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Literature Text
When you dream of monsters,
Keep the teeth, the claws, the wide, drooling maws.
Keep the dark fur and frightful face.
Keep them dreadful and wrawling and avaricious.
Don't try to humanize them,
to find the little person with two smooth arms and legs,
Five fingers on each hand and eyes made of three parts.
They're not there.
Instead, remember that monsters are there to remind you of what scares you,
To draw and repel.
Monsters aren't broken things to be mended,
Nor ugly things to be realised as beautiful.
There is no status quo for them to revert to.
That monster underneath your bed,
the other hidden in your closet
and the one dwelling in your shadow,
They are as much of what nature has made them as your own self.
When you dream of monsters,
Hold them in your heart as you would with all other dark things.
Look at them.
Recognise their strangeness and frightening wonder.
The appendages that can cut and the ones that can soar,
Remember where they came from
and what they can do.
All the grime and dirt and fear and profanity,
The perversity and the warped edges and the towering horns and steel-bright cold,
The mouthful of razors and black-fire,
the hate and hurt.
Keep the monster honest
to what it had to become
after the horrible thing that was done to it
The thing it had to become
to survive and endure.
Keep the teeth, the claws, the wide, drooling maws.
Keep the dark fur and frightful face.
Keep them dreadful and wrawling and avaricious.
Don't try to humanize them,
to find the little person with two smooth arms and legs,
Five fingers on each hand and eyes made of three parts.
They're not there.
Instead, remember that monsters are there to remind you of what scares you,
To draw and repel.
Monsters aren't broken things to be mended,
Nor ugly things to be realised as beautiful.
There is no status quo for them to revert to.
That monster underneath your bed,
the other hidden in your closet
and the one dwelling in your shadow,
They are as much of what nature has made them as your own self.
When you dream of monsters,
Hold them in your heart as you would with all other dark things.
Look at them.
Recognise their strangeness and frightening wonder.
The appendages that can cut and the ones that can soar,
Remember where they came from
and what they can do.
All the grime and dirt and fear and profanity,
The perversity and the warped edges and the towering horns and steel-bright cold,
The mouthful of razors and black-fire,
the hate and hurt.
Keep the monster honest
to what it had to become
after the horrible thing that was done to it
The thing it had to become
to survive and endure.
Literature
longing
i scuff at sidewalk bottle caps,
mouthing your name as i pass shriveled milkweed stalks and snuffed-out cigarettes.
once, the clock hands pointed north. they mock me now with each degree elapsed,
each angle pointing to a slew of compass-rose regrets.
mouthing your name as i pass shriveled milkweed stalks and snuffed-out cigarettes,
i hear the second hand’s advance tally my silences like rosary beads,
each angle pointing to a slew of compass-rose regrets.
if only i could pull your name from this unmerciful stampede!
i hear the second hand’s advance tally my silences like rosary beads.
every dull tock measures out those quinine
Literature
welcome to the real world
1. if someone invites you back to their place
for coffee, and you only drink tea,
don’t stress:
you probably won’t actually be drinking coffee.
2. when the creepy guy from work asks you out
again and you think about accepting for the first
time because you’re sick of going home alone and
you have never learned how to say no, don’t. learn.
stand in front of the mirror until you love yourself
enough for your skin to fit snug on your body. read
about the hundreds of millions of planets out in the
hundreds of millions of galaxies and feel so crowded
that you’re about to burst all over again.
3. you’re gonna
Literature
Small Talk
It's dripping with logic and reason
the question you let gently drop
onto the table between us,
“So, tell me about your life.”
And I'm watching it carefully
telling myself it won't bite
it's more scared of me than I am
and I can capture it with glass.
And I can't rest the answer there
because it's bigger and scarier
and this one will bite will sink
will tear apart the careful stitches.
It's too big for this table
and I can't put it onto you
so it weighs heavy on my neck
and the silence stretches further.
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This was one of those pieces where everything flowed out perfectly until... the end. Where you just hit a wall and nothing flows out anymore. Or rather there still is some creative juice to be found it's just of a different kind than what was flowing out a while ago. A while ago you had crystal clear spring water, now you have wine, or beer or orange soda.
It's 3am. I'm rambling and sounding a lot less intelligent by the character. Forgive me. I hope you like this piece.
Crit questions:
1. Was it powerful? Or rather did the piece strike you as such? If not, how did it strike you then? I'm speaking of those subjective kneejerk reactions we all have upon first reading or listening to something.
2. Any advice or suggestion for the piece's improvement?
Thank you. Have a good day!
It's 3am. I'm rambling and sounding a lot less intelligent by the character. Forgive me. I hope you like this piece.
Crit questions:
1. Was it powerful? Or rather did the piece strike you as such? If not, how did it strike you then? I'm speaking of those subjective kneejerk reactions we all have upon first reading or listening to something.
2. Any advice or suggestion for the piece's improvement?
Thank you. Have a good day!
© 2015 - 2024 streetcamera17
Comments10
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Critique for 
I'm going to respond to your comments, rather than give an overall feedback
1.) It was indeed powerful until the last stanza. It lost some of the simplicity of the verse that had characterized the first few stanzas, the imagery became forced, and desperate in it's attempts for relevancy.
Why?
Looking at your piece overall, the figures of speech are far more subtle in the first part, you have onomatopoeia, paradoxes and internal rhyme.
This falls away in the last part and makes the words seemed forced. Because poetry is such a brief form of literature, no word can be wasted, and they need to be chosen for maximum effect. The words here don't seem chosen so much as launched onto the page for lack of alternatives. Revise the end section, and look carefully at your diction.
You need to go over a few of your themes for the poem, and relate your diction back to that. Frightening words? Sympathetic words?
What is is ultimately that you want to say about the "monster" that it's external, or internal or both? That it's just a shadow or that it's right behind you and about to POUNCE! Is it a child's monster or an adult's monster? You had these concepts down in the first two stanza's and lost track of them later on (when you "hit the wall") Regain them, and you'll get your poem back!
2.) Try introducing some figures of speech, even if it's just alliteration or assonance to balance the poem out, even an oxymoron if you can manage it!? The imagery is consistent throughout, it's the lack of careful planning of language that interrupts it, even as it's message is maintained.
I'm going to respond to your comments, rather than give an overall feedback
1.) It was indeed powerful until the last stanza. It lost some of the simplicity of the verse that had characterized the first few stanzas, the imagery became forced, and desperate in it's attempts for relevancy.
Why?
Looking at your piece overall, the figures of speech are far more subtle in the first part, you have onomatopoeia, paradoxes and internal rhyme.
This falls away in the last part and makes the words seemed forced. Because poetry is such a brief form of literature, no word can be wasted, and they need to be chosen for maximum effect. The words here don't seem chosen so much as launched onto the page for lack of alternatives. Revise the end section, and look carefully at your diction.
You need to go over a few of your themes for the poem, and relate your diction back to that. Frightening words? Sympathetic words?
What is is ultimately that you want to say about the "monster" that it's external, or internal or both? That it's just a shadow or that it's right behind you and about to POUNCE! Is it a child's monster or an adult's monster? You had these concepts down in the first two stanza's and lost track of them later on (when you "hit the wall") Regain them, and you'll get your poem back!
2.) Try introducing some figures of speech, even if it's just alliteration or assonance to balance the poem out, even an oxymoron if you can manage it!? The imagery is consistent throughout, it's the lack of careful planning of language that interrupts it, even as it's message is maintained.