The real me

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

The poem has real energy in its self-assertion, and a few lines land with genuine force. The water/fire image works well because it earns its logic: if the speaker is water, then being asked to extinguish someone else's mess becomes a pointed irony. The closing lines about the open door also carry conviction, and the moon/night image gestures toward something interior and private that suits the poem's subject.

The main challenge is that the piece relies heavily on declaration rather than showing. Lines like "I have grace, I am grace" and "be true to myself and glow" tell the reader what to conclude rather than offering an image or moment that would make the reader feel it. The anaphora section ("You wont find me at clubs...") is the strongest passage because it does show, through concrete specifics, who the speaker is. That technique could be extended further into the poem. A secondary craft note: the spacing between lines creates a lot of visual pause without a corresponding pause in meaning, which can make the poem feel stretched rather than spacious. Tightening the lineation, and attending to apostrophes and consistent capitalization, would help the poem look as considered as its best ideas are.

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Let me first look at what I found note worthy within your poem.

The metaphor of flames and water is good, it is the one part in the poem that feel poetic, and another part is, well, the three sections of the ocean, the moon and the sun. And the last three lines are pretty fine.

Aside from that, I only have one problem.

What do you mean?

I mean, there is no clarity I can see, I may be inept, yet I refuse to believe that it is due to my ineptitude that I am unable to conceive of any connection between the narrator saying that she is graceful and suddenly shrinking. What is the connection with shrinking and fire? What does the narrator mean by shifting from the ocean, the moon, and the sun, to a series of defensive arguments? And most importantly, what is dopamine doing in there???

In essence, I am saying, this poem reads like, a bullet point presentation masquerading in the guise of a poem.

Usually, poems connect their points and scenes through line breaks, but the line breaks here serve no purpose, other than what 'I perceive' as chaos.

It would be better if the poem would be divided better.

And one last point, the arguments put forth, need a bit more grounding. Needn't lean into imagery, but even if you tell, tell it like it is an inevitability, right now, it reads much more like the poem is merely wanting me to believe some random facts about the narrator.

Except that, I find the poem relatively fine.