Eraser Shreds

More shreds fall to the ground, black on on side, but white on the other. And the eraser? It just gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

They ask me what I do 

Knife in hand

Eraser in the other

"Just performing a surgery"

Smiles and raised eyebrows

Laughter and shrugs

Eyes watching as I carefully

delicately slice the marks away

Black spots, the imperfections

The knife, our only way

trying to remove the spots

trying to hide the imperfections

You can throw the shreds away

You can try to hide them

but they exist- but only you know

No matter what you do, even if the spots are removed

sometimes you only create more marks and scars

and sometimes there are so many darkness

you can't help but give up

other times...

you scar yourself more and more

just to be a little more perfect

to be a little more white

when the eraser can no longer erase

and the floor?

covered in rubber slices

dirty and black on one side

but the other - pure and perfect and innocent

You lose all of yourself 

trying to be perfect

always trying

always failing

there might be other ways to change

but you...

you won't ever know

Reviews

[Dante Carlisle]

I love the idea behind you claiming that these dirty, black imperfections look ugly to the world, but the other side is clean and innocent. It makes me think of how the world may view someone as imperfect for what the is claimed as inconsistent with beauty or the status quo, but when looked at outside the realm of societal norms, these 'imperfections' are not quite so imperfect. Yet, these 'improvements' are said to be good and fine, laughed at and shrugged off. This is not simply about physical beauty, but also about what the world tells us a person should be. Who are they to say so?

I don't agree with the end, either. One must only need look, and learn, to understand that there are better ways to improve, and eventually we all learn to say to hell with the world. To hell with what people think and want for us. Improve in the ways we can, but all out destruction is never truly an improvement. We must build to grow, to improve. To destroy and call it good is like saying the man that takes a sledgehammer to an artist's sculpture is superior to the artist, simply because he was capable of destroying what was once beautiful.

A sad poem, but I'm beginning to learn that your poems can elicit a lot of thought, and give me a lot to talk about. Thank you again for the writing.

[aranciata]

A huge flaw of the whole society is people using their words and actions to make others feel inferior and it's just awful what people do to others. The whole surgery idea was to poke at how many people use plastic surgery to make themselves "prettier" or "better" in the world's standards, and how they lose more and more of themselves just for trying to fit in.

I loved your idea of how "[destroying] and [calling] it good is like saying the man that takes a sledgehammer to an artist's sculpture is superior to the artist, simply because he was capable of destroying what was once beautiful". People abuse their powers over others way too often, and it makes the world uglier.

Thank you for the review, I loved reading the thoughts you write in them!
-Athena

[Mahlo Metsys]

One of my favorite elements of poetry is metaphors of simple everyday things contrasted with much larger deeper mental explorations. This exploits that incredibly well. The emotion in the composition is superb, I feel attached to it more than just seeing pretty decorated words. Great job on this one.

[aranciata]

Sometimes we don't really need to go far places to find meaningful objects, they can be right in front of us. Thank you for your review!

-Athena