An examination of human life

What is life,
but a collection of strife
carried on right through the years
What is death,
But just a final rest
an ending of those tiresome tears?

What is love,
just a somber pun
A good emotion waiting to betray
What is hate,
but an endless trait
a collection of believed past wrongs?

What is pain,
but an endless game
trying to dodge out of aim?

What are these emotions?
A series of worthless notions?
No, we are human,
and these things,
are what put us in motion.

This poem suffers from ridiculous rhyming schemes. That is, it's only purpose is to rhyme. Otherwise, it's just a laundry list of riddles. When it ends, it doesn't really tie up the loose ends, simply because the poem is so vague that when the reader finishes the poem, he's still trying to figure out why those ends were loose in the beginning.

Take out the two first stanzas, which are comical at best, and talk more about what makes humans human. That seems to be the main point that you hope on making. Once you make it more concise, it'll be better.

Nice poem, views life as a game, gods little game if you will? anyway i liked the comparison. So nice job and its good.
Check out my blog people, and my poem. Its depressing but its fine. I thinks it is good, thats just me.

lukas8u wrote:What is life,
but a collection of strife
carried on right through the years
what is death,
But just a final rest
an ending of those tiresome tears?

Not much I can say about this part except that it is boring. Very boring. What you are telling us is that life is hardship and death is peace, but you take an entire stanza to do it and in the meantime, use no poetic devices whatsoever except the weak metaphor at the end (yes, tears are symbolic of sadness - that's pretty elementary).

Clean up the "textbook" style voice you use in this part and try to inject a little more...life into it. What makes that strife unbearable? What can you compare death to, instead of just a "final rest"?

What is love,
just a somber pun

A pun of what?

A good waiting to betray

A good what?

What is hate,
but an endless trait
a collection of believed past wrongs?

Hate is not equal to wrong; hate is, perhaps, action upon those perceived wrongs. Your definitions make no sense.

What is pain,
but an endless game
trying to dodge out of it's aim

Dodge out of whose aim? I'm assuming here that the pain is trying to dodge something, because that's the way you've phrased it.

What is bliss
the feeling that you have,
when you get your first kiss?

This just does not belong in the poem. You've spent the first many stanzas telling us about how life is turmoil and everything can be summed up by negativity. Now you spring this strange cliche about kiss being a catalyst of happiness upon us? Please, just get rid of this stanza completely.

What are these emotions?
Just a series of worthless notions?
No, we are human,
and these things,
are what put us in motion.

Prove it; that's all I have to say here. If you do believe there's some light out of this catastrophe that is life, then show us somewhere that out of the endless game of pain, out of the mindless hate, out of the tumultuous life comes some good that brings humanity together. Whatever you do, don't do what you just did, which is throw into the reader's face a trite "we are all one" saying that has no substance and no evidence behind it. At least foreshadow your point somewhere in the poem apart from the very end.

(more editing to be done)

I really hope so. In general, this was a bad poem. I recommend giving some evidence for your points (after all, if your statements come from cloudy air, then why should we believe you or listen to what you have to say?). Use imagery, for it is what helps the reader ground his emotions and his thoughts into a material plane instead of reading vague words off of a page.

Hope that helped.

Interesting poem but incredibly confusing. What exactly are you trying to say? What is the point of this poem? Life is hard? Make sure what you are trying to say is clear to the reader.

lukas8u wrote:What is life,
but a collection of strife
carried on right through the years
What is death,
But just a final rest
an ending of those tiresome tears? Why is there a question mark here?

What is love,
just a somber pun
A good a good what? waiting to betray
What is hate,
but an endless trait I don't understand this bit! Isn't a trait a mannerism, like, a characteristic?
a collection of believed past wrongs?

What is pain,
but an endless game
trying to dodge out of aim? Why are you suddenly doing three sentences of rhyme? It's just popped out of nowhere.

What are these emotions?
Just a series of worthless notions? I don't think you need 'just' here. It would flow better without it
No, we are human,
and these things,
are what put us in motion.

(more editing to be done)

The rhyming there was seemed a bit...forced.

But you have the ideas behind the poem, and I got what you were trying to say. I suppose the main issue is that this has been done before, so many times. I think what you need to do is think more about what you are trying to say in this poem, then edit it to suit that.

Dude, don't force your writing to submit. Instead, you must submit to your writing.

Pretty nice!

Questions, questions.... Asside from some of the forced rhymes, all that needs fixing is... The capitalization and the punctuation. The only way that I could tell the difference between the sentences was the only capitalized lines. In poetry, the first word in every line needs to be capitalized.

Other than that, Gold Star! Good job!

What is life,

but a collection of strife

carried on right through the years

What is death,

But just a final rest

an ending of those tiresome tears?

Why did you choose to put a question mark at the end of the second question, but not the first? Without a question mark I stumble when I read this, and go right into the second question without pause.

What is love,

just a somber pun

A good emotion waiting to betray

What is hate,

but an endless trait

a collection of believed past wrongs?

You have some good reoccurring themes, a parallelism in stanzas. Once again, why do you choose not to punctuate the first sentence? Also, you don't seem to be questioning what love and hate are here, it seems much more like a rhetorical question.

What is pain,

but an endless game

trying to dodge out of aim?

If you're going to bring up pain you might want to contrast it, like you did in the other stanzas. Also, rhyme is very prominent here, and other places it fades in and out.

What are these emotions?

A series of worthless notions?

No, we are human,

and these things,

are what put us in motion.

It feels choppy here, and I'd lighten up on the commas. Granted, I read poems how I would read them for Speech&Debate competitions, but I read it like this:

"No. We are human. and these things. are what put us in motion."


I'd really like to see how the final product turns out-- can you track a forum on YWS? I'll have to check and see.

Before coming to the last lines I thought this would be about cursing the weak and pathetic human motions and showing hatred towards them.The reason being that all the emotions which were dissected showed us their worthlessness.Examination of each emotion made perfect sense.

Despite all that,the emotion analysis was undone by these lines:

A series of worthless notions?

No, we are human,

and these things,

are what put us in motion.

This is the perfect finishing touch.It tells us that though these emotions are pathetic, they really are just a reflection of us.Every bad thing about those emotions applies to us too.

Good job.