You are uncontainable - 
you burst into innumerable pieces.
Each fingernail, toe, smile
Sizzles upon the pavement.

poeticallytaken

Pressure

Jun 4, 2026

June 2026

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perig3e

First you have "Everything rising"  then you throw in cheek by jowl "the sunrise of your soul"  You're cooking up unsavory word hash.

Second line "I fear that I'm afraid"  I fear you wouldn't recognize a redundancy if it stared you in the mirror!

"This goes far too deep"  I beg to differ,  The only thing more shallow than this poem, and far more valuable w0uld be a blank sheet of paper/ monitor screen.

Words have meaning.  Have respect for them and accidental readers. 

jeffrey-robin

george again cuts accurately to the core

yet

you ARE trying to "say something"....real

the fear of another person and their true emotions is real

and threatening

"innumerable pieces"

now...to the chase!

you juxtapose this person's relationship to you with their relationship to everyone

WE NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE REALLY AFRAID OF

(as do you)

your

"the only thing to fear is fear itself".....too weak

B_Lid

It seems the constructive critical pressure was able to bring a diamond into being, and even though I love so much to occasionally happen upon one of George's bitingly funny critiques- there is no need for this poem to be branded any longer for what it is not, unfinished.
Great read, I really liked the boiled down images, thanks for sharing Alex.

lucan

It sounds as if what started in vagueness came down to this interesting and slightly disturbing image. We don't NEED to know what you are afraid of, anymore, only this result.

The start of the&nbsp;&nbsp;second and fourth lines perhaps should either both be capitalized or downstyled; and "innumerable" does not strike me as the best possible word for sound and sense in this context... since you've changed so much, and come this far, you might change that, too. Or, if you must keep it, would "innumerable shards" or something like that work better? I also like the fingernail and especially the smile, but the toe, not so much. That's just me. 

Great to see someone who understands what to do with a critique, and knows it's still Alex's poem; let it say what it must. It's almost home.