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No one's home.
Another night, temperatures drop into the negative. Working people sleeping in their cars, while politicians tell us it's not as bad as they say it is.
Little children huddle together under a pile of blankets because the heat is off .While utility companies work with corporations and lobby politicians to raise the cost.
The food bank is closed until next week. And mom's whole paycheck went to pay rent. Her hungry children now, wonder when they will eat next.
Dad died of a fentanyl overdose and mom is not okay. So the doctor prescribed medicine that took her soul away.
All this, while society turns a blind eye, it's P diddy Donald Trump or the Epstein files, oh, it's get a job or it's not my problem or I didn't know.
Narcissism is at an all time high, while compassion is at an all time low. And where are the people of God? Oh, where did they go institutionalized? And no one's home.
About This Poem
Last Few Words: This poem is not an attack on religion Or society. Nor is it a political statement It is a call to reflection.
Review Request Direction:
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Review Request Intensity: I appreciate moderate constructive criticism
Editing Stage: Not actively editing
Critiques
neopoet
1 week 2 days ago
Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem's strongest asset is its accumulating structure: each stanza introduces a fresh casualty of the same systemic failure, and the sequence from frozen cars to closed food banks to the prescribed medicine that "took her soul away" builds a genuine momentum. The decision to move from external circumstance to internal collapse over the course of the poem is sound, and the final turn toward institutional religion—asking where the people of God went and answering "institutionalized"—lands as the intended indictment.
The title earns its weight by the close. "No one's home" works on at least two registers: the literal emptiness of the foreclosed or unheated house, and the spiritual or moral vacancy the last stanza names. That doubling is the poem's best effect, and it is worth protecting by making sure the rest of the poem points toward it rather than competing with it.
The central craft issue is the gap between reportage and image. The first four stanzas largely tell the reader what is true—working people sleep in cars, utility companies lobby, the food bank is closed—and these statements, while accurate, ask the reader to feel without first letting them see. The exception is the line "took her soul away," which does the work of metaphor and is more affecting than the surrounding declarations. Consider where else a single concrete image could replace a summary. "Mom's whole paycheck went to pay rent" states the math; an image of what the empty refrigerator or the unopened mail looks like would let the reader arrive at the math themselves, which is more powerful.
The fifth stanza is where the poem is most at risk. The catalog of "P Diddy Donald Trump or the Epstein files" introduces proper nouns that are likely to date quickly and that shift the register from lament to topical commentary. More importantly, this list competes with the human figures—the children, the mother—who have earned the reader's attention in the preceding stanzas. The dismissive quoted voices that follow ("get a job," "not my problem," "I didn't know") are effective and could carry the stanza on their own; the celebrity names dilute them. Cutting the proper nouns would sharpen the contrast between private suffering and public distraction without anchoring the poem to a particular news cycle.
The penultimate move, "Narcissism is at an all time high, while compassion is at an all time low," is the one place where the poem states its thesis outright. After five stanzas of evidence, the reader does not need the abstraction; the dramatized scenes have already proven it. Trusting the images to carry the argument, and ending closer to the concrete and the title's double meaning, would give the close more force than the explicit diagnosis does.
On the line level, watch the punctuation and spacing, which are inconsistent—a missing space before "While" in the second stanza, stray spacing elsewhere. These are small, but in a poem this direct, the surface should be clean so nothing distracts from the content. Finally, the rhymes that surface intermittently—"away" with the implied cadence, "low" with "go"—suggest the poem may want a more deliberate relationship to sound. Decide whether the rhyme is structural or incidental; right now it appears only at moments of heightened feeling, which can read as either intentional emphasis or accident. Committing to one approach will steady the poem's music.
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Frank Johnson
1 week 2 days ago
I have yet to receive a critique.
I've poste three poems and have not gotten a critique from the a I
Geezer
1 week 2 days ago
After reading...
the poem, I definitely get the message of the title.
I beg to differ that it is not an attack on certain segments of society.
"Good Men" doing nothing, seems to be the axiom here. I do agree with the assessment of Narcissism being at an all time high, and the feel that there are no "people of God".
I am not sure that this qualifies as a poem, but hey, what do I know? I was impressed with the plain language and the vivid images of hungry kids and
Mom on Valiums or some such. ~ Geezer.
Frank Johnson
1 week 2 days ago
Thank you.For reading
You should check out the spoken word version on my facebook reels. I Use music and audio video images to add layers of expression, to these poems. I'm a painter and a singer-songwriter. When it comes to poetry, I'm primarily a spoken word guy. I Appreciate your feedback and would love to hear your opinion on some of the reels I have made.I NEVER use. a I ghostwriters , or a I voiceover EVER . Everything.I create at the very least , is real.
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