Cynicism, dogs and a good cup of tea

A knife wedged
in a wedding cake
is a realist view
of the world.

Love is a silly
little fantasy,
dreamed up by
little girls.

I don't believe in love.
Valentines make me sick.
Loves kissing at midnight,
is so cliché and false illusion.

With every relationship that passes,
I think I have come to see;
that no-one will be in love,
as much as my dog loves me.

Loyalty and honesty,
just needing them to be there.
I think everyone will agree,
that these are the things love
seems to be.
A dog shares all the traits,
and that's enough for me.

So when everyone is together,
and love had left me.
I think I'll put my feet up
and have a cup of tea,
sit by the fire with my dog,
and keep a sense of reality.

Hello there, retrodisco666! I hope you are having a great first day of 2011.

Now, I am going to warn you: poetry never has been my forte, but I did want to point out the parts of this poem I did and didn't like. However, I am no expert at poems, so don't expect some wonderful wisdom here. First of all, I would like to point out how I enjoyed the realist view of love, and the bringing in of a man and his dog's relationship. I do not thing you should title this piece "cynicism," however, because this man does not think himself a cynic, I think it is unfitting. Why not call the poem Realists, Dogs, and a Good Cup of Tea instead?

retrodisco666 wrote:A knife wedged
in a wedding cake
is a realist view
of the world.

I felt like in the above stanza, you just wrote out a sentence on lined paper, cut it up into fragments, and stuck it into a stanza format. The stanza didn't have a particular rhythm, and just felt much too broken up for my likings. I also do not quite understand how a knife wedged in a wedding cake is singularly a realist view of the world. I mean, everyone knows that a knife is wedged in a wedding cake to cut it. Not particularly realist there. Explain this to me, perhaps?

retrodisco666 wrote:I don't believe in love.
Valentines make me sick.
Lovers kissing at midnight,
is so cliché and a false illusion.

I felt that when you said just "loves" instead of "lovers" I was a bit confused, like you referring to many relationships kissing at midnight and not just a single pair of lovers. So I changed that. Also, instead of ''false illusion'' which didn't sound right when I read it aloud, I changed it to "a false illusion".

retrodisco666 wrote:With every relationship that passes,
I think I have come to see;
that no-one will be in love,
as much as my dog loves me.

I feel like this statement is confusing. No one will be in love as much as your dog loves you? Why not avoid the confusion and just state: "that no one will be in love as much as my dog and me"? Also, there is no need for the hyphen between no and one. Just "no one".

retrodisco666 wrote:So when everyone is together,
and love has left me.
I think I'll put my feet up
and have a cup of tea,
sit by the fire with my dog,
and keep a sense of reality.

Present tense! Keep it that way. Also, wonderful ending.

Overall

I truly liked this poem. It was very realist and seemed very thought-through, like this man was very sure of his opinions and such, which is good. I found myself imagining this man as well, even though you did not really go into detail with description, so that's just wonderful. Overall, I enjoyed reading this and besides the things above I pointed out, it was a very well-written poem. Bravo! I hope this helps and contact me if you need anything else.

- Mizz

A knife wedged
in a wedding cake
is a realist view
of the world. very clever stanza

Love is a silly
little fantasy,
dreamed up by
little girls. i can relate

I don't believe in love.
Valentines make me sick.
Lovesers kissing at midnight,
is so are cliché and false illusions. this is just a suggestion, since the last two lines don't make sense

With every relationship that passes,
I think I have come to see;
that no-one will be in love,
as much as my dog loves me. you need to say that your dog is 'in love' with you for this to make sense. Good idea though.

Loyalty and honesty,
just needing them to be there.
I think everyone will agree,
that these are the things love
seems to be.
A dog shares all the traits, last two lines seem lack-luster
and that's enough for me.

So when everyone is together,
and love hads left me.
I think I'll put my feet up
and have a cup of tea,
sit by the fire with my dog,
and keep a sense of reality.

Good title, btw

I relate to this poem so much. And its weird your sixteen and a boy aswell. You know what Im going through man! The sad part is I haven't got a dog There is nothing to critique about the poem because you reached out and grabbed my attention and held it. That's all that needs to be said. Well done!

Though I disagree with the cynical outlook, this poem made me laugh. The only suggestion I have is to fix the third stanza (especially the last two lines), because it doesn't make sense and disrupts the flow. Love the sarcastic tone and cleverness of the first and last stanzas.

I hate lovey-dovey things to, and stupid teenagers who mistake fleeting romances for "love". It really disgraces the actual thing, you know. Love isn't an emotion first of all, it's an action.

Anywho, well done! I enjoyed reading it. Best wishes for future endeavors!

retrodisco666 wrote:A knife wedged
in a wedding cake
is a realist view
of the world.

This is an extremely choppy stanza, and it kind of spells out the rest of the poem a little bit too much for me. I wouldn't be as blunt, and maybe have this somewhere in the middle of the poem. I kind of feel like I could read this as the beginning and go "Okay, well that's what the poem was about."

Love is a silly
little fantasy,
dreamed up by
little girls.
Again, this is really choppy. Maybe you could combine the last two stanzas? The lines seem too bare and too short to me, and the rhythm feels stilted because of it.

I don't believe in love.
Valentines make me sick.
Loves kissing at midnight,
is so cliché and false illusion.
Maybe have a colon after "love"? And the third line feels a little awkward. Also, do you have problems with the cliches of love or love itself? I would concentrate on the actual problem a little bit more.

With every relationship that passes,
I think I have come to see;
that no-one will be in love,
as much as my dog loves me.
I think that you could use some parallelism in the last two lines of this stanza, and it would be much easier to read, flow-wise.

Loyalty and honesty,
just needing them to be there. These two lines are pretty awkwardly worded.
I think everyone will agree,
that these are the things love
seems to be.
A dog shares all the traits,
and that's enough for me.

So when everyone is together,
and love had left me. I felt like this statement should have been finished- also, the tense changes.
I think I'll put my feet up
and have a cup of tea,
sit by the fire with my dog,
and keep a sense of reality.

Overall, I liked this- I'm honestly kind of in agreement with part of it (not so extreme though) and you rarely find pieces dealing with this concept. I think that you could have had a smoother flow, but good job overall.
-Coral-