Crazy People Overload

[cidermaid]

Hi tectak,
I like the idea and the story of this one but i had to have several goes at reading this as I found it quite bumpy to read. I was not sure if this was a deliberate attempt to make the read have a disjointed feel to emphasise the disconnect of the voice. ( I wasn't convinced it was). My overall impression was that this was a good first pass and that there is a lot to work with but somehow at this stage it felt to contrived and was generally working to hard to pass as a real voice of crazy, so sorry your poem didn't get me to buy into it. I think it needs a greater sense of distracted and random abstract thoughts - a few curve balls. I'm reading more lonely outcast / freak than crazy.

You sit and talk to people that crawl up your cranial walls; A good opener to gain the attention, but line feels a bit wordy.
they let you chat and never walk away. ? and never walk away. I get the meaning here (i think) but perhaps a comma and change the and to they to make it clearer that these are inside the head. Otherwise the first line could be taken as "real" people who's comments, irritate get / crawl into the narators head. (chalk on blackboard image could come through) - not sure if I have explained that very well
Sometimes you shout out to them with a kinda' out-loud call. Again I get the idea but the repitition of the action (shout and out-loud) dose not quite gell for me, it feels weak
You're never sure they hear you; they don't say. You'll be glad to hear I like this line! think it tightens up all of the previous nits and brings the subject matter into the spotlight. so you could almost disreguard all the above comments as they are for the most part sorted out by this last line ...but on the other hand they were the drift of the read as i worked line by line in isolation.

A kid gets steered around you by his momma smokin' dope; Good image and detail in the dope. Like the flip on the who's crazy in this picture? I have a pause and so would put a comma in after you. But I know what you think of my punctuation efforts but I thought i would put it out there anyway
she knows about the crowd inside your brain. Nice line. Don't know what the percieved poetical take is on adding a stress by putting a word in italics is, but I read knows in my mind
...and the kid he stares and smiles at you, with truth he sees as a hope I question if a kid (that is young enough to need steering) would understand or care about such concepts as truth and hope. This is where I feel you are trying too hard and the poem looses authenticity to a crazy voice. It's too deep, rational and connected...room for a curve ball here i feel.
that he hasn't been conditioned to disclaim. The same comment on this line. As it stands is perfectly Ok, but for a crazy comentary on life it's a bit boring and pc

His reconstructed adult says it's rude to laugh at folk
who look at you with crazy in their eyes.
So he learns to stay away from nearly everyone and jokes
that there's only him who's sane...but it's all lies. This stanza confused me a bit. (it's easily done so be patient with me) By "His" I am assuming it is a referance to the kid mentioned above (because the poem opens with a voice self described as "you") So is it the kid's reconstructed adult (as in the mother on dope) making a comment on people with odd eyes?...Prejudicing her child for a lifetime of wrong attitudes...or was this meant to be the voice of the narrator "you" recalling his own mother's comments to him that caused him to shy away from those that laughed at him and thus caused him to withdraw. I feel like either way it could work as a story line I was just not sure which it was. As a read it is perhaps one of the smoothest of the whole poem and i like the brief injection of rythem it gives the poem. A rest between the bumps. (That is not intended as sarcastic. If this was the intention, I think as a devise it will work with a few tweeks)

I knew when it all started; people told me I was fine,
I figured there was something goin' to hell. Not sure i get the "something goin to hell" part. (goin to hell in a hand cart...all going horribly wrong. Is this your meaning here?)
If I said to ma I loved her, she would cry most everytime, Like the insight into the heartbreak of a mother with a child who is different.
and about that time I guessed... but didn't tell.

Schoolkids I sat next to, took to walking round in groups
but they walked around me, soon as cross the street. Not sure these two lines add that much to the story and again as above feel too objectively observational to be real crazy. Perhaps another curve ball here.
I tried to talk about it but my words got stuck in loops
and pretty soon had no one left to meet. Like these two lines give a good impression of someone constantly talking to themselves. good crazy development. not sure if the use of pretty works in this context, seems too civilased. Perhaps not needed at all

The room I lived in emptied as new friends filled up my mind. Like the first line this feels too wordy, but good image.
Then momma left or died, nobody said. good detail and belivable crazy thought
Sure, I met a lot of people who pretended they were kind
but I only trusted those inside my head. same comment as above - good

Life's pages stick together so each turn is like a year really like this image
but it doesn't seems to matter anyway.
The book is never ending and the words are all unclear
so now I write my own down every day.

I listen hard to hear myself but sometimes, when it's dark,
a million, million voices talk to me.
I answer back to all of them, walking in the park,
and what I say, I call my poetry. Like the closure of the last two stanzas

tectak
2013
(billy's comment. "So the sites overloaded with crazy people" )

as always these are just my humble opinions and thoughts for your consideration. AJ