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His life, My hands....
I held a man’s face in his hand,
I told him it’s ok,
die for the land.
pass judgment,
give...
satisfy,
live...
I held his belief in my very palm...
Told him it was ok;
I know the harm
I blessed him,
washing his sword.
I gave him my final word,
To gratify.
What we seek.
Who am I?
To inherit the meek...
I told this man,
it was ok.
I sent him off,
from tonight to today.
I gave him reason,
I made him see,
yet, inside it crushed me.
Giving him this permission to die,
Inside all I could do is cry.
As the skyline I passed,
lights twinkling in the sky,
my heart broke.
Alas,
I held his face within my hands.
His life soon to pass,
His mark to be made.
Of time,
of life.
And he knew.
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| Thank you so much for your imput. I love the fact that you cared enough to help me make this a stronger poem. Thank you ever so much and I look forward to reading some of your works. |
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What a strong statement on a sore subject.
At the beginning, I'd break L2 this way,
I told him it's ok/ (you need the apostrophe)
die for the land.
But I'd either take the "To" off the next 4 lines, or make the second one "I told him it's ok/to die for the land. Because it sounds like your posting a list of five things you told him were OK.
Personally, I like the sound without the to's.
Now to get to more of the meat here, I enjoyed the start of this because you spoke with sybolism. Death, yes, universal, but when you washed his sword you "showed" us that this is a warrior. That's way better than telling us he was a soldier.
The piece started to leak power when you rhymed seek with meek. Don't rhyme unless the rhyming words also happen to be the very best words you could possibly use to convey your ideas. I don't think seek/meek are those words here, but I also do not claim to understand every facet of the poem, so do take all my comments with several large grains of salt!
Again, at the line, "to give him my permission to die" Now you're telling us instead of showing us. This starts the poem weakening a bit more.
Small nit, "as the skyline passed"? Did the skyline move? Or did you pass the skyline?
I really liked that you now hold his face in YOUR hands. Yes, I noticed at L1 that you held it in his hands, which is curious, but you did it, I hope, so you could create a contrast now, now that you've resolved the internal conflict? Now that you're resigned to that which isn't really yours to control?
But I wouldn't speak of a cold, ugly thing like "life expectancy" I'd try to come up with a fresh metaphor for that. Perhaps the number of his dreams, slipping off like sand. Sands of time is too cliche. If someone can guess where you're going before you get there, change it. Life Expectancy and Sands of time, sorry. People see that coming from two blocks away. (Which I've used as a deliberate example of a cliche!)
Now this might surprise you, but the next line, And He Knew. You're done there. As far as I'm concerned, you can save everything after that for another poem. By running on longer and over-explaining, you kill what you've done to that point, which is allude to things that people can figure out from the context and watching the evening news.
And you've done a good job.
Hope the ideas aren't intrusive. |
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