Hope in Horror

I remember once upon a time
When skys were blue and grass was lime
Our children laughed and all were pleased
To live in a world that wasn’t diseased

This was many years before
I shuffled through the gates and door
The dirt path forward to horrors untold
To watch with death and work with cold

Never in the history has there been
A tyrant and terror like I have seen
All friends are dead and family lost
For our people it is the greatest cost

The ruler of our lands cares not
Desires us all in the ground to rot
His hatred claims our lives every day
And nothing to stop it can we do or say

Yet still through all this I have hope
I shant be taken by gas or rope
Beyond barbed fences and steel doors
Lies my home buried deep in the moors

Below my feet lie many dead
Who worked then defied to save my head
In our lives we sacrifice for each other
Anything to save a child and mother

I can see no happy end in sight
Yet this will not stop my fight
A fight to hope, to live, to dream
Of a world where there is no cause to scream

My time will soon be here
And I will not shed a single tear
As I walk I see brethren crowded there
Tired and saddened but they still care

One last look before I leave
A desperate shove at the door and a heave
To escape from this misery and all these lies
Tightly, I sigh and shut my eyes

These woeful days have been mine
Where a human has crossed the barbarous line
Now my loved ones smiling faces
Are all I see as I leave with graces

I remember once upon a time
When skys were blue and grass was lime
The sun and freedom never mattered
Until the day our world was shattered

Hi vixeyt,

vixeyt wrote:I remember once upon a time
When skys were blue and grass was lime
Our children laughed and all were pleased
To live in a world that wasn’t diseased

Can one get any more cliched? Children laughing. Yes, I realize that that is the generic sound of bliss and happiness, but it has been overdone so much that it's used now basically as a joke, a satire - never a serious appendage to description. Get rid of it.

The last line is too vague for the rest of the stanza. Diseased world can mean many things, none of them concrete, and when compared to your pointing out of glass, sky, and children, the fog of this pseudo-imagery doesn't cut it at all. Don't jump back and forth between abstract and tangible without a transition; unfortunately, that means you have to get rid of the last line as well and replace it.

This was many years before
I shuffled through the gates and door
The dirt path forward to horrors untold
To watch with death and work with cold

The rhyme here suffers egregiously. Read it loudly to yourself; after every line, there seems to be a pause. This is cute at first but later becomes a nuisance and downright annoying once the reader starts stumbling after every seven or eight syllables. If you want to save the rhyme scheme at all (and as I will explain later, doing so is a monumental feat for this piece), then run the lines into one another. Make it so that the reader's thought process doesn't stop at the end of each line, that it continues and blends so that it's one piece, not four seperate ones. This advice goes for the entire poem, by the way, not just this stanza.

Never in the history has there been
A tyrant and terror like I have seen
All friends are dead and family lost
For our people it is the greatest cost

The ruler of our lands cares not
Desires us all in the ground to rot
His hatred claims our lives every day
And nothing to stop it can we do or say

Completely unoriginal. You're describing a generic villain, a guy probably dressed in black who sits on a throne and laughs maniacally. There's nothing in here to actually create a sense of evil in the reader's mind. You need to describe it tighter and with more flavor than what you have now.

The strange inversion "cares not" doesn't do anything for the poem either. Don't sacrifice flow and believability for a rhyme scheme.

Yet still through all this I have hope
I shant be taken by gas or rope
Beyond barbed fences and steel doors
Lies my home buried deep in the moors

Shant? Nobody speaks like that anymore. Replace it with something that doesn't sound as if you're desperate to go back to ancient times for some reason.

How can a home be buried in the moors? Moors are either waterfront ports that house boats or wetlands, and neither makes much sense. It looks as though you've once again bowed to your rhyme scheme instead of caring about what you are actually saying.

Below my feet lie many dead
Who worked then defied to save my head
In our lives we sacrifice for each other
Anything to save a child and mother

I can see no happy end in sight
Yet this will not stop my fight
A fight to hope, to live, to dream
Of a world where there is no cause to scream

If you can see no happy end in sight, then why are you saying that you believe in hopes and dreams, etc? These contradictions make no sense. Fix it.

My time will soon be here
And I will not shed a single tear
As I walk I see brethren crowded there
Tired and saddened but they still care

One last look before I leave
A desperate shove at the door and a heave
To escape from this misery and all these lies
Tightly, I sigh and shut my eyes

These woeful days have been mine
Where a human has crossed the barbarous line
Now my loved ones smiling faces
Are all I see as I leave with graces

Are we supposed to be witnessing an execution? If so, make that clearer, because right now it's hard to tell whether the narrator is being led to the gallows or is just banging her head against a wall, whining to herself.

I remember once upon a time
When skys were blue and grass was lime
The sun and freedom never mattered
Until the day our world was shattered

Strike this entire stanza. The content in it isn't the point of the piece - the theme is in the three stanzas above this one - so don't repeat it for no reason.

In general, this was very mediocre and nothing that jumped out at the reader, making him care. That can be altered by removing some of the cheesier material - the description of the tyrant, for example - and illustrating truly powerful images that ride as well as direct the piece.

Hope that helped.

.......................................... AMAZING. THIS WAS GREAT I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING BAD I LOVED THE DESCRIPTION AND I THINK THAT THIS IS JUST PERFECT. however there are a few minor spelling issues and grammar issues. for example in the second stanza last line when you say "to watch with death and work with cold" do you mean to watch death work with cold??

but apart from that this is the best poem i have read so far. i love how it rymes and flows great at the same time and how it comes back to the subject that you started with at the beginning. i have nothing more to say. this work is undescribable.

The only other suggestions is a plea for you to keep on writing and to keep up the good work












TuckEr EllsworTh