A broken puppet on the world’s cold stage
Is made to dance by players who don’t see
Within her wooden heart the growing rage,
The bitter pain and splintered agony.
With shattered will and an unfeeling heart—
Without a hope to ever be repaired—
She must play, silently, her written part,
A figurante in chains, lost in despair.
This dancing marionette without a name
Conceals behind her mask an inner hell.
Her pain is coals, a heat that can’t be tamed,
Hidden from sight behind the wooden shell.
When will it show? When will the hurt be seen
Behind the eyes of this carven figurine?
Behind the eyes of this carven figurine
Tears of icy sawdust melt and fall,
Cracked from the frozen mask of perfect scenes.
Her anger catches, feeds upon them all.
The play goes on around her dancing feet
As embers light and glow behind her smile;
Her cold-stilled heart at last begins to beat.
She’s smiling, laughing, dancing all the while,
Still acting, through the rage that longs to break
Her world, and watch it all engulfed in fire;
Over lives and chains a mastery to take,
To dance a waltz of death on heaven’s pyre.
She blinks her eyes (this act must be undone),
Her mask slips, cracks; the breaking has begun.
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I like the imagery and pictures that you create here. I really like it. I don’t know if you need the part in parentheses in the second to last line, it seems a bit unneeded, but I don’t know, maybe it ties into the second part. But if it doesn’t need to be there, then I think its an unneeded pause.
But other than that, its really good. =)
Your poem is excellent. You do an excellent job of illustrating the main characters inner turmoil and her outward false happiness. While I was reading your poem, I could feel her sorrow and anguish. She is a puppet to the wants of others and allows herself to be manipulated as such. I think your poem actually builds to a climax of sorts. At the end when her mask slips, you know something has broken inside of her allowing her true self to finally break out. Good work :)
You say it’s a part of something big. Then you must be very careful not to become boring. This is OK for an intro, but later, you need to fill it with more action, less descriptions.
“heaven’s pyre” sticks out as only forced rhyme (others and the rhythm are very good)
final note: (I already said it to some poem with similar thematic):
>>don’t know if you knew, but King Diamond wrote the concept album called “The puppet master”, you must read it’s lyrics (not necessarily listen to it), I think he brought the whole idea to the highest level of sickness and methaphoric cruelty.<< (I love quoting myself :))
This is looking good for the mostpart, not sure the first line works well as the natural flow is not there “on the worlds cold stage” I think just simply on the world stage. I feel the marrionette is a meta-phor for some world famous actress , ie Marilyn Munroe, or it could head towards an actressess battle with ageing or drugs, this is where i visualise it heading so far. You are correct that it needs work mainly on the rhythm and flow and i suppose this will mean some re-wording is inevitable to produce that. I also feel the description of pain is a little over done and repetative throughout.
The last line is very tantalizing and surely luring for the reader.
Clearly well-written with a good vocabulary.
However, I felt like I was reading a passage from a story instead of a poem- you are telling a story, but because your lines are so long, it feels like with a few words missing here and there, it came out of a novel. It’s a bit clunky and overwhelming, if that makes sense to you. For the same reason, I think, it wasn’t until the second stanza that I realized there was rhyme!
My suggestion is to vary your line lenghths- some short, maybe even with just a couple of important words, some medium, and long. This doesn’t necessarily mean cut out words, but definitely rearrange.
I think there’s a really good chance you get this published and into a book of your own. You’re obviously talented, even from two stanzas I can tell that.
I actually had this image in my head of a broken marionette wanting to break free from the strings. You can also relate that to other things than just a puppet, which makes it even better.
I think my favorite line in this was “Tears of icy sawdust melt and fall”. That was really great wording and the imagery is fantastic. You definitely have something and it’ll be great when you finish it. I’d definitely like to read the rest of it.
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