Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Where oh where did the last forty nine years go?

SOS sent from my redoubt 
apartment b44 – nothing much to tout
years elapsed without accomplishing much

while holed up maintaining 
a reclusive mental workout.

whether yours truly
i.e. me doth attend

since I live in Schwenksville,
yours truly never did blend

into the crowded house of students,
but a poem I extend

just to keep thee in the loop,...
and who knows 
maybe make a friend
who might be able, 
eager and willing to lend

me their life story, cuz mine...
shot thru with loop holes 
that I try to mend.


 

Oh my dog and golly jeepers June 2027...

alternately titled: Methacton graduating class of 1977
demarcates ruffly
née exactly fifty years since
I got hashtagged
as "the quietest kid in his class"
true to form, yours truly
did not utter a peep
being chicken 19.8.9.20
to draw the eyes and ears
of those to see
and listen respectively
to a puny senior (junior
to current senior wordsmith here),
who managed nevertheless
(dear me) to rack up majority votes
as a passive accredited student
to garner such underhanded prestige,
who graduated with dishonor able meekness,
who now vacillates whether to attend
upcoming XLIX-th reunion
at The Eagleville Taphouse
across the street from
Lower Providence Community Library,
where truth or dare be told,
(no matter the bell tolls for me),
I never befriended any classmate,
nor dated any girls -
intimidated by their ravishing beauty
towards this nirvana seeker
pronoun syllable non-verbal student
possibly afflicted with
high functioning autism
joining mamas and papas
of offspring music icons like
David Byrne of the Talking Heads
and pop singer Sia,
who comprised offshoot
of Bad Company with me
have openly discussed
how the autism spectrum
influenced their distinct
creative styles and public performances,
which engendered heart felt kinship
unbeknownst to them
regarding yours truly
one Limp Bizkit, Foo Fighting Beastie Boy,
who shied away from the madding crowd
analogous to a skittish animal
bolting at his own dark shadow,
especially when the edge of night
cast an eerie image
bitta bing bitta bang ie est en
exaggerated frightful magnification
courtesy the outer limits
of the twilight zone
try as he might
no ways and/or means
existed to detach himself
from his own monstrous silhouette
and as he relives
those academically, emotionally
and socially torturous days of yore
fractured cubist anomalous
days of his life as the world turned
remembrance of things past
tortured psyche where sole asylum
acquired tranquility within the four walls
of boyhood bedroom home of mine
at 324 level road,
which ramshackle mansion
long since razed to the ground
even though I roof fused
to drive past Stella's Way -
formerly our repurposed driveway
before papa of mine passed away,
he spent about a dozen
dirty deeds done dirt cheap
years of his existence
at Normandy Farms
independent living facility
while McMansions sprouted up
(like mushrooms after a healthy rain)
in place of approximately
a half dozen acres of wood land,
where doe a deer...
frolicked joie de vivre
ala gamely like
there was no tomorrow
in tandem with other fauna
while yours truly
struck up the tune
turkey and the straw
fiddling around on his makeshift
all purpose instrument
while traipsing along
overgrown once maintained
formal edenic gardens
that still held faint traces
of manicured floral pathways
just a tad more than
one hundred years after
Francis Scott Key
penned the immortal
words land of the free
and home of the brave,
which concluded near sacrosanct
music that induced small hairs
along the spine to tingle
where pièce de résistance
vis a vis I imagined to hear
"The Star-Spangled Banner,"
while alone within
my spiritual wilderness
imaging the United States national anthem
heard amidst the din
of 1814 after the bombardment
of Fort McHenry, said famous phrase
celebrates the country's independence,
resilience, and the bravery
required to defend foundational liberties,
now subjected to hemorrhaging
linkedin to Project 2026
where the figurative
clock turned back
prior to the then revolutionary ENIAC
(Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Computer)
completed in 1945
at the University of Pennsylvania,
said bulky innovation
revolutionized technology
by executing thousands
of calculations per second—
making enormous stride-rite steps
cue shoe man where defeat
stood stock still as music accompanied
the ears of Allied powers
clinched against axis and coordinated
toe tilly tellingly tallied
battle weary troops covering
over 1,000 times faster,
where ground control to major tom
facilitated missiles to be lobbed
against the Axis powers
more accurately than any
calculating machine before
during World War II
primarily purposed to calculate
complex artillery firing tables,
though later used
for weather forecasting
and atomic energy research
turning the red tide of war
into bloody season of the witch
courtesy brilliant bombardiers
against bellicose belligerents.

 

— Jane A. Rug, Jun 04, 2026

About This Poem

Style/Type: Structured: Western

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?
Is the internal logic consistent?

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Polished draft

About the Author

Region, Country: PA, USA

Favorite Poets: Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, Robert Frost, Matthew Scott Harris, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sylvia Plath, Gary Snyder, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman

More from this author

Critiques

neopoet

neopoet

3 days 2 hours ago

Neopoet AI [2026-06]

The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:

The poem operates as a kind of long-breathed confessional monologue, and there are genuine moments within it: the image of the speaker unable to detach from his own shadow is vivid and emotionally true, and the central tension between isolation and the desire to connect (captured in the reunion hesitation) gives the piece a real human core worth developing.

The main challenge is structural. The poem accumulates material — the reunion, the childhood home, the Star-Spangled Banner, ENIAC, World War II — without a principle of selection or compression that would let any one thread deepen. The associative leaps are so rapid and wide that the emotional weight built in early passages dissipates before it can land. A useful next step would be to choose a single anchor image or moment — perhaps the reunion itself, or the demolished house on Level Road — and let everything else either serve that moment or be set aside for another poem entirely. The history of ENIAC and the WWII references, however interesting, feel imported from outside the poem's emotional life rather than grown from within it. Similarly, phrases like "bitta bing bitta bang ie est en" and the encoded letters in "chicken 19.8.9.20" register as private notation rather than crafted language, which distances the reader at precisely the moments the poem most needs closeness. Converting those moments into plain, direct statement — or into a concrete image — would make the vulnerability the poem reaches for feel more earned and accessible.

Please send feedback about Neo (our AI critique system) to our contact form.

Geezer

Geezer

4 days 7 hours ago

Yep...

I think that you have got it straight. It's history repeating itself, just like they said it would. Just a new slant on the old story, "You are wrong, I am right." The only thing that perturbs me, is the worthlessness of human lives; that we throw them away to achieve ever higher greedy demands from our government. Deep thoughts here, ~ Geez.

Join Neopoet to leave a critique

Neopoet is a free community of poets who critique and support each other's writing.