This is the child...

This is the child that no-one sees.
Lost in a long ago melody.

This is the child who dances in the sunlight,
Walking the chasm between the dark and the bright.

This is the child in the rain in October,
Her eyes painted black, she holds a four-leaf-clover.

This is the child who cannot be heard,
Onyx eyes on amber, she devours your every word.

This is the child born of a thousand lies,
This little darling who paints pictures with her eyes.

This is the child you hear in your dreams,
Those dead, dark eyes haunt you with their screams.

This is the child lost to fate...

No, I'm sorry...

You were too late.

Hey, I get to be your first reply!

So, I think this is a good poem. You have the bad and good sides of this child. It's kind of mysterious in a way. The only thing that I saw is that in your second line, you broke out of your rythem.

You said "This is a child no one sees. Lost in a long ago melody." Maybe you could start you second line with "This is a child lost in a long ago melody." It might make it stay together because you used that begining with every other line.

But, besides that, I still liked it. It flowed really nice and I think you have an overall good poem here.

Okay, the thing with this poem is, you have a great base, but your rhyme scheme is off in a lot of stanzas and you repeat "This is the child" just a tad too much. With these small problems it takes away from the true meaning of the poem.

Examples of the rhyme scheme:

This is the child who dances in the sunlight,
This is the child who you know will not be alright.

**The last line has too many syllables to flow well with the first line.

This is the child in the rain in October,
This is the child with the four-leaf-clover.

**"This is the child in the rain in October." It seems like you have one too many "in"s in this line. Maybe change it to "the rain of October." Also, these two lines don't seem to match. Why are they in the same stanza?

As for the use of "This is the child..." I think that you should use it once in each stanza. Just a personal opinion. Then it wouldn't seem as over used and you would have more room for fixing the rhyme scheme.

The poem sounds good for the most part. And I like your ending very much. The problem is, in the end I don't understand what I was supposed to get from this. What are you trying to get from your reader when they're finished? And, who is this child? I'm just wondering because I read the poem over and over and didn't come to that point where I was like "Oh, I see. I really understand this." I'd work on your focus for the poem a little longer and then come back to it.

PM me if you have any questions or need help with anything!
Keep it up!
~Rieda

Thanks you guys! Yeah, I wasn't really thinking to much about rhyming or much of anything, I really do need to revise this. I'll take into account everything you guys said. Thank you so much!
-Elise

I liked it, it was easy to read. And again like with your poem, Hide me.. I could really create mental images. I love the eigth stanza where you say.. "This is the child born of a thousand lies" I'm not sure why, it just really spoke to me.. =]

Oh, thank you! You're so nice! Hey, check out the RPG I started. It's called Elementals RPG. (sorry about the advertising)

This poem definitely needs to pulls its focus in more. What sort of impression is this poem supposed to give me? What's it supposed to be about, even? I don't come away from the poem feeling anything or knowing anything or thinking about anything, and in that it fails; you have some wonderful images, but the poem has nothing to hold it together. It feels like you threw a bunch of strips of paper together and glued them down; poetry takes time and effort, so concentrate on what you're trying to say when you revise this.

It also seems to lean quite a bit on its repetition; it's a fine tool to use, but only when it will benefit the poem. The repetition here seems to hurt the poem because it makes it sound juvenile and sing-songy. The rhythm and rhyme scheme don't help, either; if you're going to use these techniques, you have to be very careful. It's hard to use them in a sophisticated way and it takes practice, so practice! Here, yes, they make it sound childish, like a picture-book narrative. That's not good if you want to be taken seriously.

Good luck.
Colleen

your poem has a nice message. But I think your over used the phrase 'This is the child'. Maybe you can change it. Make the whole poem, not boring but very interesting.

I love it. It's my kind of poetry It means something to everyone but not always the same thing. With poems like this, you need to make sure it flows, also, they don't always have to ryme, just flow. "This child" is the main character, that usually points to yourself {the reader} or someone you {the reader} want to know. I love writing these late at night (I usually rip them up in the morning anyways) But I really, really like this. I've revised it to flow a tad better. I was going to quote but wrote this first so... sorry Basically I just got rid of the "This is the child" and used different words. "The", "Who" and "A" work really well but I probably used too many of them. And I don't blame you if you hate me forever for messing with your work.


This is the child that no-one sees.
Lost in a long ago melody.

This is the child you hear in your dreams,
The child who haunts you with her screams.

This is the child who cannot be heard,
A child who treasures your every word.

This is the child led to the noose
Who broke free, got loose.

This is the child who sings to your lover,
A child who loves another.

This is the child dancing in the sunlight,
A child you know will not be alright.

This is the child in the rain of October,
The child carrying a four-leaf-clover.

This is the child who paints with her eyes,
A child born of a thousand lies.

This is the child of the wind and the snow,
The only child that you don't know.

I agree with the suggestion of cutting down the "this is the child" to once per stanza. It's purely your choice, but I feel like it would help the flow of the story a lot.

The main things I noticed were (1) I didn't really get a good feel for the "child" character because I don't really see a unifying theme in the child's actions, and (2) the stanzas, rhythmically, seemed to sort of trip over themselves in places - hiccup, if you will. I know that not all poems are meant to be metered, but I always feel like rhyme and meter go hand-in-hand. You're very close to having a constant meter here - try counting out your syllables on each line and reading it out loud. Study a little iambic pentameter. I think it would really help to pull the stanzas together a little more solidly.

Individually, you have some great lines here. I really like the lines about "painting with eyes" and "lost in a melody". I just wish that the stanzas were tied together a little more firmly.

The ending doesn't seem to pack any punch. Look at it. What do you want to emphasize in the poem? The duel nature of the child? How mysterious and ambiguous the child is? I don't know... you have to decide. But when I finally came to the ending of the poem, it was almost a let down because you build it up with repetition and what not, but the ending doesn't burst out in poetic genius.

Also, this image is weird:

This is the child who sings to your lover,
This is the child who loves another.

Just because we don't see children as doing that sort of stuff. Just so you know...

And one more thing... I think this is more dramatic poetry than narrative poetry, seeing as you're not telling a story. PM me if you want me to move it.

Hope that helps!

I thought this was pretty great. Couplets are hard, but you did a pretty good job. Flow is always a nasty pain, and yours could use a little work (as many mentioned before) but I really loved it! It's great stuff, really.

Your imagery was so fantastic! This child is such an interesting topic and it gave your poem a really eerie, fascinating tone.

Overall, it was great! Editing is every writer's best friend, and if you're really serious about this piece, just tweak it a bit.

I really think it's beautiful.

~Nightfall

I'd have to interpret that as a very evil child.....
But I like it. It kinda' cunfuzzed me in the beging but... over all great and good luck here......
-em

Thank you all SOOOOO much for the reviews.
Yeah, I will get around to editing soon, but I've got finals ALL week, so I doubt I'll get to it before next monday.
Thank you all so much, I'll try to take what everyone said into account. I love you all, you're SOO great!
-Elise

P.s: a lot of you have mentioned the four leaf clover thing. Well, I guess what I was going for, was that this is supposed to be a very lucky child. She has a four leaf clover, for goodness sakes. (They're so rare, lemme tell ya if you didn't already know ). But as you can see from the rest of the poem, it isn't helping her very much. And the rain in October...how many know that autumn rain isn't very pleasant, atleast in America, where I'm from? And she's caught in it. More evidence to the fact that, although she's supposed to be a very lucky child, she isn't.Make sense? Probably not. I was in a very confuzzled mood that day.
Sorry if anything was unclear, lol. Revised version up soon!
-Elise

EDIT: Ok, I got the revised version done! I've replaced the old one with the new (and hopefully improved) version on the main post. Hope you guys like it!
-Elise

Ok, I'm not sure if I understand it..
But..
I think..
That I really liked it.
Hmmm.. curious.
Good job.
=]