Don't cry, love.

Oh you poor girl
You lost little sheep
Your only 13 and yet your head is swarming of awful things
Don’t smile at those boys,
They don’t like you for your smile
They want your pretty little body, sweetie.
Oh no don’t worry, you have time to learn
Stop your crying dear, there is no use right now
Keep your tears contained by your broken smile.
It’s gotten you this far, right?
Watching you now, from a higher knowledge than before
Oh you poor naïve little girl
Just wait, you’ll find him
Yes HIM.


To a younger version of myself

Hey Emmy and welcome to YWS. I know you just joined, but you should spend some time reviewing other works as well. After all, you can't expect to get reviews if you don't review yourself! When you do review, try to spend about 10 to 15 minutes on it and just explain why you did or didn't like a work

On your work, you generally don't want to bold words. The problem is that it really distracts the reader from the poem, and it's your poem and not bold letters that you want to stand out. If you want to emphasize certain words, then use italics instead.

This poem sounded very confused to me, as if you were trying to cram too much into too little of a space. The first two lines make it sound as if the gossip is directed toward the younger speaker, but then we find out in the third line that the younger speaker is the one doing all the gossip. You then go on to describe her as more or less an airhead, and yet later on, you make it sound as if she's frustrated with her school; that is, she feels smarter than everyone else around her. So is she an airhead or is she smart? Is she participating in the gossip, or is it directed at her?

There's also the issue of age here. I'm assuming the speaker is your age, 13. If so, this poem lacks a lot of power. At thirteen, you still are your younger self.

Then there's the irony implicit in the poem. You mock the younger speaker as thinking she was perfect, and yet it's pretty clear the older speaker still thinks that she herself is perfect. Otherwise, she wouldn't refer to the books as empty knowledge and take a condescending tone toward others.

Overall, the poem needs tidying up. It's too confused at the moment. What I suggest doing instead is turning it into two or three separate poems.

Hello! Yes, as Nate said, your choice of punctuation/font is a little messy, and it does detract a bit from an otherwise interesting poem. There are places where a comma or a semi–colon has been unnecessarily placed (especially that line above the tick–tock–tick–tock!), and others where one is needed (check out your last line–shouldn't there be a comma after "be"?

However, I think it has potential. This has a very strong, if not harsh tone. It works well enough, though you come across rather bitter.

Same old dictators, same ancient books that await for you
To crack open their bindings, to find empty knowledge that you left last year

This I like, though I'm not entirely sure why. There is something both craggy and graceful about it–probably to be attributed to the sound of the words and the look of them together. Regardless, I like it; are the 'books' textbooks and the 'dictators' teachers? Just curious, that's all.

Well, I think that's about it. You have some homework to do (that is, if you intend to revise it), but I think this poem has some good moments.

–antimelrose

Hey there! Welcome to YWS!

One thing I would say, just quickly, is that I don't think you need to put the words in italics. You should let the words emphasise it for you, really. It doesn't sound so great when the words are emphasised by the writer, as the reader might not want to say it that way, if that makes sense at all?
Oh, and remember the different between 'your' (a possessive) and you're (a contraction of the words 'you' and 'are').

I don't know about the message in this poem. The ending doesn't tie in with the rest of it, and the tone throughout doesn't really come across as very nice. It's supposed to be a message to yourself, right? So doesn't that mean you'd probably be nice? If it was a poem written about your younger self, then sure, I'd expect it to possibly be more bitter. But, I don't know, it doesn't seem to fit.

~Amy

Hi Emmy! So first off, I didn't like the italics in here, as Amy said let the words emphasize themselves. I'm guessing this like a message to yourself when you were younger, yes? The end I don't think really works, it's a little bland I think. But it's not too bad of a poem...not great, but okay.

~Hope