The King's Last Hope

wisemann210 wrote:Lin : Your challenge is to write a poem about a dying tree who's fruit is magical.

Dancing down, the leaves tumble
Twirling with the sprinkling rain
Dead as the rat's dying carcass
Lying on the side of the road

Crouched down on the ground
The little girl peers with her blue, curious eyes
Staring at the presence above her
Standing high among the lower beings

It's drooping leaves spread around
A curtain, hiding the blackened bark
The chirping happy birds are no longer around
Not worthy in the presence of one greater

The little girl feels the aura of the tree
A different feeling than with any other
It's different, yet powerful and mighty
She warily eyes the tree as she steps away

One by one, the leaves fall off
Fall and blend in with the wet dirt
The mighty tree's power grows dimmer and dimmer
A dying king of the skies

The girl sniffs and ponders on leaving
A dying tree to it's end
A glimpse of a rainbow sphere
Brings her closer to see

The tree's source of power
And offspring of it's mighty
A fruit dangles behind the once-there leaves
Now, nothing to hide it's greatest treasure

The little girl licks her chapped lips
An obvious forbidden mystery
Yet, temptation draws her nearer
To taste the tree's power

She arrives at the foot of the king
Not as dominating as before
Stretched up on her tiptoes
Reaching for the forbidden fruit

The little girl plucks the fruit from the limbs
The wind swirls around her, tangling her hair
Like the tree is breathing out it's last breath
The final straw for it's fighting battle

She skips away, holding the tree's last hope
The farther away she goes, the worse the king becomes
The leaves dropping at a faster rate
The dark bark starts to peel and fall

The little girl stares at the splattered colors
Her tiny hand carefully handling the fruit
She opens her mouth slightly
And takes the first bite

The magical taste explodes inside her mouth
A variety of tastes, both sweet and sour
Hungry for more, she takes another bite
Greedily, the juice runs down her chin

She licks her sticky fingers
Savoring each last taste
The feeling of confidence, she skips away
The tree hidden away in her thoughts

The next day, a mother's pitchy scream echoes
No heartbeat sounds from her little girl
Covered in rainbow colored spots
Her blues eyes frozen in pain

The same day, the last leaf falls off
The king now bare and naked
It's shameful appearance, trembles with the wind
And dies with it's last hope

*

Er, attack me with criticism please. I'm looking for any comments. Just attack.

*Lin

Lin! Here we go. I'm in the mood for brutal honesty today, so bear with me if I sound harsh.

Dead as the rat's dying carcass
Lying on the side of the road

If the leaves are as dead as the rat's dying carcass, than that means that they're not quite dead yet, correct? I dont know. These two lines are a bit funky. The repetition of 'dead' and then 'dying' throws off your rhythm, even thouh I like the analogy of the carcass.

-Ing words

Ooh. I'm not really liking this overload of -ing words. Staring, standing, drooping, chriping-- it's just too much. Find a way to get this imagery across without so many of the same type of word. Try something a bit less jarring-- something less obvious.

A different feeling than with any other
It's different, yet powerful and mighty

I'm sure you just missed that, but the repetition really doesn't work here. >_>

A dying king of the skies

Ooh, I like that line! =D

Alright, so. I'm going to stop here in the middle of the poem and bring up capitalization. You capitalize the first letter of every line here, but I really don't think that's giving your poem the best effect possible. I think it would be to your benefit to only capitalize when you actually start a new sentence, you know? It joins the lines more, connects them into pure and compelte thoughts instead of breaking them up into just lines of words.

And, of course, I think this could use some punctuation, too. In some poems that are heavy on the emotion, it's okay to go without commas and periods and such. But in a poem like this, that mainly tells a story, those kind of stops are necessary for your reader. We can't just have line breaks to tell us when a thought ends. We need to whole kadoodle.

Covered in rainbow colored spots

I don't know. This symptom doesn't seem magical or serious enough for me. The poem turns into a sort of joke when you think, "Oh, she's covered in ranbow polka-dots! Tee-hee!" But really, it's not a joke. It's supposed to be the tragic punishment for taking from someone who has already lost so much, yes? I like the parallels you drew between this and the story of Adam and Eve, the tree of good and of evil. I just think there needs to be another ailment that causes her death rather than being spotted with rainbows.

Maybe she just freezes as a child, looking like she's only sleeping? Something more magical, but less fantasy-ish. If that makes any sense.

Alright, overall, I wasn't too crazy about this. I think the meaning and the story was wonderful, and some of your stanzas had beautiful description, but I think part of my issue was the stanza-formation. With such short lines, you end up having a kind of choppy flow, and you can't have long, flowing ideas and imagery with such short lines. You didn't use rhyme, so the poem didn't have ryming to tie it together. I was just...underwhelmed. I wanted some of that amazing imagery. I wanted metaphors that dazzled me and similes that blew my mind away. While this certainly wasn't a bad poem by any means, I think you could spruce it up with some really interesting analogies and descriptions. Use that metaphor of the tree/king. Mention how it roars in battle with the kingdoms around it. Something like that.

I hope this was helpful, Linkidy-Caterpillar! ^^ I understand that you had a crazy time limit, but I'd love to see this brought up a notch to something truly remarkable.

~Evi