How do you wish to die? With a bang, a whimper, or a cry?
With your hands held out, striving towards glory? Or with your head hung low, all forgetting your story?
Do you wish to meet him, The dark, grim specter, With a blade in hand Having danced with fervor. The earth around you littered
With corpese anew, And your soul forever damned
By those whose blood you drew?
Do you seek to depart from this mortal plane
Hiding, a coward Your friends and allies dying in vain?
No hope for them
No hope for you
A crimson blade
Your last view?
An uncomfortable question
Though it may be
This question needs answering
As life is not free Especially for us
We bastards of the sea
Who dance with death daily
Who deserve no plea
How do I wish to die, you ask?
A knife to the heart, or some poison in my flask?
Meeting my demise in the mouth of a cruel sea beast,
Or perhaps the ocen depths themselves,
Maybe my own men, will lay me decease
Or the bullets of the Grand Navy, finally striking true
I say this, and I say it truly,
I care not how I die
For my life and my pain would have all been worth it,
Should my death make at least one person cry.
I sigh,
for I do not want to die,
but while time is passing by,
I whimper and cry.
The only option,
is to deliver hope,
start anew,
a create a joke,
be free from the trauma,
and always hail Obama,
get rid of the drama,
and bomb America.
I personally think the poem itself is pretty good, though a bit unsatisfying in some places. That’s to be expected though, no one’s a professional here and I certainly couldn’t produce something like this.
On the actual feeling the poem gives me though, seeing as I kind of find messages like this “corny” for lack of a better word, my opinion is obviously going to be skewed against it.
None of the rhymes contain any intrinsic value and I don’t see what people see in it to compliment it. Some of the rhymes aren’t even real words…
What’s a “spector”? What’s a “fevor”?
I’m assuming he means specter and fervor but I can’t really call it high quality
Everyone will eventually die The reaper’s scythe extends into the night And as we ask : “Why?” The reaper answers: “It’s to make things right.”
don’t ask, this was a random thing written in 36 seconds and bears no relevance whatsoever to the topic at hand
Well, I can’t really help you that much in that regard seeing as, as I said, I am shit at poetry. Maybe you could just wait for Level to log back in or something. My main gripe is a thematic one, but you needn’t worry about it since that’s a personal preference thing.
I assume that Level meant that your rhyming doesn’t seem to have any intent behind it, and seems to be placed there for the sake of having a rhyming scheme. I don’t really know if that’s the case or not for reasons that I have already stated.
What I can say is that I really like how the 5th stanza flows, though the third and fourth lines within it bother me a little. My instinct tells me there should be another line between those two.
I imagine it’s because of the rhyming scheme, and my prejudice from reading other poems is that every iteration (don’t know terminology sorry) of the ABAB pattern should express an idea on its own, and the next idea/statement should be introduced in the next iteration. So, the “as life is not free” bothers me because I instantly think that should be the fifth line, and not the fourth.
This isn’t really a suggestion, and is more of commentary. Again, best bet is to wait for someone who knows what they are talking about.
That…is true, oof. Trying to implement a deeper meaning behind the rhyme didn’t cross my mind while making this as I focused too much on trying to haev it rhyme, and even then it was still not done very well. Thinking about it now, that tends to be my thought process for all poems I right, unless they purposely don’t rhyme.
I may be just dumb, but I don’t see it. When I reread it, my own instinct tells me it’s fine, this is how i wrote it afterall, but if you could elaborate a bit more or include an example of how you feel it should be, I would be greatly appreciative.
Overall, thanks for your feedback.
I referred to my intuition as a “prejudice” simply because it’s something that I don’t think is grounded in any technical knowledge but in experience. It’s likely that I’m just being weird.
Basically, this is how the rhyme scheme divides the stanza:
But the way I hear it in my head, “as life is not free” and “this question needs answering” shouldn’t be in the same division in the stanza somehow (though that fucks up the later lines). So, like this:
