I caress your body with my fingertips
and with each glide
my finger
burns like rubber.
Why does it hurt?
Why does it hurt to love you?
Love is supposed to be beautiful and not toxic
But I got too many skeletons in the dusty, pitch, black corner of my room
Each one being a flaw of mine
But you were scared of the dark.
Poetry
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just offering comments to let you know how this (only) reader responds to your poem 🙂 I am not trying to rewrite it for you, or tell you what you should do, simply letting you know what thoughts struck me on reading this. Please feel free to ignore anything you don’t find helpful.
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the title is original enough to grab a reader’s attention, and is reinforced by its repetition on L4.
you convey the sensations of the physical and emotional , with some nice word choices to support these, but I feel this could be taken up a few notches with some small attention to detail:
there’s a clash of tense – until the final line this is written in the present tense. I don’t see that changing that to past tense adds anything but muddies things a little.
Line 1 uses ‘fingertips’, so plural when it comes to fingers, which is then narrowed to a single finger in L3, causing a small stumble to adjust.
do you really feel you need L’s 5 & 6? if you removed them, how much would it affect the poem?
there are several ‘filler’ words that could also be eliminated for a cleaner read e.g
“But I got too many skeletons in the dusty, pitch, black corner of my room” could become “But I’ve too many skeletons in the dusty, pitch-black corner of my room”
and by eliminating ‘being’ in the line that follows on.
some might consider it a good idea to use a line-break after ‘skeletons’ for a greater visual parity of line-length on the page, but I kind of like that crowded, cluttered feel – it adds to the overall impression of too many things all crammed together, not much breathing space.
The last 2 lines would, I think, work better for your poem as:
Each one a flaw of mine
And you are scared of the dark
thanks for posting this and taking my comments in the vein intended 🙂
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my poem. Everything you said was absolutely right and i appreciate it a lot. I know there’s still so much work for me to do. I have always loved writing but i know i need help on the grammar and wording some things. I just got the courage today to finally post my work online in a very public place. I appreciate your input and i will def be using your advice. Again thank you so so much.
we’re all learning and developing as writers. one rule: never change anything you don’t feel right changing. the poem is yours, it has to come from where you are.
sometimes suggestions feel wrong now, but right later on as we grow. other times they simply aren’t right for your concept of the piece. confidence in your own judgement comes with experience, and reviewing others’ writing helps exponentially towards finding perspective when looking at your own.
for me, the voice of the individual poem is more important than the voice of the poet. not everyone agrees. 😉
p.s congratulations for posting your first poetry!