Pendulumly

[summermoose]

Start with the words from heart of the wise
Sacrifice meaning with excuse-fused lies
Bend with the lows and cheer with the highs
Wash out wash in, sure to move with the tides
Circumstance of the moon dictates my mind
Feeling up this time, but tick tick time flies

[tectak]

Start with the words from heart of the wise
Sacrifice meaning with excuse-fused lies
Bend with the lows and cheer with the highs
Wash out wash in, sure to move with the tides
Circumstance of the moon dictates my mind
Feeling up this time, but tick tick time flies

Hi summer,
You have a good ear and a good idea. The tick-tocking of the metaphysical metaphor carries the piece along nicely...beating heart, lows and highs, wash out/in, tides, lunar cycles. So what could possibly go wrong? Not a lot...but if you are asking for crit then punctation would help. This is a simple piece with its own rhythm but as you bizarrely capitalise every line start like some 1950's indoctrinated student of 19th century poetry you create confusion where none should be...to the detriment of the already compromised meter.
Even paced poetry will quite often have meter dictated by simple syllable count. L1 has 9, L2 has 10. So put "the" before "heart" in L1. 10/10.
L3 counts 9 again, but L4 has 10. About now one may think that you were going for a pattern here. So look at the last two lines. Are they 10/9. Nope.10/10.
So spot the odd one out. L3 is a half foot short. There is a cool answer. How about "Bend with the lows and cheer up with the highs"? Cheer up, get it?
Your poem, but I would suggest for L1, all other things taken in to consideration, that you get rid of the first "the" so:
"Start with sweet words from the hearts of the wise.."
Sweet-hearts, get it?
Ending on a general observation, use of "the" definite article can often be avoided and so it ought. It fills a space where a defining word should be, as above.
"Bend with deep lows and cheer up with sky highs." OK. This is cheap. You can do better, of that I am certain.
Best,
tectak

[Entenzahn]

The beginning is very vague and abstract and that makes the poem as a whole hard to get for me, since I need the first lines to clue me in on what I'm reading. On second glance I understand that this is about a person with mood-swings. The imagery is consistent and you go for some nice similes, but I'm not sure to what end. You're showing me a list of things that are like mood-swings and then you leave saying "that person with mood-swings is me", so I feel like it's mostly a journal entry.

The images are there, but not really impactful and after you've established the theme I wish you'd give me some more immediate impressions that let me feel the highs and lows you're alluding to.

Also I'm pretty sure you're supposed to properly punctuate your poem even when a sentence ends at line end.

Start with the words from heart of the wise very vague and abstract – why start with this? What does it mean?
Sacrifice meaning with excuse-fused lies Phonetically nice but otherwise worse than the first line
Bend with the lows and cheer with the highs Better – I get what you're on about now
Wash out wash in, sure to move with the tides Good image
Circumstance of the moon dictates my mind This line feels odd because the way you'd emphasize the words doesn't gel with the rhythm – Also I get what you're talking about by now
Feeling up this time, but tick tick time flies

[summermoose]

Thank you Entenzahn and tectak for the awesome critiques! I really appreciate it. Will take it for a rewrite soon.

[groberts01]

I agree with what's already been posted. The poem reads smoothly as sound poetry and the simile is nice, but these qualities haven't added to produce a poem with a strong impact yet.

I like how you've used mixed rhyming types to end the lines. I think you kept the music of the rhyme well without creating an annoying repetitive feel.

In the final line 'tick tick' jarred me a bit as the sonic of the rest of the poem was consistently soft. I think this made it a good closing line; it pushed home the feeling of time passing. I think you could exploit this effect better, however.

Does the second line match with the message of the rest of the poem? It seems to me that the other lines are warnings or good advice; are positive messages to take with you as time goes by, whereas telling a lie isn't.

I think the poem needs more structure to it. The idea behind it is clear, but there isn't a clear progression of idea from one line to another. The fourth line, for example, read for me as if the voice had run out of advice and instead made a general comment about time passing.

The penultimate line made me think immediately of PMS - I know people who get moody too when the moon reaches a certain phase at a certain time of the month .

[billy]

great try with meter, the last like feels a bit of a cock up though, a more emotional take on tempus fugit; the poem has the beat of a clocks pendulum and the title works well in being the metronome that guides the poem, needs a small edit but well done. oh [time flies is a bit of cliche. seing as the rhyme needs a fix, would it be hard to edit the line as a whole and make it more in time with the rest of the poem?

Start with the words from heart of the wise
Sacrifice meaning with excuse-fused lies
Bend with the lows and cheer with the highs half a foot missing off the meter here. a suggestion would be [to bend wit..]
Wash out wash in, sure to move with the tides
Circumstance of the moon dictates my mind the rhyme here feels to far off to be a half rhyme or a whole one
Feeling up this time, but tick tick time flies