REVELATIONS

it is about a girl who is tortured by a stifling presence in her life and wants to break free.

A looming figure is over me ,a conjuring vision i often see
every step i take every word i say
i fear you cutting in in play
i conform to your ways,only in pretense
this wicked game to you is a fence.
i am shoved away,knocked down
without a touch or a frown.
you hit me,hit me hard
a thousand glass shards.
you win,you rejoice alone
you give away your heart alone
and i am the backdrop your life needs
as the play runs a tone.
you are the lead and i your shadow
this is a mere puppet show
it is time to cut the strings i know
it is time to spread my wings
i maybe right or wrong,dope or torn
in ways i would be strong
 it would be me,my doing alone
and i would be happy.

Author's Note

tell me what you think ...honest and candid criticism please.

Reviews

[Emma Olsen]

Hi! Sorry for the wait.
Overall, I think that this has a lot of good ideas and ways you could go with editing, but right now it's a bit jumbled and reads like a first draft. First off, the rhyme. It's fairly inconsistent. You start out with it and then it disappears. Since some of your word choice seems to be forced by the rhyme rather than chosen because of subject matter ('a fence' and 'frown' in particular) I would say just get rid of it for the majority of this and use it only as a way to stress ideas, if you even use it at all. I am not a huge fan of rhyming, I have to admit. As I've told others, I believe that a rhyme should be used only when it adds something to the poem, especially as it can make the tone of the poem a lot lighter than it often is meant to be. This poem isn't really losing the mood, but I don't really seen the rhyme adding in anything either. If you keep it I would advise trying to place in more complex rhymes that aren't so easily seen, such as 'fence' and 'pretense.' 'Fence' seems forced, as I said, but its pairing is nice and I'd encourage you to seek out rhymes that the reader doesn't automatically see and anticipate based on the similarity of the word. It makes the poem predictable when you stick words that rhyme too easily together like that.
Okay, the next thing is the metaphor of a play you introduce in the second half of this. I really like it and think that it's a powerful way to convey the message of the poem, but right now it seems to be something that you kind of ran into halfway through this. When you edit, I would suggest making the idea of a puppet master more common throughout, opening with it if you can. I'm not sure the title is exactly right, either, so you might want to use the metaphor as your title somehow and then unify the many images in the poem through this device.
I think some unity would also help in terms of clarifying what your subject matter is, exactly. This is very confined to the speaker's head. I think some of what's going on needs a bit more clarification. I think I relied a bit too heavily on your description below the title to understand this, to be honest. While ambiguity in symbols can be good in a poem, ambiguity within the poem itself can often be bad because the reader is too confused by what the poem means to even try peeling back the surface. While I don't think you have a huge problem with this issue, I encourage you to try to specify exactly what the 'you' does to hurt the speaker and why. What's really bothering me is the lack of motive, because it makes it so that I'm not sure whether the 'you' is a person, a concept, or an object. Not only that, but I'm not sure which images are based in reality and which are metaphorical. While a couple of these images are really powerful (the glass and puppet show, in particular, stand out), I'm not sure how they tie in to the 'you' and so am not sure how to read them. Is this abuse by a person? Is this a metaphorical representation of another issue? Something else? Perhaps clearly stating it may not be the exact right way to go, but I don't think the clues are really lining up for me right now. "without a touch or a frown" seems to be a clue, but I'm not entirely sure and it's only provoking more questions for me, rather than giving me clarity. I think a lot of the most successful poems I've seen provide a narrative that makes sense and it's only later, when you go in to read more, that you realize that the poem has more depth and symbolism than you realized. Ernest Hemingway was all about this, so it might be good to check out his work. Robert Frost has some of this, too, specifically thinking about 'The Road Not Taken.' This is present in plenty of other works, but I hope that illuminates a bit of what I mean.

Also, while your verbs are working alright in here, I think some focus on finding more precise, powerful synonyms might do a lot to make some of your images have even more impact. Hit, for instance, has a whole range of synonyms that convey a more specific idea of how the person was hit: strike, slap, smack, spank, punch, swat, pummel, etc. None of your verbs in this are standing out to me in particular, so I'd suggest running through and seeing if you can't find more words that more accurately describe the exact motion you're trying to get the reader to picture. See how the subtle difference change the mood, tone, and message of your poem. In addition, I would suggest avoiding these neutral verbs as much as possible: is, was, were, am, are, have, had, has, do, does, did, feel, sense, etc. Some of these word choice issues can extend to other parts of the sentence, as well. For instance, you end on 'happy,' but it's such a general word. Why not use 'joy?' 'Glee?' 'Delight?'

One more thing, kind of small, be careful with repetition. If you don't make it look purposeful, it can instead look sloppy. I tend to adhere to a 'three or more' rule where I repeat a word or phrase, well, three or more times. Twice almost always looks like a mistake.

A few line-by-line critiques:
Did you mean to split the first line? It looks like it should be two lines, not one.
"every step i take every word i say" Ooooh I would remove this or reword it, as an American the association with this song is just WAY too strong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fesv7_fXvs
"cutting in in play" Think this is a little awkwardly worded because I'm not sure if you mean to have two 'in's.
"as the play runs a tone." Not sure what you mean by this . . . A play isn't really musical? I like that you bring in the idea of the play and then run with it as a metaphor, though.
"i maybe right or wrong,dope or torn" Space between 'may' and 'be.' What do you mean by dope?

Overall, I think that this just needs some editing with a focus on unity. You have some good images in here and I definitely get a mood, but I just want a bit of consistency in this. =P Good work and keep it up!