Shadow

Black as night,
Dreams of fright.
Heart is true,
Eyes of blue.
Skin of white,
Flees from light.
Hope is lost,
Power’s cost.
Time just ends,
No loose ends.
Death is near,
Don’t feel fear.
Life goes on,
Feeling’s gone.
Can’t say no
to Shadow.

Time just flies,
Close your eyes.
Can not see,
Ask why me.
Was your choice,
Hush your voice.
Not a kid,
Do as bid.
You were told,
Can’t grow old.
Time ends here,
Death is dear.
All is lost,
Holocaust.
Time unfolds,
You’re Shadow.

I think that while you do have a very nice, steady rhythm the length of your lines causes the meaning to be lost since the sentence that you make can't really flow onto each other.

When reading over it, I do find it mesmeric because of the sharpness and abruptness of the lines. I think that instead of having comma's all the way through you should also add some full stops in the middle, to break things up.

Because of the length of the lines your poem seems totally centred about the rhymes because that what your lines seem to do - just find another word to rhyme with the previous.

Can’t say no
to Shadow.

That line there seems incredibly forced, you had to cut down on the last line to make it stick with the syllable count. It just distorts everything; rhythm and rhyme are important but not more important than the meaning of the words.

I think that this is a very hard form to make a poem from and what you've done here is a good piece with the 3 syllable, abab rhyme scheme. I think that you would be very hard pressed to find a poem that is really good, which uses this form.

That all said, and I don't want to sound all negative, I think that the words you've chosen are really good and you've done an amazing job with this structure.

Thank you!

I suck with poems and thought this one was okay enough to post, but I have trouble with punctuation. I was wondering if I could maybe get a bit more help on that? Thanks!

Well punctuation does depend a lot on what sort of message you were going for, but what I'd suggest for this is adding a full stop at the end of each couplet.

Black as night,
Dreams of fright.
Heart is true,
Eyes of blue.
Skin of white,
Flees from light.
Hope is lost,
Power’s cost.
Time just ends,
No lose ends.
Death is near,
Don’t feel fear.
Life goes on,
Feeling’s gone.
Can’t say no
to Shadow.

Something like that - mind you that's just a suggestion it does depend on the message/tone you want to take on.

Was "lose" supposed to be "loose"? If so, here's how to spell it.

If the periods have a longer pause than the commas and are spaced throguhout the poem properly...(I've been reading poetry for years, and sometimes I still forget that pauses only come with puncuation )


then this is a great poem, I love the style you used.

Okay!

So I took Mad's advise and added periods. Thank you guys so much on helping with this. And I agree on this last part:

Can’t say no
to Shadow.

It does sound forced. I'll try to fix it up.

Though I actually like this a bit, I have a few criticisms as well.

First, the last line at the end of the first stanza...

Quote:
to Shadow


I think is one syllable too short and it breaks the pattern and causes a week ending.

Also, although I applaud your ability to make everything fit into this type of flow and actually make sense, it also makes the poem slightly durogatory and leaves the reader reading as flows: "blah blah blah, blah blah blah, does this ever end, blah blah blah, blah blah blah". Some flucuation is actually good in poetry, so that the reader is not bored and left feeling as if they are never going to reach the end.

Happy Editing!
WM