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Don't Give a Damn

Lips, stained with shadows,
Shout out profanities
Not giving a damn
Who might hear;
Hell bent on robbing
Innocent ears

Lips, sneering with sarcasm,
Frown with cynicism
Not giving a damn
Who might listen;
Hell bent on tainting
Innocent concepts

Lips, dripping with hate,
Plant prejudice seeds
Not giving a damn
Who might be hurt;
Hell bent on destroying
Innocent lives

Lips, frozen with disbelief,
Edged with tension
I absorb my damnation
As a thoughtless casualty
From hell bent ideology
That none are blameless

Shadows of humanity laced with
Sarcasm and fear
Hate what they don’t understand;
Hell bent on selfish ideas
Not caring enough to give a damn.

12.19.2010
© Tonya Greenlee

Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Review Request (Direction): 
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Editing stage: 

Comments

I can see alot of thought has gone into this poem and it has paid off! Well constructed, The title is spot on and you tide it altogether perfectly in the last stanza.

Excellent poem Tonya

Thank you for sharing .

Love mand xxxxxxxx

Thank you Mand. This one is a bit personal...althought it wasn't written so.
I added another paragraph at Annas suggestion to make it personal..
I am glad you like the poem. Thanks for reading. I know i am behind on
reading and comments. I will try really hard to get caught up soon.

Always,
Tonya

author comment

If only you had chosen to personalize this poem, Tanya......

In my opinion, so many poems omit that integrated essence/presence. Without it (again my opinion)
they're lifeless words and not *poetry* in the best sense of the word.

~love and stuff,
Anna

Thanks so much for your time. I always enjoy your comments and opinion.
I have heard comments both ways.. some don't believe a poem should
be personalized. I usually tend to make them personal, but didn't on this one.
I added a stanza..see what you think. This was a personal poem, an
observance, that was painful to see and endure.

lol..~ love and stuff,
Tonya

author comment

Hahaha. Who says poems should not be personalized? How silly! Every poem is personal to the poet, a poem is our unique identification and assimilation of feelings, thoughts, experiences.

There are a number of ways they can be written, but depersonalize a poem? Not by the greats. Every metaphor is highly unique and *personal*.

Of course we can speak of the mundane, the depersonalized poem, the hallmark card variety. Suitable for all for every occasion. ;-) They are nice, but wouldn't your friends like a poem written by you, about an experience shared?

Then again, spiritual poems, poems from the heart, one can identify with, no matter the language, the place in time or the poet.

See if adding a last line, such as: "Sometimes I'm damned if I do, sometimes I'm damned if I don't" doesn't add something...

Stuff of love,
Anna

No time, no time, I have no time! LOL
Horribly busy,
but I loved this.
The title is excellent
"How was my language use?"
heehee...you don't need to ask that question.
One thing: "innocent concepts" broke the cadence for me, and there was an implication in the beginnng of child-like innocence ruined by hate, so for me the word "concept" doesn't ring true, it was to "grown-up", if you see what I mean. "ideas" instead, perhaps?
Love the theme, it is close to my heart, and took me back to places I usually try to forget.
The beginning is great, so is the ending,
and overall I really love this piece.

Sorry for the rush!

Respectfully, Race

"Laws and Rules don't kill freedom: narrow-minded intolerance does" - Race-9togo

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Race_9togo

I like the way that you repeat the same line, it infuses the the poem with power and drives it on. Good stuff.

Lou

Stand tall, be proud to be who you are, give the world the finger!!!!

Dear Tonya

I gather from this that you dislike sarcasm, cynicism and "profanity" (whatever you might mean by that word). You also seem to dislike anything which criticises your own world-view (whatever that might be).

I feel you should be more tolerant of other people's points of view, even if they are at odds with your own prejudices. You final stanza reads,
"Shadows of humanity laced with
Sarcasm and fear
Hate what they don’t understand;
Hell bent on selfish ideas
Not caring enough to give a damn."
To state that people who are sarcastic or fearful are Hell-bent on selfish ideas and uncaring is, in my book, quite offensive. Maybe they are fearful because they DO give a damn; and it's only those who are narrow-minded who take offence at sarcasm and irony.

I seem to recall that you stated as a comment on a poem in which I criticised American capitalism and greed " AMERICA is the GREATEST nation on the face of the Earth. That is not arrogance, just plain truth." When I pointed out this was not a fact-based claim, you then added in capital letters that I "spewed out hatred". I would respectfully suggest that you should carefully think who is being personally rude and offensive and who is not.

xxx
Edna
Poet(ess) to the Stars

You are right. I suppose I should be more tolerant. I actually thought I was a very tolerant person. It seems I may fall short of being tolerant enough.
I could argue my point of hateful perspective on this poem. Its mainly focused on myself here. Where as there is no specific target, other than myself, that I'm actually targeting. I suppose I could be wrong in your 'america' poem, that you actually know what you are writing about. I feel, however, there are an awefully lot of facts you do not know.

I would not presume to write anything halfway similar regarding England. Why? Because, although I may have a vague knowledge of what is going on there, I know I don't have near all the information to have a truthful picture and England is a tiny country in comparison to the USA. Not nearly as many fingers in the running of your country. So how can you possibly be an expert on the running of mine?
You can still write about hate. I feel it is best not to slander others or give generalized derogatory inclusions. Just as ALL English are not bad, ALL Americans are not bad, stupid..yadda yadda yadda as you seem to believe.

author comment

I think I DO know what I am talking about, although I would not go so far as to claim to be an expert on the running of your country. I studied American political history as part of my university course, I have even read de Tocqueville on democracy in America, I have visited the USA many times, admittedly only to the East Coast (NYC, Boston, New England, Miami and New Orleans) and to the West Coast (LA, SF, San Diego and all points in between). I have even seen gun violence and police brutality on American streets, I have seen beggars lying in the gutters off 5th Avenue a few yards away from billionaires' apartments and 5-star hotels charging $500 a night. I read newspapers and am exposed to other media reports on the USA constantly (unlike American papers and media which largely ignore what's going on outside the USA, the British media report very closely on American gun violence and school shootings, on the impeachment of the Donald, on American endorsement of illegal Israelite settlements in Palestine and the West Bank etc etc.) I see your president's crazed ramblings and racist diatribes on TV and I read of his claims to "grab pussy" and am amazed that he is still in office after such words (and with his supporters, many of them women, closing their eyes to his appalling behaviour). I wonder if Fox News et al will report on the mass demonstrations against Trump when he visits London tomorrow?

Your comment that Britain is a "tiny" country compared to the USA is bizarre and irrelevant. The UK has a population of 65 million people. the USA c.330 million. A fifth is not exactly "tiny"! By the same token the USA is "tiny" in comparison with China, since China has nearly 1.4 billion inhabitants; similarly India has 1.3 billion, each having over 3 times the population of the USA. If you are referring to physical size, the USA is smaller than Russia, China and Canada (Russia is nearly twice the size of the US). Thus, how is the USA the "greatest" country in the world in any meaningful sense?

I don't recall my having said "all Americans are bad"; nor would I say anything so bigoted and stupid. What I would say is that your country is sharply divided (race against race, left against right, religious against secular, etc etc) and that inequality is rife - you have untold numbers of billionaires and untold millions of poverty-stricken people struggling to exist on foodbanks in a harsh capitalist environment, you have millions unable to pay for healthcare whilst Big Pharma makes billions of dollars of profits for shareholders and you spend billion upon billion on weaponry to bully other nations. Some of those charges (not the last two) can also be levelled at the UK, but the glaring differences are not so glaring. And we do have strict gun control so we don't have regular killings of schoolchildren so gun-toting Americans can get to keep their lethal weapons. We do have a rising tide of knife crime in the UK (due to social inequality and lack of opportunities for many young people, thanks to the Conservative government, with a nasty, misogynistic, racist liar as prime minister - an appallingly arrogant and complacent government which is doing bugger all to try and eradicate inequality through education. No country is perfect but in order to make any move towards improvement, one has to be willing to accept criticism and not dismiss it as "spewing hatred".

xxx
Edna
Poet(ess) to the Stars

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