Hopefully you won't mind my critique. Hopefully I don't come off as harsh, it's just a humble opinion. I'd like to learn and expand my own writing so most of it will be in the form of questions.

First, I'm curious about the rhyme scheme. I'm not sure if the breaks in the rhyming are there deliberately and I couldn't figure out why. Like in "finger" then "world" and further down "get" and "condolences". It'd be great to understand the reasoning or depth behind that.

You also change the pronoun from the 3rd stanza onward. It switches from first person and then from the 15th and 16th stanza, you switch back to I. Is it a progression from "I" to "you" to "they" to "we"? Namely the expansion and involvement of yourself in the accusation?

Furthermore, the form or object of "you" seems to change. "Watch you band together and witness you antagonize another" in contrast to "they are too afraid of being brought down by you". The "you" early on seems to be the antagonist, cowardly and negative whereas the "you" later on is courageous and seems to be a protagonist. Is it a deliberate change? Is there meant to be a divide? Or is it a generic reference to a collective? Or is it a change in perspective? I'm a little confused there.

Perhaps it's a matter of style but it could be cleaner and more concise, fewer words and articles. For example "wrapped inside of society's shadows", you could drop the "of" because it doesn't serve much purpose.

Finally, there seems to be this overwhelming trend (especially on DA) to not use punctuation when writing poetry. And I really don't know why. Am I missing something?

As far as content goes, there is a degree of melodrama but it is controlled as well, which I like :) I feel there are too many histrionic, exaggerated pieces on DA. The content can be a little vague, perhaps deliberately so, which is both a good thing and bad thing.

I'd be really interested to see the reasoning behind it :) Can't wait for your reply
DreamsDeprived's avatar
Too many questions x,x that's why it took me this long to finally reply.

1. There is a lot of personal, real life events that influenced the rhyme scheme. I mentioned this before. This type of poetry I started doing is what I like to call my improv poetry. It's all written in one shot, and finished pretty quickly. So what I was most concentrated on was getting the "emotions" out, and less worried about if it rhymed properly. That's my reason for why the rhyme scheme is a bit off.

Again, there is no real good answer I can give you that might make sense. It's just that this is all improv and sometimes it's not that smooth as others. There's no reason for every little thing that's contained in this poem. The stuff you're wondering about is there because it seemed to fit at that moment in time. I'm not wanting to sound defensive, but that's the only way I can truly put it right now.

This overwhelming trend seems to bother you, mildly. I can see that and I get where you're coming from, but I can't speak for everyone who doesn't use punctuation in poetry. My reason is-is that this is free verse....so yeah...

I wanted to see what you thought of it, but through out your comment you kept stating that you were confused, which probably lead to this type of questionnaire-type critique.