confessions from the used and broken hearted

[katiiielady]

Scattered graveyard of clothes surround your room like
a whirlwind of bad decisions from the night before.
The haunting reminder of the pain you endlessly cause yourself.
Your room feels as messy as your mind.
You vaguely remember tugging at your hair and your body, feeling unimpressed.
Tearing off each others clothes is a much less intricate process.
Your body yearns for more, his body aches for your feel.
Your body desires to feel light and free, but is trapped
by the insecurities, you've caged yourself in.
Your heart anxious for the touch of his palm on your back,
patiently awaiting words of affection to pour from his mouth.
Vacancy is all you hear.
Someone who values your body over your mind, while you admire him wholly.
Every glance,
every move,
every breath you are present and he stares at you with emptiness.
Devoid of love for you, he is absent, thoughts elsewhere
beyond the four corners of linen you lay upon.
An empty heart beating frivolously next to yours.
You feel jealous for the ease at which he can exist in this bed,
while you painfully aim for perfection.
Your heart bounding and leaping and theirs pulsing regularly.
You feel the longing, aching touch after touch for what feels
like minutes but has been hours.
Your body learning, learning how to move, learning how to feel.
Learning how to forget.
Forget the pain, forget the anguish.
Impulses, rushing through your body heating up only in the delicate
intricacies of crevices where he touches you.
A beautiful rise of exhaustion consumes you both, you fall asleep intertwined.
Closely indulging in the rise and fall of his chest.
At dawn the cool rush of wind on your face awakens your mind and reminds
you of the pain your tired, weak heart and body feel.
Vitality is drained from you, eyes black from smeared makeup, cheeks flushed,
body drained of sweat and tears.
Wash your face, wash your body, wash your mind from the pain and the hurt.
Wash your memory from my mind.
If only it were so easy.
After you are clean, you still feel empty, clean but empty.
You feel unwanted and unloved.
You feel like he grabbed a piece of your heart and kept it in his cold, hard bed.
A place that was once warm where you laid the night before,
two bodies intertwined.
The feeling is so painful you can hardly bear it.
You put on warm clothes and remind yourself
again and again to not go back.
But you feel weak.
The weakness consumes your entire body.
It grows inside you at night, and consumes your thoughts.
You can’t ignore it, in the end the weakness encompasses your whole body.
There you are again in a warm bed with a cold heart.
Lying next to a lifeless love, while your pulse is
beating in tune with the music his eyes remind you of.
His cold stare reminds you of being used.
Soft, delicate caresses over your aching heart will never
heal the deep pain that lies inches beneath his touch.

[Leanne]

Hi -- you have a fairly strong opening line with an interesting image. I'm disappointed that this isn't continued through the piece.

There are reasons we use paragraphs in prose, or line breaks in poems. A block of text like this can be a chore to read, especially when there are so many grammatical and logical errors, e.g. "Your body loves feeling free but feels caged all at once" ("all at once" makes no sense -- do you mean "at the same time"? Even that is fairly redundant. A stop after "caged" would serve you better); "but from your soft skin up is a dead." (dead what?); "Aliveness is drained from you" ("aliveness" is new age term that really fails as a word for me personally -- it may be different for you, but I don't see anything wrong with using words like "vitality" that are much less awkward and artificial-sounding); "You feel like they grabbed a piece of your heart and kept it in their cold, hard bed" (how many lovers are in this bedroom? He or she, not they); "so painful you can hardly bare it" (bear).

There is the germ of an idea here but it's being drowned in words. I know you haven't put this up for critique but it would be very dishonest of me to simply say "wow, I enjoyed this, great job". I mean, I probably could have enjoyed it had it been condensed. Perhaps you'll edit. I hope so.

[katiiielady]

Hi -- you have a fairly strong opening line with an interesting image. I'm disappointed that this isn't continued through the piece.

There are reasons we use paragraphs in prose, or line breaks in poems. A block of text like this can be a chore to read, especially when there are so many grammatical and logical errors, e.g. "Your body loves feeling free but feels caged all at once" ("all at once" makes no sense -- do you mean "at the same time"? Even that is fairly redundant. A stop after "caged" would serve you better); "but from your soft skin up is a dead." (dead what?); "Aliveness is drained from you" ("aliveness" is new age term that really fails as a word for me personally -- it may be different for you, but I don't see anything wrong with using words like "vitality" that are much less awkward and artificial-sounding); "You feel like they grabbed a piece of your heart and kept it in their cold, hard bed" (how many lovers are in this bedroom? He or she, not they); "so painful you can hardly bare it" (bear).

There is the germ of an idea here but it's being drowned in words. I know you haven't put this up for critique but it would be very dishonest of me to simply say "wow, I enjoyed this, great job". I mean, I probably could have enjoyed it had it been condensed. Perhaps you'll edit. I hope so.

---

Hi Leanne,

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this. To be honest this was the very first poem I have ever written and I didn't think anyone would take the time to critique it but I really do appreciate it. I think I was just feeling overwhelmed with emotion and I decided to write it so I apologize for all the mistakes. I really do think I could do better but it was more therapeutic than for a perfect piece. Thank you!

Chantelle

[Leanne]

Chantelle, that's what the workshop is for -- reading poems and helping each other improve

Now, as I said you do have a germ of an idea here -- how to bring it out is up to you. The best way to decide what will work is to read as widely as you can and see how other people are doing it. That's not to say that you need to be the same as anyone else, but there are techniques that you will pick up through reading that you can then employ in your own poem.

Already it looks better in the different format. Try playing with your sentence structure and using images to show, not tell (you'll hear that phrase a lot). Condense. For example:

But you feel weak.
The weakness consumes your entire body.
It grows inside you at night, and consumes your thoughts.
You can’t ignore it, in the end the weakness encompasses your whole body.

This could have been said in just one line, maybe two. I'd probably go with "but weakness consumes you" -- all the other words are unnecessary detail.

If you're happy to accept criticism (and it sounds like you are, which always makes us happy here!), then we can move your poem to Mild Critique or the Novice forum if you'd prefer.

[billy]

looks and read 100% better,
no feedback here but i think you could do well work-shopping it.
it has lots of potential
you have some great lines at work (as well as some not so great )

i did enjoy the read