective correlative for the theme of your poem, and is pleasantly reminiscent of T.S Elliot's opening English lines of "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock":  "Let us go, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table;".

New seedlings plant and thrive on asphalt,

This is weak and incoherent wording. "New seedlings" are not able to "plant". This is a distracting subject-verb confusion that detracts from the power the previous lines have been building.

The final window is smashed, the ultimate door, splintered.

I know that you intended "ultimate" to mean "final", but when I first read this I imagined that it was, in fact, an "Ultimate" door, like the door to Heaven, or something similar. I love the line both ways; it's marvelous.

oil rigs sit redundant as floating corpses

I enjoy the use of the word "redundant", but for some reason this line distracts and annoys me. I believe it is the word "as". Similes are powerful when they are pulled off well, but this is not an example of an effective use of simile.

The southern hemisphere benefits from the removal of presidential peer pressure.

Here you have pulled the reader out of the world that he has built around your poem and thrown him into the real world. This line feels like you are flaunting knowledge of current events. It is out of place.

They both laugh and grin

While technically it is not, "laugh and grin" feels like a redundant statement

Planets and stars sweep the sky as a young man gazes to the heavens and prays for his developing Western nations.

I commend you for not adding the word "across" to "planets and stars sweep". Well done there; that is an overused personification. This last line is powerful, but can be seen in two lights, either:

The man is praying for his developing Western nations that will be founded on the return to nature evident in the previous twelve lines.

or:

The man is praying for his developing Western nations that will include all of the machinery and corruption that the poem has decried, because the world works in a circle.

Both endings are effective and work well. The pessimistic ending I pointed out fits more firmly in my eyes, but the intention is yours and your view stands.

All in all, of course, a wonderful piece of work. Very well done.

Hi,  I loved this piece!  I write a lot of poetry at times but I find it hard to put those kinds of words in that type of format.  I think I am too self-involved - you obviously aren't.  That's great.  But I don't think its about the end of things.  There is a lot of renewal in this piece and in the second stanzas there is a lot of life, it just may be the end of things as we have been used to, but I often wonder if that isn't for the best.  You made me think - thank you.

I am not sure what you mean by the "ultimate door". 

The final window is smashed, the ultimate door, splintered

I don't know, wouldn't thieves "thrive" in lifeless, apocalyptic streets?

Thieves survive in the lifeless streets.

I wish you had explored this further:

oil rigs sit

redundant as floating corpses – no souls.

I wonder, would someone dream about his developing nations if there was so much obvious and elemental proof of the ultimate wreckage of developed nations?

as a young man

gazes to the heavens and prays for his developing

Western nations.

That being said, this is a wonderful poem.  It has raw, demanding energy and speaks to the fear we each carry about our future and that of our children.  Thank you for sharing it.

I enjoyed reading this   I was immediately drawn into the setting of a destroyed, hopeless land.  I can feel the despair throughout the poem.  In my perception though, toward the end there is a more hopeful, optimistic feel that life and people will persevere.  I liked the imagery and how you described the setting, but not necessarily tried to convince the reader towards ill feelings, just the end result.  And we are able to come up with our own perceptions.