Refrigerator Art

Please provide constructive criticism! I need help revising some things. Not for school (I'm not a cheater) but for my life.

Rejection sets in like a stain,
From so many small corrections,

Painted into a self portrait

That hides your acne scarred complexion,

And blemishes from childhood.

Bad marks in academia,
Smart like smoke against your mind’s eye
Like your dreams were a joke,
Which you were never smart enough to get,

Despite years of sleep therapy.

And now the leaves fall from the trees,

Like so much ash from cigarettes,

Like resignation and regret,

Like all you loved lost in a bet,

That you placed on yourself.

Your character begins to dwindle,
as false hopes fall away,

From the future you had framed,

In bad paintings.

And you feel like the stick figure you drew,
That became refrigerator art.

Author's Note

Please offer constructive criticism. I'm think skinned and can take anything. Give me your worst, as long as it's honest!

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

confessional type poetry that works for me..i like how you carried through the "painting" idea...you painted a portrait of the speaker that dwindled down in the end to him being a stick figure...

as if you lived life as poorly as you were an artist...

regrets falling like ashes from a cigarette..."despite years of sleep therapy"

really good line and stanza there.

we can only hide who we are for a time...we can stick to that illusion like the magnets stick to the refridgerator door...but eventually the magnets lose their power to stick...and they fall off the fridge, much like our dreams fall away...or our illusions...and then we see the bare us.

[Epipsychologist]

Ahh, I see what you did there!
I'm interested in how our unwavering past shakes illusions from our frail and tentative futures. I kind of tried to build a poem around the third stanza you mentioned. I feel like it was the strongest, but the rest dwindle a little.

Thanks for the review.

[tyson]

It's hard to criticise someones work when it is so honest. Reading this i'm getting an overwhelming sense of regret and and a bitter resentment towards the choices either, you or the protagonist have made so far in life. In other words, a lack of identity or an identity crisis (if they aren't the same thing). I may be wrong, maybe I am just taking your words and applying my own context to them. But even if that is the case, that's brilliant. Hemingway did the same thing with, 'The Old Man & The Sea.' Where it was so written well enough, that the interpretation could be whatever the reader wanted it to be. Nice one!

[Chris]

It seems like a profile... instead of a poem. I'd ask what did you want to say or achieve with this? What did it release from you? and lastly I ask did it do what you wanted?

[Epipsychologist]

Thanks for the criticism Chris.
I wanted to get at the feeling of dejection, or of realizing that when so much hope for your future falls away, something of your character falls away too. I guess this would be better as a character profile. I didn't have much acne or psychological issues, I just feel crushed under the wait of hopes right now. But this helps, because now I can right a poem about feeling crushed by hopes, which seems like an interesting idea.
Thanks again!

[Chris]

A good depression is a terrible thing to waste... yep.