Purpose was paved into the foundations,
Each stone standing guard,
Soldiers stand watch, lighting fires along the towers,
Alerting men to settle their scores.
------------------------------------------
Every year there seems to be a new war,
Countless battles, and grimy faces lit under a new flame.
Clashing of metal upon stone, scraping across a scarred surface,
Blood spills down the walls,
Accumulating filth under ages of torment.
------------------------------------------
The times change, but the command stays the same,
As winds and rain beat upon a weathered face,
Wiping clean the victory and defeats of those long dead.
As if the lives of the men who fought were merely a dream,
But each gash in the rock tells of the life fleeing a warrior’s eyes.
---------------------------------------------
Clouds seethe and the fires hiss in anger,
As water streams from above,
Scrubbing the rubble,
Working its long tired hands along stained rock,
Until it stands again,
Unsullied.
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139,320 Literary Works • 672,531 Reviews
Hey there, Toto25! My name is Scarlett, and I'm here to review your poetry this Review Day! ^^
First off, I'll give you a little tip. "Shift + Enter" will give you line breaks that aren't a bunch of symbols in a row. XD I'm not sure if you've used that or not, but I thought it might be a good thing to know and/or remind you of. The Publishing Center is really weird about formatting. I don't know when that's going to be fixed (and even worse, lately it doesn't even want to upload documents! o.o), so learning tricks to adjust your own formatting is a good idea. ^^
Okay, so I like these first two lines here;
But then you get to this part and you lose me;
I think it's "soldiers stand watch". Going from "each stone standing guard" to "soldiers stand watch" messes with the flow. I suggest rewording that section of the line. It really doesn't gel well with the rest of the stanza for me.
I feel like this stanza needs some work with punctuation;
I'd probably do something like this;
Looks a little better now, doesn't it?
And there there's this section;
Let's back up a second. "The times change, but the command stays the same" - what command? You could have included it here and you haven't. It would have added some interesting character to the poem. I repeated; what. command. You mentioned the commands, then just straight into more battle-scene. Adding in the command would add in context for the battle. Just something to consider. ^^
As for punctuation, you could use some variation to the commas here. Perhaps something like this;
Make sense, yes?
And I'm going to stop there before I get too passionate about poetry. XD I love the imagery in your last stanza, but I feel as if the poem as a whole needs a little work. Nothing major, just a little polishing to make it the best it can be. You flow is pretty good, just stunted in that one spot I pointed out. The imagery is good, but could be better. You could really expand on this, too. As it is, it's just a snapshot of this battle/wall. You could literally paint a picture with words. Take this, bring more imagery and emotion into it. Make it make me feel something, because right now? I don't feel more than a tiiiiny flicker. Anyways, I hope I've helped.
Remember; keep it up and never stop writing!
~Scarlett.
Wow, this poem portrays a very strong and clean message. You might not live in America, but when I saw this, I immediately thought, "Trump" xD Nothing bad, but this thought just shows how weird I am. And if you do live in America, sorry if you don't like him. I'm not trying to be offensive ;-; tbh idl him too...idl clinton either. How did this comment become politics stuff? Just wanted to say, amazing...ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ ɪɴᴛᴇʀɴᴇᴛs (งツ)ว ╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
I really like the imagery of this. It makes me think of something from LOTR or something. I think that the thing I liked the most was just how sad it makes you feel about war and bloodshed in general. It doesn't glorify it or anything like that. It's a good exposition of how dark and gritty it is. I just picture the battle for Helm's deep and it honestly made me feel the exact same way as when I watched it for the first time. I wasn't excited for the battle, I was scared. And reading this it, as someone in the military, it gives me a little bit of the same feeling. I enjoyed reading this a lot. I think you should write a short story about a battle with a lot of the same language and word choice you used here, I think that would be beautiful.