Commitment To Sin

      The lines on her wrist drip with new words
      As tongues of true poets caress the wounds.
      She finds herself unable to stop,
      Cutting ever deeper through the flesh of memories.

      A rush of red regret as she hacks into
      A vein of trauma and forgotten screams.

      Her skin white with fear as she remembers the fist

      Blackening and bruising her all too fragile soul.

She snaps back from the nightmares 

Of things that go bump in the night, 

Breaks from her trance to see black blood

Painting the picture of her past 

Onto a cold, callous page. 

She takes hold of the pen, 

Raises her hand above the paper,

And cuts again.

Author's Note

It's finished now (:
As always, constructive criticism is always welcome, even if it's just over something like layout. I want to become a better writer (:
Thanks for reading (: ♥

Reviews

[.shalynn.009.]

An interesting take on a cutting poem. I personally think cutting is a thing people should talk about more, because it's too taboo, and generally means the person doing it is asking for help. The act of cutting is a strange thing, The only way of expressing inner pain, for those who do it, is do create a physical pain for people to see. And the healing of the physical pain sends the message that the emotional pain could heal as well. (Sorry, my brother and best friend used to cut, one of them when I was in elementary school. I learned a bit about the psychology behind it). But I'm glad this kind of digressed from that theme, turning the act of writing into a form of cutting, so that the words are the spilling of the subject's blood, rather than simply taking a knife to the skin. I didn't take this as a cutting of the body, because of the writing in it, but a cutting of the soul.

As for the layout, I was wondering why you formatted it the way you did. The way I saw it (with the line "She snaps back from the nightmares") I thought perhaps it was a tonal shift, from the kind of nightmarish quality of the first two stanzas to the cold reality of wherever the speaker is, staring at the page in front of her. A blank page is like a symbol of a new start, with her snapping back from her memories to the present, yet in the end she went back to what she had been dreaming about.

That's just my interpretation of this poem. Not the literal cutting, but the use of the cutting as a metaphor. I liked this poem a lot, just as I like all of your work. I actually like your poetry more than your songs. The reading it, at least, since I've never heard your songs. Keep writing and thanks for the RR.

[KittenCaine]

I've gotta admit, I was kinda skeptical at the start. Cutter poems just tend to be so... overdone? But that was a nice twist at the end, it just makes everything click so well and the image becomes powerful. :3

[Ruth]

To allow the emotion to bleed onto the paper is everything! This is powerful love! We need to cut and dissect pain and let it seethe over lines as much as we can, excellent work! xx

[The old me]

Very powerful. I would love to see the finish product. Saw the finished product now, and its very good. I enjoy your poetry.

[Yari Garcia (Older Prof..]

I liked the last line the best. Short and sweet and to the point, makes for a powerful read. Very good.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

Delete repeted "the" in the second line. Not really a fan of cutter poems...people who cut themselves hurt others worse and to me, that is a petty, sorry excuse for a human being. I knew a cutter once, was a friend. He hung himself in jail. I miss him but I'm glad he's dead so his family can have some chance of peace. He was always causing them grief, I just wish to God he'd done the job right the first time instead of putting them through hell over and over again.