Here I'll post my poetry. I'd love to have some feedback on them, but please be constructive. I mean, I don't need to know that I am stupid and ugly and should never be allowed to write again, okay? Just tell me what you do/don't like about my poems, what I should change about them. And give reasons why, please.

I've placed two of my poems in a certain topic in the Menewsha Nation - but I've posted them as a quote there, so that shouldn't be a problem, right?
Anyway, a lot of my poems are Dutch - I'll translate some of them. They might, however, have some errors in them - it is not that easy to translate poetry.

Warning - some of them might be about blood, or death, or other things like that. A lot of them were written when I had a depression, so they're not really... happy.
----

October 06

All of me

I am raised to be broken
I am living to die
The world is starting to end
I am staying here to leave
I'll be forever but I'm nothing

I can no longer try to forget it
I know now that I'm nothing...

Nothing but this silence is what I know
Everything else I once knew I forgot
The silence says more than a thousand words
to me

The pain made me so much stronger
Too strong to see what really matters
This fear I felt made me so brave
but it also made me so cold...
I don't feel this pain or fear anymore
But I know they're still there, deep inside

And although it made so much stronger
I know it also killed the real me...

Where am I now? Am I gone?
Nothing's left behind but this mask I always wore
But the face behind is now gone

The strength, the braveness once was a way to defend
To defend myself against the fear, the pain
But there's nothing left now to defend, as it became
all of me...

I'm now gone, but I'm still here
The strength, the braveness became all of me...

---
Translated from Dutch - originally written Jan 07, translated Feb 08

Night

Silence, nobody is speaking
only the wind whispering
Darkness, dark as black as ink
The sun hiding behind the horizon

Wolves howling, together or alone
Full moon gracing the sky proudly
Stars glistering in the night
Jewels in heavens crown

Trees swinging back and forth
The wind growing to intense storm
Clouds covering the moon and stars
Rain falling on the earth

---

I might post more soon, but I have to search the poems - they're on three different computers, and only one of them has internet. Not really easy. And a lot needs to be translated first anyway.

I really like the 2nd one.

Time to deconstruct .
What's your tone? Atmosphere? Poetic Devices...
let's begin.
It'll be a group effort.

Hard to explain, the second one is one I originally wrote in Dutch. I translated it to English today, more than a year after writing it.
Thank you for posting.

Wonderful.

I feel really melancholic reading the 2nd one.
Cause I find silence very uncomfortable...but at the same time it can be pleasant.
Paradoxical...

I like the line "Jewels in Heaven's Crown."

Is it a coincidence that both poems talk about silence?

Thank you both. :)

Not a problem.
Writing poems is really really hard.
Well for me anyways.
Just one little suggestion.
you have a line "Darkness, dark as black ink."
I think you should find a different word for dark, it would just make it flow better.
(Unless repetition is what you were going for)

I know - but that has to do with the translation, in Dutch there are two different words. I'll try to search a better word for it. :)

Ok. My apologies.

Dutch you say?
My last name is Boomhouwer.
My first name is Jan.
as the french would say...
Tu es...Dutch?

Dutch as well? your name is surely Dutch. If so: Hallo. :) If not: that meant Hello. ;)

I don't speak dutch.
I live in Canada.
My dad is first generation Canadian though...his parents were immigrants.

Ah, okay. :) Have you voted at the poll already?

Poll?!

They're lovely ^.^ Very sad and harrowing, but I admire your ability to write poems in both English and Dutch. Would you mind posting then in Dutch as well? Just so we could see how it flowed originally...

A couple English related crits on All of Me, on the line "Everything else I once knew I forgot" it might roll off the tongue better "I've forgotten". On the line "And although it made so much stronger" it needs a word between made and so "made ____ so much stronger" to be proper English. On the two lines "Nothing's left behind but this mask I always wore... But the face behind is now gone" the double 'but' could be replaced with "save this mask I always wore" or just deleting the but before "the face is now gone"

On the line "The strength, the braveness once was a way to defend", braveness ought to be 'bravery' and same for the last line.

On Night - "Darkness, dark as black as ink" could be many things but a few lines of suggestion would be: "Darkness, pitched as black as ink", "Darkness, deep and black as ink", "Shadow, dark and black as ink", "Shadow, dark as black and ink" or "Night, as dark, as black as ink"... Or one of a hundred other ways ^.^ I'm sure you could find a better one. On the line "The wind growing to intense storm" just from the fact no other line starts with 'the' I'd delete that one word and start with 'Wind'

Absolutely lovely though, the one good thing about depression is that we come back out of it, and that it leaves such a longing in people for creating something, that the very best writing and art always crop up from the feelings it creates.