Like Lovers Must

We had the world at our fingertips, love--
neither sky nor ground could hold us.
With wings that birds would be jealous of,
we flew and danced like lovers must.

And enslaved by this blindness, I noticed not
that our ephemeral path had ended;
how I screamed, kicked, cried, and fought,
remembering when we had beauty transcended.

All roads must end, love, all things must die,
and yet still you chafe my bloodied heart.
And how awful it is to say goodbye
and settle for memories, and stay apart.

So in the end, my sweet, our sky turned grey,
but I wait, for tomorrow is another day.

Hi. You have some good phrases here;
"enslaved by this blindness"

and

"beauty transcended",

but, as a whole, I think that this needs to be cleaned up a bit.

In relation to the form, you sometimes stray from the required meter and this makes it read a bit jerkily. Generally, sonnets have ten-syllable lines, with an alternating stress (every second syllable). I'd try reading this aloud and counting the syllables and stresses out on your fingers as you say them. That will help you to get a sense of how this sounds, and how it should sound.

Sonnets traditionally deal with love, so it's very difficult to make love sonnets original. I'd go through this and cross out anything that sounds like something you've heard before, e.g;
"world at our fingertips",

"say goodbye",

"our sky turned grey",

and

"tomorrow is another day."

Instead of looking at love as a general concept, I'd make it more specific to your speaker. What is particular to his or her manner of loving, and to the object of his or her affection?

I'd also avoid twisting syntax to fit line endings, as this sounds unnatural and draws attention to the highly crafted nature of the form.

There's a very good anthology of sonnets called "No Bliss Like This", spanning...a century or so, I think...which is definitely worth a look.

The whole secret of sonnets is practise. It can be very difficult to say what you want within the frame of such a restricted form, and the best way to combat this is to write them and write them and write them.

Hope this helps.

Jas

I like it. It's melacholy with a touch of hope. It reminds me of Gone With The Wind at the end when Scarlet screams into the fog...."for tomorrow is a new day!"

That is a good thing....

It makes me think of my own problems.... A reflection to lovers' frequent and incessant problems.

thumbs up.

Peach. There was a giant moth outside my window tonight and my cat was after it. Also, I told Adam about that time we wrote the hurricane poems about the same line thing and he was like 'oh, we should totally take a topic and write poems about it and see how different they are', which reminded me that you never showed me your silken birds poem. In any case...

When I first read this (a couple of days ago), I was highly pleased with the rhythm and the rhyming. The rhythm is kind of off in some parts, but it doesn't mess with the poem /too/ horribly. I think if you went back and cut out a few of the fluffy syllables (for example "my sweet" in the last is not all that necessary), that it would flow even better.

We had the world at our fingertips, love--

neither sky nor ground could hold us.

The problem here, though, is that you rely on slightly cliche'd phrases: 'world at our fingertips', 'could not hold us'. Besides /that/, though, you speak of holding the world, then the world holds you, and by using those phrases, being bound by them, you come up with imagery that doesn't quite work with itself. xD

remembering when we had beauty transcended.

Because of the inversion in this sentence, it sounds really awkward. I think that sometimes inversion works, but in the context of this poem, it makes the rhyming sound forced. =/ I think that the second stanza needs to be reworked, but it should keep the same message (that you were too blind in that happiness to see what happened, really). =]

and yet still you chafe my bloodied heart.

When Adam and I read this, we both were compelled to say, out loud, 'that is a cool line'. You need to keep it. The imagery in it is superb. It's lovely. I want to marry you all over again. xD

But then, at the ending, it kind of fizzles out like it did in the beginning. I know you can do better, and in fact, I know you can do better by reworking this poem. You have the emotion, you have the story, and you have the skill. I LOVE YOU.

<3

-Toast-