Like the Rainclouds

Obviously it's not very good, but my 'on command' poems almost never are.

I wrote this at the end of ninth grade for a poem assessment, where I had to identify three poetic elements of my own or someone else's poem. I wrote my own to save myself the trouble. I have rhyming, metaphors, and alliteration.

This is one of my few 'darkness to light' poems. They're not quite as numerous as my 'darkness' poems (such as Nighttime Sorrows), but I haven't written as many with that kind of dark theme as I did back in seventh grade when I was suicidal.

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Like the Rainclouds

The sky still looks gray
She’s flying, floating, falling
Yet another day

Tears sting her dark eyes
She’s standing, stepping, slipping
Silently she cries

Eyes like the rainclouds
She’s climbing, clinging, calling
Her warm tears, night shrouds

She sees a faint light
She’s reaching, running, racing
To catch if she might

She finds the night’s end
It’s fading, failing, fleeing
She’s found a good friend

Hiya,

I think my main problem with this poem is how stilted and formulaic it seems. It feels like you were only writing this poem to satisfy requirements rather then just relax, open up and have fun, which is what you should do in poetry. I can really tell that this was written for a school assignment. Each stanza feels the same, with only slight alterations on the words. There's no excitement, nothing for the reader to look forward to.

However, the thing that bothered me the most was the lack of imagery. You give us a vague idea, tell us what the rainclouds are doing, then move onto the next stanza. Rainclouds are something not a lot of us see on a regular basis, so take advantage of that and describe what the rainclouds are like. You don't have to cover every pore and detail, but just try to paint a picture.

I hope I don't sound too harsh! Just try to remember, you can really do whatever you want with poetry. Just think about the basic that you are describing. Let your thoughts flow to your heart's content, open up and forget about the rules. It will be a lot more fun that way, trust me! At the end, the elements you were looking for will probably end up there anyway while also being a bit subtle. While revising, I recommend that you take a look at the YWS Poetry Database. Here, you'll find a lot of poems from famous authors. Read a few of them. How did they apply the techniques? What is the rhythm like? Another good place to look would be the YWS Poetry Tutorials. Here, you'll find an awesome bunch of articles that help with improving poetry.

I wish you the best of luck, and I apologize if anything is unclear! PM me if you need anything further.

-Elinor x

Hi, Eritela, I'm June, let's have a look, shall we?

I don't think there's anything bad about this poem, rather there are little things to this that disagree with one another and that sets the overall tone of the poem off a few degrees. For instance, in the first stanza,

The sky still looks gray
She’s flying, floating, falling
Yet another day

I'm confused about the she. At first, I thought that, perhaps you were personifying the sky, but the later stanzas make me assume different. I think, though, that whatever you include in the poem should be important to the poem, and the line "Yet another day" doesn't feel like it's giving me much of anything substantial, dear. However! I think that because the "ay" is an easy rhyme, you can easily find something to replace that with.

I also wasn't too fond of cliche images throughout, such as the gray sky representing sadness, or the black tears, or silent crying. It's all too common, and while I understand that these things rhyme together well, there's something about them that turns a readers interest down a dark alley.

While I am a fan of the 1-2-1 rhyme scheme that you maintained throughout the poem, I cannot say that I am entirely fond of the structure. The present tense to present active to back to present makes something in my mind uneasy because it feels like you're making a strained effort to convey something to us, but you're being restricted by your scheme. I don't feel as if it's working out.

Thumbs up on the rhyme; I can't say that I'm a big fan of the theme, because I think it's overused, but thanks for the read.

June

Obvious! Next time let the reader follow the subject of you poem!

Like the Rainclouds

The sky still looks gray
She’s flying, floating, falling
Yet another day

Tears sting her dark eyes
She’s standing, stepping, slipping
Silently she cries

Eyes like the rainclouds
She’s climbing, clinging, calling
Her warm tears, night shrouds

She sees a faint light
She’s reaching, running, racing
To catch if she might

She finds the night’s end
It’s fading, failing, fleeing
She’s found a good friend

Hello! Today I'm going to review your poem.

First of all, your using Figures of Speech mainly personification and simile.
Your like comparing yourself to a raincloud right?

On the first stanza, nothing I can say no errors and typos.

I can relate on this but the last stanza, what do you mean when she found a friend?

I know you can improve this more but seeing that you can, I think it's good but not perfect

Keep writing!!! Enjoy!!!

-Vir-

I liked it.
I understand what you are saying..
Keep writing..
Kakagirl XX

This isn't bad, but it could use work. I totally understand what it's like to have to write a poem at the last minute and not coming out with something terribly brilliant, but that doesn't mean you can't go back and edit and rework it as needed until it's better.

The main thing that stood out about the poem that could use work was the disjointed feel. I mean, the first line talks about the sky, so I'm preparing for a poem talking about the sky (especially when you add the title to that) and then suddenly it switches to a girl. The transition isn't very smooth at all--I'd personally recommend mentioning the girl, who the poem is about, at the start instead of talking about the sky. Also, I'd change the title--it really seems more like you picked it at random than anything. I'm not too good with titles myself, but I'd suggest thinking about the main theme of the poem--a girl's journey from darkness to light--and then choose a title that relates to that.