Darkness

This is a poem I wrote last night in a random fit of inspiration. Hope you like it.

The darkness of war
It follows us
From within ourselves
From within others

Like a thick blanket
It covers us
Obscuring all thoughts of hope

The darkness surrounds us
There is no escape
It presses in on us
Like the weight of a thousand pounds

It will entice you
Lure you into its dark cave
There will be no way out

We must find hope again
The light within each of us
To find it
Is to find peace

The darkness will come again yet
We must find our light
Our hope of peace

--------

My poetry isn't usually this morbid, but I figured I would give this a try. I welcome criticism.

-Sorceress

Hello again! *Waves* Uh, I liked it. Its okay, though, I usually don't care for happy, flowers in the field type of peotry so... (I really suck at criting poetry, sorry) Again, I thought it was good.

~Pol~

Hm... This was all right. A little bit dry, a little bit tell-not-show. I personally didn't find it the most engaging thing to read, but then my tastes are weird.

Quote:

It will entice you
Lure you into its dark cave
There will be no way out

Okay, technically there is and should be a way out of war. And this stanza is redundant to your next:

"We must find hope again
The light within each of us
To find it
Is to find peace"

Because didn't you just say there was no way out?

So anyway, this wasn't bad for a first poem. Hope to see more by you.

Peace, love, chocolate,
Muffin

It was too straightforward for my tastes. By the end there was nothing to figure out because, especially, of the lines:

We must find hope again
The light within each of us
To find it
Is to find peace

The darkness will come again yet
We must find our light
Our hope of peace

I'd get rid of the direct references to darkness and see how you can use what you have left to create something more thought provoking.

I didn't really like this. It's flat, unemotional, and as EnchantressMuffin said, very tell-not-show. Pretty pointless, in my opinion.

Your subject matter was good-- war is something we all need to think about, but this just doesn't work. It doesn't call any images to mind of what war actually means: pain, blood, suffering, emotional trauma, and hardship. But there's nothing like that. Just... emptiness. I felt nothing when I read this, and though I don't need to be told explicitly what is going on in a poem to be able to visualize it, I don't see anything in my mind's eye about the point you are trying to get across. (And, I assume there is a point to this.)


Quote:

Like the weight of a thousand pounds


Kind of a crappy metaphor, I think. What weighs a thousand pounds? Is a horse sitting on top of us? Should we fear this proverbial horse of doom?


I didn't think it was morbid, I thought it was just absurd.

~Butter In My Hair~

Ok, the first thing that struck me about this is that there is no punctuation.I'd punctuate like this:


"The darkness of war
follows us (omit "it", you don't need it)
from within ourselves,
from within others.

Like a thick blanket,
It covers us, (I would reverse these two lines)
Obscuring all thought of hope.

The darkness surrounds us.
There is no escape.
It presses in on us
Like the weight of a thousand pounds.

It will entice you,
Lure you into its dark cave.
There will be no way out.

We must find hope again,
The light within each of us.
To find it
Is to find peace.

The darkness will come yet again.
We must find our light,
Our hope of peace."

To be honest with you, this sounded more like you were talking about a powercut than a war. Really think about war, and use stronger images.Think of the blood and the screams and the gunshots, and how bodies are left to rot on the gore-soaked ground.Really try to feel fear, and channel it.
You overused the words "darkness", "light", "hope" and "peace", which weakend the poem, and there are much better words out there for you to use.
Write from your gut, not from your head. Hope this helps.

This is like.. Gravy without the chicken stock. Bland and nothing too special, but still altogether nice.

I'm ont a large fan of the depressing stuff, poetry or otherwise, but this wasn't too bad.

What I will say is, is that you revise your first verse, as I didn't think it flowed all too well with the rest of the poem. I think this is because of the last two lines beginning with "From within". This did nothing from me and slightly deterred me to read the resr, but I did and I was pleasantly surprised.

Good work, but could do with slight improvement.

It was kind of hard to tell what you were talking about at first but later I found out.

It was okay you could make it better, tell more about why war is bad if you want this to be an anti-war thing.

Thething912

Pretty much everything that can be said has already been said, but I'd just like to point out that there are a billion poems out there with the title Darkness. There's nothing wrong with it, if you happen to be very attached, I'm just saying that you might want to consider something more unique to your poem. Something that catches the eyes, because if I'm like most people, most people scroll down the list and look for something interesting. Darkness as a title is kind of bland.

Anyway, heed the advice of the other writers. They're right.
Good job, and I'll definitely be looking out for more of your work
Aussie