A frightful winter morn.

The cold is my only lover.
I feel naught for the man next to me.
He is soon to death, so why would it matter?

Where does my loyalty lay?
My homeland condemns me to this place.
So why should I have love of country?

Steel, powder, ash.
My weapon is nonliving, unloving.
It is simply a tool with which to deny myself peace.

The cold is a brutal lover.
I feel myself freezing, coughing, dying.
I feel the burning numbness as it spreads to my reddened limbs.

This world has taken all thought out of its doings.
And in doing so, it removed all feeling from mine.
Death holds no horror, it is routine.
The dead are no terror, only soon to be forgotten names.

You forget how to feel,
Any resemblance of pain more a reminder, than sensation.
Who feels for an ambiguous nobody?

The cold is my only lover.
She is considerate of my pain.
She slips me lovely cyanide in my dreams.

So that when I pass, in her loving caress,
I shall never live beyond my pain.

Hello there!

So, altogether, this poem is really good but if you rip this apart into many stanzas, it's not so good. I think this is bland and the message that you're trying to get across is really strong and beautiful and I like your idea but the execution could be taken up a notch.

I didn't quite like the fact that you kept saying "The cold is my lover..." It got boring after awhile, maybe try using a different phrases. Experiment.

I will commend you for not letting rhyme eat up this poem, because usually writers do that.

Favorite part:

The cold is my only lover.
She is considerate of my pain.
She slips me lovely cyanide in my dreams.

So that when I pass, in her loving caress,
I shall never live beyond my pain.

This was a lovely way to end this poem.

All in all, good job.

And if you have any questions, feel free to PM me.

Ta,

~Angel

This is sad, but very well written.
I really like it. I don't believe you need criticism.
Very nice.
Keep it up!! :]


-BG-

Another great piece seemingly from what you have written that I have read you always included death in your poetry.
Nice way of having your work brought to attention I suppose.
Anyways great work once again and ill keep an eye out for more of your work!
-Dawn

Hey!

Well, this was chilling. Given the theme of the poem, that's a good thing. I was very emotionally involved with this character, you've really demonstrated the effect war(?) has on a man.

Like Angel, I'm not sure about the way you keep repeating the line

The cold is my only lover

It's beautiful as an opening line, and maybe repeated once or twice, but it's not a line that's still effective after so many repetitions. It kind of puts the reader off. The phrases should be similar, but you could maybe change "lover" every time to suit the new twist in the story, and kill two birds with one stone by keeping the reader engaged.

As for the ending, it's very emphatic. I really felt connected to the narrator at this point, and could totally empathise with him. The way you draw it to a close, you really have a great final effect on the reader.

I hope I helped. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop me a PM and I'll be happy to explain.
~Grin

Hey there!

The best bit about this was how you set the piece. With the period/full-stop at the end of every line in the first 5 stanzas, the reading is in some senses quite rugged, but it makes the pace slow and allows each point to be dwelled on a little before reading on. In this case, that works in your favour and the end result is a good, fluent rhythm. The imagery was very good as well, it definitely connects with the reader, in fact I loved the part where you put death across as such a normality:

Death holds no horror, it is routine.

I, too, liked the idea of repeating that "The cold was my only lover" as it creates a connection to an emotion that wouldn't previously have been there and the reader empathises with the distance created in the poem. So I really enjoyed that part.

What I perhaps didn't like quite so much was the vague feeling at some points. Such as when you say your weapon is nonliving, unloving, what is your weapon? It can be confusing because the poem thrives of implicity and if it's interpretted wrongly or not at all, then it doesn't come across with the effect it should have and disrupts the fluency. Though, this may simply be my opinion.

Hope this helped and keep writing,
Ben

Razzleberry <3 *licks*


Overall, I liked this. It was bittersweet and chilly. Which is good.

Your repetition, I love it, but I hate it. It gets dull, annoying even, because the value of it only changes a fraction. But it holds meaning in two of your stanzas when the mood to those lines changes.
I think you should do it every other stanza. (Keep it with the fourth stanza.)

The cold is my only lover.
My weapon is nonliving, unloving.
It is simply a tool with which to deny myself peace.

The next problem would be, you leave your reader hanging, you only conclude one thing, you just drop all your other images. So your reader, though they have some closure, it's not complete, you've left some threads out there that need to be sown in. For example the weapon, what about it? You need to give us some finality.

He is soon to death, so why would it matter?

So why should I have love of country?

The two questions at the beginning, I'm not so fond of. Because you don't answer them for the reader, don't expect them to figure it out on their own. Otherwise it won't fit in with your poem and your reader will leave with more questions then answers.

Overall this is a good poem, it needs some tightening up. But yay.

Good luck,

Kamas