Lonely When you Left

The golden elixir has
spilled for only you.
Where can I
look for solace
when you have gone away?
I have kept my promises,
my debts are all settled
but still you left me here alone
wishing you stayed.

I remember before the war,
before the firing
and crossed swords.
I haven't forgotten
who you once were
or what we hoped we had in store.
I thought I meant as much to you
as you will always mean to me.
But when you leapt,
far to eager,
into the waiting arms of those beyond,
I knew all you had ever
wanted was the drink
from their fair hands

And so the golden rain did fall
the potion to just you.
Was it healing or hurting,
this gift from above,
was it worth it

I am delicate
more so than lace
and ash
and dreams
more than the thinnest floe of ice
or the brownest leaf, fallen from the tree

When the draft,
glinting with metallic
was poured out for you
I watched the transformation
and now my mirror
shows a reflection
defected and antiquated.

All that left to say now is
I miss you.

Okay, so I really enjoyed reading your poem! It's really, really good!

SilverSharpie wrote:The golden elixir has
spilled for only you.

I really liked this part! It was pretty!

SilverSharpie wrote:I am delicate
more so than lace
and ash
and dreams
more than the thinnest floe of ice
or the brownest leaf, fallen from the tree

This part was awesome! I like the figurative language used here. It adds life and imagery to the poem. Nicely done!

SilverSharpie wrote:All that left to say now is
I miss you.

This is a really great way to end this poem! I liked it and it added closure to the whole thing!

Okay, so I really loved your poem. It was awesome, well-written, and I didn't find any errors in it. Keep writing poetry! You're good at it!

-Emily

This was kind of strange for me. At first, I like it, because the flow was smooth and your rhyming scheme didn't seem so forced. After the first stanza, however, it definitely became just that (forced) and you sometimes even dropped the rhyme altogether, which in turn made the flow choppy and bizarre.

I would do one of two things: Read this out loud to yourself and listen for the lines in your poem that are too long, too short, or just plain weird, and then alter them so that the rhyme and beat are even and smooth. That, or you could ditch the rhyme completely and focus more on syllable count and rhythm. Either will challenge you to be better.

Hope I could help!

-Knightley

Hi there!

I really don't know how to critique the technical side of poetry at all since I don't write it. But, that said, I do have three nitpicks:

my debts are all repaid
but still you left me here alone
wishing you would have stayed.

The stayed/repaid part threw me because there's no consistent rhyme scheme over the rest of it.

I haven't for gotten

"forgotten"

All that left to say now is
I miss you.

"All that's"


Ok, so overall I really like this! It's very pretty . I don't really know what advice to give you though. I'd suggest asking someone who likes critiquing poetry to do a more in-depth analysis. (If you need me to I can PM you some names)

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful, and if you ever need another critique (especially if it's a short story, though I'll look at anything) PM me!

Lupis

The golden elixir has
spilled for only you.

These lines are pretty and all, but what is the golden elixir, and why is it significant? You mention it once and never again which makes me think that you could drop this altogether. Otherwise, I suggest you refer back to and elaborate upon the golden elixir elsewhere in the poem.

who once you were

This line struck me as awkward. I suggest using "who you once were" as it's more conventional and less likely to cause your reader to trip up.

defected and antiquated.

I believe you meant "defective". "Defected" is a verb while "defective" is an adjective.

Also, I'm wondering why this stanza has almost no punctuation. The rest of the poem is punctuated properly for the most part, and the lack of punctuation in this stanza is particularly confusing since you list so many things.

All that is left to say now is

Be careful that you aren't missing words. In poetry, especially, because it usually is quite short, your readers tend to notice small mistakes like this more readily, and they tend to be less forgiving of them.

This last stanza felt like it came out of nowhere to me. If you were to more directly connect it to the previous stanza, maybe mention how the narrator no longer has her beauty, then the shift in ideas will flow more smoothly.

Overall, you had a number of rhymes throughout the poem that sounded strange because there was no pattern to the rhyming. I suggest going back through and seeing if you can reword things so that there's at least two, if not more, lines in between any rhyming words.

Another thing I noticed was that a number of your lines didn't make sense when put into sentence form. A good example of this are the lines "I remember the antebellum- / before the firing / and crossed swords." You're missing a what (a time, in this case) to the before. Also, I'm not sure if the dash is the best piece of punctuation to use here, but it's more an issue of personal taste in this case.

In any case, a good way to make sure that your poem makes sense (and is properly punctuated) is to write it out in prose format to check before putting it back into poem form. Reading your poem aloud while it is still in prose form can also help you check your flow -- if everything sounds smooth, then you're good. If not, try reading it aloud in poem format, and if it still sounds off, then there's something that needs fixing.

One other thing you could use work on is imagery. The golden elixir bit was a nice attempt, and I think it would work really well if you expanded upon it, but for the most part, you had a lot of images that you jumped around with, which made things difficult to visualize.

For example, you did a great job with describing the narrator's delicacy as like ash, but you also described it as like lace (which is overused), the thinnest floe of ice, brownest leaf, and dreams (also overused, and vague). That's six vastly different descriptions and images, and it's hard to reconcile them unless you show how they are related. If you were to relate each of these images more concretely to the idea of delicacy, they could work. For instance, mentioning just how each of the aforementioned is delicate will make that connection apparent while supporting and enhancing the original idea of delicacy.

The main thing to remember about imagery is that it must be concrete and easy to visualize. Imagery is what makes abstract concepts like love and emotions tangible. Without a ground in something solid and specific, imagery falls flat. You have a number of good ideas for imagery in this poem; right now, it's just a matter of expanding upon them and showing how exactly they relate to the concept you're writing about and how they relate to the other items of imagery you've already mentioned.

I hope that was helpful.