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The Wanted

Plague of the town
Hide when he is seen
He is believed to be dangerous
Though evil as he may be
He is indeed wanted…
Wanted for others satisfaction
To curse at…
To throw rocks at…

Miserable because of his ways
He cannot find happiness
Collapsing faith crushes the mind
His mission, to change you
He is very wanted…
Wanted for others satisfaction
To hit…
To make bleed…

He only wants to cause harm
A life shall always matter
Unless it is his kind
He is nothing but a savage
He is extremely wanted…
Wanted for others satisfaction
To be burned…
To be killed…

Ask what he has done
But to see would be more clear
He is nothing but a monster
Nothing… just a freak…

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?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Last few words: 
give me feedback and don't tell me things "will be ok"
Editing stage: 

Comments

For starters you can never tell just how much a poem has been fictionalised. And for seconders we are poets, not therapists.

This has a certain power, and the punishment refrain works well. I can't help feeling there is an element or dimension missing though. Perhaps something about the nature of those seeking punishment? Is it justice? Revenge? Perhaps an aspect of the monster in them? And the motivation of the freak? If 'He is nothing but a monster', there's really very little to say, but I tend to think monsters are made, they don't just appear like a genetic mutation.

Just some thoughts. I think this piece has more potential to explore.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

i know were poets and not therapists but 90 percent of the time the only thing people say has nothing to do with the poem, don't tell me that tell people on here that. to be honest it pisses me off.

i know what you mean when something feels missing from the poem though. i worked on this poem for a week but the last couple days i couldnt even touch it... i looked at it and was unsure what to change... but... i wasnt satisfied with it, i changed the poem completely 4 times but i never could get it right, so i just wanted some feedback... i couldnt tell if i was missing something, it was too dull... i just couldnt tell but i knew something about it was off....

the poem was set up for the people wanting the person dead to be the real "savages" and nothing was wrong with the boy, he lived life normally but people found him odd so they wanted him dead. sometimes i see this in society and when anger builds up it escalates from cursing at them... hitting them... to murder.

author comment

Just grit your teeth and bear it. Ignore them. We are really here to improve our craft. And that's all I want to help with.

I suppose you can tell from my critique that I guessed you were trying to say more, especially about the punishers being the real savages, but in the end you said the opposite. We shouldn't spell everything out for our readers, but we can't mislead them and expect them to get it either.

Perhaps if you edited to say, near the end, that he is just different, not actively evil, then we might get the idea.

On the other hand other people might have understood you perfectly and maybe I am just stupid. I hope you get some more critique so you can decide if it needs changing.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

While most of it is descriptive the line
He only wants to cause harm
is the voice of the punishers, not the writer. See what I mean?

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

im still not sure, i planned on scrapping it but posted it because... i cant figgure out whats wrong... i like it... im happy with it... but.. .im not 100 % satisfied ... i might work on it a few more hours but... im not sure this poem will go anywhere

author comment

and come back to it later.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

And the thoughts of what was acknowledged many years ago
It was the whipping boy
So for any wrong you whipped the boy although he was completely innocent. Well done for expressing a viewpoint that was different.
Stand up for yourself like Galileo did
When he said the world was round and all the idiots kept saying it was flat
He went to jail for his beleiefs but he was right

Hi Desell,
I would keep working on this. You've either picked an archetype or it has picked you. There are a plethora of pariahs throughout mythology and literature. Generally there are paying for dire deeds in this or a prior life. Oedipus is a prime example. Through a foretold series of event, Oedipus (UNKNOWINGLY) killed his father Lauis (who had pinned Oedipus' legs together as a child to assure the prophecy that Oedipus would Kill his father and marry his mother would not come true). As time went on, the 'village idiot' or drunk was treated with much more respect and often was the relayer of useful information a la Falstaff the drunk.

My belief however is highest use of the FOOL is the 0 card in the Major Arcana of the TAROT. He represents innocense and has been used extensively through myth as Percival, the knight who finds the holy grail, The Green Knight who gives Gawain quite a go of it. To round this out and summate, there was another archer who shot the albatross, in Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but again, like Percival, was percieved as innocent though he had a rougher time of it than Percival.

This brings me back to your poem and the main confusion. Your words at times contradict the tone of other parts For example. Initially, the villagers hide from the man but within sentences you describe his torture at the hands of the same villagers. Are you riffing on Man's inhumanity to man? Or are you mixing the green man (who is also Pan, Memnoch, and The Horned God of the Wiccans and Tom Bombadil in Tolkien) with a Quasimodo type figure? I'm confused by what you're going for here.

Ron

BlueDemon77

Blue Demon77

"What I want is to be what I was before the knife,
before the brooch pin, before the salve, fixed me in this parenthesis:
Horses fluent in the wind. A place, a time gone out of mind."

The Eye Mote-Sylvia Plath

There is a definite confusion of voice. As I was reading I kept getting the old west wanted poster feel and then in other lines like a cult leader feel. I think this needs to have an external narrator, there you can develop the voice and tone of the narrator that then extends onto the character.

In this poem I think you have a beginning and an end but no middle. There's no head on collision for the conflict. People will probably disagree with me, but I think this needs to be longer. Imagine this as a (shorter) play with three acts: 1. Crime 2. Escape/Flight 3. Resolution/Restoration of Justice/Conclusion (whatever you want to call it).

You have an interesting flow. At first I didn't like the ellipses or extended pauses but on 2nd read they grew on me. So my suggestion is make the lines with the extended pauses really mind-blowing. They need to qualify the extra pause, more needs to be offered in those lines.

I like your refrain a lot; it works really well :). The sheer fact that you have a refrain makes me think this needs to be longer (again I'm sure people will disagree with me). I feel in this work you're veering towards (shorter) narrative verse. There's a story here that's not being told. We don't even really know why he's running/exiled. There are hints of disfigurement/disease, murder/violence... but no actual tip-off on his crime. I think that's what makes this poem a little confusing.

I really like this poem; I think it has heaps of potential:) and I look forward to seeing it revised:)!

I hope my comments help, I know they're a little vague!

We are talking Poetry here and this has a great theme though as some say it needs waiting for , where the story is probably told in simpler tones.
If it is fiction it is easier to talk about, but here we have some poets that write about their own world of misuse and lose of direction.
I can see where Jess is coming from it is hard to talk about a work when we are not sure of who it is talking about..
If not fiction then it can be written as a poem in a different way, where the main character speaks, or the ones that have done wrong to him/her describe the person they can choose several ways of doing this, this is poetry..
There was a great healer long ago who said that him without sin should cast the first stone..
Then to this work where the bullies in the end have to live with what they have done.
The memory of the one they hurt will I expect be shorter lived, as he/she is more likely to forgive them in his/her smaller world..
Yours Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

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