A Child's Pain

[BigRich200]

A child’s pain: crying in the background,
Shouting and screaming in the front room.
A door slams and windows break,
Glass crashing to the concrete below.

The child's the prize; nothing else at stake.
He who wants the child most, and more violently, wins.
Glass crunching beneath booted feet
Furniture overturned, chairs flying through the air.

A child’s fear, gently softened in the chest of her father,
A dash to the door, head down, running through the pain.
To the car, a close call, nearly stopped at the last.
But nothing stops a fathers’ anger or pain, nothing.


Amended for intelligibility, thanks to Fairytat.

Comments welcome...
~BigRich~

 

[Fairytat]

A child’s pain, crying in the background,
Shouting and screaming in the front room.
A door slams and windows break,
Glass crashing to the concrete below.

When you say "a child's pain, crying in the background," you are actually making the pain crying, not the child. Unless you mean for the pain to be a living breathing entity on its own, you need to correct that.

A scramble to the line, last there loses all.
He who wants it first, and most violently.
Glass crunching beneath booted feet
Furniture overturned, chairs flying through the air.

Scramble to what line? Where is the furniture being overturned? He (I assume the same person who slammed the door in the first stanza) has already left the house so where would the chair be?The second stanza doesn't fit with the first and last. You are talking about the horrible things that anger can do to a child when things around him/her go wrong. Yet, in the second one you make no sense as it doesn't follow the story you are telling.

A child’s fear, gently softened in the chest of her father,
A dash to the door, head down, running through the pain.
To the car, a close call, nearly stopped at the last.
But nothing stops a fathers’ anger or pain, nothing.

While poetry is often considered an abstract medium, the story you tell must make sense. I really didnt get anything out of this poem. You talked about the pain, fear, and anger but never really showed it effectively. You told us what and how but not why. In this case, the why is the most important part. You need to show more.

 

[BigRich200]

Thanks for the comments FairyTat.. you're quite right, it makes no sense to anyone except me. It was something I wrote not long ago, not really as a poem, but just as a confused expression of a certain life-experience of mine; I suppose you could say it's abstract in the extreme, to the extent of being unintelligible - I'll try and amend it for public viewing...

 

[WickedEve]

quote:
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"A child’s pain, crying in the background,
Shouting and screaming in the front room.
A door slams and windows break,
Glass crashing to the concrete below."

When you say "a child's pain, crying in the background," you are actually making the pain crying, not the child. Unless you mean for the pain to be a living breathing entity on its own, you need to correct that. "

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Since he has a comma between pain and crying, I read it as a list of bad things that were happening. A child's pain, and crying in the background, and shouting and screaming in the front room.

I didn't get the part about "scramble to the line" either.

I'm guessing that the father is fighting with the mother, so maybe she slammed the door, and it's her booted feet crunching glass, and he's the one still inside throwing the chair.

I think this poet needs to give more details in this poem.

BigRich, why don't you rework this poem a bit. It's a good start, and I think you could really make this into a strong piece.

 

[BigRich200]

Thanks Eve - I've reworked it slightly now, but to give you more understanding, here's what the basic situation was that I'm writing about.

Parents split up - mother "steals" the child - father not happy - mother and child disappear - father spends two weeks "finding" them - mother has friends to stop father taking child - father has friends to help him take child back - the poem is about the re-taking of the child by the father, there's a big fight between the two opposing parties, father wins and dashes to the car with his child.

At some point I may sit down and turn the piece into a proper poem, as opposed to just a summary of events..