Tell me what you think of my poem?

Question

The Cry of the Soldier

A slight wind touches
my tear streaked face
as I step out onto
the blood stained wasteland that
was once my home.
Death slithers through the bodies
feasting on the sorrow,
crawling up my body
and threatening to devour.
And I can look no longer,
stay no longer
live no longer.
Concieted are the killers,
ignorant of the lives taken,
familes torn apart.
They see death but do not feel it,
numb against the slicing sting
that can come from no blade.
I cannot have done it.
I cannot have taken innocent blood.
Men are happy to sacrifice, but why
is sacrifice happy?
Who can rest with a stranger's blood on their hands?
And I can look no longer
stay no longer,
live no longer....

Kevin S, I will have to admit that I have never seen war but I know someone close that has.

Thanks for the compliments as well as the criticism; I'll try to improve (this is one of my first poems).

Answer 1

wow. amazing.
really. i don't even know how to say how much i loved it
:))))
i love guys who can express themselves.
i loved the colors the poem creates when you read it.
nice flow aswell
^_^ great job!!!!!

edit: also, don't listen to those jackarses. they're jealous of your writing skillsss

Answer 2

You use a lot of words to say nothing. I dont feel any emotion, and it sounds like a poem of a man who killed his family. How can you write a poem about something you havn't felt before? In the music style blues, they say you can only play it really good if you have had the blues.....same is with poetry. If you try to do good and impress people, you will hinder your ability to create something new. Your just the same as everyone else. Use your own words for descriptions, not other peoples words....we all have heard those descriptions before.....

Answer 3

Here, read this:

Our Heroes Falling

The fields fall silent
The last hero is falling
Kissed by a bullet,
That fatal romance
Man has eternally with war
Yet, it is never complete.
There is always some object to obtain
Some people to free.
Fears and revenge are all we can see.
The last hero has fallen
He lays silent, clutching the Earth.
Wanting his mother
To quench his forlorn thirst.
The dead never move
Yet they move us all

That's by Edward Curtis. That's a contemporary war poem (written in Iraq in 2005). Yours is not even close to this. Indeed, it is light years away from this.

Just-One-Man's said it all (and deserves the 10 points for taking the time to correct all your mistakes and for showing you how weak and cliche-ridden your poem is).

Your poem IS very confusing and badly organised. It needs a lot of work doing to it if we are to take it seriously.

Read some real war poets like Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas and Siegfried Sassoon and then you will see how it is really done.

PS go ahead, give me a thumbs down for helping you out.

Answer 4

A poem is only as good as the mind that creates it. It is goos enough, but you should try to cut out some of the "as" and stuff like that. It should have a more delusional and fragmented feeling. Other than that like I said it is how you and those who read it interperet it.

Answer 5

IF you are a servant of the Almighty then you know that war has its place. You know the Israelites did not weep for those they destroyed on God's command. IF on the other hand you have somehow gotten your wires crossed so that you believe that Christians are passive, Christians should NEVER kill, then I can understand that cry of the soldier, but it's misleading. Practically the entire Old Testament is God's anger, God's wrath, God's laying waste to His enemies. Read that again and show me those cries of the soldiers.

So, I just don't buy the premise of your poem. IF it's an anti-war piece then ... yawn. I've heard it ALL before from Michael Moore, Jane Fonda, Sean Penn, et al.

A few grammar notes:

Is there a such thing as a "slight wind"? Wind is by definition STRONG. Saying, "Wow the wind is really blowing!" is redundant! Duh! That's what wind does. Breezes are less than wind. So are Zephyrs.

"My tear-streaked face," NOT "tear streaked face." And it's cliche'. Tracks of my tears. As tears ran down my cheeks. Yada yada yada. CLICHE'! We're looking for FRESH imagery!

"... the blood-stained wasteland ..." NOT "the blood stained wasteland...." Same mistake as the one above. And AGAIN it's cliche'. Read Lincoln's Gettysburg address. That was 150 years ago! We've had at least 150 years of hearing about blood-stained clothing, blood-stained soil, etc. Cliche', cliche', cliche'.

ONE second death is slithering through "the bodies" and the next it's in YOUR body! When did we go from talking about others to talking about YOU??? Be consistent in your voice. Stay focused. Don't drag your reader hither and yon.

Death is a "slicing sting," huh? SLICE sounds BAD. Sting doesn't sound that bad. "Bill, how's that hand?" "Not bad. It just stings a little." A slicing sting is contradictory, JUST as is a slight wind.

If you are truly a Christian then you know that NO MAN is innocent; so, what is this "innocent blood" that you speak about? Besides, I've only read it a million times that "he spilled innocent blood." More cliche'.

WHAT men are happy to sacrifice? And because "men," who have life, have the capacity for thought, feelings, and emotions are happy, can we turn it around and say that an inanimate object like sacrifice is happy? It's a curious turn of phrase, one that frankly lost me completely!

Who can rest with a stranger's blood on HIS hands, not on their hands. And by the way, LOTS of people can rest like babies (oops! more cliche'!) with strangers' blood on their hands! Don't kid yourself!

So, with that last line, you are going to KILL yourself? What about life everafter? Do Christians ever really die?

Answer 6

nice but.... the writer can not beleive he killed innocent blood so how does they know how the people on the other side feels about the war? how does the writer know that the killers are concieted and ignorant?

Answer 7

Your poem is a bit confusing...you say it's a cry of a soldier, your speaker says that his home is destroyed, then you say that he did it?

Here's the other thing...be careful, be very careful about writing on things you do not know directly. If you are a soldier, great, if not, please, don't pretend to know the mind of a soldier, especially in today's world where what you see on the evening news bears little resemblence to reality.

I've been there...have you?

Answer 8

Wow that is amazing. What inspired you to write about a soldier?

Answer 9

strongly agree with Zaiphrus.

and i love your poem. its rare to find guys like you, most of the time, i find only the girls posting poems,, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GUYS??? i find them mostly on the commentary section.