Fallout revision 1

[Jana]

Hey Jana,
I'm not an expert at song critiquing, but I'll do this like it's a poem:

Fallout 

v.1
Fallout shelter underground -I think the fallout shelter could be a potent image. I just don't know if you develop it enough in this piece.
Survival gear scattered around -I would suggest not starting every line with a capital letter. It's considered a bit old-school in terms of poetics.
Drums of grains 
Mildew stains -From my experience, short rhyming lines like line 3 and 4 here, indicate a comedic tone, or come off as being a bit like a nursery rhyme. 
Cold war relics still remain -Again, I feel like the image of Cold War relics has potential. It just needs to be developed more.

v.2 
Rural folks lived to tell -I'm not quite sure why only rural folks live to tell...
Of days gone by, they knew too well -"days gone by" seems a bit cliche to me
Nightly war fears stoked 
Paranoia stroked 
Armageddon's been provoked -I like the last three lines here. I would suggest merging them into two lines, or even one.

c.1
The fallout is here -Where is "here"? I feel like this could be explained more.
We see it clear -I'm a bit confused on who the "we" is here.
Racketeering political sphere -Sphere feels like it's just used here to make a rhyme. I feel like it's the politicians that are guilty of racketeering.
Choking off our atmosphere -This sounds more like its talking about pollution than radiation from an atomic bomb.
Armageddon perseveres -This is a depressing line. I like it! I think should consider expanding the idea in this line.

v.3
Another generation's passed 
Fallout shelters holding fast -I'm sorry, but these two lines here made me think of the Fallout video games. Was that your intention?
Nightly war fears stoked 
Paranoia stroked 
Armageddon's been provoked -Even though I like these three lines, I don't think they need to be repeated.

v.4 
Fallout shelter underground 
Survival gear hand-me-downs -I like this line. Again, this is another idea that needs to be explored more.
Drums of grains 
Mildew stains -What makes the images in these two lines so important that it warrants repetition?
Armageddon's drum still sounds -I would suggest of thinking of another word to use instead of "Armageddon".

c.2
The fallout is here 
We see it clear
Racketeering political sphere 
choking off our atmosphere
Armageddon perseveres -I know this is the chorus, but if this a poem, do you think is important enough to be repeated?

This lyric is from a poem I wrote and converted into song format. I hope it's okay to post in this forum. Please ignore the font size differences. I'm not sure how that happened with a straight copy/paste. Odd. 

I hope I wasn't too harsh here. However, I feel like you have some images here that could be developed more thoroughly. I look forward to seeing where you take this piece from here.

Cheers,
Richard

Thank you for the feedback, Richard. This must be a good example of one that's not conveying the meaning well. I think to set to some thunderous drumbeats interspersed with a military march, a dissonant chord progression, and flutes, it might pack more of a punch. This one came out of an object writing session on the word fallout, which brought to mind the fallout shelters scattered around the country to prepare for nuclear war.  Having been raised by the generation of parents who had bomb drills in grade school, I was raised to be somewhat of a survival/preparedness type person. This mindset, along with the current perpetual wars in which we're finding ourselves, the chronic repeating theme of Armageddon on the TV news of one sort of another, I was trying to convey that this is a theme that plays out across generations, that it never leaves us, that the politicians feed us the propaganda and fear to keep the war drums beating, many of them benefitting directly from the war profits, and that we watch this while the true fallout of the racketeering upper classes is really environmental destruction. We're just now taking it seriously, and this is the critical Armageddon we face today. That's the gist of it anyway. 

As far as the caps on the first line, that's how my word program formats everything. I was just too lazy to change it. Sorry for slacking. The shorter lines I added for a change of pace. The "here" is meant in a global community sense. We see it clear now, the environmental destruction we've caused through unbridled capitalism. Our generation's Armageddon. The repeat of the chorus was just for the song format. If I'd left it a poem, I'd not have repeated it. Or maybe I would have. The drums of grains are part of the survival stockpile that lasts through a generation or two if stored properly. That and the mildew stains are my development of the fallout shelter, a musty, damp old cement room underground where we hide our paranoia preparing for nuclear fallout. 

Perhaps it's a regional difference? If you're in the UK, you may not have had the same traditions we had in the rural areas of the US. Most city people don't' have access to fallout shelters. Only landowners with acreage have room to install them. Our public facilities did install them, but not enough to save everyone and none that individuals could use for their own stockpiles.

What's funny is that the three lines you liked are the lines that for me are awkward when trying to phrase it with a melody in song. It gave me a chuckle when reading your comments. Also, I didn't realize that I repeated that same phrase twice. I'll have to go back and check what I had originally written there because I'm sure it was a different wording.

Thanks again.