Today

What does it mean to be in the moment?
Where is the here and when the now?
Time could you please tell me where you guide us
and break the silence that tortures thought?
I am here and waiting for your reply
but all I hear is silence of the grown men who cry.
This agony is too much this pain is not real

When I was younger I wasn't as heartless...
Younger? Compared to what
Think me, who are you what
are you?
ANSWER ME!
Are you another reason without a cause?

It's useless it really is to find an answer
when you live like a shadow of yourself.
When your soulcurse is to be the harbringer of death.
How unwilling I am to this cause.
I look to the day when I'm free...
Will I ever be free to know again
those I'd call friend
or must I live in this hell
while my friends pass away
and I bear this
their knell.

(for those of you who live in Canada or saw the NBA and were wondering why the silence... I live near a place called Bathurst... 7 young men died on thier way from a basketball game. This is my release and their dirge.)As far as criticizing grammar I assure you that it's all intentional (this time) If you misunderstand a word refer to the dual meaning. Thank you.

With this poem I see a struggle withing yourself, yet you seem to be addressing current situations! I must admit that I've never seen a poem using color to bring out the emphasis on each word or words you are trying to stress to your readers. As for punctuation I don't really see a problem with it you seem to have used it well to complete your thoughts. Also I sense emotion with an underlying message! One thing I do see with your poem is that the stanzas in the beginning are long as as the poem progresses you stanzas get shorter almost as if you are running out of words or you are becoming really brief with your poem to stress your point, however the way it's written and the shortening of the stanzas works in your favor! I see a very good potential within your poetry to expand your horizons. I don't want you to think that I'm bagging on you, but giving constructive criticism, on areas that may need improvement in the future! Overall this poem speaks with the mind of you the writer and it really comes alive as it progresses! Looking forward to writing with you in the future and I will be critiquing your poems so that I may see another great poet emerge here on AO! Overall in my opinion well done Corvus!

Damn. BlueFox1 stole most of my critique.

Your thoughts are spilling and overflowing, and it really does show well through the lack of punctuation. That nagging sense of not knowing the reason for such a tragedy —and I did interpret this poem correctly... right?— is conveyed through the almost robust structure and highlighting of the words. It sounds like the speaker has lost his or her mind and has gone insane from not knowing and the agony and depression... A nice breath of fresh air after reading poems where the speaker knows exactly what he or she is doing. :laughs: And I love the last two lines... So beautiful and vivid...

Great job on this, Corvus.

Ok: now that I have a few good critiques allow me to explain this....
This is in two parts. The shift being after The return to objectivity. This poem is meant to come of as somewhat destructive in nature as well (Partially the reason for the shape resembling a tornado because it's the easiest destructive force to emulate with words.)
The poem starts with long and filled outlines because it's objective. A question. Then as I dig deeper and deeper within myself, the words of thought slowly condense into emotion itself. Then it explodes and returns to the objectivity again. Slowly returning to the deeper less spoken more is meant kind of side.The postioning of the red words is as important as the fact that they are not really being emphasized (sorry if I misled you) rather they are all over the place like a thought that links onto that one word to understand itself and then jumps to another. The color red being related to blood and tragedy as well....

Basically though this is all a recreation of how I was feeling at the time feeling angry and sad for being so heartless... Like an angel of death, just doing my job then passing on to the next victim (not that I actually killed them but my lack of sorrow seemed to kill their memory so I forced myself to dig and finally bring out the sorrow which I hide most of the time.)
This actually has so much meaning to me that I doubt that I can explain all of it. Don't get me wrong I appreciate criticism but don't assume ignorance when you do. Everything I did even the sense of confusion that you may have felt while wondering if those words were really important or if there was any point in the lack of structure was all planned because I was confused with myself and wished to set that mood for any who read it. Sure I didn't follow any set of poetic rules but that's the beauty of it, who is thinking perfectly rational when they feel like they are insane? (abby you were dead on with that.) I'm sorry that I'm acting like a prick but it's true when I say all things in this were intentional... purely.
(as for any other piece don'texpect a detailed description like this one {unless you ask for it} I just feel the need to have this one be understood because of its cause)