poetry critical

online poetry workshop

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Welcome!

Welcome to Poetry Critical, an online poetry workshop. To post your own poetry, rate that of others, or start a new thread on the message board, you'll need to create a user id by typing a name and password in the box above and hitting 'New User'. If you just want to critique or jump into the discussion, however, you can do that without logging in by typing your comment in the box under each poem or post.

 
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Random Poem:

Walk in Rwanda (CHANGED A LOT)
MdMolly

A man I knew sent me home through the woods,
 1
Past the river where I had played as a child like so many others,
 2
Before the war had stripped us of passion.
 3
 
 
My Jeep tumbled through on uneven terrain -
 4
Smooth only yesterday, I had to step out to see what I knew
 5
I would face with it's stench of savage dissidence.
 6
 
 
I had to step over the grave of a thousand,
 7
The children whose faceless skulls, blown off with the coddle of fifteen homicidal bullets,
 8
Erasing a people without consequence.
 9
 
 
I had to forget the sound of crunching
 10
Beneath my soles – it is not the sound of fall, only the fallen
 11
Whose words never spoke so loud as their deaths.
 12
 
 
I had to touch the face of a naked woman, dawned with the blood of her father,
 13
Cleaned by the fresh tear stains down her cheek,
 14
Now Hutu's forgotten trash in the riptide of extermination.
 15
 
 
I had to move down that road
 16
Place my feet between knees and in crimson soaked dirt,
 17
Pretending its unnatural heat is not life.
 18
 
 
I had to turn around because my stomach
 19
Did not bear the same strength as my feet as a car
 20
Came forging over the execution grave.
 21
 
 
I had to stare into the eyes of the righteous
 22
As he passed in his beaten down truck bearing Hutu flag
 23
Relishing annihilation rolling under his Goodyears.
 24
 
 
I had to purge my body of the sins of my brethren
 25
As he crushed the naked woman whose swollen skin broke under the pressure of his hatred
 26
Leaving him with the remnants of her decaying body.
 27
 
 
I had to forget what I’d seen because those swollen,
 28
Empty eyes would follow me, like her tears,
 29
Proving life does not lie where it ends.
 30
 
 
I had to lie down and let life die without death among the bile and putrid essence left rotting,
 31
Because one more mutilated body won’t matter much
 32
In the grand total of genocide.
 33
 
 
I had to get up and walk away despite
 34
The snapping of brittle bones demanding my attention.
 35
I couldn't be late for dinner.
 36

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design & code copyright donald tetto. all poems copyright their original authors.
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