Young Writers Society

Aw, you know I love you! Otherwise, I wouldn't give you such a critique.

Anyway! Continuing onward!

The light that was shown,
Was only the dark,

You do realize that this makes no sense?

The flames that warmed us,
Has consumed you

Have, my dear. HAVE.

Deceived by the only one that you can trust,
There was no trust to give.
A time of all deception,
No real meaning to live.

Now you're repeating yourself.

And now its all over
It was meaningless to the end
I can finally give in
My soul ready to rest

Give in to what?

We both tried to stop
Both attempted to quit
Never did we know
In the dark the meaning shown

Stop what? And what sort of meaning are you talking about?

We searched and fought

What?

It was all a deception

You fought a deception? Weird...

To kill and slaughter
To murder and in the end

To kill and slaughter what?

The darkness still came
The light deserted
We were still left alone
The ones who caused the pain

Okay...

So yeah. Basically, this suffers from ambiguity and nonsensical imagery. Contrast is good, but in your comparisons, make sure that they actually make sense!

Add some rymes to your poem. Right now it's really choppy. With rymes your work can be smoothed out. You have a good plot but you should make your message more clear. Your work is also slightly cliche. Keep working on this piece and I'm sure you'll have a great poem.

It's awfully, awfully abstract. And also really cliche. To be brutally honest, I think the best thing you can do for this poem is put it out of its misery. Next time, work on using concrete images and, erm, punctuation, which is your best friend. Grammar too.

Better luck next time.
-Colleen

Hmmm. I think you start this one well but parts of it could be phrased better and some of the imagery needs improving. Also, the two rhymes you've used don't really work in the poem's favor. Here's some suggestions -

The light that was shown,
Was only the dark, [I like the idea behind this but perhaps the impact could be greater. Maybe change it to

'The light that was shown,
Was a deeper shade of dark.']
The flames that warmed us,
Has consumed you [For these two lines, I'd suggest you add a period at the end of the second and it should either be 'flame' and has or 'flames' and have.]

Deceived by the only one that you can trust, [This line is rather long which disrupts the flow a touch. Perhaps 'Deceived by the trustworthy;' would work?]
There was no trust to give.
A time of all deception,
No real meaning to live. [This line doesn't really fit with the rest of the stanza and I was going to say the rhyme doesn't work but it sort of does if you shorten the first line. Oooh, I have an idea. How about -

Deceived by the trustworthy;
There was no trust to give.
A time based upon deception
Is the only way to live.]

And now that it's all over [Add a comma here?]
It was meaningless to the end [Perhaps 'It meant nothing to the end.']
I can finally give in
My soul ready to rest [This doesn't link to the previous line too well. Perhaps 'And put my soul to rest.' would work better?]

We both tried to stop,
Both attempted to quit.
Never did we know
In the dark the meaning shown [I'd suggest you re-phrase this line because it doesn't quite make sense. Perhaps 'That the dark held the meaning' or 'That in darkness, truth was shown.']

We searched and fought
It was all a deception
To kill and slaughter
To murder and in the end [I'm not sure about this stanza. I think you should take another look and try to add some imagery.]

The darkness still came -
The light deserted.
We were still left alone;
The ones who caused the pain. [I think the ending could be stronger but in general, it's a nice poem.]