Hi Igor, and welcome. You've identified your biggest flaw but really haven't addressed it -- forced rhyme occurs when you are shoving the words into an unnatural pattern and allowing the rhyme to take control of your poem. This can be quite clearly seen throughout your poem, with inverted syntax and missing articles/pronouns. Most of this would be very easily fixed by allowing your lines to be longer -- pentameter instead of tetrameter, for example.
I've just reworked your first stanza with that in mind:
The birds sit quiet, all the trees are calm,
and no man holds a sword within his palm;
upon the grass, beneath the silver sky
all sleep in peace and never wonder why.
Now, why do you change from four lines in your first stanza to five in all the others? I suspect you have no reason, it just happened by accident. By the time you're posting here in serious critique, you should have an answer for every choice you've made, even if it's just "I thought it might work but it hasn't".
For such a serious subject, words like "stomp" and "rump" are pretty juvenile. Your language must do justice to your subject -- this is just not negotiable. Your poem at the moment reads like a bad combination of Jabberwocky and every simple war poem I've ever read. Please address your fundamental flaws before I spend any more time on this.
I've just reworked your first stanza with that in mind:
The birds sit quiet, all the trees are calm,
and no man holds a sword within his palm;
upon the grass, beneath the silver sky
all sleep in peace and never wonder why.
Now, why do you change from four lines in your first stanza to five in all the others? I suspect you have no reason, it just happened by accident. By the time you're posting here in serious critique, you should have an answer for every choice you've made, even if it's just "I thought it might work but it hasn't".
For such a serious subject, words like "stomp" and "rump" are pretty juvenile. Your language must do justice to your subject -- this is just not negotiable. Your poem at the moment reads like a bad combination of Jabberwocky and every simple war poem I've ever read. Please address your fundamental flaws before I spend any more time on this.
It could be worse