Our One Duet

Our One Duet

If we were to have our one duet,
The only song to sing together, let it be
That we draw breaths on the same beat,
That we express in our eyes that of which we cannot speak;

Were this to be
The only semblance between you and me,
I’d pick our clarity of thought
As we both leave for the last time.

If the only similar traits we held,
Were fearing that things could not be the same
And sporting apathy over fear,
So they are.

Though I’ve grown fond of chilled feelings
And stoic longing,
Gladly would I open my eyes and reveal my emotions
For you, only you.

And the autumn remembers these sighing days, these thinly-veiled aches of the soul—
Our music—and so ends our only song as it breaks pitch,
Our fragile minuet,
Our one duet.

Comments & reviews · 3
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User avatar
Goldie_Locks
Review

I agree with them, the syllables are a little messed up, but your message is clear. It's broken a little strangely, but it adds a twist! Keep up the work, just try to match the syllable count up!






~Sarah

User avatar
Kale
Review
Kale wrote a review · Tue Jul 06, 2010 1:06 am

Were this to be, the
Only semblance between you and me,

Like jemjive pointed out, this stanza is broken a little awkwardly. I suggest moving the "only" to the end of the first line since, right now, the current position of the breaks makes the comma look grammatically incorrect when it isn't.

If the only similar traits we held,
Were fearing that things could not be the same
And sporting false visages to maintain the mirage of normality,
So they are.

Here you have a tense shift in the last line, which really threw me off. Also, who/what is "they"?

Overall, while this is a good start, and you had a definite structure and flow to your ideas, I felt that this poem was very vague and abstract. There wasn't much by the way of concrete descriptions, and as a result, I was left floating in a sort of poetry limbo. Something you might try is looking at all the pronouns you have and replacing them with a description that describes what the pronoun represents. Pronouns are inherently quite vague, and using too many of them in a poem can make it confusing. Also, directly relating the events of this poem to a concrete and easily-visualized description would help anchor your readers and make this poem more memorable, especially if the descriptions are unique and unusual.

Your grammar was very good overall, though you might want to consider not capitalizing the first letter of every line. There is an option to turn this off in Word, if that's the word processor you use, and you should be able to easily find the instructions on how to on the internet. I mention this because the capitalization is part of the formatting of your poem, and formatting can have a huge impact on how your poem is received. In this case, I think the capitalization of the first letter of every line helps give this poem a more formal feel, which works with this poem, but may not work with others.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. :D

User avatar
jemjive
Review

Hello Gilded, I am here to take away that horrible feeling of a work with no comments. :)
I think you have a pretty good peopm going here. I think the words you chose are mostly good, I just don't like where you separated the lines in some places. And your punctuation in some places looks a little bit off, but I don't know if I am all that qualified to pick at that. On thing I suggest though is to do something that was once reccomended to me, write your poem out in paragraph form, then add your puctuation and them put it back ito your poem form.

Here are my little nitpicks,

If we were to have our one duet,
The only song to sing together, let it be
That we draw breaths on the same beat,
That we express in our eyes that of which we cannot speak;
The second line is a place where it breaks weird. I have an idea, a way that sounds better to me, but then again, I do everywhere. I won't share them here now because in my experience, when people tell you those things it makes it harder for you to try and work on it. Feel free to PM though if you get really stuck or anything. Also the semicolon seems a little out of place to me.

Were this to be, the
Only semblance between you and me,
I’d pick our clarity of thought
As we both leave for the last time.
Again, broken weird. ;)

And sporting false visages to maintain the mirage of normality,
I find that this line doesn't seem to fit well into the rest of the poem.

I hoped I helped! Overall I did actually like this poem, it just needs a little bit of work.
Keep writing,
-Jem



seagulls are bad sea chickens with no sense of humanity
— Kay (novembercrow)