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Thank you for the feedback! I loved hearing your interpretation

man this makes me realise how much i detest the concept of "growing independent". putting yourself through an everlasting torture just to get to experience the occasional moment of clarity and liveliness when work is on hold for just a second. i really love the line "the city wouldn’t be so staggering without illumination wasted". great work!

Ooh I see exactly what you're getting at, definitely going to implement it. Thank you!!

Of course! 

And I half-guessed that might be the meaning! I think the piece early on needs to assert some kind of connection between lighting and burning so that the end lines come as an outgrowth of the original concept.

My problem with the line, I think, is the wording; even a small change like “I’d be willing to embrace a burning world” might work better. Not that line—it’s too stuffy, but that kind of thing.

Thank you for the feedback! 

I was falling asleep on a balcony in chicago and thinking about how the city wouldn't be as beautiful if we didn't waste an insane amount of energy, so the line about the world burning was meant to be a cheeky pro global warming reference. I wouldn't have been able to enjoy that moment if it weren't for mankind's flippant attitudes toward energy conservation. 

I would love to hear if you have any feedback regarding that view, but I'll also play around with it to see if I can make it less cliche!

The first line is great: “i’m playing the game of lonely offices.” I like it so much; “lonely offices” is a good image, and saying it’s a game conjures up this whole ethos that the speaker is going for. 

Putting on my criticism hat: I don’t like “i’m selfish in the way that only 23 can be, / but i’d be willing to watch the world burn / for more moments like this.” 

“Willing to watch the world burn” to me just reads like cliché—I’m thinking of the Heath Ledger Joker. I think you’re intending a volta, some kind of turn, there; we’re suckered in by the words “beauty” and “illumination.” But I feel like you can do that without the “watch the world burn” phrase.

I’m also confused on the connection here between burning and light; I think that, to make this point, we’d need some assertion that the two are necessarily connected, that all light involves some kind of flame, whether that’s the radiation of the Sun of the filament of a lightbulb.

i'm playing the game of lonely offices  
and high electricity bills  
it's half past two  
watching those distant lights blink out  
the city wouldn't be so staggering  
without illumination wasted  
and that's the beauty of it all  
i'm selfish in the way that only 23 can be  
but i'd be willing to watch the world burn  
for more moments like this  



https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/waj1jh/272022/ii18tr9?utm_medium=android_app&amp;utm_source=share&amp;context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/waiiyp/on_the_lawn_alone/ii13yud?utm_medium=android_app&amp;utm_source=share&amp;context=3

Sleeping among man made stars