Wasted Liberty
Are there words to express my soul,
To bring warmth to this paper cold?
Have I traded Heart for coal,
Exchangéd Soul for a purse of gold?

Machines as wild as Nature’s best,
And you just leave me with this mess?
I’m your child, not one to jest;
Why couldn’t you have just wasted less?

I look around. They add cement.
Just too hard to resist Satan’s tempt?
To be rationalized in terms of rent,
Now left doomed by actions preempt.

Antithetical Wisdom: Such complaints matter not,
In fact, liberty to waste is why wars are fought!

I decided to try my hand at poetry, this is the first one I created. What do you think?

Hi there,
Welcome to the site and to pigpenland.

As a first poem this shows plenty of promise (certainly more than many first poems)... but sadly mistress muse is a harsh and mean task master who will slap you around plenty...if you are going to try your hand at poetry I hope you like pain!

So first things first, I'll pass on the basic advise I was given when I started out: take a read through and anything that you have heard before in a commonly used saying it likely to be a cliche. Also there are certain words and topics that are just used too death in poetry. Try to think of new or image rich ways to give the poem freshness and interest. The other great advise I was given when I first joined - that seems obvious to me now but I had not thought of previously - read your poems aloud. It will make a huge differance to your editing process.

Overall the read is plain enough but individual lines need to be thought through so that they actually say / mean something beyond an abstract statements that then needs to be re-connected by the reader back into an overall meaning. Think about keeping to one central metaphor or image that is strengthened from stanza to stanza and do not overload the reader with personalised emotions...personally I find angst poetry is particularly dull to read.

In terms of this particular poem I would suggest that strip out all of the first person lines / words and rework each line to a sentence.
I have left an example of what might be taken from your words. This is not a re-write but rather what I managed to read into your lines to give me images and meaning to the overall poem.
I would look forward to seeing how you might edit and develop this if you choose to.

Hope these notes are of some help. All the best AJ.

(02-14-2014, 02:27 PM)Æther Wrote:  Wasted Liberty
[i]Are there words to express my soul,
To bring warmth to this paper cold? The cold paper draws the warmth from my thoughts, white noise fills the void
Have I traded Heart for coal, A trade was made, a pulse of yielded flesh exchanged in mined out seams - red to black
Exchangéd Soul for a purse of gold?