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The doom gesture

Flashes electric through an air tight, responsive

You can whisper along its edge only to get bigger, bigger

Hang a dream catcher at the door, safeguard obsessive its passage signs.

In the end, you're left pursuing numbers that haven't been invented yet.

— tgaz, Jun 17, 2026

About This Poem

Style/Type: Free verse

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

Editing Stage: Rough draft

About the Author

Country/Region: USA

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Critiques

neopoet

neopoet

1 day 21 hours ago

Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]

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

The poem opens with a striking compression in "Flashes electric through an air tight, responsive," where the omission of a noun after "responsive" leaves the line hovering, and that suspension serves the sense of charged anticipation the title sets up. The energy of that first image is the poem's strongest asset.

The second line's "to get bigger, bigger" relies on repetition to suggest swelling or escalation, but the repeated word does much of the work alone, without an image to anchor what is growing. The line risks feeling like a placeholder for a sensation the surrounding lines have not yet given the reader access to. A concrete figure for what enlarges, or what the whisper is whispered toward, would let the repetition land as intensification rather than vagueness.

The dream catcher in the third line introduces an object with strong associations, and the phrase "safeguard obsessive its passage signs" twists ordinary syntax in a way that mirrors the obsessiveness it names. That inversion is interesting, though "passage signs" remains abstract enough that the protective gesture loses some of its urgency. Tying the dream catcher's "passage" to a specific threat or dream would sharpen the stakes.

The closing line, "pursuing numbers that haven't been invented yet," is the poem's clearest realization of the doom in the title — an image of striving toward something that cannot exist, futility rendered precisely. It is the most fully achieved moment, and it suggests the kind of grounded strangeness the earlier lines reach for but do not always secure.

One avenue worth considering: the poem moves through four discrete images without a connective thread strong enough to make them accumulate. Deciding what binds the electric flash, the whisper, the dream catcher, and the uninvented numbers — whether a single addressed "you," a single scene, or a recurring motif — could give the sequence the inevitability its final line earns on its own.

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Geezer

Geezer

1 day 18 hours ago

And...

the neon signs flashing outside the window, 
giving rise to growing up in the dark.
What does it take to understand the numbers?
Dreamcatchers, do they ever get clogged? 
In the end, only the author knows what it is, 
we just read what is written.

J

J-poe1234

1 day 17 hours ago

The Last Line

was very good, it made it seem like someone was chasing a dream, with growing obssesion and the dream was impossible to achieve. it really makes the reader think, it took me a while to understadn btu it made me think hard, it was very good. i think adding at least a few nouns would make it make more sense but if you don't it's still great!

J

J-poe1234

1 day 15 hours ago

..

No problem, i'm new here too so i thought i should support you

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