To the Pathologically Bored American Man

[Lizzie]

This well written piece suggests to the reader that the poet universally ascribes to other young men men his own neurotic, hostility-driven impulses and perhaps acts. Surely most young males living without cell phones only on rare occasion came close to the behaviors ascribed to the crazed driver of cars-as-weapons wreaking havoc on man and beast, allegedly driven by boredom but  more likely by hatred of some kind. The poem might be redone with this in mind lest readers suspect most of the acts described were committed in fantasy or fact by the poems' creator.

Hi, zorcas. Are you saying that the subject or 'meaning' of the poem is not clear?

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You keep talking about your America like I keep not-talking about my Philippines, and with a clear, moral voice, too. I'm jealous. 
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. Slant rhyme makes for stronger thud. Nice.

You don't need to careen
into a neighbor's cornfield Careen don't sound right, it feels a little rare -- but then, it does alliterate with cornfield.
—headlights off, doors open—
and slam the pedal to the floor "Slam the pedal to the floor" sounds like you course-correcting away from the proverb....and hitting a tree. Which proverb?
just to see what happens
[to make something happen]. It's such a clean, classy font, and you use brackets! What's wrong with brackets? Are they too angular?

You don't need to whack
mailboxes with your baseball bats, "Mailboxes" feels tame, plus it doesn't keep up with the rhythm of "whack/bats, baseball/bats".
or make up jokes with your dawgs I smell cultural appropriation here, on the part of these "men" -- being from a country who was once raped by America right as it was winning independence from Spain, I like this point a lot. Oh, the stench of it is......pungent, for sure. It's interesting (not the right word) that people can be such bigots toward minorities and still act like adopting their manners of dress and speech makes them cooler??? I don't understand.
to throw at the ugly dog on her bike I'm sure "bitch" is the better word here -- the speaker already uses dog, so why not go for the more natural, plus alliteration. Lovely contrast between this and the next, though. I wonder if I never heard 'bitch' from the guys because you can't say that word in church! Ha, I jest, but I'm serious too. Surely bitch is what they meant, but they probably said dog because some words align you with the demons and some words don't (apparently).
or pin a pretty chick up against I read part of the pin-up girl note from earlier, and yeah, that double edge enhances this.
the backside of the corner store. But the progression between whacking mailboxes to making jokes, though alliterative, feels a bit too rough -- probably "make up jokes" sounds too tame, not faux-ghetto enough. Something more. You're right that 'making jokes' probably feels off in tone from what comes before and after. I need to evaluate this stanza because there might be too many things going on in it anyway.

You don't need to dispatch
your mom's hatchback into a ditch "don't-need-dispatch-ditch", "dispatch-hatchback-ditch" -- lovely, lovely use of sound.
on a dare, flipping your best friend But the dare just reads superfluous: akin to a joke overextended, plus ruins the next flurry of sound, the flipping [off -- hey! curious thought...] Heyyyyy.....you use brackets, why can't I?
sixteen feet out the passenger window, ....Wait, is this the probable scenario? Shouldn't it be the windshield? Ummm.....probably.
breaking his skull open on a tree,
dissolving both your lives at sixteen. And at this point, the triple gerund also reads superfluous -- I think the skull line and this one could be fused. Oh, fun fact about -ing endings: I just read that that's one of the linguistic structures favored by the King James Version of the Bible, and I wonder if that might be one of the reasons that I seem to reflexively go to this construction?

In fact, if you consider my consideration of the whole's last thought, you may restructure this wholesale -- perhaps develop "flipping" into a mislead, adding "off", removing all the references to sixteen, and just going something like, "breaking open his skull on a tree / like popping corn with a gun", just with a less silly metaphor.

You don't seek ecstasy or boast destruction. You don't....seek? Man, the lead in is a bit distracting -- at least the first stanza variation was in the first stanza. And the switch isn't even a bold one, one that makes me think again: "seek ecstasy", "boast destruction", unnecessary summarizing abstracts. Change, please. Agreed. This sentence is horrid.
Now you sit next to your friends in silence—
phones lighting your faces from underneath
like expressionless paintings— Expressionless paintings, though it reads a pun, looks too flat to work -- I imagine the scene, and it looks like something from a horror show, if anything. Better something else -- something more vivid -- pun be damned.
and the world goes on without you
as it should have all along. I realize this is a somewhat personal point of view on the part of the speaker, but nothing in her (I'm assuming her because you're a her) betrays this level of....not conservatism....juvenoia? Close, but not exactly -- anyway, advising kids not to act stupid is all well and good, that's the function of you old folk, but rejoicing when they don't do anything (for the phones here are treated as dead ends, not as avenues of information -- I do most of my reading through ebooks nowadays, and sometimes draft or revise on phone) is essentially not wanting them to grow up, to experience things, to learn from their mistakes, or at least to be naturally selected out of the gene pool. And it's not like these bored American men have much to do better -- in fact, judging by the penultimate stanza, these days they're not even men yet. I remember when I was sixteen....which is very good perspective, in relation to this, since that's only three years ago. I'm sure the more you roll back, the more sixteen joins the workforce.

That is to say, if you're sticking with that sentiment, at least make it justifiable, and not, er, juvenoic -- make your "men" actually men, and make their actions more horrifying than self-destructive (and only self -- what's a mailbox?) hedonism. But overall, lovely work.

So, it seems like I need to do a little bit more work convincing the reader that the feelings expressed at the end are warranted, yes? I actually view all of those actions as destructive of more than the self, but i won't go into a lengthy justification of them. It's not just hedonism. At the very least, there's a reckless disregard for the well being of others who are both in and outside of the car (there's always a vehicle full of friends and girlfriends), and complete disregard for the integrity of others' property and for others physical boundaries (not to mention, for the natural world). But, I will go back and re-evaluate the veracity of my examples.

I thank you greatly for all of your comments, River. Very helpful!

lizziep

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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 .....I'm not a big fan of 'or', the conjunction of convenience in poetry. I also think that 'bunny' is too cute a word to use here, trying too hard to damn the subject when the rest of of the lines do the trick anyway Oh, I never heard it called that. Funny. About bunny, yes I'll drop it. I see what you're talking about. Kind of feels maudlin in a way. I actually used bunny and chickadee because those are animal words that are also used as references to women (kind of like chick), and I haven't found a direct way to talk about behavior in interpersonal relationships yet, so I'm sort of hinting at their character in that regard through their behavior toward weaker things in the natural world. Anyway, this is not a justification, just where my mind went. I will change.
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. ....a fresh last line that rounds off the strophe splendidly

You don't need to careen
into a neighbor's cornfield
—headlights off, doors open—  ....reminds me of  cow tipping in 'Cars', strangely.
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 ...I actually like that you use 'dog' here. A 'dawg' / 'bitch' combo would have been too predictable
or pin a pretty chick up against
the backside of the corner store. .....nice one

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. ....too intrusive. this line sinks the strophe. Gotcha.

You don't seek ecstasy or boast destruction.
Now you sit next to your friends in silence—
phones lighting your faces from underneath ...Todd said this already - great image.
like expressionless paintings—
and the world goes on without you
as it should have all along. .........fantastic ending. Yeah, wankers removed from the gene pool at any age are no loss to the world, are they?

Lizzie - you're just getting better and better. This one was splendid. Thanks for the helpful advice and the encouragement, Achebe. Glad it's working for you.