A liitle high school heartbreak

[missaprilmarie]

Okay so on this thread I plan on posting multiple poems instead of flooding the forum. My friends say I'm good but I wouldn't mind some other opinions. Hope you enjoy:)

I needed you

Please just one more kiss
I need to know you are with me
Take my hand
Sweep me off my feet again
I want to know your love
I need you to know what you mean
Don't let me take your breath away
I need you beside me breathing
A simple smile by you to me
That would be enough for me
I'm tripping on your last words
You just don't get any of this
The love wasn't the lie
Everything that came with it was*

[missaprilmarie]

Learning From Mistakes

And you thought I was the liar
The one who had changed their mind
The one who had taken no damage
You have no idea

I cried at night for you
The cuts on my wrists have your name written all over them
Long days thinking of dying
Thank you for that

Now I believe you should be apologizing
I admit to taking everything good I had given you
You didn't have to cause me that much pain though
Using people, I thought that was even above you

You aren't the person I loved though
You've changed into a darkness I don't know
You think I've changed too
And that is the truth
I'm better now than I ever was with you

Broken Record

Me and you were like a broken record
Repeating the same thing over and over again
Three more week and we are over once again
I just want to hear the next verse in our song
But what if the verse isn't what I want to hear?
Is there even another verse?
Or does the record end after the scratch?
Can I see the tracklist please?
I just want to know whats happened here
God knows I don't want to start on another album

[hillwalker]

Of the pair, 'I needed you' I believe is by far the stronger.

It paints a delicate, fairly simple picture of young love, and that is what makes it so remarkable. There are some lines that stand out :

Don't let me take your breath away
I need you beside me breathing

is a brilliantly clever couplet that takes two or three readings to appreciate - and the last line is also a perfect put-down - unemotional yet haunting with the pain behind it.

The second poem is a bit more over-the-top emotionally, which in fact waters down the mood you were probably hoping to create. Lines 9 to 14 in particular could do with some trimming down - and yet the ending is once again one of this poem's stronger points.

You have the gift - it's a case now of being able to identify those parts that work best; concentrating on what you can get from those and ditching (or recycling) the rest.

H

[missaprilmarie]

Thank you. I'll be working on finding what sounds best in my poems while still putting the emotion I want into it. I agree that the second is somewhat over the top emotionally but poetry is my way of venting. I just put down what I feel and hope it goes well together.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Okay so on this thread I plan on posting multiple poems instead of flooding the forum. My friends say I'm good but I wouldn't mind some other opinions. Hope you enjoy:)

I needed you

Please just one more kiss
I need to know you are with me
Take my hand
Sweep me off my feet again
I want to know your love
I need you to know what you mean
Don't let me take your breath away
I need you beside me breathing
A simple smile by you to me
That would be enough for me
I'm tripping on your last words
You just don't get any of this
The love wasn't the lie
Everything that came with it was*

There's a beautiful innocence to this, signalled by the humbleness of the title, which seems to advise us, in advance, not to take this too seriously.

I wonder if the * is to be followed up in one of your subsequent poems. If not, it's a distraction when one is still struggling to guess what the "Everything that came with it" was. The most plausible answer, to me at least, is that the narrator agreed to make love when she wasn't really ready for it?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Learning From Mistakes

And you thought I was the liar
The one who had changed their mind
The one who had taken no damage
You have no idea

I cried at night for you
The cuts on my wrists have your name written all over them
Long days thinking of dying
Thank you for that

Now I believe you should be apologizing
I admit to taking everything good I had given you
You didn't have to cause me that much pain though
Using people, I thought that was even above you

You aren't the person I loved though
You've changed into a darkness I don't know
You think I've changed too
And that is the truth
I'm better now than I ever was with you

I agree with Hillwalker that "I Needed You" is more successful than this one and that lines 9-14 are just too literal. And I think apropos both these latter two that you might be doing yourself a disservice presenting them in the same thread as the previous one, because it begins to seem as if you're a 'one-trick pony.'

Also "I'm better now than I ever was with you" just isn't convincing because, in fact, if you really were "better" you wouldn't want or need to say so.


Broken Record

Me and you were like a broken record
Repeating the same thing over and over again
Three more week and we are over once again
I just want to hear the next verse in our song
But what if the verse isn't what I want to hear?
Is there even another verse?
Or does the record end after the scratch?
Can I see the tracklist please?
I just want to know whats happened here
God knows I don't want to start on another album

Yes, the "scratch" is a telling metaphor, but I kind of think that after you extended that metaphor in "the tracklist," you might have done better to let it go. It began to feel as if you knew you were on to a good thing and wanted to make the most of it.

[missaprilmarie]

The * was accidently put in there by my ipod once I copied and pasted it onto here.

And I think apropos both these latter two that you might be doing yourself a disservice presenting them in the same thread as the previous one, because it begins to seem as if you're a 'one-trick pony.'
I put them into the same thread because I want other people to be able to have their poetry on the first page so people will see it. I will continue to post my poems on this thread because it is all just a little high school heartbreak.

Also "I'm better now than I ever was with you" just isn't convincing because, in fact, if you really were "better" you wouldn't want or need to say so.
I do need to say so because the you in the poem doesn't believe I am. I feel like they need to know that even though they broke me down into a million pieces, I changed myself for the better because of it.

It began to feel as if you knew you were on to a good thing and wanted to make the most of it.
I did know I had a good thing but was scared of what might happen if I let it go. I was scared to let go of something that I was so used to. I was scared that maybe my feelings weren't real.

[hillwalker]

I missed your 'Broken Record' poem because it appeared as an edit after I had already responded to the previous poem.....so

Regardless of what motivated you to write it I actually enjoyed the metaphor of the record/scratch/verse/tracklist - and the clever final line about the album.

My advice would be to forget about sharing the direct emotions that drove you to write this poem with your readers... but make use of the memory of the anger and pain as a catalyst to create a new poem.

Although you probably feel it is an important coping strategy to transfer your frustration or bitterness or sadness into your poetry it doesn't always make for very sympathetic reading by uninvolved outsiders. Poems like this are better recycled after you have reached inner harmony!!!!!

BUT your experiences allowed you to pluck this metaphor from the ether and play with it. Dump the complaining and questioning, and redraft the poem as a short, poignant piece revolving around the metaphor of a cd/record then I think you are onto a winner.

Good luck, H

[MorpheusSandman]

I pretty much agree with all that's been said here by hill and Prince. While these pieces are unpolished they show a definite and natural talent. I also greatly appreciated those two lines in "I Needed You" that hill pointed out, and I quite enjoyed the extended metaphor of Broken Record. One thing to keep in mind is the mediation between straight emotional expression, like things you might say in conversation with a friend, VS poetic rendering where you abstract things a little and find a way to frame them through the suggestion of words, phrases, lines, stanzas, rhymes, etc. While good poems can be written in a conversational style (see many of Prince's) it always helps to recognize where the gem of poetry is in the piece. In these, for instance, it might be in the metaphor of Broken Record, or those lines hill pointed out in "I Needed You". You have to watch out and not mix them too much or too randomly, because juxtaposing a metaphor like "I'm tripping on your last words" with "You just don't get any of this" is a bet mentally disruptive for the reader. The reason the second piece is the weakest is because there's too much telling and not enough showing or other poetic devices.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Also "I'm better now than I ever was with you" just isn't convincing because, in fact, if you really were "better" you wouldn't want or need to say so.
I do need to say so because the you in the poem doesn't believe I am. I feel like they need to know that even though they broke me down into a million pieces, I changed myself for the better because of it.


My comment had more to do with psychology, perhaps, than esthetics; the former in keeping with Shakespeare's "Methinks the lady doth protest too much." Although you only asserted it once, it's the sort of boast that always evokes skepticism in me.

But perhaps there is an esthetic point to be made here as well: if indeed you intended the poem as the speaker's need to prove something to the guy who abandoned her - if, that is, you intended us to understand by that last line that, better or just the same, she's still in the grip of the feeling he evoked in her, then that boast would serve the purpose.

[missaprilmarie]

Is love really worth all this?
The pain and the heartbreak
All in the hope of finding true love
Years of nothing but tears
Thinking that someone will wipe them away
Making it all better
But what happens when that person never comes
Or your mind decieves you
Making you think they are the one
But try just rip your heart out
Leaving you broken for eternity
So is it worth it?
No matter what your answer to the question is
When you look into your lovers eyes
And your heart begins to race so fast it might explode
You'll know it was all worth it *

[_Shannon_]

((hug)) I just ran across an old poetry notebook of mine, and it was fun to look at the girl this woman was...None of my poetry from high school survived as I wandered about the country. I have such mixed feelings about that--poetically I am sure it was drivel, but like you wrote--poetry was how I survived emotions poised to consume me.

Keep writing! Even if poem by poem is not stylistically perfect or proficient--you are forging your voice for the future poet you will become.

[PrinceMyshkin]

After the several indictments, I wasn't altogether ready for the upbeat final 2 lines, but there's a fluency to this that is undeniable.

[missaprilmarie]

Gone
What will happen
when her body is cold
and her heart doesn't beat
the blood no longer flows
her breath doesn't escape her lips
she no longer speaks
nor thinks
she is like stone
slowly weathering away
becoming a distant memory
of this world
until she is forgotten
except for that headstone
in the middle of the graveyard
surronded by only a million others?

Mine
Your words speak to me
They let me know what I mean
How much you love me
How much you care about me
All the promises you have made
Have been and will be fufilled
You are the only one I trust
You hold all my secrets on the tips of your fingers
Your hands hold my heart
Your legs guide me
You arms hold me with total comfort
Yet your whole body is what is most important
For it is what died for me

[dafydd manton]

I really, really like that - brought back a good few memories. Would you accept one tiny suggestion. Gravestone and graveyard - it seems to grate slightly. Would "headstone" make it flow better?

Keep writing!! (And keep listening to Hillwalker.)

[missaprilmarie]

I liked your suggestion and agree with it so I changed it. Thanks!

[dafydd manton]

*bows low, sweeps floor with feathered tricorn hat!*