Description: So, I was reading the contests thing and found one that said to make a poem about a school shooting. Here's my poem. I wanted to relate a shooting to a thunderstorm and ... well you'll figure it out.
Thunder clouds rumbled from his throat
as lightning flashed from his hand
a brilliant display of inner fears
painting the common walkways a crimson land
they say run run and hide
before confusion becomes grim flashes
when self-proclaimed Zeus comes astride
let wise men and panic create clashes
that decide what little can be done to stop
the thunderous clouds swelling inside his mind
and the lightning mayhem from his hand
why would authority trust simplicities loving hug?
This is really good, the connection you’ve made to shooting and a thunder storm is really clever and I agree with someone’s epiphany it would work even better as a sonnet.
I think the storm is a good metaphor for the man’s state of mind too, as storms can be used to represent rage, anger, madness and of course ‘fear’ and ‘mayhem’. The flashes of lightening could represent the mixture of thoughts running through his mind and how quickly they change, giving the over all feel to his mind as madness and unstable. As I said earlier, it’s really clever.
The loud roars of thunder is again a good metaphor for gunshots and the line ‘painting the common walkways a crimson land’ helps the reader make that connection. This seems like it was a carefully thought out piece. But at twelve lines maybe you could stretch it just a little further to fourteen and make a sonnet, maybe use Iambic pentameter, which I know has already been suggested. But, I think it will greatly improve the over all affect of the poem.
im with jase on making this into a sonnet of sorts... you are so close to making it happen already.
having said that though this does work as it is and i think your use of thinderstorm is a very original and creative way of expressing such an event. many people will be looking to express themselves and their reactions to such an event and their expression may be more literal than yours which is what i think gives this piece an edge.
personally i am in love with storms.
we dont really have any good ones where i am from but when i was in the US for a coupla months last year i lived through some BRILLIANT ones!
this one day my friends were at work and their daughters were away at a camp for a week so i was home alone. the phone rang and i answered it and it was the next door neighbour ringing from work asking me that if the storm got too bad could i run nextdoor and get her son because they didnt have a basement and my friends place did. i said that would be fine and hung up the phone.
then it struck me... i didnt know how bad "too bad" was because this storm was literally 10 times worse than anything i had ever experienced and i was loving it haha.
turned out there was nothing to be stressing about and i didnt go get the boy next door but yeah... storms are magnificent displays of power... i am always in awe of them.
and i think you envoke that awe in this piece.
using different images and effects to represent different things... lightening flashes of anger and bullets... thunderous yelling and thoughts...
i would almost think about renaming this piece... i dont think your title does your piece any justice at all...
In your first stanza you have an abab end-rhyme scheme, then cdcd in the first half of your second part. However, in your last four lines you deviate. Assessment-wise, do you think you could make the last four have an efef end-rhyme scheme? If you did, there'd be nothing stopping you from having a finishing gg rhyming couplet to make this an Elizabethan sonnet. Yes, there'd be meter and syllables to deal with if you wanted to make it more difficult (iambic pentameter... da-Dum x5, if you didn't know), but that's just another option. Just a few thoughts for you to consider. Oh, and one tiny nitpick: "simplicities" should be "simplicity's" in this case.
Overall, I think you have a lot of potential with this piece. You have a good sense of rhythm and know how to incorporate imagery.
Submission Name: Simple Storm 
