Lonely (kind of graphic?)

[lock1]

Loneliness

Loneliness does not falter in its inconvenience
It does not wait until you can kiss your own skin
And tell yourself that you are all you require
That the comfort of others is but a false excuse for security.

It creeps through your shutters the night after you were left
Alone in a bar because they promised they'd be right back
But you were too enticed by the warmth of whiskey on your soul
To figure that they wouldn't.

It finds you alone in a strange motel outside of town
Where the odors of a lover you only knew linger on cheap cotton sheets
Paired with the hope that maybe they would stay.

It finds you at three o'clock in the morning on the bathroom floor
Engulfed in solitude it convinces you that maybe pills could be good company
Or perhaps a pair of scissors.

It is four o'clock in the morning when you discover loneliness has lied to you
As your vision blurs and you can no longer recall
Whether your shirt was crimson or white when you put it on,
The realization sets in that it would have been better to live lonely

Because while loneliness is inconvenient

So is death.

maybe a little preachy, but interested in hearing your feedback

[bena]

I don't think that it is too preachy, because this is a message that needs to be told. The biggest issue I have is that you could simmer this down and make it less a story, and more a poem. There's a ton of neat stuff here, but it gets lost in the extraneous words.

[rowens]

Loneliness does not falter in its inconvenience
It does not wait until you can kiss your own skin
And tell yourself that you are all you require
That the comfort of others is but a false excuse for security.


Maybe that line could go. 
The first three lines sound nice together, but the first line doesn't go anywhere, it's pretty flat.



It creeps through your shutters the night after you were left
Alone in a bar because they promised they'd be right back

But you were too enticed by the warmth of whiskey on your soul

To figure that they wouldn't.


That has the kind of charm I like, a kind of charm. As a part of this poem, it's bad writing. But you could do something with it. Right back? Or, back? They'd be back? Right back has the appropriate delicacy and urgency though. 





It finds you alone in a strange motel outside of town
Where the odors of a lover you only knew linger on cheap cotton sheets

Paired with the hope that maybe they would stay.


A lover you only knew is a good line. The stuff after it lessens the effect a bit. Even if you ended the line with knew. Maybe return instead of stay?



It finds you at three o'clock in the morning on the bathroom floor

Engulfed in solitude it convinces you that maybe pills could be good company

Or perhaps a pair of scissors.



It is four o'clock in the morning when you discover loneliness has lied to you

As your vision blurs and you can no longer recall

Whether your shirt was crimson or white when you put it on,

The realization sets in that it would have been better to live lonely


that maybe pills could be good company
Or perhaps a pair of scissors


that almost works. At the same time, it feels no good because of the rest of the poem. Not quite too good for the poem. 


The mounting theme of the other parts above is weak. 



Because while loneliness is inconvenient

So is death.

[Requiem]

Wow.
This is kinda epic. Excellent job portraying such a tricky emotion, though I must say that this seems like a very extreme form of loneliness, more like depression with suicidal tendencies.
The only thing I would change (it's teeny tiny) would be the "only" in "odors of a lover you only knew..." I feel like "once knew" or "thought you knew" would better communicate the divide and utter lack if connection between the two people.
But yeah.
You're golden.

[Erthona]

lock1 (unregistered) I wonder how this person is posting but is still unregistered.  

This is like a Butterfly poem in that most everyone feels compelled to do one of these at some point in time. The common theme in all of them is that someone was responsible for their own death. The attitude towards the character ranges from extremely negative (he/she was self-center and never thought of anyone but himself even in death) to extremely positive (he sacrificed himself that others might live, he was a real hero). So this is much covered ground. It is fairly archetypal a large amount of possibilities are covered in mythologizes. From the hero, to the dunce.    

Don't cap every line, cap the start of a line only if it begins a sentence. This makes it much easier for your readers to read your poem. Put periods at the end of sentences. Stanza 1 (S1) cannot be one sentence. So maybe:

Loneliness does not falter in its inconvenience.
It does not wait until you can kiss your own skin
and tell yourself that you are all you require;
(or) that comfort from others is but a false excuse for security.     Maybe replace "but" with "just" purely personal

possible words choice option S1

Loneliness never falters in its inconvenience.

S2
"It creeps through your shutters the night after you were left"  tense agreement problem

It creeps (present tense)  were left (past tense)

Possible solution: "It crept through your shutters the night after you were left"

Need a period after S2 L2  "they'd be right back."

S2 L3 New sentence. Drop "but" cap "you"

"You were too enticed by the warmth of whiskey on your soul"
To figure that they wouldn't." Possibly: to realize they wouldn't.  "Figure" when used this way is usually identified as slang, and even when using it with "out", as in "To figure out..." As this poem has no necessary justifiable need to use slang, or a regional dialects, so using either can be problematic in this poem.    

In my mind " enticed by the warmth of whiskey on your soul" is somewhat senseless. Usually it is the belly that whiskey warms. I'm not even "sure what the warmth of whiskey" has to do with ones soul, since the soul is not a physical organ. How then is one enticed (beguiled, or coaxed) by the warmth... See if you substitute synonyms of enticed in its place, it doesn't really convey much meaning.  

Sorry. It looks like it should make sense, but when one breaks it down it falls apart. Maybe something along the lines of "you were too entranced by whiskey's deadening of your feeling of isolation." Well, that's still pretty clumsy, but definitely something along the lines of "entranced".  

"Engulfed in solitude" I'm not sure that is even possible. Solitude is generally understood to mean physical separation, loneliness is more akin to a mental or an emotional separation from others, generally characterized such feelings as depressed, hopeless, and so forth. So even though in some cases they can be synonyms, they cannot in all. How would it sound to write engulfed in nothing, emptiness. However as I was writing this I realized that it would be the same problem if you used loneliness instead of solitude, so maybe the problem is in the phrase, "engulfed in". Items that work with "engulfed" are usually plural. Engulfed in sweaters, in chairs, popcorn, but not engulfed in a chair, or an ocean, or a car. I'm sure there are exceptions (blanket), but as a general rule it holds.

Most important: Drop the last two lines, it weakens the rest of the poem, and it greatly weakens a very strong ending.

I would say welcome to the site, but evidently you have yet to get here.

Dale

[ellajam]

Hi, lock1, it looks like you may have got caught in a glitch when billy recently culled the site to delete inactive members. Please, nothing personal, just reregister.

Thanks, and please accept our apologies.

ella/mod

[Mark D. Windmill]

Hey, I liked the image you painted in the reader's mind. My personal opinion and taste is that in poetry, often, less is more. Words can mix up the message or make the reader lose the focus on the message conveyed. I thought this was almost more of the start of a gritty bruce willis old cop movie. Not to make fun , you did a good job, point being is it flows as a story much more than a poem.

Good job