On Break (Edited)

[tomoffing]

Hey Hippy,

Your lack of meter combined with the inconsistent rhyming pattern is challenging (as you point out). I think the few incoherent thoughts and transitions you have at different points is a bigger challenge for me as a reader. Let me explain what I mean.

I really like the overall idea and many of your specific scenes (blood bank, the driving and dream sequences, and hitting the deer in particular) but you're losing me in between with some really abstract lines & stanzas, not to mention some incomprehensible lines.

I've tried to highlight and explain some of these below.

I think you have a good piece in here, but its excessively long with many redundant lines.

Thanks for the read, I hope you'll let this fester again and have another go.
t

(I expanded this poem, and then allowed it to fester for a week. I made some changes, settled on a closing stanza, and now I here present this meagre filth to be scrutinized. The biggest flaw I see is the lack of constant meter, this is free verse.)

On Break

It's been a mere twenty minutes on this slow and painful day
while the clock unwinds torture, ticks that fail to fade away;

Merely twenty minutes more are allotted to me.

Surrounded by food, but not in the mood— unnecessary rhyme, and "the mood" implies a whimsy of choice that's inconsistent with starving in the next line.
my pocket's starving too, you see. now how is your pocket starving but not you as you've said in the previous line? What is your pocket starving for. Money but not food perhaps. I'm pretty lost.

Until I learn a skilled trade,
Exchanging blood for gasoline. I like this idea, but I think from a semantic perspective you should reverse the order of the lines

I look up and through,
through the shelves
through thoughts so blue
that they drag me to the present
through and through. too many "throughs" here, and blue thoughts is very cliched.

Some cheap candy, (cheap happiness),
it's temporal, just like everything else. this is hyperbolic and again incoherent, as everything else is not in fact temporal.
Odds and ends and that and this
it's pointless, so I just look through those shelves.
I think these two stanzas could be trimmed and combined into one. would be more powerful that way


I see the items, but they don't click,
my thoughts so far removed from it:
where is my next meal coming from
what if I don't have enough gas to get home
am I too weak for the blood bank this week

Speaking of banks, I ought to check...
No, what's the point, I know how little I have.

At home, the computer screen glares;
it flickers at my command and there
on the dimmed screen I write my prayer: dimmed and glares are conflicting, but besides that minor detail, these are great lines. Really good contrast between my command & prayer.
hope for the future, where I most want to be
though diminished and torn, still reality. im lost again here. very abstract.

Yet, these goals can't be abided in.
It's too important to focus on the present
even without my basic needs present.

The bottle eludes me, and so, I take my meds
and think of the reasons I don't want to be dead
and think of the reasons I should live instead.

My luxury car has a “woof” license plate,
family, friends, and dogs roam on my estate
food and shelter aren't worries, life is great
then I wake up and the dream dissipates.

I make the buzzing alarm shut the fuck up.
Bitter coffee in the light of hopeless sunrise
as I think of the new manager who I deeply despise.
The lady yells at us for every last mess up.

Settling in a sputtering truck, gears shuddering to drive, gears don't drive, the truck could drive, you could drive, but a gear alone doesn't drive.
as I think of the new manager who I deeply despise.
Spite grasps the steering wheel, and my feet turn to lead;
in my shaking rearview mirror, I see a blue and red.

A crumpled piece of hundred dollar paper in the glove box
next to a concealed switchblade in the cigarette box.
My first concern should've been the leaky fuse box.

Guardrails are so much flimsier than they first appear.
We take headlights for granted, until they disappear.
The road would have been sunlit, save for twenty minutes mere,
and if only the road hadn't held such deer.

Dear life! It flashed before me, the only thing I knew
Blood dribbled from my broken nose
and I thought my days were through.
I looked down at my broken hand
and observed the grisly view: If you're looking down and observing your hand, that is the grisly view, so you would need a period here. If you look down at your hand "then" observe the grisly view, this would be the deer in the next stanza, so you could use a a semi-colon.

The deer refused to die comma or period here
it quivered and it writhed lose the second "it"
leaving only I
alone to take its life.

I kicked down the battered door
which fell right off its hinges.
As the glass shattered more
I watched the deer in its cringes. "shattered more" and "in its cringes" are awkward phrases to meet the rhyme

I took out my rusty knife
and looked down at the blade;
with a quick stabbing slice,
I took my life away.

These last 6 stanzas for me are your strongest. Some lines need tightening, but I think there's a piece all on it's own in here.

I hope some of that is useful.
I'll keep an eye out for any edits or revisions
t