[Certain]

Diode: This was a weird time to drop what might be the best verse I've read from you, though I think part of that comes from you having shook off quite a bit of rust in the past couple months. And this was the best verse I've ever read from you, if we're talking about the quality of the writing in a vacuum. Your character was well-developed, though you perhaps leaned too often on cliché artist descriptors. And your flow was on point. Did you know you don't often rhyme more than one syllable at a time? Did you know you're allowed to use more?! (Yes, it has to be said.) Where the story falls flat is in its relation to the topic. By writing about the artist rather than the art, you essentially ignored the content of the art until the very last line. Had you done a better job of explaining the boy's love of cars or his father's work as a mechanic or something like that, this would have all felt much more full-circle. Instead, much of this verse reads like it could have worked with just about any street-art topic. So that was disappointing, but it was forgiveable in the grand sense because there was no doubt that the verse connected with the topic, just not as directly as I thought you could have gone.

fresh: You have a stumbling block with phrasing, particularly misusing words. For example, "cordial" doesn't often describe a person as much as a situation, "conflicted" usually describes an internal battle and "rampantly invoking" just isn't a phrase that makes sense in general. Those instances and a handful of others made me stop reading to figure out what you meant. That becomes an especially big problem when your storytelling is as straightforward as this was. But the story itself wasn't so bad. I liked the dark twist of justice directed at Jamie much more than that of Johnny. The moral was laid on a bit heavy-handedly at the end, but I think it was necessary because your story thrived in exposition from the get-go. Had you engaged the reader with more dramatics and personality, you could have ended it with the crash and left a big impression. But the plain and sloppy writing is what ultimately served as your undoing here, despite a rather nice take on the topic.

Vote: Diode