This is going to bother a lot of my poet friends/fans, but it has to be said. In all honestly, 95% of the poets I'm friends with have never done this-- so don't think I'm talking about you if you're one of them. I'm talking about the vast wastelands of WattPad where literature only goes to die a slow and painful death. But, sometimes, every poet is guilty of this, and it FUCKING SUCKS FOR THE READER.
When I read poetry, I want to be able to read it. I know it sounds craaaaaaazy to say that I need to be able to read what you're writing, but when your formatting
is place
all the
LOLTROLOL over
I can't fucking read it. I don't know what was in your mind, I can't read what you're trying to say. Don't take this as a diss; I completely understand that that's an artistic choice and that the poet feels that the poem needs that, and, most of the time when it's in the hands of a good poet, it's fine. But when an amateur poet points at a good, abstract-ish poet on here and plays Monkey See, Monkey Do, it turns into a shitstorm of pretention and annoyance.
I read
can this.
can't
I this
read.
See the difference? One is formatting that makes fucking sense and takes care of the white space that poetry often leaves, the other is pretention and pure annoyance.
But, I'm not just hear to talk about formatting stuff. I'm here to talk about metaphors. Look: I am a dumb motherfucker. Assume that most of your readers are. So when I see a poem that says "the stars fucked the baby in the elephant's tsunami" and I say "That poem is fucking shit and it makes no sense," know that 95% OF YOUR READERS AGREE WITH ME, PROBABLY. A LOT of poets on this site seem to think we're all Harvard graduates, which we're not. I don't understand how that past quote was relating to the Holocaust (I made it up, by the way), and you shouldn't fucking assume that I can read your mind. I'm not saying to swear off metaphors or that poets are shitty; not at all. What I'm saying is that when you take your poems to some sort of abstract fucking degree where I can read it and say "I don't know what the fuck I just read and I got nothing out of it," know that you should probably change your style if you are meaning to connect with anyone. "Your eyes flutter like the ice flicks off my snownails in December," while a shitty metaphor (I made it up myself, like the rest in here), makes goddamn sense. "When I take your hand I go to another plane of existence." MAKES SENSE. "The golden babboon of mental soundness floats through the air as I try and swat down your maddness through the haze of cigarrette smoke" MAKES VAGUE SENSE KIND OF. That's as abstract as poets should get, because it's fucking weird but at least at the end it kind of makes sense. When this is your poem:
"your
cigarettes
leave
blood stains
on
the prized chair
of the dead
Presidents"
I don't fucking understand what you're trying to say.
Lastly (and this is a quick one): FUCKING STOP WITH CIGARETTES. STOP. IT'S DONE. THE CIGARETTE THING IS SO FUCKING OVERDONE. STOP. EVERY FUCKING STORY ON THIS SITE IS CALLED "CIGARETTE ______." FUCKING. STOP.
In conclusion, stop writing about cigarettes and let me be able to read and understand your point.
Now fuck off and write better poetry.
YOU ARE READING
Mental Beatdown
RandomA book about the stuff I hate and why I hate it. And whatever else I want to throw in there because I don't follow your rules. NOTE: Seriously if you read any of this and get offended just shhhh because I really don't feel like hearing it at all.
