Pay the Toll

Its a great poem
Very sad and darkly depressing

I agree with wat most people have said here but even without these changes....
The imagery is super
The flow was super
the word choices again super =)

everything was super

Following with the stench that is so lingering and horrid.
The air is illuminated, as it swirls around,
So dark and dreary that you cannot see your hand.

[Following with stench that is lingering and horrid,
the air is illuminated as it swirls all around,
so dark and dreary, you cannot see your hand.]

- usually I'm not against fillers, but in this stanza I think it just does better without them in certain areas. So, eliminating the fillers like; the, so, that, in certain areas and adding a few more words to boost the emotion makes it flow and sound better.

The leaves fall slowly to the ground. red-yellow-orange-green.
They drop slower than the others around it.
The world goes to darkness, nothing to light the way.

[The leaves fall slowly to the ground - red, yellow, green, and orange.
They drop slower than the others all around.
The world goes dark, with nothing to light the way.]

** I noticed that you used fillers in the wrong area's here as well. Such as; "around it", I still used what people call a filler but replaced it with 'all' and switched it. The colors of the leaves, I personally think green should come before orange... why? I don't know, it just sounds better to me. I also added 'and' there and took out a few fillers in the last line and switched.

As he leaves you in your room, sitting next to her in a chair.
[As he leaves you in your room, sitting in the chair next to her.]

** Switching those around just makes it flow better, to be honest.

- - - -

The parts that aren't copied and pasted here are absolutely amazing. The rest you just need to work with the wording. What I showed you after telling you is just ideas, and not the only way you can change it up. But, you do need to change it around in order for it to sound and flow better. The 'fillers' ( i don't really think they're fillers, but apparently that's what they're called) are just in the wrong areas and with the wrong words. Once you change that you'll have an amazing poem.

Which by the way, is a really, really good poem. I really enjoyed the read. You've great emotion through-out it.

These two lines contradict themselves, I know what you mean in them but I think they need a line inbetween to change the mood from literal to metaphorical.
"The air is illuminated, as it swirls around,
So dark and dreary that you cannot see your hand."

Maybe "Yet so dark and..." would make more sense?

I read your comment that you posted on this:
"red-yellow-orange-green."
With this line when you read it you get the image of leaves actually forming, which later turn into metaphors.
Because you don't mention the body in the poem, and don't mention any relation to it being sick/organs I doubt anyone would guess the relevence of the colours.

You start to rhyme in the poem randomly, it throws the flow off a lot.

"His head was shaking back and forth like a pendulum."
Love that lone.

I got a little confused through the poem about whos perspective it was from, too.
Though reading it closer reveals it.

Be careful with what you don't fully explain in poetry, there's a fine line between leaving out details and poetic-ness (?).

Darn this is long.

I still liked this, my innital thought was this is about helping a friend deal with something terrible, it made sense (or at least to me).

I liked the images created in this, and the emotion was almost real, good job there.

Sorry I seemed to focus on the bad stuff =\
This is a solid poem, you have good form, the flow is great until you start to rhyme (easily fixed, though) and the emotion is in all the right spots.

5/5

jess ~

Your vocab is very updated, and the imagery is very real although I don't think I get the meaning of the poem. No punctuation in your poem does distract me.

“The world goes to darkness nothing to light the way.”
It would be better if there is a comma between darkness and nothing reading:
“The world goes to darkness, nothing to light the way”
This line contains two ideas,
“The world goes to darkness” and “nothing to light the way.”
Without the comma, it infers that the line is only ONE idea, not two.
The same comment to
“ Where you once illuminated you've now gone astray”

(The setting is not clear though.)

Great imagry.Word choice was brilliant and the flow was smooth.Excellent work.5/5

-Amber