Round

[bogpan]

A person is round

(there is no word for mud)
“God is round”
(whitewash my eyes, the poor ones)

it piles up
a layer after
a layer

whiteness 

and it gets clean

[first_high_of_the_day]

I have no idea what this poem is about. Who is your target audience?

I'm just gonna focus on one thing here. The quotes and parentheses are not giving the piece the effect that you think they are. Using punctuation to direct the reader can be clever and down right necessary. However, it's not done correctly at all in this piece.

normal line

parentheses
quotes
parentheses

normal
normal
normal

normal

normal

You give the reader a single line, before you start trying to force your punctuation on them. That's not good enough. Even worse, you hit the reader with 3 at once without context and then go right back to normality for the rest of the piece (which means you werent trying to set anything up, such as repetitive punctuation to give special attention/meaning to certain ideas).

Why is there a quote between two parentheses? Is there an example of this in life or in another work that I can relate to as the reader? This is so unnatural, so forced. Meaning, you're making it up. there's nothing the reader can draw from in their own experience to match up with how you're presenting things (either in this piece, in others, or even in life. parentheses quotes parentheses. what is that in the real world?). im left confused because i'm not sure what the writer intended. That's not what you want at the beginning of your piece. You want to win the reader's trust before you start "getting creative".

Point is, if this piece was written without the weird punctuation, it would be a lot more approachable. Would it drastically improve the piece. No. The punctuation has very little to do with the piece. It has a lot to do with you as a writer. Which is why I chose to focus on it.

[Brownlie]

A person is round

(there is no word for mud)
“God is round”
(whitewash my eyes, the poor ones)

it piles up
a layer after
a layer

whiteness 

and it gets clean

WARNING: The comments below are worse and more pretentious than Wikipedia. 

I'll engage in ad hoc semantics for my review because I'm a resident wanker here.

There is no meaning here for me. I could create meaning from a phrase "colorless green ideas sleep furiously," but then it's all in my head. I believe your poem engages readers in a similar practice, but this poem has less coherence than that phrase. So, while the sentence above is grammatically correct and meaningless, your poem is both grammatically incorrect and possibly still meaningless. In my opinion, abstractions (such as whiteness) have a greater chance of being meaningless because they can refer to so many things, or something like that. In addition, "it" in line 5 appears to have a sort of dangler effect and, consequently, I don't know what "it" refers to. So you continue on, after "it", with a series of spacial movements  with no discernible referent. What is being layered and piled? It should also be noted that if mud is in parenthesis that seems to suggest it cannot be the subject being piled. The quotation marks are also confusing. You could look up uses for quotation marks if you don't know them. I don't know. Like I implied before,  I'm blowing it out my hole here. . 

Here's how this would read without line breaks:

A person is round (there is no room for mud) "God is round" (whitewash my eyes, the poor ones) it piles up a layer after a layer whiteness and it gets clean. 

This presentation of your poem is absurd, but I think it shows the lack of cohesion which can be gained from a prosaic sentence structure that breaks up lexical units into grammatical sentences. However, even if this occurred, it's still hard to convey meaning. I suppose you could make an argument for the use of ambiguity in certain situations. However, I can't really think of an established poem that doesn't have any meaning.  Poetry is a highly coded language that builds off of previous works that are also ambiguous, and it's occasional need to be mellifluous also contributes to the fact that the whole ordeal can be very recondite. You can compound these supposed tenets I've put forth with the fact that poetry and poets may even oscillate between art for arts sake and a grand (sometimes divine or political) purpose for writing in a sometimes existential crisis for meaning. 

Now, there are some ways to use line breaks, though I am quite a dullard in this regard. Some ways might be to indicate a paragraph type delineation, to use enjambment, to generally redirect or surprise the reader, to use a regulated form, to modify the general rhythm, or to accentuate a word (such as "whiteness" which you seem to be doing). 

(I'm sure my grammar was bad in this comment.)
Thanks for posting.

[Erthona]

A person is round  (debatable, in what way? as a sphere or a circle, or just as well rounded?)

(there is no word for mud) (evidently there is as it is written here)
“God is round” 
(whitewash my eyes, the poor ones) (how many eyes do you have?)

it piles up
a layer after
a layer         (eyes, whitewash, God, mud, person, or roundness?)

whiteness    (Oh, I see, it is whiteness that piles up)

and it gets clean   (wouldn't Whiteness by definition be clean already. Seems like dirtiness would be indicated by discoloration)

___________________________________________________________________________

The first line says that "a" person is round. Since the indirect article is used, one must assume there are other persons that are possibly not round and maybe even something like square or oblong. 

There are many words on the page that convey little. Here are the things we know.

We know a person is round.
We know God is round.
We have no clue what this might signify if it signifies anything at all, or if the two statements are even connected.
We now that the poem asserts that there is no name for "mud."
We know that "it" piles up, but generally no idea what it is, unless it is whiteness.

That this makes little sense even in the most generous treatment of it has already been established by your other reviewers. Something like this generally arises from three sources:

the writer thinks he is expressing himself more clearly than he is; this is a common occurrence for the novice.
the writer has read widely praised poetry which appeared inscrutable to him do to his misunderstanding of it and so
he tries to be imitative, but only gets the superficial level and that is what he attempts to convey
it is an instance of who flung doo poetry. Where the writer throws up anything and hope that it sticks, mainly hoping to overwhelm readers with his bullshit so they will think it is great and say so (so as not to look stupid). This could also be called the "Emperor's New Clothes" poetry.

In a way this type of poetry is beyond criticism as there is nothing there to critique and the writer can defend himself by simply saying, well, you just don't understand. Implying, or not that the person is somehow lacking in the intelligence necessary to understand. This is not to condemn, it is simply to point out the defense mechanism that most often occurs in such situations. On occasion I still mutter this to myself, it is just I can no longer believe it.

The best I can offer is to try and see beyond your reaction of anger and feeling slighted and see if you can at least take on some of this to help you improve.

Best,

Dale    

[RooktoKing]

A person is round

(there is no word for mud)
“God is round”
(whitewash my eyes, the poor ones)

it piles up
a layer after
a layer

whiteness 

and it gets clean

Despite the criticism about the narrative clarity of this piece (which I absolutely agree with), I have to say, I see potential here. I like your use of shape (roundness), and color binaries (mud, whitewash, layers, cleanliness). However, the others are right. Without more clarity, this has no power. As a reader, I respond well to the imagery of this apparently dirty white thing (humanity? God?) that eventually gets clean, but I'm not affected by it because I have no idea what it means. TLDR: keep the "feel" of the imagery, make everything way way way clearer.

[LorettaYoung]

A person is round

(there is no word for mud)
“God is round”
(whitewash my eyes, the poor ones)

it piles up
a layer after
a layer

whiteness 

and it gets clean

Hi: I'm sorry, but I don't have an idea of what you are trying to get at. Except there may be a theme of mud becoming clean.  Your first four lines are perplexing. How does roundness relate to mud or cleanliness. Are you talking about poor vision being cleansed by whitewashing?  Are you saying that whiteness piles up by layers? The one accuracy I see here is it is true; as far as the thesaurus says there is no exact word for mud-what is the significance to that?  And, your punctuation is either partial or non-existent.  If you are serious, try to make your thoughts relate to one another, within a few lines; if the title is "A Person is Round";
you could talk about that, instead of whiteness. Somehow you need to get your words and thoughts to relate to one another. Think about each thought more deeply; or discuss it with someone to expand you expression.  I do wish you good luck, and appreciate that you are making an attempt here. If you want to write or express yourself, do keep trying and seek out techniques with advice.
Good luck, Loretta

[Bearsy22]

The idea of cleanliness and dirt is an interesting idea to write about. Especially in relation to God. But on the whole your lines are incongruous. I simply don't get what you are trying to communicate. But it is a good basis to improve upon. :-)

[Lloyd E Dixon]

Mind blowing, how little is said, and how much it makes one think. I like that it's short and no direct point, leaves it open for other's minds to wonder. Kind of want to poke and pry, instead of criticize.
Is it about the speakers nature to repeat, or be repetitive in habit? A "person" is "round" in nature, or behavior? The speakers proceptions of god, the opinions, or ideas of god are circular. In the mental picturing of God, that the speaker has, as each transition of the cycle becomes relative or noticed, in the speaker's life, the speaker feels as though god varies through a similar cycle. Therefore, relating to god, or acquiring a sensation that maybe god reacts to the speakers behavior, good or bad. Or maybe this is something the speaker is told. God responds to your faults, or deeds of any nature.
Clearly... the mud and whitewash layer upon each other. Whereas, mud is not being washed away but only covered by white paint. Symbolism for transgressions, and forgiveness, possibly. The speaker feels as though the transgressions are not lost, gone or cleared in washing, but only covered by white and then to be covered by another, or the same action or transgression. This only going back to the statement about cycles, or "round." Or maybe the whiteness pile upon its self, and the speaker feels as though once it's covered up completely it is clean, since it is forgotten.