Young Writers Society

There is a lot about this poem that I want to like, but at the same time, there's a lot about this poem that just feels off.

Slip past the gaurd, with his jewled crown,
for behind him is the jail where our desires live,
pacing, looking for a weakness.

For instance, these lines initially read like the jail is pacing and looking for a weakness. Considering jails are rather stationary in nature, that makes no sense as an image. You need to make it clearer that the descriptions in last line refer to the desires. Instead of "live" which is a rather oddly positive word to use in conjunction with "jail", "are confined" or "imprisoned" would make much more sense in-context.

Similarly, "looking" is rather weak a verb for the situation. "Searching", "hunting", "digging", or "probing" are all far more vivid and give a better picture of what the desires are like. For instance, "hunting" implies that the desires are more predatory and dangerous, while "searching" implies patience, and "digging", desperation and active determination.

This poem has a lot of general words that severely weaken it because, in using the more general word, you lost out on the opportunity to characterize and/or describe things even more vividly. In addition, because of how general many of the words were, the areas where you tried to use more descriptive words stick out as being out-of-place, with there being too many such descriptive words at times.

Blow on them and they waver, fragile lives tangled in deep secret wishes.

In this case, "deep secret" feels like a rather obvious stacking of adjectives. It also feels a bit redundant since secrets, by nature, tend to be hidden, which is what "deep" implies.

The lack of commas also annoyed me throughout the poem, especially in this line:

dotted with our blood sweat and tears be destroyed?

and wherever you used a period in place of a comma, especially at the end of lines. The periods in particular were abrupt, making the flow quite choppy.

In addition, the line breaks, except for the strands / dotted enjambment, were rather mundane. They all occur at natural pauses in the sentences (which isn't necessarily bad), and they contribute nothing to enhance the meaning, appearance, or flow of the piece (which is bad in a free-form poem).

I'd suggest experimenting with the line breaks a bit more and seeing how they alter the flow, meaning, and appearance of the poem. More consistent consistent use of commas, as well as fewer periods where commas are more appropriate, would also be a good idea. Lastly, considering your word choice a bit more deeply would immensely help this piece more than anything else. Right now, the word choice is nothing spectacular, and there is a lot of room for improvement.

The basic idea of the poem is solid, as are the basic images, however, right now, they're only basic, and they need more refining and/or fleshing out.