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I want to bite. I want to kick and scream. Fight with everything I have until I can't even pick myself up off the floor. Anything to get you out of my head for just a second. But it doesn't matter what I do, your face still lingers in the back of my mind and I can still feel the heat of your lips on mine. The ghost of your hands plays tricks upon my skin. It doesn't matter what I do, the memory of you stays with me like an unwanted tattoo; reminding me of what we once had. But you're gone, and I'm left feeling empty. Weak from your grasp upon my heart like shackles tying me to a past I wish I could forget. You were the love of my life, and like so many others before me, I know what loss is and I wish I could just forget it all. You didn't want me. But my god, I f*****g wanted you so much that I was blinded by my own desires and I let them set me on fire because I thought that you needed the warmth. But now I have nothing left in me but the burnt remains of a heart too willing to love. And it makes me so angry because how can you love someone so completely and get absolutely nothing in return? How can the universe let one person feel so much pain and expect them to survive? I let you break me and it makes me so mad that now all I can feel is the need to break things. To fight anything and everything. Because as long as I stay mad about it, then it can't break me any more than it already has. The anger is the only glue keeping me whole right now and I just can't let myself fall apart again.

Reviews

[JayG]

A suggestion or two...

From start to finish this is a lament—what's often called "a dismal damsel" poem, with the theme, "Love is pain, and life is agony." There's nothing wrong with them, it's just that...well, it's a dismal damsel poem, and it's been done, and done, and...

The problem is that while for you it's intensely personal, and deeply meaningful, the reader is outside, looking in. It's addressed to someone unknown, who, for all we know, did the smart thing by leaving. Not knowing the situation, the history, or the anything that would give an outsider context leaves the reader at a disadvantage.

So in the end, what can a reader say but, "Awww...poor baby." And I know that's not what you hoped for.

The way around that problem, as it is in writing fiction, is that instead of talking about the result of the situation—placing effect on the page without the cause—make your reader live the events. Don't tell them you're hurt, make them feel the hurt by knowing the cause as you do, from-your-viewpoint in the moment it happened. A razor sharp view of an ant at a picnic grove, if the ant embodies the theme, is better than a water-color of the grove in getting the message across.

I don't mean that you should provide a list of why you have a right to be upset, I mean placing the reader—as you—into the situation, so they experience your emotions be being made to feel them, not simply hear about them.

It's a very different way of approaching the act of writing from the nonfiction skills we're given in school, but our school-day writing aims to inform—to make the reader know. But poetry aims to make the reader FEEL, a very different goal. In other words, at the moment you're writing from the outside in—telling about the situation. To pull the reader in, you're better to write from the inside-out showing the reader the world of the one living the poem, in that person's viewpoint.

A bit of digging into poetic technique, and the tools available to the poet, might help, and be fun. You might look at the excerpt to Stephen Fry's, The Ode Less Traveled, on Amazon. It's meant more for the poet writing structured poetry, but what he has to say about the flow of words, and the rhythms of speech is useful to any form of poetry, or prose for that matter.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[Zeitgeist Manifesto]

This was intense. Such brutal honesty and raw emotion. When the people who can make us smile feel these kinds of emotions...it can be scary because we get afraid that we are going to lose them. But sometimes we need to just feel what we need to feel. We can only hope that when they are exhausted and can no longer hold on to the anger...they allow happiness to embrace them once again.

[Barbara Walker]

The emotions are so strong in this. It's written with a rhythm that shows a real longing for no more pain, no more hurt and all the questions one has when one loves fiercely and gets nothing in return. A very strong write!

[Dayran]

Makes a person feel they can't do worst being on their own. Nice.

[Coyote Poetry]

Anger can be a good tool if you use it properly. Anger is a double-blade knife. Help keep us motivated and can make us make poor decisions. I like the honest tone leading to strong ending. Thank you for sharing the excellent poetry.
Coyote