Friends

Friends

My friends were going far away from me
And a long time would pass before their sight I would see.
Their faces feigned excitement and happiness,
But all our eyes were full of tears.

I remembered the first time we met,
The first nervous introductions,
And then the casual the casual conversations.
And we knew that our friendship would set.

The first unknowing handshakes,
And the meaningful hugs.
Our differences we would shrug and
Our secrets and priceless things- we would share.

Then understanding of deep thoughts there was,
And also the arguments on each other’s views.
But we would never break away because,
Our bond was as refreshing as the morning dew.

I remembered the breaking of windows by cricket.
As we pondered what to do,
The angry owner would come and say things rude,
But we would be laughing hidden in the thicket.

I remembered the troubles when we were caught,
And then we played blame games.
To give each other more trouble we sought,
But in spite of these our bond always remained the same.

And as we grew old,
We understood each other very well.
And as we faced each trouble to our friendship with ease.
So no one could ever make it frail.

But as we reached our adulthood,
We had to go our separate ways.
And meeting each other regularly- a promise we took.
And with tears of grief and joy we looked forwards to the coming days.

Hi your poem is beautiful there is nothing worst than growing up and leaving ones childhood friend.
But your first stanza and the rest part of the poem were different the first stanza made it seem as if the rest of your friends are leaving together and leaving you behind. But from what i understand from the rest of the poem everybody is leaving everybody to grow up.
Welcome to YWS.

I like that poem about friendship! Your writing is nice and they are placed in a good order. Yet, I agree with El Finito. You may want to somehow change your first line/stanza so then you won't point your readers in the wrong direction.

Otherwise-- it's flawless.

As already mentioned, the first stanza gives a very different impression than the rest of the poem. That's easily fixed, though; just mention that the narrator is also taking part in the leaving.

Overall, this poem felt very awkward to me as I read it. A number of the rhymes felt forced, there was no set rhyme pattern, and the lengths of each line were inconsistent. In addition, there were a number of unusual phrasings that felt odd.

A good example of both forced rhyme and odd wording would be the second line of the poem:

And a long time would pass before their sight I would see.

When coupled with the first line of the poem, it's also very obvious that they do not match up length-wise. What I would suggest (and which also deals with the problem with the first stanza) is rewriting the first two lines to something like this:

I knew, as my friends and I were parting ways,
A long time would pass before we saw each other again.

As you can see and hear, the lengths of the lines are much closer, and though the rhyme is not exact, it's pretty close. It also makes it clearer that this is a mutual parting of ways. Keep in mind, though, that this is just a suggestion.

On a side note, if you weren't already aware, poetry does not need a rhyme to be good. If you honestly are having a lot of trouble coming up with rhymes, try writing the poem without any. The most important part of a poem is its rhythm: even free-verse poems have a rhythm, usually one that mimics normal speech. Rhyme greatly enhances rhythm, but rhythm can be strong without rhymes. On the other hand, without rhythm, rhymes fall flat and sound unnatural/not good. Since there is no clear rhythm in this poem, it is part of the reason the rhymes feel unnatural.

The other reason the rhymes feel unnatural and forced is because how you phrase things to fit the rhymes also sounds unnatural and obviously forced. In addition, as I mentioned before, there is no pattern to the rhyming. Each stanza has a different pattern -- the first is aabc; the second is abba; the third is abcd; the fourth is abcb; the fifth is abca; the sixth is abab; the seventh is abcb; the eighth is abcb. See how inconsistent the pattern is?

Overall, I would suggest rewriting this poem without trying to make it rhyme or fit a rhythm and see what you get. Later on, if you would like, you can go back and try to fit it to a rhythm and rhyme.

This poem has a lot of potential, and I would love to see it more developed and tweaked so that it flows better.

Hey there!

You've chosen a lovely, but rather sad, subject here which is nice to see.

What I think is a problem is the way that your rhythm doesn't really establish a tangible beat throughout your poem. It's not that it has too, not at all, I would just like the rhythm, and the length of lines, to perhaps be more consistent throughout. It sometimes feels a little off here which isn't great.

In addition, I didn't see much imagery used. One that I did see, 'as fresh as the morning dew', was kind of cliche and therefore didn't exactly add much to your poem. There are a lot of poetic devices at your fingertips, it would be cool if you used them.

~Amy

Hi, there! I like this poem. It's a very sad subject--losing a childhood friend is so very hard--but you wrote it well. It seemed very neutral, not a poem that popped out at me in either a good or a bad way. I don't know why--that's honest. It just didn't pop for me. I did like the idea, however.
Good job.
-Mizzle