[oats]

the title grabbed me, and the writing propelled me to continue reading. content wise, it's obviously easy to connect with for most of us here, and many of the feelings resonate. at the same time, there's nothing new here. no interesting insight, no moment of impact. it lacked the mayo, so to speak, the zing that makes this different from any other good-not-great piece of writing. I'm not familiar with your previous body of work, but if I were to guess, I'd say this was a pretty light effort. not that there's anything wrong with that, sometimes it's just fun to write.

technically, it's well-crafted. it carves out a rhythm that's easy to follow and sticks inside those parameters neatly, which is no easy feat. basing this off of pure mechanics, you're clearly a capable rhyme-writer. here's the caveat:

something about this is very bland to me, to be honest. the writing itself is fine, but the cadence and structure of this was really basic. it probably sounds harsh, but this is the type of reason why I don't really enjoy topical writing anymore. it's super formulaic. it feels like you checked off all the boxes of what makes a good topical verse (which you did, by the way - this is very well-written), but it's just really forgettable for me. no real standout lines, no clever turns of phrase, no wording or descriptiveness that hinted at anything more than just the surface meaning. in a different light, I could see this being almost an homage to the rap fantasy type storytelling verses of the early 90s (think "Case of the Misplaced Mic"), but as it stands, this just doesn't do much for me.

sorry if this is overly critical, but you're good enough to deserve some honest critique instead of "yo this shit is dope." I'll say this: you have the ability to write well in this format, no question. enough so that I'll likely read future verses from you (I always haunt the OM, though I rarely leave feed). I hope that you'll take more creative licenses structurally and experiment more. take more risks, that sort of thing.

you should join the AOWL though.