It's the end of the ride

Hello, a few things here:

- Obviously the first thing that needs to be addressed is the rhyming scheme. I mean, it works in the sense that the poem doesn't seem to be trying to say too much. If you dropped much of the "bodies" talk, I could see this poem in a Shel Silverstein context. But you are obviously trying to go for a little more here, so it needs work. Rhymes are forced and unnatural. I think you really needs to think about your word choices here.

- The content is interesting and kept reading right along, but honestly the title and last line are really really not working for me. It just cheapens the whole thing. Seriously.

- I think any revision should require that you really think about what you are trying to do with the poem. The nautical aspects of it are carefree and somewhat fun-like, but then you try to get all serious and philosophical at the end. That's not a bad thing, but you could probably do without slapping us in the face with it and it would have the same effect. A bit of subtlety with a sea metaphor of sorts would really round this piece out.

Feel free to send me a line if you'd like.

I will divide my review into sections so that it's easier to read.

Specific things I noticed ('it's'):

You used the word 'it's' very, very much. It was okay in the beginning, but as the poem went on this particular fact started to really annoy me. Try to use some more descriptive words when talking about the boat and other things ( one of the reasons I didn't like this was because 'it's' can be describing so many different things you never know which). Some examples:

"It's the end of the ride"

First of all, the title contains this very word. I think it could have worked as just "At the end of the ride", or, more simply, "The end of the ride". This is of course also used as the last line of the poem, so I would change that as well.

"The adventures it's had
The perils it's faced
With the captain and the lad
Through a long life it's slowly paced"

This is one of the stanzas which uses 'it's' the most. Some suggestions:

'The adventures that have been had
The perils that it has faced'

Or just,

'The adventures it has had
The perils it has faced'

Is way better than using 'it's'.

Specific things (rhyming):

Okay, on to the next. Another thing that kind of bugged me is that a lot of the rhyme that is I is poem sounds very forced. A few examples:

"One small wooden boat
Battles through the waves
Struggling to keep afloat
As it travels its path is paved"

'Paved' first of all doesn't really make sense in the context unless you explained it a little more. The boat obviously isn't paving the ocean. There are other words you could use that rhyme better with waves and make more sense, though you may have to change the last line completely. Some other words to think about using:

'caves'
(might be used to describe the shallows in between the waves).

'saves' or 'saved'
(this verb can be used in many ways to make sense with the context of a boat in a storm).

Hope that helped as far as those little things!

Specific things (word choice):

One line that particularly stood out for me was this one:

"Waves of 100 feet come barging"

Apart from not flowing very well, this line was a little discontinuous. Generally, I wouldn't use numbers in a poem, I would usually spell them out. But even if you do, 'one hundred' is kind of a mouthful. Maybe try using a different, descriptive word, like 'colossal' or 'unimaginably huge' or something of the sort.

Things I liked:

This was a really great poem! The meaning was clear and well got across, and I really liked the form and structure. Keep up the good work!

Sapi

P.s. Sorry for the super long review.

I found this very interesting and fun to read. You used the words very well and kept the rhythm of the poem flowing. This I must say was really good!