Observations / The Tree

This is a piece I wrote a year ago, it's not brilliant but I suppose it's somewhere to start.
I would also like to apologise to new readers.
The comments present at the moment are about a completely different poem which I replaced with this one because....
well because it was terrible (though i guess this one isn't much better, I'll let you make your mind up about that).

I stand like a sentry on the hillside.
Watching,
Waiting.
Year after tireless year.
Waiting for the inevitable end that awaits all things
Which dwell on God’s green Earth.
I never sleep nor tire.
I age slower than all other things
And it is through this
That I have been here longer than any thing alive now
Could ever remember.
There were others like me, once.
But they have been cut down
Long before their prime.
I hope I reach the end when God intends me to,
But I am sure I,
Like so many before me,
Will be hewn down and taken away
While I still have so much left to give the world.

No matter when my life is taken,
I will be the only one to notice the loss.
For another will quickly rise in my place
And I will be forgotten.
A faceless thing;
Easily replaced after it has served its purpose,
Unimportant in the grander scheme,
The master plan.
A living thing;
Something missed after its passing.
Something which serves a unique purpose
And is not so easily replaced.

But which am I?

To use a famous quote by T.S. Eliot:

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

I don't think that poetry--or prose-poetry or whatever you would like to call this--should be constructed entirely out of emotions, particularly the poet's own, because it makes for uninteresting reading. That isn't to say that you shouldn't write your poetry with a lot of emotion and a lot of passion, but at this point, this piece is a rant, attempting to be a social commentary. "An outpour of emotion. My emotion." So? Tell me why I should care. Tell me, in this rant, why I should give a hoot about this. At the moment it is just angry and bitter-sounding and not even trying to be subtle, not even trying to reach the reader...so ultimately, it fails. Keep it in the blog.

-Colleen

I'd have to agree with Cade, but what I would recommend is keep writing those types of things to get them out of your system, and then take those ideals and make them into poetry, and doing that by being subtle as Cade had said. Saying that I still found it interesting and somewhat true. Sounds like you're at a crossroad to keep writing or not, to keep thinking or not, never let something you don't agree with make you into that disagreement. Don't stop thinking, writing, doing what you do or you just fall into what you speak of that you despise and another good is lost to the bad!

I find it interesting that you talk about how it's important to remain happy and to have hope even when things look bad it gives the poem or whatever you wanted to call this a message which I find as a good thing. Also, I think you might want to add, what good is a thinker if they don't slove problems.

Poetry is not simply an outpour of an emotion, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a bad writer.

If you do want to make this more poetic, consider using images to show off what you are saying. This is primarily a rant at the moment, but if you can give us a picture of a thinker, alone in the world with a bunch of sheep, then it can have a lot more meaning and be considerably more poetic. So restart, try again! Keep this in your blog or journal. Don't try to pass this off as poetry.

Actually, I find what you did good strategy for starters. Write what you feel, like what you just did, pour it all out, don't worry about rhythm or whatnot. *Then* put in poem form. Use your ranting as a base, and leap from there. You have a really good base for a really good poem, so use that! This is a strategy I use all the time, and it works! Or, like already said, just post it in the blog

Kobain72 wrote:
No matter when my life is taken,
I will be the only one to notice the loss.
For another will quickly rise in my place
And I will be forgotten.
A faceless thing;
Easily replaced after it has served its purpose,
Unimportant in the grander scheme,
The master plan.
A living thing;
Something missed after its passing.
Something which serves a unique purpose
And is not so easily replaced.

But which am I?

Very well written. I found it thought provoking on enviromental issues and the open ended question at the end allows for a multitude of opinions. A throughly enjoyable poem. Well done