Lock It Away

[Willpark]

Lock It Away

Keep your heart in a box,
Hide the key and swear never to open it,
Lest you experience some pain again,

Keep it locked in its cage,
And though its sings and yearns
For freedom and freshness,
Deny it. Imprison it for its own safety.

Feel its strong pull,
But pull back only stronger.
Do not give into its sweet melody,
A siren’s call, surely, luring you to doom.

Let it grow weak and old
In captivity, no longer longing
For its destined desire,
Singing sweetly no more.

Then wonder why.
And wish you hadn’t.
And realize you still have time,
And hear its fated song echoing on the horizon.

[billy]

hi willpark,

you start the poem with a cliche and many of the lines are very wordy in a way that gives it a mundane feeling. each stanza is saying the same thing more or less. simile and metaphor will change the pumpkins into crystal coaches. i know cage is a metaphor but it's a cliched one. get rid of any clichés, siren's call etc. interest the reader with the first line and keep them interested.

Lock It Away

Keep your heart in a box,
Hide the key and swear never to open it,
Lest you experience some pain again,

this whole stanza says

hide your heart from pain

Keep it locked in its cage,
And though its sings and yearns
For freedom and freshness,
Deny it. Imprison it for its own safety.

this one says

lock your heart up for ever, it's for your own good.

Feel its strong pull,
But pull back only stronger.
Do not give into its sweet melody,
A siren’s call, surely, luring you to doom.

Let it grow weak and old
In captivity, no longer longing
For its destined desire,
Singing sweetly no more.

Then wonder why.
And wish you hadn’t.
And realize you still have time,
And hear its fated song echoing on the horizon.

[Jinxy]

Lock It Away

Keep your heart in a box,
Hide the key and swear never to open it,
Lest you experience some pain again,

Keep it locked in its cage,
And though its sings and yearns
For freedom and freshness freshness doesnt really fit here too well
Deny it. Imprison it for its own safety.

Feel its strong pull,
But pull back only stronger.
Do not give into its sweet melody,
A siren’s call, surely, luring you to doom.

Let it grow weak and old
In captivity, no longer longing
For its destined desire,
Singing sweetly no more. Try and be a bit more consistent with your alliteration, it just randomly appears throughout the poem. This verse is nice, but it doesn't at all fit with the rest.

Then wonder why.
And wish you hadn’t.
And realize you still have time, random assonance that you could develop more, wonder why, realize, still have time. Your use of poetic devices is kinda random and scattered, be purposeful and patterned
And hear its fated song echoing on the horizon.[/b]

[Martyl]

Poetry needs to be easy on the ear.
This poem is very rough on the ear.
Introduce some rhyme.
The poem talks about locking up your heart.
This is a powerful sentiment.
The poem talks about a powerful sentiment without being powerful enough.
I think a bit of editing will help this poem enormously

[UnclePedro]

Hi Willpark

Let me start off my saying that this is a great start to writing this style of poetry and is a great topic to cover. The issue I have with this as a reader, similar to the other people who read and commented, is that this can be a very in-depth, intense, and deep topic to write about, but the poem you have here is a little too simple and common of an interpretation/story. While words like 'heart', 'cage', 'box', or the reference to the mythological sirens aren't bad things to use, they can be a bit off-putting if they are used in phrases that are commonly written. No one wants to read an original and new piece of poetry that is stitched together with familiar sections of literature, which loses its allure of being new and special and unique to the writer/poet.

You can write better poetry by giving these sentiments or ideas a story or background, attaching the sentiments to a person or thing, by taking the reader on a journey, or, paraphrasing Erthona (another user on this site) aka Dale: "Poetry is about making the obscure clear".

Edits:
1) Like a few mentioned above, the poem doesn't flow very well. You can write poetry that doesn't rhyme and flows well if you pay attention to the number of beats per line and rhyming schemes. These can vary on the type of poem you are trying to write or if you are doing your own thing, what sort of tone or rhythm you are trying to emulate.
2) L2- At the end of the line, 'it' appears to refer to the key instead of the box.
3) I would end your first stanza with a period instead of a comma since all the other stanza end with a period
4) Stanza 2, L2- should be 'it' instead of 'its'
5) Be careful not to fall into a trap of referring to some object as 'it'. It often loses the reader and can make the poem less readable
6) Stanza 3- The first two lines shouldn't be separated with a 'But'. Using 'But' implies disagreement between two ideas, but these two lines only share similarities. You can fix this by taking out the 'but', rewording the lines to introduce disagreement between the two lines, or otherwise changing the lines so that you get rid of the confusing negative in the statements
7) Stanza 5:

Then wonder why.
And wish you hadn’t.
And realize you still have time,
And hear its fated song echoing on the horizon.

A couple things to change here. First, you are using to many 'ands' here. It's far too choppy along with the periods. I would change it to flow better like so:

Then wonder why
And wish you hadn't,
Realizing you still have time
To hear its fated song echoing on the horizon.

This way it's a lot less choppy. If you want to make more of an impression, split the sentence into two.

Keep writing, edit and improve! You will become a great poet if you learn to learn and most importantly, never stop

-UnclePedro

[abu nuwas]

Hi, I am much of the opinion of Uncle Pedro.

It seems to aim for some sort of free verse, but I found the rhythms came and went. I was not quite with Uncle Pedro regarding the end. There, is, as it stands, quite neatly rhythmic , iambic to be precise, except for the unwieldy 'on the horizon' business. Even that might fit in, if you were to include it in a final (rhyming?) couplet. Couplet or no, the advantage of getting that stanza to be metrically good, is that it is the end of a murky journey, it refers to song, so why not have the sing-song of an echoing meter?

I am not much for the content: it comes under what I call 'hard yakka' poetry --- when the narrator seems to tell us s/he is having a hard time on the romantic front. So that is my crusty response. To do well, requires excellence .....