don't care if no one likes this....just had to get this day off my chest....

What can I say? You sound pretty peppy about it anyway.

"up field" could be "upfield" or "up-field". The word "darkens" isn't right. I feel like "nor him neither" should be "nor him either". If that's not grammatical, it sounds better to me. "pay it for the shooting"? The crow? Like a native american tradition, or just ambiguous wording - you paid with guilt for the shooting? I don't feel like the repetition of "and" in the last sentence does what you want it to, which I can clearly see you trying to do. It would be just as well, maybe, with a period after guncotton and no and before my. This is my favorite one of yours so far. You know how I love a good narrative. Bravo and tchuss.

The first two are great, the last not so great. It jars. How about "Uncles lean on cars; some beer / takes away..."? Is that any improvement? Do you see what I'm asking?

"Everything Zen" is the title of a song by the immensely popular (in the mid-nineties) bad British rock band Bush. How could you have not known that? Do you think people often name poems after songs? And what if songwriters named their songs after other songs? There'd be no end to the confusion. Oh, and I say this to you so much that you've probably taken to disregarding me altogether, but what a giant pussball of non-punctuated too-long-lined say-nothing cliche crap this poem is! How can you have not given up after all this time?

I'm giving this an 8 too. It's not really an 8 for me now, but I think it has the potential to be a 10. "I will be out" bothers me -- what, out of prison? out on your own? out for lunch? out of the office? I agree with biteme that the cracks...red umbrella line is excellent.

I notice you made no comment on my pome when you came to my page to whine about my cruelty--kinda makes what you said somewhat hypocritical, don't you think? I change my vote to a 10. There's your green bar where you want it. Everyone who counts will know exactly what that 10 means. You posted your pome without any intention of improving it. If you'd had any intention of improving it, you'd have fixed the glaring grammatical and word-use mistakes. You say hole instead of whole. You say knew instead of new. You said "what everyone do". These are incredibly stupid mistakes of grammar, but are not really that important. Here's the real reason everyone who counts condemned your pome: You chose as a topic something that is written about constantly, and didn't bother to say anything at all new, original or creative about it. The entire pome is "telling" -- ZERO "showing". Not a single concrete detail, just cliche after endless cliche. There is absolutely nothing in 23 lines that allows us to identify anything at all about the narrator, or their situation. Nothing. Not a color, not an image, not a glimpse of character, no people, no buildings, no trees, no rooms, no anything. No carefully manicured metaphors, nor sprawling similes. Nothing at all of interest. Why didn't you just post "I don't fit in and I feel shitty about it." There isn't anything else in your 23 lines but a repetition of that. If you had ever read anything at all about poetry anywhere, you would know that all telling with no showing is THE cardinal sin of poetry. You can break any other rule -- ANY other rule -- and get away with it if you do it creatively and skillfully, but not this one. How is it that you don't know this about poetry? Or that you failed to see it in what you wrote? If you are too lazy too learn anything about writing before you post your babblings, why should anyone take you seriously or show you any respect? In any other field of endeavour in life, could you walk in without making any effort to learn what's what and expect anyone to respond to you with anything other than derision? People being cruel just for the fun of it is a very effective force for improving your poetry. Here's why: they know nothing about you. Nothing at all. The only ability they have to be cruel is what the pomes you post give them. In other words, those pointlessly cruel comments are indeed pointing out exactly what is wrong with you poetry, if you are willing to listen. A lot of the commentary & posturing I do on here is because I want to provoke people into being cruel to me, or more specifically, to the pomes I post. Because I WANT to know when I've written something stupid, so I can improve. Is that enough actual targeted criticism for you? Or did you even bother to read this far. You don't deserve targeted criticism, because you haven't made enough effort to learn anything on your own yet. You fucking stupid bint.