Days Gone By

Squeals echoed throughout the neighborhood.
Running along the side of the house was a girl.
She was young, her beautiful hair curled with blond,
whose only fear in the world was her mom
finding her Crayola artwork on her bedroom wall.

Chasing after her, not far behind
was a boy;
bigger, and stronger,
whose only fear was the bee that stung him last week.
He was only trying to kiss her.
He had to, he was triple doggy dared.

This same boy was outside of her bedroom window,
pebbles from her garden weighing in his pockets.
One after another they left his hand
each on begging to apologize.
With the tap of each rock on the window

Came a memory.
Of the yelling, the tears,
and the lies she repeated to him over and over,
when she said she didn’t love him.

A mascara tear streamed down her cheek.
But this time it was a tear of joy.
The white dress, her father by her side,
the man at the altar she saw through her veil
was the man she vowed to love, years longer than eternity.

Hi there. This is not poetry. I don't mean to sound harsh, but this poem is simply a work of prose divided into stanzas with a lack of punctuation. The writing isn't the best either, considering a lot of phrases and sentences confuse me. This needs a lot of work, possibly a rewrite. However, it will help a ton if you proofread your work and have proper spelling/grammar. You've got a lot of unnecessary adjectives and you try to cram so much into one line. See my critique below; corrections will be in red.

Squeals echoed throughout the neighborhood.

Not a good way to open a piece. It just strikes me as very bland. For one thing, "squeals" doesn't make me feel intimated, but a word like "scream" would. Perhaps "A scream echoed through the neighborhood" would be better?

It came from a girl, running.

I rewrote this phrase for you for a number of reasons. The order of words just wouldn't do, and secondly, you had a lot of unneeded information, such as the fact that she's running alongside of a house. That's pretty redundant, especially if she's in a neighborhood, so just the fact that she's running will do.

She was young, her beautiful hair curled with blond,
whose only fear in the world was her mom
finding her Crayola artwork on her bedroom wall.

The whole striked out section can be deleted. Again, this is poetry, and does her beauty really matter? Does her one fear matter? No. You could probably tell us these these things if this was a story, but you really need here to get the message across would me, "She was young, and brave."

Chasing after her, not far behind,
was a boy;
bigger, and stronger.
whose only fear was the bee that stung him last week.
He was only trying to kiss her.
He had to.
He had been dared.

No real comments here, but just see my corrections above.

And then you decide to start another poem in your last three stanzas. Seriously, what is the connection? It first starts off with a girl, about 7 or 8 years old, as I imagined it, being chased by a boy, and then it turns into be love story that ends in a marriage? It all went so fast that there really wasn't any time for me to process it.

My Final Thoughts
It appears as though this has the workings of a piece of fiction rather then a poem. If you wish to continue with this, I say rewrite it as a story, because you seem to have so much information you want to tell us about the characters that doesn't fit into this type of writing.

Good Luck.
-Elinor

Hello  So…as I take this all in, I want you to know that I completely understand what you’re saying and where you’re coming from, however I think you might have understood my poem in the wrong way. I’ll point out why later, and I know that the fact that you understood it different than I meant to write it is my fault, being the writer.

First off, I’ll start as you did with the use of squeals vs. screams. You’re not supposed to be intimidated. As you mentioned, she is a seven-eight year old girl, and she’s being chased by her neighbor. I sort of used my neighborhood as the thought of this, because we have many little kids living on our street, and the boys are always chasing the girls and the squeals are to show that they’re having a good time. In your second comment, I also understand what you mean by unneeded information, and I will definitely consider a different way to write it, so thanks for pointing that out.

The reason why I described her beauty was because I was trying to paint an image for the reader. That’s what poetry does right? At least, that’s how I view poetry to do and I know many others do. Of course, maybe not all writers/readers do, but it’s what I try to do. I don’t want to sound like I’m brushing off you’re comments and not going to fix it, but I really would like to keep the Crayola artwork some where in the poem. Again, I was trying to show how she acted as a little kid, because you know how kids are always drawing on the walls, at least my sister does. It was to show her personality and so I would love to keep it. If you have another way I could write it to make it clearer I’m all ears!

The reason for my use of using “triple doggy dared” was because they are little kids, and little kids are never just dared, they are always triple doggy dared to do something, and if they are triple doggy dared, they think they have to do it. In those lines, I was trying to get into the minds of the little kids, to have a different perspective.

The connection between the stanzas is that it’s showing the years the boy and the girl spent together. First they are two innocent kids playing around, and then they grow up to be teenagers dating and in an argument, and then they are married .It’s the same two characters all throughout the story. Any suggestions on a better way to connect them? I personally don’t think this would be a good short story, at least the way I would write it. It may not be poetry to you, but it is to me. Do you have any suggestions, considering what I said about certain lines that I want to keep, that I could make it better? For instance, what, to you, would be a good connection? Thanks for reviewing!

Whoa, a lot take in. I'll PM you so this space can be used for other reviews.

-Elinor

I didn't realize how long that was! Haha, good idea!