Her sorrow is lying in the centre of her breasts

A mother is silent

The tears at the bottom of her ocean refuse to arise

She sees the sun set at midnight

Without the promise of a new day to rise

 

Her dreams shattered

Her children orphaned

Her men and women widowed

Her people spraying each other with bullets

As if they were but mere bugs

The lullaby from the lips of guns keeps her awake

 

Cluelessly without hope she asks the night,

“How can it be that the land I once gently

Nurtured is now soaked in blood?”

“Why is the darkness looming over me?”

 

She knows today is gone

Yet she can not go back to yesterday

She must hold onto tomorrow, though unknown-

Peace hides in its secret haven

Refusing to show face

Author's Note

criticism is welcome

Reviews

[Natasha]

The line that stood out the most to me was "The lullaby from the lips of guns keep her awake" great line! What a sad but real poem. Sometimes we need to write about these issues going on in the world and to express our pain. One point of constructive criticism would be to work on punctuation at the end of your lines and know when thoughts end and when thoughts need commas or no commas.

[Mary Helda]

i will definately check on that and learn how to punctuate my work...thank you so much..i really appreciate it:-)

[Natasha]

of course! I honestly just learned a bit ago how to punctuate and it definitely is still something I personally struggle with as well! It takes many years to really understand poetry since each poem is so different in how it is formed and structured!

[Mary Helda]

yeah that is true..but there is so much fun in learning poetry

[Nigel Newman]

Hello Mary. You sent a friend request, so I've taken a look at your writing.

Gosh. I have no criticism to offer; the desperately sad meaning comes across clearly, and you have some beautiful phrasing. Tribal conflicts often make it onto BBC News, and of course Europe is now seeing the wave of refugees fleeing from places where fighting has made life too perilous. So to see a once beautiful place turned into ruined homes and schools; and to see people who used to peacefully coexist turn against each other - these are desperate things. Your poem captures this very well. Let's hope that peace will emerge 'from its secret haven'.

So, no criticisms. But I have some suggestions for you to consider. Their aim is to reduce any moments that may just jar a little, either because of spelling, choice of word, or sequence. These are SUGGESTIONS; I offer them but simultaneously advise you to be wary of making too many or too deep changes which might somehow undermine the truth of the emotions which shine through.

V1: A mother .... this is no ordinary mother. I wondered about just 'Mother' or maybe 'Our Mother'. My capital M is deliberate. Not keen on 'arise' then 'rise'. In both cases there are many other words you could use, e.g. tears to well, a day to come. I think grammatically it should be 'refuse' not 'refuses'. I wonder if the meter and scan are better with 'set' rather than 'setting'; not sure but thought I'd mention it.

V2: I think you may mean 'shattered' rather than 'shuttered'? You could mean the latter, in the sense of her dreams being closed from view, etc. Either works, but I raise it in case it was an auto-spell takeover by your laptop! Other than that, this is a brilliant verse - desperate but beautifully done

V3: Again, it's possible you meant 'natured' but I suspect you meant 'nurtured'? 'She asks ...' Really not sure about this. Firstly, is it actually necessary, and second, is it in the right place? I would add the V4 couplet 'clueless/hopeless' into the scope of a possible re-sequencing. My instinct is to have a line something like 'cluelessly without hope she asks the night ....' as a new opening line to V3 before the nature/nurture line, then drop V4

V5: She says 'today is gone'. I think there are several more spiritual verbs you could use rather than 'says', even 'she knows' or 'cries', but I think you could use a more emotive verb if you wished. I also wonder if you would even need the verb if you restructured V3 and V4 along the lines I've suggested - it may become obvious that she is the one talking, asking, weeping, aching, etc etc so there might be no need to restate it. 'tomorrow though unknown' seemed a little clunky because I wanted to add an 'it is' before the unknown ... 'an unknown tomorrow' might read better. OK this loses the rhyme, but I don't think that's a problem.

V6: 'show face' to me, is a little like an opposite to 'lose face' . Is this what you meant, or would it be better with an 'its' added before face?

These suggestions look a lot when spelt out like this, but I do this to be clear. I want to reassure you that I think you already have a deeply moving sad poem.

[Mary Helda]

Thank you so much..i will look into it and make necessary changes..your criticism has been very constructive..thank you

[Coyote Poetry]

A powerful and sad poem.
"Her dreams shuttered
Her children orphaned
Her men and women widowed
Her people spraying each other with bullets as if they were bugs
The lullaby from the lips of guns keep her awake "
When dreams and life are filled with sadness and blood. A hard life. Thank you for sharing the amazing poetry. You left a lot for the reader to think about.
Coyote

[Mary Helda]

Thank you Coyote..this poem means alot to me..the way violence is escalating in this world breaks my heart..

[Coyote Poetry]

I 'm glad you did and I hope to read more. And you are welcome.

[Mary Helda]

you will definately read more:-)