The Empowerment

I was feeling really down when I wrote this poem. I had just had feelings of beats in my heart and decided to 'dance' to my writing. Please enjoy this one and I would like to hear what you think.And Ziggie could be you.

Arise, arise Ziggie
Rise to the beat of the drum and shimmy
Rise to the percussion so rhythmic
Forget what happened yester-morning
For your empowerment is dawning

Arise dear Ziggie, Ziggie, Ziggie
Rise to the beat of your determination and shimmy
Rise to the thump of your heart so rhythmic
Forget what they said yester-morning
For your empowerment is dawning.

Arise Ziggie-Ziggie, Arise Ziggie
Rise to the beat of your anger and shimmy
Rise to the beat of your tears so rhythmic
Forget what you failed yester-morning,
For your empowerment is dawning

Arise, arise my Ziggie
Rise to the beat of your insecurities and shimmy
Rise and dance on your enemies so rhythmic
Forget all you said yester-morning,
For your empowerment is dawning

Arise my darling, smile Ziggie
Rise to the beat of tomorrow and shimmy
Rise to your happiness so rhythmic
Arise…Arise…

I find that the beat is broken up with the arise rather than emphasized with it because you have the same lines over and over with a few changes. Generally rhythm in poetry is made by the syllables. In that sense it does have a similar beat each section but the sections each begin with a different feel as Arise is more of a slow word due to the ending consonant and the other words tend to be quicker I noticed.
When I was reading this I did feel the beat of the drums but almost as background music not reflected in the poem aside from how the poem repeats itself. You did a good job at conveying that this was not just a poem about dance though. I would personally like to see this type of poem from you again, but less structured using the syllables to beat a poem rather than a background drum.

The thing that really struck me about this poem is how repetitious it is. The thing is, it's not annoyingly repetitious, which was great. Unfortunately, in order to maintain this repetition, you sacrificed coherency in places. How can enemies be rhythmic? I think you need to employ more punctuation to help clarify things. Also, playing around with punctuation could add a nice, newer dimension to each repetition.

Another thing you need to watch out for is the syllable count. Since your poem hinges so much on repetition, the syllable counts of the lines also need to be repeated. This is not always the case in this poem unfortunately, and you have a couple of lines that are a touch too long, which throws off the rhythm. Going back to the enemies line as an example, "enemies" has one syllable too many; I suggest substituting the synonym "foes". Going back through and evening up the line lengths will really make this poem even stronger, so long as you don't sacrifice coherence.

thank you for the great advice. i will consider that next time

i feel like the first four stanza's were the same thing, and then you forgot how to finish. you should have used copy and paste. heres this though, i like the word ziggie. and i feel shimmy (blurggh) should be spelt shimmi. thanks