The lovers

by retrodisco666

Published June 23, 2010

In poem

I took a drink from a vial,
so that i could sleep a while,
The doctor shall pronounce me dead,
so i can be with my wed.

I walk towards her hallowed hall,
I don't know what to expect at all,
I shouldn't have gone and killed that night,
My love may have paid the price.

I see her lying in her tomb,
We will be together soon.
I take my dagger and slit my neck,
I will love you forever Juliet.

I awake to see below,
A cold and broken Romeo,
I took the dagger from his hand,
We weren't destined for this land.

I put the dagger in my chest,
and lay in my place of rest,
In our blood i drew a heart,
it was Romeo and Juliet from the start.

Comments & reviews · 6
RepublicOfCoter wrote a review Review · Jun 27, 2010

Hi. After I read the first stanza I knew exactly what I was going to get-something slightly annoying. I didn't like the rhyming one bit; to me, it ruined the feel of the poem. It was a forced rhyming which usually is a big NO NO in the poetry business. You made a big mistake by moving from one character to the other without any notice and so suddenly. I liked how you re-invented the story of Romeo and Juliet but that's all I can offer.

MWAHAHAHA!
-RepublicOfCoter

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kingolions
Review
kingolions wrote a review Review · Jun 26, 2010

Hay. I quite liked this poem. Unlike Galerius, after I read the first two lines, I thought that this wasn't going to be that great, because I found that your rhyming seemed forced. I was soon proven wrong.

I liked how you portrayed Romeo and Juliet. The only thing that I had a problem with, is that I found it a bit confusing the first time i read it, when you were swapping between Romeo and Juliet. I think you just need to make it more clear that there is a change in point of view by using *** or something. But other than that, I found it well written.

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Galerius
Review
Galerius wrote a review Review · Jun 26, 2010

Hi retrodisco666,

After reading the first two lines, I actually thought that this was going to be a decent poem. I quickly realized how wrong I was. Your two main problems are:

- you focus too much on the rhyme, including lines that are simply meant to hold up the arbitrary AABB pattern without any thought as to the flow or movement of the piece

- you have a strange mix of paragraphs that have good images, and those that are deserts of non-description, making reading this piece as a whole very unsettling

retrodisco666 wrote:I took a drink from a vial,
so that i could sleep a while,
The doctor shall pronounce me dead,
so i can be with my wed.


Now here, the first two lines worked very well, giving a type of dramatic sing-song voice to the poem, as if the narrator is trying to decide whether to be morose about the Romeo/Juliet suicide or accepting of its inevitability. The third and fourth lines also played to this effect, although less so. Unfortunately,

I walk towards her hallowed hall,
I don't know what to expect at all,
I shouldn't have gone and killed that night,
My love may have paid the price.


That sentiment hit a brick wall as soon as this stanza was reached. "...to expect at all." Really? That basically screams the fact that you're trying to keep a rhyme together. Phrases like "at all" are generally coded messages for the poet's inability to rhyme without stuffing in extraneous words that could easily be taken out.

The last two lines in the above stanza are devoid of any imagery or subtlety. We don't want to hear that you shouldn't have killed and your love paid a price. We want to feel it. So describe it.

I awake to see below,
A cold and broken Romeo,
I took the dagger from his hand,
We weren't destined for this land.


This stanza is another example of rhyme gone bad. "We weren't destined for this land" may be a good line elsewhere, but here it's tacked on with seemingly no reason. What does it even have to do with the three lines above it? Marginally, I suppose that it's connected, but only just. Find another, more fitting place to put it.

Fix those problems and this poem has a chance at life. Right now, it's wallowing in its own naivety.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

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skutter11
Review
skutter11 wrote a review Review · Jun 24, 2010

This quite a good interpretation of Romeo and Juliet! The whole thing followed really well and the rhyming didn't falter once. The rhythm kept up really well, too. The imagry was equally good and it coungered such vivid images in my mind.

I hope to see more of your work in future!

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blacknightscry Comment
blacknightscry commented Comment · Jun 23, 2010

Hello, I really like this poem and how you went from Juliet in the first stanza to Romeo in the next two then smoothly back to Juliet for the last too. I'm easily bored and this obviously wasn't boring. ^-^

CuteBalletDancer7 wrote a review Review · Jun 23, 2010

Hello(:
Well I'm a sucker for Romeo and Juliet, haha, but I thought this was good. I like how I didn't know who or what was really going on in the beginning. There could be a bit more flow, but I'm not exactly sure how to fix that but to add some new interesting vocabulary. Or it could just be me (I'm not the greatest at editing poems). But no matter what, there is always room for improvement in everything.

Keep Writing(:



There has never been a sadness not cured by breakfast food.
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