11-06-2016, 08:32 AM
Hi, lizzieep,
Your poem is very well written from first line to last with a clear, consistent, and heart-breaking message.
The poignancy is amplified by the fact we have all been sixteen, we have probably all seen this happen, we may have participated, and sadly many of us actually thought and acted like this.
The tragedy of young lives lost through recklessness and lack of empathy is a sobering experience for friends, siblings, and parents. And, of course, the innocent victims of senseless violence suffer much.
The use of the cell phone as a bookend is most effective to tie the piece together and give it an inevitable but original ending. You have used alliteration, assonance, and consonance elegantly and effectively throughout the piece, along with some comfortable rhymes.
I like this poem very much in its craft and in its message.
Your poem is very well written from first line to last with a clear, consistent, and heart-breaking message.
The poignancy is amplified by the fact we have all been sixteen, we have probably all seen this happen, we may have participated, and sadly many of us actually thought and acted like this.
The tragedy of young lives lost through recklessness and lack of empathy is a sobering experience for friends, siblings, and parents. And, of course, the innocent victims of senseless violence suffer much.
The use of the cell phone as a bookend is most effective to tie the piece together and give it an inevitable but original ending. You have used alliteration, assonance, and consonance elegantly and effectively throughout the piece, along with some comfortable rhymes.
I like this poem very much in its craft and in its message.
(11-06-2016, 03:11 AM)lizziep Wrote: Thank god for cell phones:
you never look around anymore.
Now you don't need to fire your rifle
out the window of your Firebird
at whatever bunny or chickadee
catches your predatory eye.
You don't need to speed along
gravel roads at midnight,
swerving to pick off raccoons
as if the thud under your truck
from their busting brains
earns you points in some video game.
You don't need to careen
into a neighbor's cornfield
—headlights off, doors open—
and slam the pedal to the floor
just to see what happens
[to make something happen].
You don't need to whack
mailboxes with your baseball bats,
or make up jokes with your dawgs
to throw at the ugly dog on her bike
or pin a pretty chick up against
the backside of the corner store.
You don't need to dispatch
your mom's hatchback into a ditch
on a dare, flipping your best friend
sixteen feet out the passenger window,
breaking his skull open on a tree,
dissolving both your lives at sixteen.
You don't seek ecstasy or boast destruction.
Now you sit next to your friends in silence—
phones lighting your faces from underneath
like expressionless paintings—
and the world goes on without you
as it should have all along.