A Mockery of a Child's Acrostic

[OliverPorano]

(formerly posted on a different website)

Pretend your worries are in neverlands,
And the soothsayers are always wrong.
I love perpetual, cloaked in the sand.
Nonentities can scream so long.

Misanthropes, of the filtered side,
Intellects locked in a chicken coop.
Several days, yet none have died.
Enter sadism’s happy loop.
Rising cliffs loom above the sea,
Yonder temptation for the then diseased.

Hound the pleasure with a vengeance bold,
Over hills of vice and seas of sin.
Pen the tragedies that were once old,
Eyes of death watch the next of kin.
Lest somehow righteousness escapes,
Eagle eyes look to the door.
Since my feelings are bound with tape,
Sadness grips me to the core.

[rowens]

This has just enough to make it interesting and worth writing and reading, but maybe it's not supposed to. Maybe it's not meant to be anything. You could make something out of each of these lines. But you didn't make much.

[LittleOwl]

One pitfall I see a lot of aspiring modern poets fall prey to is an emphasis on intriguing wordplay that ultimately lacks cohesion. Like rowens, I enjoyed aspects of your imagery, and I think you could easily tease out several different poems that expound on certain lines. But honestly, I see a jumble of fragmented ideas rather than a polished poem. My advice would be to work on continuity and deliberate, purposeful line construction. One meaningful stanza is better than three aimless ones. Try building on the elements of this piece you like the most.

Also, just to nitpick: your last line does you a great disservice. You're obviously a capable writer, so "Sadness grips me to the core" is so beneath you it drags the rest of your poem kicking and screaming down with it. You have the ability to write something captivating, so just work on your focus.

[betalife]

I agree with the above comments. You have some cool images scattered throughout (I really liked "the soothsayers are always wrong" line) but I think you're sacrificing the poem's cohesion to make sure the acrostic form works.

[OliverPorano]

Thank you, thank you everyone. This is ten times better than all the crap I was getting on Poetry.com like:

"4 stars good"
"2 stars mercy, you are killing me"
"ok"

I wrote this poem while in my geometry class, having forgotten several assignments and having to write an acrostic poem about myself. Next time, I will try and give more thought to my poetry as I write it. My mind tends to wander when I write poetry, and each of those lines actually does have meaning to me, but I'll have to be more coherent.

[Elsie Fillmore]

It does fall apart a bit in the last stanza. The first two stanzas are solid.

[shenaz]

I think the imagery is very nice. A bit like paloma faith, but I don't really get the point of the poem. Too many ideas scattered around. I feel that you need to take one idea and develop your poem around it to make it coherent. Jmho