Nikatu

I am being eaten
broken and beaten
Things I cannot see
take small bites of me
consuming my skin
making me thin
Turning my color white paste
and my body to waste
With fever and chill
and death in a pill
I am dying I know it
and i certainly show it
I am being eaten

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Galivanting

I dont quite get it. Recently my demons have been writing my poetry. Is it the season? Why is it that poems of summer joy fade to fall despair.

sorry just posting my thoughts, your poem needs some editing but i do enjoy where it is going

Nikatu

I tried poems of happiness... sucked
I tried poems of sadness... uber sucked
I tried poems of comedy... they didn't get it
I tried poems of rage... Constipation
I tried poems of love... Sappy
I tried poems of bitterness... Wow... I can write something halfway decent.

It's not a seasonal thing lol. I'm a happy, loving, easy going, but somehow bitter person. I love me.

What editing does it need?

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dannyboy

I assume L6 should be thin.

J.R. MacLean

a rather sly species of despair here.
one feels it could go on, to some kind of absurd ending, like the murdered man who manages to scrawl in blood: it was, it was arrrrrrrghhhh.

Nikatu

My stomach was feeling very ill when I wrote the piece, and I often joke around that it is probably the cancer acting up again. So I wrote this piece thinking about what it would be like to have cancer and to have it consume your body slowly and painfully... the ending isn't so mysterious or twisted as a murdered man, just a slow death by cancer. Actually, I'm very weird with almost every story, poem, essay, and, well, everything I write. I start with a title, and then I write the poem. In this poem, the title "Cancer" is becomming more necessary with the comments I am getting. I think if I left that as the sole title, it would help others understand it better.

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Glfralin

I understood it from the title. Cancer is a consumming disease left unchecked or if it comes back in a resistant form. My point being that your analogies to being eaten are appropriate. I think the emotion you are letting yourself feel is natural in that instance. I have COPD, if I get the slightest persistent cough, even just a day, I get scared something awful.

I find your poem honest which when shared with other people who've dealt with cancer gives them permission to feel frightened or angry.

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bluewhite

Not only your poem is honest,but also you are an honest ,easy going person. I like. Mmhhh,I love myself,too. Mmmmm

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cbaird14

I am being eaten
broken and beaten
Things I cannot see
take small bites of me
consuming my skin
making me thin
Turning my color white paste
and my body to waste
With fever and chill
and death in a pill
I am dying I know it
and i certainly show it
I am being eaten

I am being eaten is an interesting first line. Actually you have many interesting lines in the poem. I wasnt completely captured by it though and here are some thoughts about why...

The structure was god in terms of being thin like the subject of your poem, or at least how they see themselves. I think even better would have been a thinning process. A long first line with lines decreasing in size leading up to a short last line. Or even a longer last line to make the reader question the validity of the speaker's illness, which it seems you want us to do.

The line about white paste was a diversion from the rythem. There were too many stressed syllables which you have have a reason for and you may not I'm not sure. Also paste gives more of an allusion to wetness then I think you want here. The dry whitening skin of a cancer patient is more associated in my mind to flakes. But I have also never had cancer...

The line, I am dying I know it and I certainly show it was almost comical in its delivery. It was predictable and reminicesent of children's birthday songs. This made me think that you were taking a more satirical stance on the whole issue. If you are not, I would suggest changing that line.

Broken and beaten are good images but are not talked about for the rest of the poem, which leaves the reader thinking they were used only for the ryhme. I would argue they are not and I am sure you would as well, but they need to be 'fleshed' out.

Overall an interesting poem that I enjoyed reading and writing on. Keep in up,

Chris

Nikatu

Well, with the broken and beaten part... I was trying to show the fact that so many cancer patients (and other sick and dying people) have lost hope... they are being beaten by cancer (or maybe just by time). I like the idea about trying to create a slimming effect but I don't want to add anything to the poem, I think that it really gets the idea through best in its simplicity. The last line was not intended to be comical, but rather that apparent. You can see the sickness in a cancer patient by relating it to the other lines I had given...

Thanks everyone for the comments so far, and I will probably sit down and rethink this poem sometime in the future to see just what I can do with it to make it even better. The original poem (this is the edited version I posted... I was brought to remembering its existence and to posting it because my stomach had really been hurting me at the time...) was inspired by the play "Shadow Box" which describes a few days from the lives of terminally ill cancer patients... the play was very sad, and had an obvious impact on me... I actually have developed a fear of hospitals because I've gone there to watch so many people die as opposed to getting better. I even have a good friend who has lived through cancer, even after the doctors told him he didn't have a chance (the make a wish foundation let him throw out a pitch at a baseball game, and then he got better... he likes to say he beat the make a wish foundation) and I am thinking about showing it to him to get his input on the matter...

Why would my poem make people feel angry?

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desithugg

wow...lol..not so much into poetry..only 14 but i like it very nice

bluewhite

too great, I want to learn from you

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Sigur Rós

Great stuff Nikatu. I really liked the idea.

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