Real People

[AisforApple]

Where have all the real people gone?
Are they out buying groceries to make their real meals?
Are they out making money to pay their real bills?
Have their cars broken down from not going anywhere?
Are they washing their real faces and drying their real hair?
Do the real people have real children who want to grow up
To live in real houses on Diversey and Chattuck?
Do they sleep in real beds and dream in black and white?
Do they ever smoke cigarettes or get into fights?
Have they walked down real sidewalks, have they crossed real streets?
Are they on their way to real places with other real people to meet?
Do the real people read real books and write real words?
Do they sit on real park benches and feed real birds?
Where have they gone? Are they really this hard to find?
Are the real people still here, or have I just lost my mind?

[rowens]

It took them centuries to learn to be so fake with such efficiency.

I'll try to give a better critique when I'm not being threatened to hurry.

Do you dream in black and white? I don't. But I've heard people say they do.

[brandontoh]

Where have all the real people gone?
Are they out buying groceries to make their real meals? -- Real meals just seem a little weird to me. Like, how does it allude to people being fake? The rest of the poem has quite a strong message and good imageries, but this one line just doesn't cut it for me.
Are they out making money to pay their real bills? -- This, on the other hand, I totally get. It seems to say that people are so engrossed in all the monetary and economic thingamajit that they become their faces instead.
Have their cars broken down from not going anywhere? -- I really like this line too. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but I'm deriving various messages from each line. It may be that I'm overthinking it though.
Are they washing their real faces and drying their real hair?
Do the real people have real children who want to grow up
To live in real houses on Diversey and Chattuck? -- I know the repetition of 'real' is intentional, but in my opinion it doesn't work as well as it's supposed to. Perhaps you can try to mix it up a bit, and not use 'real' so much. This makes the poem more subtle and make the imageries more powerful I believe.
Do they sleep in real beds and dream in black and white?
Do they ever smoke cigarettes or get into fights?
Have they walked down real sidewalks, have they crossed real streets?
Are they on their way to real places with other real people to meet?
Do the real people read real books and write real words?
Do they sit on real park benches and feed real birds? -- Once again, on the repetition of 'real'.
Where have they gone? Are they really this hard to find?
Are the real people still here, or have I just lost my mind? -- Nice finish. It's almost cliche, but luckily not. It's a cliche topic, but you managed to give some form of freshness to it.

Overall, I think the things pulling the poem down are the abundance of 'real'. Also, you can try cutting the excess from some of the lines. For example, after the sleeping and dreaming line, you can shorten the next one to just 'smoke cigarettes or get into fights?'. I'm not sure the wordiness is intentional or not though, so it's up to you. Personally there are a lot of words I'd remove from the poem. Then again, I'm not too acquainted with poems like these, so yeah. Hope I'm of help, and thanks for the read! =)

[Todd]

Hi Anna,

These long line lengths are fine, but I think the poem goes on for too long and loses impact. I think if you tried to ruthlessly cut half the lines focusing on what you considered the strongest observations the poem would be helped by it. You've got some good writing here, but it tends to ramble.

Just my thoughts,

Todd

[ellz483]

I agree that there is a fair amount of rambling, specifically in the middle around the lines,
"Have they walked down real sidewalks, have they crossed real streets?
Are they on their way to real places with other real people to meet?
Do the real people read real books and write real words?"

I would probably just edit those out. however, with that being said, the ending is quite poignant, and i like that it ends with a question in the same way that the beginning starts. not bad at all. really

[newsclippings]

I kinda disagree on these fronts. I haven't seen any of your other work, but the abundance of "real" works for me, though I do think the poem starts off weak and ends strong.

This is going to sound weird, but I read the poem with the intention of disliking it, and I was happily surprised, even by the ending (which I wouldn't do myself, but my poetry tends to be the shitstain next to the advent of poetry and as such has a sort of bizarre flare about it [so you probably shouldn't be taking my advice anyway]).

Still.
Give us some other stuff, I'd like to see more.