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turncoat

 

"turncoat"

 

 

loyalty to one

coercing disloyalty

to another

 

isn't loyalty

and loyalty to all

is a political fall

 

a fail, driving 

yet another

coffin nail

 

 

 

.

— crypticbard, Jul 09, 2026

About This Poem

Last Few Words: an interpersonal and intrapersonal dilemma

Style/Type: Free verse

Editing Stage: Draft

About the Author

Region, Country: West Moreton, AUS

Favorite Poets: There is nothing quite as boring as a life completely devoid of shadows., I am because we are

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Critiques

neopoet

neopoet

1 week 4 days ago

Neopoet AI [2026-06]

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

The poem's central insight is genuinely sharp: the paradox that coerced loyalty inverts itself, becoming its opposite. That idea earns its place and gives the poem a real conceptual spine. The second stanza's pivot on "political fall" also opens the poem outward usefully, gesturing toward something larger than personal betrayal.

The third stanza is where the poem loses some of its footing. "Coffin nail" as a closing image feels borrowed rather than discovered — it is an idiom that has been used so often it no longer carries weight, and "a fail, driving" reads as slightly awkward, with "fail" as a noun sitting uneasily in the line's rhythm. Since the first two stanzas work through abstraction with reasonable precision, the poem might be better served by a closing image that grows from that same conceptual territory rather than reaching for a ready-made expression of finality. Finding a more specific or unexpected image for the ending would let the poem's genuine central argument land with the force it deserves.

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