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Young Writers Society



Warriors of Love

by Temi


T.J. Alufa

Caught in the swirling motions of love;
In a domain where your first love becomes two.
 An unseen war,
Where your weapon is time,
Your tactics are words           
And blood is the laughter you never caused.
To look upon that inward eye,
Where laughter overrides the gentleness of poetic words.  
To subtly know that you fight a war
You will never win;
As long as time never intersects with your fate.
So forever you belong,
To a bond of parasites.
Knowing strongly that all is truly lost,
But believing weakly,
That these words
Override the outburst of bliss.

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2631 Reviews

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Sun Feb 03, 2013 10:50 am
Rydia wrote a review...



Hello there! I am here to review :)

Specifics

1. Title I have to be honest and say I don't like it. I've heard the phrase before and it doesn't grab my attention or make me think 'oh I wonder what that will be about'. It would be more interesting if you rearranged it to something less familiar, such as 'The Love Warrior' or 'The Warrior Love'.

2. The second line is very clumpy. I think you need a line break after first and then that second part could easily carry over to line three. I like the idea of a first love becoming two, though I'd like to understand more of what's behind it. Is this because they break up and then get back together? Only the poem feels too soft and lilting for that and I'm struggling to equate the tone of the poem to the title and its themes. Where's the fighting? Where's the solid beat of marching footsteps and the awful casualties of love and war?

3.

Your tactics are words
This line would probably sound and flow better as 'Your words are tactics'[/quote]

4.
And blood is the laughter you never caused.
When you finally do get to some conflict, I like it. But I feel like the other two lines need to be more like this, they need to be something that can readily have an image or a feeling put to it. Your weapon is time and your tactics are words are just too generic and too vague. They're not thought provoking enough because too many thoughts could be applied to them, while we know exactly what you're getting at with the above quoted line. Give us a story that is specific to your personas. We want to relate to it, yes. But we want it to be their story, we want to feel like the narrator is a real person with their own, very real experience.

Overall

I like what's going on here and I like the complaint that the persona has found their poetry is losing out to laughter. What else? What else does this person have that the poet does not? I want to get a stronger image of these other two characters and their relationship and I want the narrator to feel isolated from them. Focus less on the generic side of this and how it can apply to everyone and more on this specific situation. Don't worry about the over-reaching message of your poem, the reader will get there. And they will be much more enthralled along the way if you give them a story and give them a narrator they can pity and relate to.

Hopefully that helps a little! Keep writing,

Heather xxx





"My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."
— Bishop Desmond Tutu