I promise

I promise.

“I, take you, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish, till death do us part.”

I promised you a mansion.
I promised you a mansion with manicured gardens.
I promised you a mansion with manicured gardens and a Jacuzzi.
I promised you a mansion with manicured gardens, a Jacuzzi and a room just for your shoes.
Made of gold.
You didn’t care.

I promised you flowers every day of the year.
I promised you flowers every day of the year. And a box of chocolate.
I promised you flowers every day of the year. And a box of chocolate. And a teddy bear.
I promised you flowers every day of the year. And a box of chocolate. And a teddy bear. And champagne.
Not just on Valentine’s.
You didn’t care.

I promised you the world.
I promised you the world on a golden platter.
I promised you the world on a golden platter, drenched in ambrosia.
I promised you the world on a golden platter, drenched in ambrosia with a cherry on the top.
You didn’t care.
You just wanted me.

I love the twist there at the end. It really pulls the poem in together. At first you don't really know what to think of the person, other than that she might be a really really really overmaterialistic golddigger, but the end puts it all in perspective. It's sweet

The only part that I didn't like was the repetition. I get how it's a poetic technique you're trying to use, but it got boring after the first stanza. After that, I just read the last bit of each line instead of reading it all out in a row. I'm not sure how you could fix that while keeping the same technique, but I think it needs to be altered just a tad bit. (The words are perfect, though. Don't change those.)

Repetition, when used wisely, can be a very effective way to accent your poetry. Unfortunately, you haven't used it very wisely here. There is nothing of substance to this poem; it's all trite, Hallmark-card images, being hammered into the reader's mind painfully over and over again.

There's really not much I can think of to improve this, I'm sorry to say--what little material there is with any amount of meaning or weight is just as cliche as the images you weight them down with. I would suggest starting over--and a good rule of thumb is, if the image is something you've heard, seen, or read before, you should think carefully before using it.

EDIT: Also, this might be of interest to you; depending on what you fed your girlfriend, if you served it to her on a golden platter, you could very well poison her.

I agree with Fand; this is babble. I don't care much for the cute twist at the end; it's a little too chick-flick for me. It has little depth beyond what I can read on the page, so you tell me why I should be interested! You want your reader to walk away from your poem with something--a new understanding, a new perspective, even a "Wow, I never thought of it that way before" thought in his head. Why should your reader be interested in the relationship between the speaker and the subject here?

Writing about love isn't a bad thing, but you've got to try to do it in a way special to you. I want to know what you think, not what Hollywood or Hallmark thinks.

Additionally, I noticed that you've posted several pieces recently. Please limit your posting-of-new-work to about two a week, okay? If you flood the site with your stuff, people won't want to read it. And remember to keep your ratio of critiques to new posts at 2:1!

-Colleen

Awww... cute ending.

Still, this seemed to me more of a list poem than an actual serious attempt at poetry, if that makes sense. I mean, I browsed over your other poems and you seem a little bit more concerned about word choice and whatnot, so I can only assume that this is a less than serious attempt at poetry.

What will make this poem a little better is if you make it mean a little more. I don't know... you have the rule of three here, which is good, but the things that you are promising to the girlfriend seem so trite and unrealistic that it's obvious that nothing will come out of it. And in a way, I think that is why the poem fails. It's not completely unrealistic so that it's a metaphor and it's not realistic enough for us to believe that this is truly what you said -- and meant -- to the girlfriend.

So figure out what you want. You can either make it realistic or completely unrealistic, but stick with something. I think consistency here is the best option. ^_^

Hope that helps!

I can't call this serious poetry, like all the other posters have said. See, when you kill us with repetition in list form it just gets monotonous. I can obviously see the emotional background behind this. Your significant other, someone you wish was your significant other. It's simple. In itself that's a problem too, the impact of it isn't that great either. I will say that it's cute and it you want to be a well-seasoned poet you need to go over poetic elements before you throw something together on Microsoft Word.

You know, this reminds me of the song "Twelve Days of Christmas". You know it? The repetition is similar to what's used in the song.

The ending is great. Just like Snoink, I went "awww" after reading. But like the others, I'm not very excited about the repetition, either. At first, I didn't really bother me, but then I started to think about it and thought you could just have written "I promised you all kinds of fancy things and you didn't care, because you just wanted me". It would've given us the same idea than this.

This was sweet, in a way, but I have to say I preferred your poem "Unrequited". But I'll keep on reading your stuff, you have it something there. So see you around!

Best wishes,
Demeter xx

Haha really catchy I liked it!

I really hate it when girls/guys marry someone just because of the things they have. This was like a breath of fresh air!

Extremely entertaining despite not rhyming. AWESOME!