You bloodthirsty savages;
Sickness of wars.
You think that you're fighting for you and for yours?
You 'speak' for your people
Then draw in a breath,
And sully their honour with violence and death. You say that you're praying,
And making a plea –
But murder the innocent, guiltless, and free.
Your 'proofs' and your 'truths'
And your 'justice' are lies -
A court and a critic? A coward's disguise. You think that you're pious
But live on your gall,
Subsisting on poison and hatred for all.
You're nothing but monsters.
I'll say it again -
You savages.
Cowards. You bloodthirsty men.Yes. I think a problem this poem suffers from is a lack of depth. There is no shift in the poem; the viewpoint is the same from beginning to end. This causes the poem to be unsurprising. I think the poem is also too long, in part because it is repetitive in viewpoint and also in word choice. About a stanza should be cut out. The meter's good, the rhyme is good, unfortunately, the content isn't really. To be fair it's a really interesting meter that the poet chose here which is one of the reasons it's so catchy. Each line begins with an iambic foot (du DUH) followed by repeating anapests.(du du DUH) It's very consistent throughout the whole poem. I could have fun playing with the structure. The reason there are long lines followed by short lines is that the length of the long lines is equal, about, to two short lines. So you could just break all the long lines into halves, put a stanza break between each rhyme set, and all of a sudden you'd have 12 quatrains instead of 3 sestets. With of course the final line separate. . . . You thirsty savages,
. See at the end here it gets really weird, like the problem with the propagators is that they're men, when really I think they mean "human" maybe. Or "Americans." Let's go with that. oh whoops totally missed that this was an anti ISIS poem. damn. I guess "American" doesn't work here at all but whatever. Do you see what American does? It turns the entire fucking poem up on its head and you're like "Damn." This poem actually has a punch. That's what the original is lacking. bioemerl what I would ask you is not is this a good poem - just - is it any better than the original? If so, my point stands. It's not really my content that you're critiquing; don't fear about stepping on toes.
. your sickness for war.
You think that you fight
for what you deserve?
You speak for your people,
draw in a breath,
then sully their honour
with violence and death.
You say you are praying.
You're making a plea –
But you murder the innocent,
the young and the free.
Your proof and your truth
And your justice all lie -
The court and the critic
are a coward's disguise.
You think that you're pious
But feed off of gall,
Subsist on poison,
spread hate among all.
You're monsters.
I say it again -
You're savages.
You're cowards.
You're pure, all right:
pure American.
The problem is rhyming doesn't make poetry and poetry doesn't require rhyming. Most critics of poetry hate on Kipling a lot but he wouldn't write "for you and for yours."Doggerel is usually the sincere product of poetic incompetence, and only unintentionally humorous, as with the work of Julia A. Moore, the "sweet singer of Michigan":