z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

Love

by Hijinks


Love lifts you up, promising a great future
She comes in the form of warm hugs and kisses,
jokes and meals,
all imaginable blisses.

Then the tornado throws you down,
makes you cry,
you stop smiling, you stop laughing. 
You wonder, why?

Why doesn't sister share her chocolate bar?
Why does brother pick a fight?
Simply over if lunch
is chicken sandwiches. Oh what a blight!

The strong wind pushes you away,
into a pool of grief, 
making you angry,
making you seethe.  

She offers you her hand again,
a hug, a sisterly handshake,
a kiss and smile.
All, simply, for your sake.

Sometimes fake,
sometimes true,
Love's always been here,
not at all new.

        

      

Reworked Draft, September 2020

I rewrote this poem for fun, to see how much my style has changed! It's still got some of the childish tone, but it sounds more like something I'd write now.  

     

Love is a step ladder, each wrung leading 
to a kinder place, full of hugs and kisses
birdsong and laughter,
all imaginable blisses. 

Then she whirls into a tornado,
making you cry,
driving wood into sharp splinters;
you wonder, why?

Why does the deafening storm
bring silence of birds and halt their flight?
Why would brother pop your balloon -
is his only goal to invoke a fight?

Love's gentle breeze can quicken  
into the strong wind of grief;
she tears trees to shreds until
you can't find a single entire leaf. 

But then she sweeps them into
a pile, for you to splash in;
the red-and-orange is warm embrace,
the dizzy joy is making you spin.

Often bitter,
sometimes sweet;
a sunny day's light and
a winter storm's sleet. 


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Fri Dec 04, 2020 12:29 am
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LilPWilly wrote a review...



I really like the first one. I think it touches more on pure aspects of love, like “promising a great future” or “all, simply for your sake.” The other one definitely had better wordplay, but as a lyricist I love the raw emotion and innocent perspectives from the first. You're a natural writer, and as for me I absolutely loved your baked goods poem. The more you expose yourself, the better I connect with you, and the best part is none of us actually know you! It’s not the same for me, my sister signed me up, but I’ll be excited to keep following you.




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Mon Jul 10, 2017 9:51 am
MrMuddyPig says...



What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
Baby don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
What is love
Yeah
Oh, I don't know why you're not there
I give you my love, but you don't care
So what is right and what is wrong
Gimme a sign
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
Whoa whoa whoa, oh oh
Whoa whoa whoa, oh oh
I don't know, what can I do
What else can I say, it's up to you
I know we're one, just me and you
I can't go on
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
Whoa whoa whoa, oh oh
Whoa whoa whoa, oh oh
What is love, oh, oh, oh
What is love, oh, oh, oh
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
Don't hurt me
Don't hurt me
I want no other, no other lover
This is our life, our time
When we are together, I need you forever
Is it love?
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more, Yeah (oh, oh)
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
What is love
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more (oh, oh)
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more (oh, oh)
Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
What is love?




MrMuddyPig says...


You're probably confused, so this is the lyric for the What is love-Haddaway song.



Hijinks says...


Oh ... okay, yes that makes more sense :)



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Sat Jul 01, 2017 5:14 am
SynonymousTom wrote a review...



Hey there! Tom here.

As a whole, I really enjoyed your poem here. It does a great job of discussing what love is. It's ups and downs, how some days its bliss and some days hell on earth. I think the format you chose for this was very straight forward and classic, and it fit perfectly with what you were doing. You went back and forth discussing love's different phases as I mentioned earlier, so breaking each thought into a separate stanza was the right way to go here.

My main critique carries off of what Nikayla said. Both "love" and "she" seemed to be abused quite a bit in this piece. While they're both very direct ways of referring to love, (and "she" is obviously love in this piece) I think you could've found a few creative ways to mix things up and add a bit more variety. Your best bet at doing that is either finding some synonyms or rewording some lines so they're not "she blah blah blah" or "love blah blah blah."

Sorry for such a short review! I hope it came as some help still.

Keep up the great work!

-Tom




Hijinks says...


I changed up some words ... is it better or worse?





I love what you did! I personally think it flows much better :)



Hijinks says...


That's good. Thanks for the input!



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Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:43 pm
Virgil wrote a review...



This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review! I see that you're new to the site, so welcome. If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask them! With that, let's delve right into the review.

First off, I wish that this didn't repeat the word 'love' so much throughout the course of the poem. There are other words that are synonyms of love that you're able to go with here that have the same meaning though aren't as stale. Over the course of the piece, the word 'love' is used nine times. Not only that, the structure in which this poem is formed is generally repetitive. Dividing this into stanzas is something that I suggest specifically for this piece due to the fact that it'll give this more of a form.

If you're unsure of how to do that already, you can line up all the lines in a single stanza and then press shift+enter at the places where you want the line to break. If this is a little too vague of an explanation, a dash or something similar to '~' in-between can divide stanzas and the reader will know what you mean. I want to see this poem spiced up a bit in content and in structure or aesthetic.

This repeats the same form over and over. The first two lines begin with a simile, then after the second line there's a semicolon or dash or something to divide the two but still keep the lines connected, and then there's another simile afterwards. I enjoy the usage of figurative language in poetry though this is what I see as an over-usage. There's too many examples here. Eight similes that don't try to expand at all with any imagery or other poetic devices, which is the weakness here.

The concept of this poem may be a little overdone, though that doesn't mean you're not able to make it your own by using personal experience and making it your own. I want more detail to come from these similes that you use to describe what love is. It's a standard way of going about a poem, though it is a consistent one. Instead of putting another simile afterwards, I suggest making four quatrains that use four similes and go into more depth about them and use more imagery and emotional impact.

Four great examples of what love is will hit the reader harder than eight examples that are sub-par because you didn't flesh them out well enough. I do admit here the coffee/tea comparison is strong in this, though I can see this being stronger if you decided to do a 4x4 structure with four lines and four stanzas ending up with 16 lines and 4 similes to make this even. Use different words than love if you're going to keep this the same though since it gets stale easily and what I've proposed for future edits is just a suggestion that you don't have to take, though I do think this would be stronger if you decided to do that.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask! I hope I helped and have a great day.

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Hijinks says...


Thank you! I changed the whole poem, would you say it's better, different, or worse?



Virgil says...


I like it for different reasons than the other poem, actually! It's still nice and I think it's an improvement though yes, it is quite the change. This draft is a lot more cohesive, and I like that. The rhyme that's sprinkled in is something that bothered me personally though since there's not rhyme in other places of the poem and I rather someone be consistent with that, though I do like this one better!



Hijinks says...


I changed some rhyming around . . .



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Thu Jun 29, 2017 1:09 pm
ExOmelas wrote a review...



Hi again!

Just the one nit-pick this time:

like livfe saving medicine.


Overall, you have something solid here. You have a clear aim, to show the many sides of love, and you have good imagery for each side.

I think the first thing I want from this is more detail. Because you do each side one after the other, it becomes very like a list and it's hard to hold each one in my head. The images are fine, but when they're only a few words long, and there's lots of them, it makes it quite hard for them to stick in my mind. My suggestion here is to focus on less aspects, or make the poem longer. You have some positive aspects and some negative aspects, which is the main thing, so you could choose your favourite good and bad things and spend more time making me feel each one. Maybe you could give me some context so that I can feel how this relates to either you or a fictional speaker. That would give some emotion in the words that would be more tangible than trying to relate it to my own life. Alternatively, you could do this for all of the ones you have here, and just have a very long poem.

Next, I think I'd quite like to know the conclusion here. When you write a discursive essay, you present evidence from both sides, then come to a conclusion about the topic. Similarly, you have presented explanations of many sides of love, some of which would make the reader desire it, some of which would make the reader afraid of it. This means I'm kind of left with no feeling towards love, because they cancel each other out. I think I suggest a final stanza where you separate what you see as the most important aspect out and explain why this is the most important. Then I would have a specific conclusion I could take away and keep thinking about. And I dunno about you, but people thinking about me for a while afterwards is what I want from anything I write.

Let me know if any of this is unclear,
Biscuits :)




Hijinks says...


I followed your suggestions, and changed the structure of the poem - let me know what you think!



ExOmelas says...


Ooh that's really good - exactly what I was thinking of :D




The words you speak become the house you live in.
— Hafiz