1
Television’s blarin’:
those street’s are a tearin’
up again, people shouting-
ing out their names, people cry-
ing out their pains, and the
young blood flows so freshly and freely-
And the Young Blood cannot help
but see through the TV:
Blood quenched thirst of arid sands and
the bursting maw of ruined cities and
tattered clothes on
tattered children and
machine-gun fire every-
where and so many dead bodies that the
vultures themselves
are turning their noses
All of this under
the scorch-
ing sun and fester-
ing flesh and the fresh-
ly spun lies of the leeches and the flies:
The mother’s heart bursts as
the Nation dies-
Or so go the cries of
the ticker-tape termites, infest-
ing the eyes
and infect-
ing the lives of the Young Blood;
bringing it all a bit closer to home…
2
But what’s home?
Young Blood knows
no home, no,
he only knows that with the
push of a button he can drown out the sounds
of the soldier’s mother’s sorrows
and find:
New Deals!
Sweet finds!
Liquor and
burgers and
spoilers for cars and
rims that can spin and
songs that can sin
all of the things that
you can’t live without and
at such low
low
low
low prices too! and-
Two children dead in another
school shooting, and
all of the wars that no-
body’s winning and yet another
disease that won’t stop infecting and-
Young Blood cries out with derisive disgust:
“Man, that’s the old news!
Give me the good shit, man!
Give it to me right
now!”
After all, what are more bodies
among the foundations?
No-
thing compared to garden-
ing tools wield-
ed by fresh faced
young models with
gel in their hair and
silicon skin and
faces adorned in elastic excitement,
holding their shears with plastic precision
No-
thing compared to the glisten-
ing, glitter-
ing, price-marked-down shit eat-
ing grin on their market-
able faces.
“Yeah, man” the Young Blood
sighs, “That’s the good shit there,
the real good shit!”
3
“This is the real war” the Old Soul cries,
but he’s drowned out by the leeches
and flies and the shit-
eating grins that come with their lies
But he cries on:
“This is the war we fight
for ourselves
for silence
for blindness
for the freedom of our retinas!”
But young blood is deaf and the
Young Blood succumbs
to the hustle and flow and
the rhythm of the drums and all
of the glammer
this glamour conveys,
to the stifling static of our
Made-Ready-2-Go days
The young blood is drowning in the stink of the flies
and the tears fuel the sigh
of this requiem’s reprise:
“The young blood always dies!”
the termites reply.
Is this the land that I call home?
Is this the life I’ve chosen?
Where TV dinners and
programming slots
determine the whether we care
if the soldiers will rot?
The old soul cried, “Hear me out!”
My young blood is dead,
so hear me shout:
Author notes
L o r e n z o
This was written as an English 12 class assignment, which was to write a poem in emulation of Kamau Brathwaite. I heavily revised it, so that while it retained it's Brathwaite-esque nature, it's rythm and style are all my own.
October 27, Tue - Minor revision: Eliminated the "s" at the end of the second occurance of "Young Blood", as it bugged me.
Additional Revision: Eliminated the "Channel 37" subtitle
A contest entry
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Comments
1 - 19 of 19
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I know that the contest is listed as 'closed,' but keep in mind:
***Final date for comments that count towards the contest: Tomorrow, Sunday, November 8th by midnight.
Final date for revisions towards contest: Tuesday, November 10 by noon.***
The contest will be judged on Wednesday, November 11.
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hi there, this is a nice lyrical poem, I think well suited for spoken word poetry. alt I do find the title really doesn't add anything to the piece and it is something you might want to look to changing. I did not like the splitting of the ing's constantly, it just seemed to break the flow too much for me.
Your imagery is good but the rhyming seems a little off in a couple of places. You also could get rid of a lot of filler words, such as and, the, as, etc. This would certainly add to the flow of the piece and would let it be more streamlined.
All in all a well written piece and worth the read. Hugs, Bunny
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First, I like that you simplified the title, as it is more confident and direct. However, "Prelude" though fitting in its way, related little with the rest of the work and seemed unfitting when I reached the end of the poem again. "Channel 37" fit a little more in a way. Or, as "Young Bloods" comes up throughout the poem, perhaps you should consider incorporated that into a new title
As this piece is very long (and no, I do not feel it should be shortened or that the "chapters," as you put it should be removed) I will go through my comments as they relate on the page. So I recommend printing off a copy as this goes through to make marks. My apologies in advance if some comments seem redundant or unrelated to the one's surrounding as we go on: it's frankly just a lot to organize. Also my apologies if it comes off as aggressive. I simply will try to be succinct which will come off a bit tart, I'm sure
But keep in mind that I really enjoyed this work.
Second line: change " a tearin' " to " a'tearin' " since without this extra apostrophe between the two, "a" is a determiner and "tearin' " some weird noun instead of them accumulatively forming a verb.
Third line: "shouting-
ing"
"ing" is doubled here" delete one of them.
On a related note, you split in half many of your -ing verbs, and though I see the effectiveness with the first lines of this structure, the ones that have to hold on to that stray "-ing" feel burdened by it. I know that this is a rhythmic decision (I assume this piece is intended for a spoken word performance), but even rythmically speaking, I feel that eliminating the "ing"s, or placing them together could really benefit the work both in the sound and in the visual aspect.
Notice:
"Television's blarin'
those street's are a'tearin'
up again, people shout
out their names, people cry
out their pains,
and the young blood flows so freshly and freely"
(please note how I arranged some of the line breaks in these works, I think it distinguishes your ideas a little more and makes the lines stand on their own a little better... like T.V. programs you might say, or different commercials in separate time slots. But moving on to more -ing examples...)
"the scorching sun and festering flesh
the freshly spun lies of the leeches and flies"
"Or so go the cries
of the ticker-tape termites
infesting the eyes
infecting the lives of the Young Bloods
bringing it all a bit closer to home"
This is still rhythmically sound and could read almost exactly the same were it not for the other revisions you may or may not have noticed...
You might have noted, though, that I eliminated ALOT of punctuation and ALOT of "and"s and "the"s or similar words (usually conjunctions, determiners, or unnecessary prepositions).
Why?
Punctuation in poetry is often unnecessary when the piece can flow just as well with the guidance of the line breaks. I actually took your work and simply as an experiment deleted every punctuation mark to see the effect. And I'll tell you what: FAH-LOWED!
Of course, there were some necessary aspects, but I recommend this exercise for you, you'll see which one's are needed and which ones are just extraneous. I mean, punctuation is nice and all, but this isn't a poem that resembles e.e. cummings or someone who made punctuation a necessary focal point such as in "1(a...(a leaf falls on loneliness)".
Same thing for "and"s, "the"s and prepositions such as... well... "as." These words are litter! Take them out as much as you can. No joke. I tested it with this work and WOW. Huge recommendation. I understand that the repetition of "and" often gives a sense of rhyme, rhythm, or downbeat. But you already have plenty of that and these watery words just distract from the rich syrup that you have going here.
Section 2 (only??? I know... but I promised a lengthy review, did I not?)
Right off the bat "But what's home?" is unnecessary, it's implied and having this line just makes the reader feel a little too stupid. We can figure it out, trust us.
Line 4 of Section 2: "drown out sounds" instead of "drown out the sounds." Again, the "the" here takes away the emphasis from the more important words, namely "sounds."
I like the "and"s a little more in the third stanza of section two (Liquor and/burgers and/ etc) but still could toy around with it.
Okay, COMPLIMENT TIME:
I absolutely LOVED the line separation choice in the fifth stanza of this section in:
"'Give it to me right
now!'"
This says so many things at once because of the word "right."
Also, I loved the stanza after:
"After all, what are more bodies
among the foundations"
Awesome wording and image here.
However, right after, the word "No-" just standing on its own trips up and confuses a bit in the reading. Consider simply just connecting it with "Nothing?" I sortof understand what you're trying to get at, but it's not working and "nothing" as one would simply work better than a half-assed denial.
Section 3 (Almost there!)
Third stanza:
"young blood" is repeated too close together. It's simply redundant. I would recommend instead: "But Young Blood is deaf and succumbs"
Fifth stanza:
Why not make "sigh" plural? "Sighs" rhymes with "flies" better after all.
Eighth stanza:
"determine the whether we care
if the soldiers will rot"
The word "the" is grammatically incorrect and the word "will" is just another watery "to be" verb.
Instead:
"determine whether we care
if the soldiers rot"
I feel the rhythm works better here anyway.
Last lines:
"The old soul cried, “Hear me out!”
My young blood is dead,
so hear me shout:"
This is a good effect for a strong ending, but in actuality it is a bit too cliche.
I really like your use of the colon here. On the page it really leaves the reader to hear the screams much more than an exclamation point or any other ending would. This is the other reason I recommend deleting other punctuation, because while here you have a blatant TACTFUL and EFFECTIVE demonstration of punctuation use, all the other uses just make this seem a possible typo or just not too special. Give it glory.
Finally, since it does leave the shout for the reader to hear on paper, how might you make it leave a shout for the audience in a spoken performance?
I recommend eliminating the word shout as such:
"The old soul cried, “Hear me out!”
My young blood is dead,
so hear me:"
This eliminates the cliche of the "out" "shout" rhyme but makes the word "shout" quietly assumed. And the listening audience will feel this impact just as well as the reading audience.
PHEW! I think we both need some lemonade! Or perhaps a moment to veg in front of the TV
Again, thank you for the entry. And good luck!
Best,
-Mia the judge. -
Very interesting concept. There is a definite story told here and the voice of the narrator provides a strong point of view. I like the lyrical quality and the flow overall although there are a few places that the line breaks seem a little awkward. For instance:
"those street’s are a tearin’
up again, people shouting-
ing out their names, people cry-
ing out their pains, and the"
Also, the rhyming seems a mite inconsistent to me. It's hard to decide whether you intend this as a rhyming piece or not! It reads a bit like the poetry I've heard at various Poetry Slams in the big city, where the verse is chanted, nearly rapped, and the power of the piece is complimented by the voice. I almost feel like a layer is missing to this piece because it's not being viewed in that manner.
I also get the impression that some of the serious nature of the poem is mislaid because of the overuse of "shit". I am certainly no Puritan and I believe in using whatever word will get your point across in your work BUT in moderation. Otherwise, it just appears as shock value.
I also wonder about the title & how it plays in as part of the poem. I took it as each numbered group fits together as the prelude to the decline of humanity. Not sure if I missed the mark but that's what I read into it.
In any case, I thank you for sharing your work with us & wish you the best of luck in the contest.
- Bean Sidhe
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well done poet
good flow and word play
love these lines..
But young blood is deaf and the
Young Blood succumbs
to the hustle and flow and
the rhythm of the drums and all
of the glammer
this glamour conveys,
good luck to you in the contest
thanks for the share
Darky
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I like the lyrical way it flows
I think your sentiments are much shared among the nations. There is young blood old enough to see...But the cases are few and often tragic. Have you seen the music video from Rammstein: Links 2, 3, 4? You might enjoy it.
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What is the title really saying here.. Prelude or Channel 37. Having it as a "choice" makes it seem as if you don't know yourself where this is supposed to fit (as in like you're trying to make this part of something bigger or if you just want to toss it in as the beginning of something).
Why are so many words broken up too; like no- thing over and over again? Maybe this is part of the style you were doing for that class project (pretty edgy for a class project though.. and I have to repeat the sentiment that you don't say that much in the first place, let alone in a way that doesn't just state the whole point), but personally I don't like it. It just fragments words as a gimmick it seems, I don't see the point in it. What is gained from breaking up so many words, saying no and some over and over instead of just keeping it nothing or somewhere?
I think the thing someone who mentioned length was referring to was the issue of the medium used. When you read a printed off poem in your hands, you can easily see the entire thing (we're talking most normal poems that are not going to be more than one page). An epic like Paradise Lost is something people love to read, but can you imagine going through that as a glowing screen in front of your eyes, page after page? So this would be quite easy to handle as a printed work, but as you have to scroll up and down in order to look things over again, you get lost trying to catch up with your own thoughts and place instead of what the poem says. Especially so when the length comes because all the lines are really short; unless that gives it some power, where each little line is a glistening nugget that keeps the audience interested, it only makes people lose interest. I don't like reading lots of little phrases that aren't each powerfully compelling; trying to see the purpose in that, and not finding any makes me feel like I'm wasting my time, filtering out all the little lines to find the meat and deeper meaning. As I scroll down further, and it keeps going on, it just gets worse, and yours is longer than most works on here (visually, by actual content maybe a little, but not really).
I don't know how much of this is in relation to referencing someone else's work since I am not familiar with Brathwaite I'm afraid, but I would suggest bringing the length down by making the lines longer instead of really short phrases, making a stand-alone title, probably not breaking it up with numbers (it isn't that long), and writing something with more depth and uniqueness. -
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I must say, I disagree with the notion of eliminating the number headings bsed on the poem's length. They serve the purpose of seperating thematic viewpoint shifts throughout the poem, not as some convenient marker for measurement. That would be like saying a novel of a certain length is unworthy of chapter designations.
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I enjoyed the style of this poem. The rhymes weren't forced and the story you told was interesting. The only major thing I would change, though, would be to not cut words in half, finishing them in the next line. That is disruptive to the read and the rhythm of the poem. I would also change the : to a . at the end of the poem. The colon has no real reason to be there.
Other than that, very well done. -
I liked this poem because you had a consistent tone. However, after reading this the only words and images that stick out in my mind are "blood" and "shit." The meaning of your poem is almost lost because you use words and images for shock value as often as you use them to add to the theme. Give me an image that doesn't rely on blood and gore and shit to tell me that the world is engulfed in blood and gore and shit. The closest I felt you came to this was in the description of the model. So, while I question your word choice in that I wish you would come up with some more original and compelling imagery, I think the narrative style is terrific.
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Oh, and the use of "shit-eating" in Part 3 in reference to the flies is a double entendre, more attacking of the "flies" themselves than the media they represent.
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I agree, the vulgarit of the poem is certianly unsettling (and admittedly recurrent). The reason I did this was because when I wrote the poem the topic that kept recurring to me was "desensitization". I though it would be ironic because even though the words are used for a kind of shock value at first, their constant repition acutally softens their effect; the reader is becoming as desenitized to the violence and the shit and death as Young Blood is, and they don't even know it.
But yes, that is certainly something I'll consider for revision
Thank you very much for your constructive criticism,
L
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The piece confuses me a tad, and I'll exlain why. The first stanza didnt' do anything for me, the format and phrasings are not a style I find myself drawn to. How ever once I got to " Blood quenched thirst of arid sands and
the bursting maw of ruined cities and
tattered clothes on
tattered children and
machine-gun fire every-
where and so many dead bodies that the
vultures themselves
are turning their noses "
I was amazed that the same person wrote those two stanzas. You're a very talented individual but I'd like to ask aside from the assigment why did you choose to write this piece in this manner? -
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The assignment was to emulate the style of Kamau Brathwaite, an individual of African descent from the Carribbean who writes mainly on the plight of his black culture in modern American society, namely the struggle for identity. I wrote the poem because I was thinking of the struggle in the culture for a youth like me; whereas in the wake of the constant violence and struggle of our society we lose not so much our identity as our own humanity.
And yes, the first stanza is my least favorite in all of the poem, and I'm working on a suitable intro to the poem as we speak
Thank you much,
L
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You'll need to shorten this up before it can be seriously looked at. It's just too long, dude.
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While I appreciate the criticism, I have to say that I see no problem with a poem being long (have you ever seen Paradise Lost?). What about the length so detracts from the work?
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This was amazing. I found this really enjoyabl too read. This was very good. THanks for entering and best of luck too you in the contest.
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Well, let me say first off I have no idea who Brathwaite is
however, I really admire the tone and rhythm this write has. The subject matter is a little confusing for me I have to admit, what I take from it is that the television is a tool to educate yourself with, but many people use it to numb down with QVC and the like. Not sure if that was your intent. Best wishes.
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This was long but it was really good. I enjoyed reading this. It was very well done. You are going on to round 2. Thanks so much for entering and best of luck to you in the contest.
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