[Certain]

@Adonis, hi.

I'm finally getting around to returning the favor from your voting on the Short-Verse Topical Tournament semifinals. So I read this verse a few times, and I enjoyed aspects of it. There's a good message here. But even ignoring some of the diction and rhyme issues that I'll discuss in my section-by-section breakdown, there was a bit of a content issue. You didn't seem to come into this with a clear-cut idea of how you wanted this verse to progress. Some of the narrative shifts and pronounce usage felt half-baked, as though that was the easiest way to write the verse rather than the best. You also dealt with a lot of abstract concepts but no practical application, which made the verse feel a bit detatched emotionally. You seemed to be writing from the perspective of a sentient being but providing only a sliver of the knowledge that sort of vantage point could provide.

And the first thing he said was.... “Let There Be Light”

Creatures with no home, still they pillage and roam.
Lived on there own with no ruler or throne,
No guidelines to break or disappoints to make.
No anointed charade crucified to hide the evil they crave.
Free from being pets; choke chains round the neck,
On a short leash being monitored and kempt.
This beautiful evil was a glorious thing.
No halos or wings flinging dust with each thrust.
Just darkness that's loved yet, vastly abrupt.

This was an interesting opener. There were two bad stumbles for the sake of rhyme: "disappoints" as a noun, and "vastly abrupt." But you painted a picture, as intentionally vague as it was, that brought me into the verse with the question of what I was reading about.

Just Imagine ...

You're you, minus constraints that defuse...
Every natural instinct you developed and used.
That right to think even when you are confused,
That right to eat until the land is consumed.
Yeah right; repel light and accept your own view.
But suddenly, he's telling you not to.

Laws that dilute our vital aspects,
Darkness is abstract.
Evil IS Live yet harnessed til absent.
Ponder this cancer.

The shift here into second person was a bit of a startle, for effect. "You're you" was a nice attention-grabber. I didn't like the last two lines because they seemed to be reaching to sound intellectual but didn't say much, to me.

We can scale Valhalla reaching new heights.
While Darwin taught us the strongest survive.
God proved his weakness was creating of lives.
Destroying them all, pouring tears from the skies.
Crackling thunder masking screams from each life.
Crashing waves, drowning out pain from inside.

The single-syllable rhyming here was really obvious and made this section clunkier than it had to be. Some minor tweaks could have allowed multiple-syllable rhymes that would have connected the verse better. There also were a few awkward moments. Moving the first line to be the third line would have read a bit smoother, though you'd have had to written another line to wedge between that and "Destroying them all." Also, "creating of lives" simply doesn't make sense but could have been turned around to be "creating our lives" and stuck with the "we" theme. But your theme generally is clear here.

See the mangled and warped souls set adrift?
The endless knocking; each skull tapping the skiff.
The faces of kids, peacefully, swimming about.
Drifting in crowds as they sink I'm so proud.
Return home to that darkness you've shelved.
I waited anxiously, never once had a doubt.
Sat, patiently, holding this apple I found.
You sampled my crown, now it's yours to keep.
The stairway to heaven is forgiving but steep.
Meanwhile my escalator creeps down without fault.

There were a lot of visuals here. Some connected, but there was a bit of a disharmonious clash with phrases like "I'm so proud" joined with the cynicism of some of the other lines. There's "waited anxiously, never once had a doubt. Sat, patiently," too, which in itself seems to contradict. The very concept of abstract imagery is difficult. You're attempting to describe things that only exist metaphorically, so asking people to grasp the sight can be difficult. I liked the last two lines, though they didn't work at all in the context of rap mechanics.

You've done no wrong ever, you only existed.

I love this line.

Your natural beauty is blackened and mystic.
His light is a glorious puzzle encrypted.
I can solve it for you; You are perfect as misfits.
Live happily.
Fuck being a casualty.
If you die and we meet, fuck charity

You should have ended with "misfits." The ending seemed like overkill to reiterate the point. And the profanity really didn't follow the tone you'd constructed.

Because you lived how you were made...carelessly.

This was a very thought-invoking line that I wish had been used as something more than tacked on, unrhymed, as a final thought after you'd already broken the tone of the verse to close it.