Retaliate

[benthejack]

Hey great first attempt!
The story is fantastic and it has a great ending
(I understood the relevance of the surgeon on my second read through)

Because it is in serious critique I'll take that to mean you dont mind a bit of brutal honesty.

It seems to largely be made of filler words and conjunctions. it looks like half the poem is chaff around the nuggets. To show you what I mean I'll go through and pick what I see are the meaningful bits of each line (Ill do it to the first half so you see what I mean).

If you take these meaningful bits and work out how to express them with less chaff in between you'll be able to fit more descriptive meat in the lines and it wont feel as forced and stilted.

I guess the other thing I noticed is that although you have the interline rhymes working, none of the other words within each line seem to fit together particularly well. "I set the cleaver down, and shift my hand" none of these words seem to roll together particularly poetically. This is also largely due to the high count of filler words though.

My first English sonnet, or attempt of at least.

Retaliate


I set the cleaver down, and shift my hand; cleaver down, shift hand.
this butcher feels so heavy, that's just right. butcher heavy, just right.
Tied up and gagged, because this is all planned; bound gagged, planned
my blade of pain, oh please stay sharp all night. blade of pain, sharp night

From ages past, why did you torment me, ages past, torment
bulldoze right through me on a street of pain; bulldoze through me, street of pain
a broken arm and smashed up face you see, broken arm, smashed face
because of you i may just be insane. because of you i'm insane.

I know bone and muscles, inside and out;
my job demands it; im a surgeon sir,
I bulked up pal, protein and carbs no doubt,
Oh wait, did I forget to mention her?

Before this blade starts, i should tell you first,
your sister's pregnant; that is even worse.

look forward to seeing where this goes!
Thanks for the read.