P.T.S.D/ The harbinger.

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

This poem confronts a harrowing subject directly, and its strongest moments come when the imagery is concrete and physical. The opening stanza's "unseen hand that grips your throat" works because it translates an abstract dread into bodily sensation, and the same instinct serves you well later with "It sits like a lead weight in my chest." These tactile images do more to convey the experience than any abstract naming could, and they suggest you should trust physical detail over statement throughout.

The most arresting line in the poem is "demons haunt me wearing faces of the deceased." It is specific, surprising, and emotionally precise in a way that earns the rest of the stanza. Consider whether other passages can reach for that same particularity. Phrases like "all-consuming hell" and "this pain" are doing less work because they tell the reader the feeling rather than rendering it. You already know how to render — the throat, the chest, the dripping brow, the gripped pistol. Lean further into that mode and let the named emotions recede.

There is an unsteadiness in point of view worth examining. The first stanza moves between "you" and an implied speaker, then the poem settles into "I" and "my." That early second person creates distance that the rest of the poem does not maintain. Deciding early whether the reader is being addressed or whether this is a closed interior monologue would tighten the whole.

Structurally, the poem builds toward the turn from torment to prayer, and that movement is sound. The shift at "Praying, once again" gives the suffering a direction and a listener, and ending on a question addressed to God is a defensible choice — it leaves the reader inside the unresolved moment rather than offering false closure. The repeated "Oh God" in the final lines, however, risks losing force through repetition. One invocation, placed precisely, would carry more weight than two.

Attend to line breaks and punctuation, since they currently work against the poem's pacing. Several lines run together where a break would let an image land, and the commas in places like "I contemplate, turning the pistol on my self" interrupt rather than guide. Read the poem aloud and break the lines where breath and meaning pause; the form should reinforce the halting, anxious rhythm the content describes rather than fight it.

Given the gravity of what this poem describes, it bears saying that the value of writing it is not only literary. If the feelings rendered here are present and current, the support of a counselor or a crisis line is worth seeking alongside the work of the poem itself.

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The only possible accidental thing that stood out to me was “my nightmares. and” with the period/lowercase “and” there. 

Other than that, this reads like prose-poetry to me, and I’m honestly a huge fan of prose like this when it fits the wound, and I think it does here. First though, I hope this is something you’re finding your way through. If not, call 988 or let a physician know. I was diagnosed a few years ago with severe depression, lifelong symptoms according to my doctor, and writing became one of the ways I coped. I’m lucky that I don’t feel that way today, but the diagnosis sticks, I guess. 

Back to the poem: I wonder if it might benefit from a sudden break here or there, but that might just be me speaking through my own style. I don’t think I have much specific advice. Read it over, aloud if you can, and you might find one or two pressure points to adjust, but this feels close to final to me.