Full Metal Jacket.

[Dagel is a biter]

I met a girl the other day, so many words I couldn't say,
just my awkward stutter, ashamed, I tried to turn away.
She worked at a cafe down the street from where I stayed,
perfect curves so insane... like a daydream I'd replay.
She asked for my name, laughed as I stood there afraid,
wrapped herself around my brain, "relax, it'll be okay."
She'd become my escape, we'd have a son, it'd be great,
numb to the pain that once rained on my parent's graves.
One morning the phone rang, storming and snow paved,
my services are needed to earn this freedom my home frames.
The purpose and reason I'm certain demons hold the gates,
across the ocean, my flaws are motive to unload this AK.
We'd trade letters, stay together forever and never stray,
on the battlefield I'd rattle shields, things won't ever change.

It's been almost a decade, the gold shade of ember has dried
I don't know the date, let alone the names of those who've died.
She quit sending pictures, while my pen scriptures every night,
if these things delivered, then Winter's taking a very long time.
I can't hardly remember her tender tasting kisses goodbye,
and the Bacardi withers away my liver, spraying from itchy eyes.
We move out tomorrow, I choose to drown sorrows with lives,
the truth is hollow... my noose is surrounded by following lies.
Armored to the bone, martyr back home where families fight,
it's harder to know the longer we roam behind enemy lines.
We were ambushed, it was more than our prayers could buy,
but we'd stand strong, a storm in layers and layers of genocide!
When we seen the sunlight, we felt relief and knew it was time,
we fought for our country, and God bet money we'd survive.

I took the first flight home, practiced my words like a poem,
just when my life felt cold, the tragic hearse had finally opened.
Destiny had seen me back, everything in Iraq tied what's broken,
my child can see his dad, and my family would be whole again.
Reaching for the doorknob, releasing warm and calm breaths,
but seeing the whore stop, felt serenity as it tore off my chest.
She shrieked in mid swing, "believe me, it's not what you'd guess,
while you played hero, I remained here, no cash for bills to collect.
Put our boy for adoption, you were deployed, my options were set,
the problem isn't cheating, it's you thinking being gone was best!"
I didn't know how to react, I collapsed before I could gasp for air,
when I woke up, the snow stuffed my lungs and nobody's there.
A note read, "I'm sorry Jon, but honestly it's your fault, I swear."
and I failed to realize that here lies the part of me which cared...

A year has passed, my tears trapped in a porcelain glass,
I fear to ask for forgiveness to my sickness, a torturous past.
The woman I loved was flown above after a disastrous crash,
my twelve year old son helps run errands at a Lazarus rehab.
Nothing makes sense, I'd done things the way I meant to have,
in a lonely house, all my stories cloud as I'm mentally smashed.
Traumatic events, automatic bullets blazing in vision's grasp,
my army medals from disarming rebels are my limit's match.
Collecting dust on a shelf, I trust someone else will give them back,
to an old couple in trouble from the results of what we did in Iraq.
No matter how we act, the ladder's too short for remorse to last,
take what you can grab, before the storm forms into ash.
There's a war called 'life', and it dies quicker than a blade of grass,
so just adore the light, it'll go by once the trigger makes that snap!

We live... we love... we die,
until the end we spend our time.
Trying to be happy in honest lives,
knowing we're bound to say goodbye.

[Dagel is a biter]

http://netcees.co/showthread.php?t=9944
http://netcees.co/showthread.php?t=10297

[Certain]

Before I begin my critique (or, really, before you begin reading my critique), let me say that I wouldn't have went this long had I not thought there was a lot of potential here. I also would not have went this long if I had other shit to do at 5 a.m. Anyway, away we go.

This piece was long, but it read very quickly. The reason for that is because it was overt and simple. You told the story in a complete form, but you never stopped to bring a level of intri***y. There's a value in this straightforward narrative, but I wish a higher degree of lyricism had been shown in the process. When I say "lyricism," I'm referring to the complexity across the board: plot, rhyme scheme, diction, imagery, metaphors, poetic technique, etc.

The rhyme scheme was very unusually. Clearly, you understand the concept of a multiple-syllable rhyme. You used them well in sporatic internal rhymes. But your end rhymes were simple to the point that they seemed almost out of the early 1980s. You had a lot of single-syllable slants, which really breaks up the flow of a verse. And because you chose to use end rhymes as a stopping point, (contexually and grammatically correctly) putting periods or commas after each, those end rhymes were stressed even more. You can afford to use single-syllable rhymes on occasion, but not throughout an entire verse and not on such simplistic sounds.

The diction is a little trickier. It's very difficult to balance telling a story with staying interesting in word choice. I have similar issues. But your verse read on a fairly elementary level. Given the content, the language should have been a step up. You can do this a few ways. I'm not one for the use of vocabulary to fill some sort of quota, but it definitely can strengthen writer's voice and make a piece more distinct. Try to come up with a few lines that will really stick with a reader, for one reason or another. Often those lines fit best in transitions, but they also could be unique phrasing for imagery or even, in this form's case, a great rhyme. Vulgar had a piece about a month ago that I barely remember except that he rhymed of "Silmarillion." That's just something that stays with a reader. Think about that when you write. Don't let everything blend into the story. Pop out of it for a second to do something creative and interesting. Novelists and poets do this all the time, but it's even more important when your readership has a short attention span.

In general, you needed to try to set this verse apart. The emotion of your narrator was never conveyed because, even as you were writing in first person, the narrative always felt slightly detached. For instance, the dramatic scene of the third stanza played out almost entirely in convoluted dialogue. (Note: This may be a pet peeve of mine alone. People don't talk in rhyme, so going through that long a stretch of a single person's speech really hurts. Dialogue needs to be written very naturally, which makes it so difficult to execute.) I thought your writing found a groove to start the fourth stanza, with the "tears trapped in a porcelain glass" and "fear to ask for forgiveness in my sickness" and the bringing together of a few war images. The fourth stanza was the strongest as far as the writing, though the first carried the story well. But I'm not sure you ever made the writer feel angry, and anger is such an important emotion amid all this. You conveyed confusion well in a few spots, and a morose tone hung over the entire piece. (Even the beginning felt somehow sad, as though dragged down by inevitability. Clever lines, with puns or wordplay, often are key in bringing to life a happy section. For instance, "curves were insane" could have been something like "curves came faster than the Autobahn" or something far less corny than that.)

Now, the plot issue is a tricky one. I usually try to hold back strong judgments for content because they often aren't endemic in a writer's work. But I think it's worth discussing the issue with that third stanza, which was the weakest for many reasons. The choices the wife takes simply don't make any sense, and her explanation makes even less. Moreover, after breaking the love of her life's heart, it seems very unlikely she would leave such an acerbic and off the cuff note. People tend to absorb blame in these situations even when they don't deserve it. A back-and-forth yell session might have both jolted some energy in and given us a deeper perspective. But the adoption thing in particular simply doesn't ring true. And why didn't she have money? Soldiers get paid.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting verse. It may have been flawed, but that was largely because of its enormous ambition. Keep that up as you better yourself.

[Dagel is a biter]

Thank you.

[Spoken]

Ain't no way I'm reading this bitch again tbh..... My dude

Just know this was an old verse that I enjoyed my man

[Eŋg]

plz retire.