The Confusing Love Poem

Hey everyone on YWS...ummm i've been gone for quite a while trying to find myself and where i stand in this big blue spherical thing we call home...so i just posted a "Throwback" poem for your enjoyment..this was written soooo loooong ago..i just randomly found it on my computer.! i probably wrote it in like the summer going to 7th grade...im in 9th now..!

Don't think I'm falling in love with you,

just cause he broke my heart in two.

You're not the one I'm looking for,

life with love is such a sore.

I don't know who to trust.

I don't know where to go.

And I don't know,

don't know,

don't know,

why I don't love you.

I need to love you.

You're the one my heart seeks out,

but my brain is pushing you out.

I know I should follow

my heart.

So I will begin

to start

loving

you.

If I were to edit this, first I would require a blowtorch, because you have An Interesting And Post Modern Structural Idea, but at the moment it's coming out like the lame cousin of the 80s song "I'm Not In Love". (I weirdly like that song, which I why I commented) The title: lame! Have some conviction! Give it something meaningful!
You seem to have a quatrain and a shape poem mating. Although generally you shouldn't establish a rigid rhyming scheme and then abandon it, but if you'd continued this AA BB fit the line around the rhyme bushwa, I would have had to gnaw my own leg off. I love quatrains they are perhaps my favourite of favourite poetic forms, but I would write this as a sonnet falling apart. I'd take the shape thing, and I would fragment this sonnet, so you're doing what this poem actually does now, which is wrench apart a conventional form and genre.
(In case you hadn't gathered, I'm not the "Awww, thats so sweat, I totally rellated, ur lyke such a good righter" type, but if you believe in your work defend it from me, it'll help you decide what is worth defending in it)

I like some of the structure you have going here--the places where the line breaks fall away, and the repetition of "don't know."

I think you do yourself and the poem an injustice with the rhymes you use, which are very forced. "Life with love is such a sore," in particular, left me cringing a little. I would suggest that when you decide to write a poem, you don't automatically try to make it rhyme. If the rhymes come naturally, if they make sense and don't stretch what you want to say out of proportion, then go for it--but if you find yourself struggling, remember that not every poem has to rhyme, and build it around a different structure. In this poem, that might be the one you move to when you stop rhyming, and the lines peter out. That mirrors the emotion of the poem and, I think, works well.

Another benefit of letting the rhyming go would be that you could use some more original imagery. Remember that a poem is not like a pop song--you can't get away with cliches like "broke my heart in two" and "the one my heart seeks out" (to name just two) nearly as easily. Surprise your readers with your imagery, and they will be put off guard for long enough to accept and identify with the poem. If they recognize what you say already, they won't be nearly as receptive.

I hope this helps, and I will see you around. Keep writing!

~Stripes

thanks for the input. this poem is so old and i was just freestyling. not exactly well thought out i was just typing things that came to mind.

It was very nice, feels slightly immature, but this is a young writers site! I can tell that this poem has a lot of promise to it, but the feel of maturity only comes with practice.

Aside from what I said above, I loved it! I can really connect to this poem, especially the part.....

ameria.rain wrote:

You're the one my heart seeks out,

but my brain is pushing you out.

It really describes where I am at the moment with my guy "friend."