Hurt.

who appropriate them

In an effort to make themselves feel better because they are uselessly lazy about lifting a meaningful finger, they condescendingly pass off everything except their own pain and leave you no better off; I do not apologize for them. I honor your intelligence in knowing that if you say it loud enough another heart will hear you and know you really mean it.  And, damn it, Girl, I hear your pain.

Many thanks, RunningTurtle.

Everyone's personal pain is most important to them, ahead of some strangers. There's nothing selfish in that, it's just the way it is. Ice cream and chocolate fudge cake is a good pastime too :)

Exactly, man. Thanks for reading.

I can feel the pain within the words it hurts a lot I can tell.

Thank you for stopping by.

sorry your life is shitty

fg

Thought Ben and Jerry's was an erotic allusion at first. Then can't find what a CWP teacher  is in google.
Oh dear! This old Brit., who incidentally likes your write because you remind him of about 52 years ago, must pick up his game.

Blunt rude replies welcomed...

CWP: Current World Problems.

Thanks for stopping by.

"I'm not dried up in the dessert
with a bullet in my spine
but goddamnit

I hurt."

um.

Yes?

I don't think I'm going to bother explaining how perfect those last few lines were.

Seriously. Seriously.

Many thanks Sublime.(:

I hate those fucking commercials.

Well done, Carla. There was such vibrancy in the anger, it was a beautiful shade of fuck-off.

(pastime, one word)

The details, they made it really come alive; the ice cream, the teacher, and I love that you acknowledge yourself as an equal in pain — death and destruction happens to everyone, every day, some of us get a bullet in the spine and some of us take small secrets sips from the hurt-flask, and the pain is no less.

Beautifully done.
B

Thank you Betty!

Extremely important to say:  "I hurt."  Not, "it hurts," "we hurt," etc.  I'm proud of you for admitting that.  I hurt sometimes, too.  But "going over how shitty my life is . . ."  It's like there is you here (YOU) and your life over here (YOUR LIFE) and (YOU), or some little (or big or medium sized) thingee (YOUR LIFE) which (YOU) are examinining.  That dualism is, sad to say, a false one for a billion and two-third's reasons:  1.  You are your life.  2.  Examining your life is only one function of you (YOU).  I'm not trying to be harsh or hyper-critical, but if you are NOT your life who is?  By the way, I liked the poem very much.  You show controlled anger, emotional variety and poetical acuteness.  Thanks for letting me read about your life.  Really.



marcella1

Thank you for your critique.

You have demonstrated a talent for taking the personal and giving it a very readable structure in which a reader can easily empathize.

The object of the anger leaves me to speculate; it feels as if the source is actually frustration that attention isn't being given to the hurt?

It's nice knowing my writing appeals to more than just myself.

it can be seen as that but basically I just don't like my pain being undermined because others have it worse. Not so much wanting attention but wanting personal pain to be accepted.

this holds a lot of motif that a lot of bukowski's work encompasses. this may be partly due to the fact that im half cut, regardless, its an honest splash in dirty water. nice.

Thank you!

"I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have." -Stephen Chbosky

I love the lines mentioned by others above, and the reductio ad absurdum desert/bullet image you pull out near the end. (spelling: pastime, desert)

Great quote!
Thank you, Mike.

Thank you.

I disagree that you are "selfish."  Your poem is honest and apparently true.  That's not "selfishness," it's courage.  You write well.  I don't think some of the words are necessary, like "fuck" and "goddammit."  But they do show, like the rest of your poem, that you are "hurt" and angry about it.  Good poem.


marcella1

Jesus points, or social justice points nowadays?...