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9/8/2017 3:24:07 AM Hayden O'Neill Posts: 2	Stop drinking alcohol, this only reassures us, like social media, like your favourite TV shows, and drugs, that our personal problems are all okay, when intoxication is an escape route, from our abstract reality. Smoke cannabis on special occasions, with friends, on holidays, away from work, and daily routines, Marijuana is a medicinal herb, like cough syrup, don't abuse its benefits. Exercise and go for a run, Get lost in the gum tree bush, find yourself amens fresh river streams, and rich oxygen, Perfect place to escape stress, And release pain. Wake up every day before sunrise, Take all the opportunity, to feel the sunlight, above and beneath the eyes, supplying us with all the vitamin D we need. Stop watching Tv, scrolling through social media, Playing video games, deflating our brains, Manipulating our reality, distorting the truths, read books, newspapers, history, and you'll see. I know these future goals are difficult to attain, But to emerge out of our sea shells, we must confront our inner pains, Don't let temptation dwell, Don't restrict to the social norms, Live life the way you feel, Understand your body, push its limits and boundaries, until you realise there's none. Sacrifice your time to help the poor and unconditioned, to stand up on their feet, into a healthy lifestyle and routine. Live life with complete honesty, And I promise you, Nature will roll in ecstasy at your feet, You will laugh with all joy, with the realisation that, sacrifice and love were meant to be.
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9/9/2017 7:46:37 PM Jack Webster Posts: 255	Many of the great classical poets wrote personal essay to formulate and express their thoughts, and then wrote poems to distill the spirit and emotion that inspired the thought, or that would pass on the muse of that thought to the reader, using sensual detail and prosody. The essay was to preserve their views, but the poem was written as a space for the reader alone, to experience the muse of the thought through the senses and emotion. The poets did not use poetry as a substitute for essay. The thoughts and views expressed in this piece would be best preserved in personal essay. There is no space in this work for the reader to lose themselves in an experience. The work, as it is presently, is a list of instructions, exhortations, and injunctions. It talks at the reader instead of providing them something they can experience for themselves through the senses and the sound of the poem. The work, almost without exception, does not use figurative languagage such as metaphor or simile, nor sensory detail that is a vessel for emotional content, nor the prosody of meter, nor of rhyme (though the last isn't a requisite). The only device it makes its appeal to is use of line break, but without them the appearrance of being a poem collapses. The poetic core of this work is the battle between denial/ disengagement and the vitality of being present in ones reality and the role pleasure plays in providing a space in which we feel safe to engage, and release pain. I think this is essentially the foundation of all poetry - the call to be present, awake, and engaged in the human experience. This is the bedrock of poetry itself, and is excellent. The work mentions the natural world in passing. An effective poem might be describing a recovering addict taking a journey into nature and capturing the spirit of nature that benefits their mental health, not by stating such overtly but by creating lush descriptions of the natural world, and describing the inner and outer sensations the subject experiences. If the sensual and emotional content are captured well, and without editorial, the result may surely be the reader envying the time the subject of the poem spends in nature and the wish to go out and have a similar experience themselves. I think many people turn to poetry to have an experience they are missing in their lives, an experience that opens their eyes. I don't know many people that turn to poetry to be told what is wrong with their lives, or what they should or should not do. I think this work has lots of merit but should be rewritten in 3rd person as an experience of nature or something beautiful. I think the author might greatly benefit from exploring the classical tandem of essay and poetry as part of their writing process to allow a vessel for their thoughts and then create a poetic space for the reader and the senses. edited by superlativedeleted on 9/9/2017
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