Can you say something good about anything. You Fu"kin P"ss T"king B"astard. Are we aloud to use " oh great Goad.

Congratulations you have just made around 8 assumptions of the way I personally think JUST from one line, WOW you have a great imagination. you only want positive comments on your poems if you really wanted to improve you would welcome all constructive criticism, but you don't you are a little too insecure to receive constructive criticism Ans as for: "All I need now is an honest opinion of this If I can write this simply do I have a gift?", AM I NOT ALOUD TO USE MY IMAGINATION

Actually being filthy rich so I could, and believe me or not: share my money with the world

I was at work in my break

Thanks, you have just pointed out my strong point

Why don't you name something you, Damien, would consider a standard for a successful life? For example, BIKES: I, Damien, have a 24-speed bike. What've you got? I'll be waiting.

Oh, good answer. I've got another one: Have you ever noticed that everybody thinks they were somebody great or at least meaningful in some kind of historically relevant place? I mean, no one ever thinks, I was an accountant in Des Moines in my past life. They're always, as in the case of my wife, an Egyptian slave, an Irish priestess (seriously), a Renaissance mathematician, a Native American, and a Mexican potter. Weird, huh?

Can I make a suggestion? Most people don't want to read other peoples' rushes of thoughts. They want to read something you've put a little effort and time into. Doesn't that make sense? If you're going to say, no poetry isn't like that it's spur-of-the-moment and emotional - well, then you'd be wrong. Most well-liked poets spend a lot of time and energy making their poems look like they didn't take a lot of time or energy. Anyway, one thing you should think about while writing a poem is that IF YOU'VE EVER HEARD anything like what you're thinking about writing, don't write it. Write about something different. I'm not trying to dis. I know what it's like to be fifteen and starting to write poetry. This is what I wish someone had said to me back then.

1) Yes and no. For one thing, they don't say "oppression... in this particular case." They call that, a bad day. Oppression is bad days forever. For instance, at any point during this reading, did you lose your right to get up and LEAVE the motherfucking reading? 2) You think I'm not listening to you and pulling interpretations out of my ass. Now you listen. I am listening to you. But there are things you don't know, because you have to learn them in college classes, or you have to live and work for a long time among African-Americans, or you have to spend a long time actually working towards greater freedom and equality for African-Americans, or you have to have a lot of common sense. You've got none of these things. I do. So, pay attention: These are not zodiac's wild-haired out-of-the-blue interpretations; these are the STANDARD INTERPRETATIONS for writing of this kind, taught on the first day of any literature class. To wit, I showed this poem to my wife - who, by the way, is nothing like me and only took two semesters of literature as an undergrad. She said EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Incidentally, if you'd made this poem about women instead of blacks, I'd be saying the same thing. 3) Great, and we both know this poem's only about one individual, because you've really only met one black individual, haven't you? Oh... but wait. You've posted this poem on a public website, where we readers read poems and try (since this is the point of poetry anyway) to somehow relate them to our lives. But, then, we don't know your one black disser, so we start thinking about other black people WE might know. AND IT COMES ACROSS AS MOTHERFUCKING RACIST, GODDAMMIT. Is that how you want to present yourself to the world? No, you say, just to zodiac. Bow'ls. If you were on a real poetry site you'd have been lynched the first day, no explanations. At least I'm trying to explain what's going on here, preferably before you go saying it to the SECOND black person you meet in your life. 4) If I told you "Dovina, go ahead, post 25 comments on poemranker today", what would you think? 5) Then it's not making up. The suggestion that it's even in the same category is racist. To wit, consider if instead of "ignoring, not hiring, etc" you'd said to your black reader, "go ahead, my people deserve it, take this Nerf foam bat and go wild on me." It's simply silly. 6) So I'm supposed to be giving constructive advice and all. Here goes: Re-write this poem so it has nothing to do with white ancestors and black ancestors (incidentally, the trouble comes when you start grouping whites and blacks, even ancestors). Make it about a guy that dissed you, but it was okay because while driving to the reading you hit all of his children with your Volkswagen. You'd been powerbrokering on your cellphone at the time.