Misunderstood

[tectak]

I re edited the poem, do you think this is any better?


At a very first glance you’re so fragile and frail, the "very" word is redundant and wrong. It is redundant because the "first" glance cannot be second....or third.....or...well, you get it. It is wrong because you cannot have degrees of superlatives. It is like saying, and we do, "almost perfect" or "the very best" or " totally new" Its not a crime but it is a nit
Who would have known your past holds such a tale.
You walk with a cane and a hunched over back,
Never do you get any slack. This is a hideously forced rhyme. It is obvious to me that you are always commited to the last word of the first line of these couplets. It is your poem so if you struggle to rhyme L2 with L1....change L1:
You walk with a cane, back hunched and bowed,
no one to help you carry life's load.
...or something


I heard your story in a rather odd place,
A room just off the track of a horse race.
When you spoke no one around would speak,
I stood on a chair just to get a peek. The meter struggles a good deal. You are, by accident or design, galloping. Sometimes you stumble but then you fall. I thought you were reading your work with a "personal" style of emphases.....but no. You do need to work on meter...especially if you are also using strict rhyme scheme. The precision of the one highlights the failings of the other:
A room near a track, where horses would race.

The stories you told gave me the chills,
Filling my arms with many little hills. Filling is not the best word. Painting my arms with goose-bumpy hills. Your poem and this is a good line anyway. Nice imagery.
I caught sight of your eyes glistening bright,
A tear slipped out with such delight. Same old same old. Seems inverse forced. Dangerously close to shooting an elephant in your pyjamas

Just as you finished the race had begun,punctuate to clarity. Comma after finished
Horses went off to the sound of a gun. This line is to blatantly a filler, though you need to get the image projected to the reader to set up the next lines. You have a two horse race in this stanza. Shoot one.
and then they were off to the crack of the gun!
but I did not see horses, I only saw you
You sensed I was staring....you looked at me, too.
.....or something
Ignoring the horses my eyes remained on you,
I know you could sense them since you looked at me too. Errr....you sensed the horses? Yep. They are quite hard to locate. Small, tippy-toeing creatures that make no sound as they er.....gallop by.:-)

This is a little Readers Write in the Sunday tabloids but you can make it much better.Please stick with this as a test-bed prototype. You will get a lot of workshopping help if you can respond to crit in a mature way.
Best,
tectak