"I hope this email finds you well,
Your performance has dropped, we can tell."
There's a notch in the door where I hit my head-
And a magpie perched atop my bed.
I pray the Lord, my soul to keep;
But it pecks my eyes when I try to sleep.
They sit me down in a stiff chair.
They criticize my mask, porcelain and fair.
"So carefully assembled!", the magpie chatters.
No hesitation once I allow it to shatter.
Posted Mar 11, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC
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The rhythm and rhyme here are a thing of beauty. They generate this sense of pace to the poem, but adds to the cohesiveness of this idea of being a slave to the pragmatic - to the point where we put up facades and prefaces. I really enjoy the metaphor of the magpie paralleling the constant gnawing away at your own psyche.
I think this is fantastic. The rhyme is the correct form for the poem's message and the rhyming is skillful. There is anxiety but also comedy; the speaker is mocking themselves in a world that is absurd.
My feedback is that I think the final line has a clunky rhyme and scuppers the ending. The shattering mask idea makes sense; I wonder if it could be better expressed.
Thank you for the feedback! I wasn't quite happy with that ending as well. I think I'll come back to the poem when I have some fresh ideas and rewrite that bit
It's common for people to say "poetry doesn't have to rhyme!"
But in this specific poem, the rhyme actually works. I think my favorite thing was how modern it started, and then the magpie (in my mind) describing emotions added a bit of a twist to the flow. I don't have any feedback actually, I really liked your choice of words. The way you described everything that was happening. Especially the mask. :)