Post by OJ Simpsonwhenever i seek a love,
my fortune turns to stone.
I plunge screaming off the bluff
and explode into blood and bone.
The streets shine cruel and cold;
empty faces scoff and sneer.
they know that i've been rolled
and that my tragic end grows near.
all i've tried has failed;
my bank of hope is broke.
emotionally i rot in jail,
but my pain will end in gunsmoke.
It's too direct. This affects both its artistic quality and its
effects on you in the writing process. Try maybe to write the same
thing as if observing, maybe even imagine you are a scientist from
some distant time, looking back on you, when current human folly and
grievances might seem alien. A line like 'emotionally I rot in jail'
can seem camp, partly because of the over-familiar jail image, and
partly because you've unpacked this already familiar image by
labouring the point that it's not a literal jail. The phrase 'tragic
end' is similarly camp in its effects; there may be a good way of
saying the same thing if you push past cliche, if you ignore the first
thought as if it were a base part of you obscuring the higher you.
The fourth line of each verse has scansion problems, could do with
trimming, though you may have intended a syncopation, which
potentially can work, if carrying stronger language.
Writing in a less direct way, learning the craft, observing the
subtlety in contemporary writing - for example in Mark Doty's work -
will help you get some perspective on your life. Your pain may be
very vivid to you and you may have been treated like shit, but to an
extent some inadvertant contribution from you through lack of
perspective can only make that pain worse. Your poem shows you to be
invested in unhealthy abstractions - where reality and your perception
are felt to be the same. You're no worse than anyone else, although
you may be invested in some viewpoints that make you feel deceptively
better in the short term.
Trust me, I'm published in the UK! In magazines no one's hard of.
And also regarded and registered as mentally ill. Qualifications
indeed...