Welcome to WDC! I hope you enjoy your time here!

Some things I Like:

You have lots of emotive language in this piece. I like the general idea of utter chaos, pain, etc with the simple "Outside, I'm smiling" at the end. That could be very effective.

Observations & Suggestions:

Okay... do you just LOVE the sound of -ING? Ing ing ing ing ing ing ing? That doesn't sound great to me. More on the monotone obnoxious side, no offence. So, my first suggestion is a very simple one that would serve three purposes.

1. it would remove the ineffective repetition of that -ing sound.
2. it would make the poem filled with action, which would be great for a short piece like this.
3. it makes reading the piece faster, and as the lines are about chaos and pain, faster may be far more effective.

The suggestion: Make the verbs a simple present tense.

Heart breaks, mind races, conscience screams, death creeps, happiness shatters, bottle empties, scares come, misery burns, sorrow rages, depression rises, blood soaks.

Already, that sounds 100% better to me. It is active, it improves the pace, and it gives each line a unique look and feel. It is your piece, but this would be a vast improvement. You could also just cut the "With a", which doesn't make much sense anyway. "With a ______________ outside... I'm smiling" doesn't really make sense because you're saying that with all of this going on outside, you are smiling. Grammatically, that is what the sentence says (as it is one sentence). So yeah... changing the verbs to action allows you to just cut that "with a" completely. Grammar issue solved.

Another issue here is that there is no progression. There is no logical progression from one line to the next. For instance, the soul and conscience are screeching and screaming... and two lines later happiness shatters? Seems like happiness would shatter BEFORE your soul screeches. Know what I mean?

"Scars come" could be ingenious or awful. The super simple verb among all the flowery language have almost a haunting quality... but for some people, it might just seem strange. Something to think about anyway.

Overall, I think the piece would be infinitely better without the -ING endings. If you take nothing else from this review, I hope that suggestion will be helpful if you decide to revise.




My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .