How to Live in a Bottle

[goodnews]

you're stealing the laughter with all of your stories
of all of those boys and all of those mornings alone
you keep me awake with that cancerous smile
you wear when you sleep as soft as a child
i'm lying, i know that you won't even bother
to check all the facts. I'm just like your father.
your mouth holds a vulture that is released when i come home
it finds me lying down and picks the flesh off of my bones
but you don't even know it exists.
the morning holds out a compass and offers directions
but my pride cant be swallowed, my scars cant be mended
so i keep on walking, wherever i go
is wherever im headed, but i wouldn't know.
it's sure as shit cold when you arent with me
but i'm not alone, i have a bottle of whiskey
if i warm up my throat, i won't be the vagabond
your friends think i am, the one you rely upon
i can stand on my feet if you just give me a hand
and i'll walk away cause i was a raised to be a man
not one like your father, but one who actually knows
how to live in a bottle and never grow old.
one day we'll join in laughter of what we once knew
making jokes with each other about towns we outgrew
but i'll know when you smile, that you're holding back tears
thinking of beautiful places back in beautiful years.
so these pathetic couplets are all that i have
if i am to grow up, i'll need to forget
that i was once a child, that i once knew true love
and that i could get to sleep at nights without getting drunk

[goodnews]

nothing?

[airabuyu13]

i really like the slant rhymee in these lines especially. i think too much like.. right-on-perfect rhyme is kinda cheesy at times so these are really good :
"i can stand on my feet if you just give me a hand
and i'll walk away cause i was a raised to be a man
not one like your father, but one who actually knows
how to live in a bottle and never grow old."

those are my favorite lines!

and for the end, i think it might be a little better if you changed

so these pathetic couplets are all that i have
if i am to grow up, i'll need to forget
that i was once a child, that i once knew true love
and that i could get to sleep at nights without getting drunk

to this:

so these pathetic couplets are all that i have
if i am to grow up, i'll need to forget
that i was once a child, that i once knew true love
and that i once could sleep at night without getting drunk

i really like the 'once' and i think carrying on the repetition to the last line would better tie it up better, but idk, i might be totally off.

very nice!!

[goodnews]

Thanks. More feedback would be great, guys.

[eliselovesmusic]

I bet you a trillion bucks that if you rewrite it by setting it out clearer, and defining the lines a bit more so it's not just one big mass of words you'll get more feedback.

It seems really time consuming to actually sit down and read it all, which is why I skim read it and liked it, however did not read it through fully therfore cannot offer proper comments....

[goodnews]

I bet you a trillion bucks that if you rewrite it by setting it out clearer, and defining the lines a bit more so it's not just one big mass of words you'll get more feedback.

It seems really time consuming to actually sit down and read it all, which is why I skim read it and liked it, however did not read it through fully therfore cannot offer proper comments....
Thanks, but no thanks.
Are you illiterate?

[fishingthe_sky]

Thanks, but no thanks.
Are you illiterate?
Actually, she does have a point. I've been putting off commenting on this because it's just as heavy to read as it looks sitting on a page.

This doesn't mean it's bad. You actually some decent stuff here, but it gets lost because you're squeezing so much into it. Take the first two lines, for example; you could parse it down to:

"you're stealing the laughter with all of your stories
of all the boys and mornings alone"

which doesn't read and look as weighty as the original version. There's a lot of extra luggage being carried in this piece, and you could ditch a ton of it with no ill effect. Concision is a poet's best friend; the less words you can use to say something, the stronger your words become.

As far as other details are concerned:
Cancerous is getting to be a pretty hackneyed adjective these days. Try to avoid it if you can.

Mentioning the father as early as you do doesn't work. There's no real context for it, and nothing immediately surrounds it uses the phrase. You clarify it later, but that still doesn't justify it being where it is.

"but you don't even know it exists" is a pretty superfluous phrase here. It doesn't enhance the image, which is already operating on an apparent figurative level, so one can easily surmise it's not something the girl is aware of, and it stands alone from your rhyme scheme awkwardly. Axe it.

Not feeling "sure as shit." This doesn't have enough character to pull off a colloquialism like this.

You commit two pretty big transgressions in your last four lines: calling attention to your form, which 9 times out of 10 comes off like a cop out, and breaking the very form you're calling attention two. Get rid of any mention of couplets, and if you're going to carry us all the way along with the form, why not finish strong?

I do like your reification of morning. That bit is pretty well phrased, and creates a great image. I also like what you do when you mention the father the second time. I was really iffy about it until I reached the end of the line at "old." It sort of caught me by surprise, and I like the idea a lot.

[x1onexwo1fx]

I won't even start to read this because it just looks like you were too lazy to hit the enter key a few more times and didn't even bother with the shift key. Unless you can offer a valid reason as to why you made it a single stanza (a massive, repulsive blob) and in lowercase, I won't take your poem seriously.

[eliselovesmusic]

I won't even start to read this because it just looks like you were too lazy to hit the enter key a few more times and didn't even bother with the shift key. Unless you can offer a valid reason as to why you made it a single stanza (a massive, repulsive blob) and in lowercase, I won't take your poem seriously.



Thank you for backing me up.



And no, goodnews, I am not illeterate. If I was, I would not be writing this.

[RolledPropa]

that is really really good.