Friends

it's like Dr. Seuss for mall tweens. I'm even picturing little illustrations to go with it.

DON'T capitalize the first word of every line. I see you've gotten advice that says you can do whatever you want but... we've all learned grammar, right? You capitalize the first words of sentences and proper nouns, right? So why would you think that poetry is any different? Let me backpedal, do whatever you want. After you write enough and get some experience, you'll figure out what you've got to do.

Content wise, I felt that this poem was a little insensitive. There are actually people out there who don't have friends, you know. This might hurt their feelings. Some people's friends don't stand next to them when they have issues. I don't know, I saw it as a willfully ignorant over-simplification. Which brings me back to mall tweens. Cute? Sure. Do I want to read cute poetry? No.

best,

It's a cute poem. Your writing is nice, and I think it kind of goes over what needs to be said without being too wordy which would be obnoxious for this subject! So, I like that. I like the battle ground comparison, it goes nicely. You could try inserting more metaphors and comparisons, just to make it flow and read off a little prettier. Maybe try playing with some of the syllables and words a little more to get the optimal result! But, I like it. It's cute! Good job!

I think your poem was really good. I could understand everyline and where you were coming from. I don't have too much criticism for you but thats because I thought it was really good the way it was. I really admire you choice of topic and the words you used. Everything you said was true and I felt like I had really connected with your poem. So keep up the good work and keep writing!

Hey there, tkpejb! (by the way, autocorrect is baffled by your username)

Anyways, hello there. I won’t be too nitpicky with this because I have two huge things I want to definitely mention about this.

The first is that, well, you don’t need the first stanza at all. The nice thing about poetry is keeping it good and clean and tight. You include what contributes to the story because you have such limited space to tell the story while excluding all of the extra, unneeded information. The first stanza is made almost entirely of unnecessary information.

Secondly, you don’t need the last stanza and the same things I said about the first stanza applies to the second stanza. It doesn’t need to be there and therefore it shouldn’t. Actually, I definitely think that the last line of your fourth stanza, “They’ll be standing right beside you.” packs way more punch. So yeah, end on a butt-kickin’ note like that and disregard that whole extra stanza. Plus with both of those stanza’s you’re sort of telling the reader how to interpret the piece. And you should always leave that up to the reader which can be done pretty easily without those two stanzas. Plus, no one wants to be told what to think, you know?

Also, “I wasn't sure if I was supposed to capitalize every line.”
Capitalization is all up to you. You can go without capitalizing anything like this poem, you can capitalize every line like you did here, or you can mix it up like this poem.

Anyways, best of luck.

~lilymoore