passenger on the road to suicide

Hmm. Well, it was a suicide poem, so right from the start I was prejudiced against it (they're a dime a dozen these days, and few really grab me - with most I feel like the idea is, 'you better tell me this is good, because it's obvious what will happen if you don't', which i really lame, since the whole point of posting here is to get criticism. Not that yours is doing that, just my initial thoughts on reading the title.) This poem had no story behind it - it didn't develop any further than the title. All I know from this is that it's about suicide. Which I knew from the title. So why bother reading the poem? That's what you're supposed to tell me. There's no story here, no connection to reality. It needs details, and interesting ones. We've all heard a story about people jumping off of cliffs, for example. Not many people do it (where I live, if you want to commit suicide you do it with a shotgun, end of story, but then again we don't have many cliffs, and we do have a lot of hunters.), but it has become so ingrained in us as a metaphor for suicide and desperation, that there's nothing new to it, and it only means one thing. So it's cliche, because you've used it for that one thing. Another problem with this poem is that it didn't have the feel of an edited poem. It felt like random thoughts that maybe sound good together, but that's it. Reach out and draw your reader in. Find connections between their lives and yours, or your character's, and use those connections to make them feel what you or your character feel. Work on it, don't just fall into the trap of 'poetry is supposed to be spontaneous'. Punctuate it, make everything deliberate. And have it make sense! I couldn't even begin to understand what this poem was trying to tell me, or make me feel, or explain. It didn't follow any logical pattern. Make it approachable, encourage your reader to read it and contemplate it.

Sorry if that sounded like a jumbled rant - I guess it wasn't a very good critique. Keep writing, and keep working on this piece. I'd love to see a rewrite. Again, sorry if I was so harsh. Please keep writing, I'd really enjoy reading more by you!

You didn't capitalize anything, and it was barely punctuated, making this...not even a real sentence, or one full sentence maybe. You should fix that; just because it is a poem doesn't mean you can ignore grammar, punctuation, etc. I have an article on punctuation: Poetry and Punctuation, that might help you.

Emotional poetry sucks to write, because you either sounds selfish and bad, or corny and bad. When you write emotional poetry, you have to appeal not to yourself, but to the reader. I also have an article about this, but I don't have a link to it... It should still be on the first page of Writing Tips, called "Emotional Poetry" so you might want to look at that as well.

I guess it was OK, it's not like I haven't seen suicide poems before. I never see good ones though, odd? I think maybe if you put more effort into bringing out the emotion, rather than just telling us things, listing things, it might come off a little better.

Also, it has really no poetic elements to it: rhymes, rhythm, structure, etc. It has a few lines that rhyme, but you don't pick up on it. Maybe if you tried to do that, it would also help it out.

If you have any questions, or want some help writing poetry [I love helping people with poetry!] feel free to PM me and I'll do what I can Best of luck!