Thread: Green Light

Green Light

Results, you’ve told me
Are all that matters,
And I can’t argue
Your perfect record.
Cards on the table,
You followed orders
To the very end;
But what have you won?

It’s like you’ve outgrown
All that you once loved,
Things you’re convinced you
Don’t need anymore,
And when they gave you
That goddamn green light,
You didn’t even
Hesitate, did you?

You always pretend
You’re haunted by that
What you were ordered
But what haunts me has
Always been what you
Weren’t ordered to do

Over the years, that’s
What stained us darkest,
What hit us hardest
With the nightmares and
With the guilt trips, and
It won’t stop as long
As we can convince
Ourselves otherwise.

You still tell yourself:
You did the right thing.
You’re used to winning
And you’re not truly
A leader until
You’ve finally lost

Simple language with a strong meaning throughout makes this poem great. The final stanza is no exception to this, and you end the piece on a crescendo with a relevant - yet powerful - sentiment.

One point of punctuation:

Results, you’ve told me,
Are all that matters,

Small, I know, but I had to go back to read that part in order to read it how you intended it, which was a distraction.

Another thing I feel you should address with this poem is rhythm. You don't necessarily need to have a beat, nor a pattern, but the way each line is like a regular sentence broken in two can obstruct the reader from 'getting in the flow' of the piece (as I know most readers of poetry do). By either lengthening the lines or not breaking the way in which the reader reads your poem. For example:

You didn’t even
Hesitate, did you?

I think you would benefit from bringing the 'hesitate' up to the previous line, so that it reads as a whole ('You didn't even hesitate. Did you?' would give a better effect on how it is read as opposed to the equivalent of what you have now: 'You didn't even. Hesitate, did you?")

Minor nit-picks, I know, but overall a powerful read portrayed in wonderfully simplistic language, Moonxw!

Agreed about the comma. I can see what you mean by the breaks, they are a bit disruptive. Thanks for the input!