[Couch]

This is the first piece of writing I've posted in this forum, and I'd like some feedback. Whether you love it, hate it, or don't find it to be anything special, please include some sort of critique in your response. This poem was written in the style of Walt Whitman's I Sit and Look Out as part of an English project for school. Whitman's original can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/142/83.html.


I sit and look out upon all the predestined graves of a nation divided.
I try and drown out their perpetual polemics, aimless arguments that nobody wins.
I look away from shells of self-righteous politicians who willingly drown in deceit and cupidity.
I bear witness to scars of civil war, brother pitted against brother, mother versus son, while leaders guiltily plea innocence.
I watch with horror as the last honest men are so savagely cut down to become unknown martyrs.
I feel the unwarranted burden that is so eagerly passed onto the next unknowing generation.
I smell fear of a distrustful people, instinctively questioning every of their leaders.
I hear cries of civil unrest, revolution; furious, yet hopeful, so blissfully ignorant.
All these – copious corruption, political pressure, cultural collisions, social suicides – show me a country cracking at the seams.

See, hear, and am crying.