why a man died..

i once cursed a man..
before my death..
to live a life..
without regret..
with out pain..
and strife..
of pure happiness.
no hardships
what so ever..

and then i cursed him..
to lose it all for a week..
but then to regain it
the next week and the week after..

and yet..
this man killed himself...
on that week
because he never knew pain..
never knew strife..
becuase he didn't have hardship..
and that is why..

he died..

I liked it ^_^ But it kinda sounded simple. You could add some examples in there. Maybe more on the man's life and why he didn't have any of those qualities. Also I would look up ways to format your work. You should capitalized all the first letters of each line. I think that is the correct poetry format right? But anyways, I think it was good and flowed well but in poetry, general things can easily sound similar to other pieces so that is why we must create individuality. ^_^ By the way, this Masa. Good work.

To start with, I do like the story in this poem, the meaning; it's unique, and true to life.

But let's take a look at your means of expressing it; first of all, punctuation.

I frankly haven't the slightest idea why you use two periods at the end of the lines. Some of them ought to have no punctuation at all, and two periods don't serve any kind of purpose at all anyway. They're not an ellipses (which is three periods) and they can't function as a period because that would be dividing your sentence; kind of like chopping a piece of wood into many tiny slivers. It would impossible to glue it back together just the way it was before it was ruined.
This is what the punctuation in your poem ought to look like (I also take the liberty of capitalizing your 'i's:

I once cursed a man
before my death
to live a life
without regret, <--- I added a comma here
without pain
and strife— <---and added a dash here
of pure happiness.
no hardships
whatsoever. <-- notice I changed "what so ever" into one word, and added a period

And then I cursed him <-- capitalized "and"
to lose it all for a week
but then to regain it
the next week and the week after.

And yet <--capitalized 'and'
this man killed himself
on that week
because he never knew pain, <-- added a comma
never knew strife, <-- added a comma
because he didn't have hardship. <-- added a period
and that is why

he died.

Now, I want to double-check that I got the story right (which ought to set alarm bells off in your head; that the story wasn't quite clear enough for me to be absolutely positive I got the sequence of events right). The man lived a life of complete happiness, and died during that week, before he ever experienced pain, correct? Or did he live in complete happiness, and then die when he had to experience pain? You'll want to make sure you make that clearer.

Now for a line-by-line:

I once cursed a man Did you really mean he cursed him? Or did you mean, he gave him a challenge to try to live that kind of life? Because some of the wording in this poem suggest the second, even though you use the word "cursed". See the line: "to live a life"
before my death This line doesn't really have a purpose
to live a life You see, if you changed this to something more like "to have to live a life / without regret" then it gives the impression that it's something being done to him, instead of something he's doing. If you see what I mean.
without regret
without pain
and strife I would cut out this line; it interrupts a smooth rhythm you had going
of pure happiness.
no hardships
whatsoever I would move this word up to the line before: "no hardships whatsoever"

and then I cursed him Again, apart from the word "cursed", your wording makes it sound like it was something aimed at him, a challenge
to lose it all for a week
but then to regain it For the sake of smooth reading, I'd cut the word "to".
the next week and the week after. This wording is a little clumsy; maybe instead: "the next week, and beyond" or "the next week, and week after week"

And yet
this man killed himself
on that week Which week? Again, you're not clear if you mean the week where he had no hardship, or the week where he did.
because he never knew pain
never knew strife
becuase he didn't have hardship I would add a period here,
and that is why [color]and cut out the "and" here[/color]

he died.

Now I've covered punctuation, and wording as much as possible; let's move on to content.

There's something to be said for simplicity. There's something to be said for your story. But put them together, and your poem is lacking in depth, in emotion, and in any kind of vibrance that makes it stand out, that attracts the reader's eye.
It's very vague; we're given no details about the circumstances. Why does the one man curse the other? What's the motivation? What exactly does the man go through that leads to his death? Give us insight into their feelings.
Definitely a big part of what this poem is lacking is description. You give us the bare minimum of details in the plainest words possible. But poetry needs language that allows us to use at least three of the five senses. It calls for imagery; unique pictures that match the theme of the poem, whether you need something lovely, something painful, something disturbing, or sad.

I might not scrap this entirely; your structure has some good points, and the story, like I said, has a new feel to it. But it doesn't make me feel anything, and certainly doesn't tell me how anyone else feels. It doesn't really tell me much of anything except that one man cursed another for no reason I know, and that caused the other man to kill himself because he couldn't stand it, though what he couldn't stand and why I'm not exactly sure.
You see? Too many questions.

You could make this into something amazing. But it still has a very long way to go. Good luck.

-Adna

Hi Silented!

Adna has done a rather fabulous indepth review on this, so to spare you the repetition, I'm just going to do a sort of overall.

I do really like the storyline you have here. Perhaps it's not original, and perhaps it's not the best thing to write a poem on, but it worked well here.

I did enjoy how you kept your lines short and simple. The clear language you used in them was pretty effective, although I would have liked to see more elaboration, more definition behind these words.

I also like how you used a slight rhyme here. I think that the rhyme kind of explains the lack of room for elaboration and such, which pretty much cancels my previous statement out (xD).

To speak, I did like this poem, although I found that it could be improved slightly. I would advise against using the ellipsis (...) to end your lines, and pay attention to the bulk of what Adna has said.

Good luck!

June

Ok, so I so totally went back and read this again and I get it. So yeah some people don't know pain like others do and they take it way to far right? They do this because of a harsh statement that they couldn't face. Totally get it, and I love this poem. It shows that no matter how mean people can be to you, it could always end badly if you are mean back. Am I right? I do love this.

Keep Writing

-Flower-

When I read this imagined a person reading this with a melody of a piano in the backround. This was really good but again to short for me. I wish I could be able to read more and learn more about the man that died. It would be better that you would be able to describe the emotions alot more.

Hello, Roon here! First of all, I love the idea behind this, it’s so insightful! Nitpicks first though!

i once cursed a man.. > Capitalise the I, also there are only two dots here.
before my death..
to live a life..
without regret.. > The use of … gets top much around here. It distracts me from the poem
with out pain..
and strife.. Or strife
of pure happiness.
no hardships
what so ever.. > How has this changed the man? Tell us about him.

and then i cursed him.. > Capitalise the I
to lose it all for a week.. > Say in a week, you tell us he regains it later
but then to regain it
the next week and the week after.. > You keep only using two .’s

and yet..
this man killed himself... > Finally three dots!
on that week > in that week
because he never knew pain..
never knew strife..
becuase he didn't have hardship.. > Because*
and that is why..

he died..

Right, remember to use three dots, I sound OCD here, but it really bugs me. Also, the constant use of the dots drew me away from the poem. There is no punctuation apart from the ellipsis’s you are so fond of. Also, capital letters are completely absent in this poem! New sentence, and all that jazz!

We don’t know how the curses really affected the man, you tell us what happened, rather than showing us the emotions he felt.

However I feel the idea behind this is fantastic, and with some minor tweaks, this could be fabulous! Thank you for posting, I hope this helped!

~ Roon

Hey, silented1, what's up? I really enjoyed your poem. It had a very interesting voice. The only problem you seem to have is your grammar.
Your ellipses (...) can really be commas.
I, when referring to yourself, should always be capitalized.
In Poetry, every word on a new line should start with a capital letter.

I have one nitpick on content:
The last sentence

he died

It seems a little flat. I'm not feeling any emotion. Perhaps you could make this poem longer to potray more emotion and depth.

And that's about it. I enjoyed it a lot!