Demon

[arbitraryarmor]

Demon

I am the anger in your heart
I am the thunder in your veins
I am the rage that tears apart
I am the carnage of the flame

I am the whispers in the dark
I am the fears you can't explain
I am the scar, the taboo mark
I am the crumbling of the sane

I am the shadows of your past
I am the flaw that brings you shame
I am the murmurs through the glass
I am the thought that gives you pain

Perish, insect; soon you shall know
Injustice is the demon's creed
Those high shall soon be brought down low
For pain is truth; now all shall bleed

---

And yes, the break in rhythm in line 13 is intentional.

[ray]

The trouble with all those I am thes is that it becomes difficult to differentiate one line from another and they look interchangeable, as here
 I am the shadows in the dark
 I am the whispers of your past

and that's often because they are

I am the thunder in your heart
I am the anger in your veins

The repetition of soon in the final verse could be avoided too

[bena]

Welp. Someone who thinks line 13 has an "intentional break of the rhythm" instead of a trochee of the tetrameter iamb foot may have a bit to learn and because this is posted in Serious Workshopping, I'm going to rip it to shreds, so I hope you have a thick skin. It is, as the cliché says, nothing personal.


First things first: The use of ABAB CDCD etc pattern is sing-songy (think of nursery rhymes) and it very very rarely works for a dark poems, and imo it doesn't work here. To me the entire poem just reeks of teen-aged angst...maybe that's what you're going for, but at this point in my life, I've had enough of it.


To the poem!


Demon


I am the anger in your heart
I am the thunder in your veins
I am the rage that tears apart <>
I am the carnage of the flame <>

I am the whispers in the dark
I am the fears you can't explain
I am the scar, the taboo mark
I am the crumbling of the sane <>

I am the shadows of your past
I am the flaw that brings you shame
I am the murmurs through the glass
I am the thought that gives you pain <>

Perish, insect; soon you shall know
Injustice is the demon's creed
Those high shall soon be brought down low
For pain is truth; now all shall bleed


Final take-away: I've seen you crit others' poetry, and you point out clichés all the time, so I know you know what they are. But this piece is pretty much a list, and has its share of clichés.

The rhymes are simplistic and often the line seems driven by the end rhyme...in other words, if you needed a word to rhyme with 'now' you'd do your damnest to find a mad cow...whether that made any sense in the poem or not. To me there is just not enough substance here that hadn't been said before albeit in slightly different ways.

so if you boiled this poem down it would be:

I am a demon.
I am everything you think a demon would be.
While I find you insignificant,
I'm still going to bother with taking you to hell.

And that's it.

To quote one of my best friends June:

"Untangle the roses and blood from your idea of red.
Give me clay. Give me rage. Give me the skin
that stretches far beyond the surface of touch."

Do I expect too much? Hell yeah I do. I've read your critiques...you can do much better than this.

How's that thick skin holding up?

Happy writing,

mel/bena the bitch

[billy]

i am poems like love poems have to be very good in order to succeed. here you use the word [the] to follow the [i am's ] they only add to the mundanity of the poem. what would poem read like without most of the [i am the's]. (just a suggestion to show how less can sometimes be more.) if you used original phrases instead of a lot of the cliches your poem would read a lot better and interest the reader more.


I am anger in your heart
thunder in your veins
rage that tears apart
carnage of the flame

whispers in the dark
fears you can't explain
the scar, the taboo mark
I am the crumbling of the sane

the shadows of your past
a flaw that brings you shame
murmurs through the glass
I am the thought that gives you pain

Perish, insect; soon you shall know
Injustice is the demon's creed
Those high shall soon be brought down low
For pain is truth; now all shall bleed

Demon

I am the anger in your heart
I am the thunder in your veins
I am the rage that tears apart
I am the carnage of the flame

I am the whispers in the dark
I am the fears you can't explain
I am the scar, the taboo mark
I am the crumbling of the sane

I am the shadows of your past
I am the flaw that brings you shame
I am the murmurs through the glass
I am the thought that gives you pain

Perish, insect; soon you shall know
Injustice is the demon's creed
Those high shall soon be brought down low
For pain is truth; now all shall bleed

---

And yes, the break in rhythm in line 13 is intentional. [why]

[arbitraryarmor]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. Harsh critique is good critique nontheless, Bena And the break in rhythm is there because that's the place in the poem where the form changes, Billy.

[Todd]

Hello, So, some basic comments here. Let me step back from rhyme for a second and focus on the content. The I am repetition gets very old very quickly. I would just as soon move it to the title somehow or cut back on the number of I am statements you make. There is also a lot of abstraction in these lines. The strongest lines have a sensory component to them. Let me give some examples:

Demon

I am the anger in your heart--Not sensory in the slightest purely abstract
I am the thunder in your veins--This however is very nice thunder implies sound and there is a pulse in the veins so this works well.
I am the rage that tears apart
I am the carnage of the flame

I am the whispers in the dark
I am the fears you can't explain
I am the scar, the taboo mark--Again this is simple and visual, so it works
I am the crumbling of the sane

I am the shadows of your past
I am the flaw that brings you shame
I am the murmurs through the glass--this line has a nice sensory component
I am the thought that gives you pain

Perish, insect; soon you shall know
Injustice is the demon's creed
Those high shall soon be brought down low
For pain is truth; now all shall bleed--This last stanza is too abrupt and too short given the length of the poem you may want to consider an echoing effect speaker 1/speaker 2 throughout.

---

And yes, the break in rhythm in line 13 is intentional.

Just some thoughts,

Todd

[arbitraryarmor]

Thanks, Todd.

[crow]

Bena said:

so if you boiled this poem down it would be:

I am a demon.
I am everything you think a demon would be.
While I find you insignificant,
I'm still going to bother with taking you to hell.

--agreed.