It may be raining, but we don't have to go outside

[Beacherjosh]

Please keep in mind I am using this as a spoken word piece, but it may also appear as a paper copy.
--first critique-able draft.
It may be raining, but we don’t have to go outside

Let me be the remedy for the season,
it may be raining, but we don't have to go outside.
Take the flow and slow dance in our arms,
and just take a bath in it.
You can be the scented candle,
we can be the flame.
Don't worry about the rain, we don’t have to go outside.

We can bundle up, and sing our song.
We can dance forever, the night is long
and we can pretend it’s a saturday, because there's nothing I’d rather do
than spend the day with you.

You're more than work, and more than play,
so lets relax and take a day.
I’ll bring you chocolate, we melt worries away.
Everything is so expensive, we don’t have to go outside.

Make our walls bloom with colors,
make our colors vibrant,
vibrant like our romance,
romance like a supernova.

Lets let the rain start a beat.
Heat it up, pick a cup, lets erupt.
I want to hear you singsong all day,
we can pingpong back and forth,
you’re my rebirth.

So sing us a song, take my hand...dance along;
angels are our spot light.
Let this day be long.
We don’t have to go outside.

[QDeathstar]

Please keep in mind I am using this as a spoken word piece, but it may also appear as a paper copy.
--first critique-able draft.
It may be raining, but we don’t have to go outside
Let me be the remedy for the season,
it may be raining, but we don't have to go outside.
Take the flow and slow dance in our arms,
and just take a bath in it.
You can be the scented candle,
we can be the flame. did you intend there to be one individual(you) and then the "we" as a separate group? Or do you mean we and in "you" and me? It sounds a bit strange since I'm not sure who we is...
Don't worry about the rain, we don’t have to go outside.
We can bundle up, and sing our song.
We can dance forever, the night is long
and we can pretend it’s a saturday, because there's nothing I’d rather do
than spend the day with you. this is very generic and part of literally every boy band song in the early 2000s
You're more than work, and more than play, this sounds like an insult
so lets relax and take a day.
I’ll bring you chocolate, we melt worries away. I'll and wee I find confusing again
Everything is so expensive, we don’t have to go outside.
Make our walls bloom with colors,
make our colors vibrant, the repetitiveness of colors is ineffective
vibrant like our romance,as is the romance and vibrant, it doesn't seem to serve a purpose or develop meaning, in context of the rest of the poem
romance like a supernova.
Lets let the rain start a beat.
Heat it up, pick a cup, lets erupt.
I want to hear you singsong all day,
we can pingpong back and forth,
you’re my rebirth.
So sing us a song, take my hand...dance along;
angels are our spot light.
Let this day be long.
We don’t have to go outside.

[QDeathstar]

I appreciate the attempt to write a non traditional love poem, that's what I understand it to be, but there are a couple glaring disappointments that need to be reworked. The last few lines of the poem are intriguing but I can't figure out if they are something more than mere gobbled gook due to the wordiness that had went on before.

I wasn't able to finish my comments earlier, so I just posted this wrap up now. Thanks

[Beacherjosh]

Thank you Qdeathstar! My audience is mainly, my girlfriend, but also read on open mic. I was so caught up in my hopeless romance lines, I did not catch a lot of these lines that do not make sense. I do need to clarify my use of "we". Also, the colors will be taken out; Ive been told before that it doesn't suit the poem. What did you find intriguing about the last few lines? maybe I can build off of it.

[Beacherjosh]

oh, and yes that was an insult! I was hoping it would come off as a cute type of insult... I'm new to this love poetry =x

[Brownlie]

Poetry gets shit on a lot by people who capitulate it to their needs. I'm not saying I haven't done that before but it happens. 

[QDeathstar]

Poetry gets shit on a lot by people who capitulate it to their needs. I'm not saying I haven't done that before but it happens. 

?

[Beacherjosh]

I'd have to disagree... Look at the beat poets, and Emily Dickinson... Shakespeare.

[QDeathstar]

Thank you Qdeathstar! My audience is mainly, my girlfriend, but also read on open mic. I was so caught up in my hopeless romance lines, I did not catch a lot of these lines that do not make sense. I do need to clarify my use of "we". Also, the colors will be taken out; Ive been told before that it doesn't suit the poem. What did you find intriguing about the last few lines? maybe I can build off of it.

I think the we, us, and you wording in the poem is holding it down the most..

I liked the last few lines the because you can feel the dance and the romance in those lines, instead of being told about it like we are in the fist 3/4 of the poem

[Beacherjosh]

I'll try to show more than tell, with my edits! Thanks!

[jsoutiere92]

Please keep in mind I am using this as a spoken word piece, but it may also appear as a paper copy.
--first critique-able draft.
It may be raining, but we don’t have to go outside

Let me be the remedy for the season,
it may be raining, but we don't have to go outside.
Take the flow and slow dance in our arms,
and just take a bath in it.
You can be the scented candle,
we can be the flame.
Don't worry about the rain, we don’t have to go outside.

We can bundle up, and sing our song.
We can dance forever, the night is long
and we can pretend it’s a saturday, because there's nothing I’d rather do
than spend the day with you.

You're more than work, and more than play,
so lets relax and take a day.
I’ll bring you chocolate, we melt worries away.
Everything is so expensive, we don’t have to go outside.

Make our walls bloom with colors,
make our colors vibrant,
vibrant like our romance,
romance like a supernova.

Lets let the rain start a beat.
Heat it up, pick a cup, lets erupt.
I want to hear you singsong all day,
we can pingpong back and forth,
you’re my rebirth.

^^^^
This is the weakest stanza of the poem. It feels like you are trying to introduce a cornucopia of events as a sort of crescendo, but they are neither incorporated well to each other nor the rest of the writing. The first line is alright and congruent with the rest of the piece, so I would suggest building upon the idea of emphasizing rhythm specifically as a motif that includes the underlying message you want to express.


So sing us a song, take my hand...dance along;
angels are our spot light.
Let this day be long.
We don’t have to go outside.

[Erthona]

Trollgirl, as you have no prior experiencing critiquing I will let you know that what you wrote was not a critique. Please read the articles in areas that you are unfamiliar with.  

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Please keep in mind I am using this as a spoken word piece, but it may also appear as a paper copy."

If you have to preface your poem with an explanation of how one must think about it, then it is not ready to be posted. It is either a poem or it isn't, whether you are going to read it somewhere has nothing to do with it. If this is a "poem" for slam poetry, and you are trying to construct it to get the best possible reception so you can win, that has nothing to do with writing poetry, that has to do with putting on a good show, and your poem is no longer a poem, but a script. We do not critique scripts here, we critique poems, so we do not need to be aware that this is a "spoken word piece". We also do not need instructions on how to critique a poem. I was critiquing poetry 17 years before you were born, so I'll ask you to kindly keep your instructions to yourself.    

In terms of the poem. The worst time to write a love poem is when you are in love, this is because the person will stuff the poem full with every love cliche he can get his hands on: case in point above.

When the writer decides to rhyme for a few lines 8-14, most of the rhymes are forced.

"You're more than work, and more than play,
so lets relax and take a day."

As one can see, the second line has little to do with the preceding line, even though it is set up as though the first leads logically to the second, all for the sake of the simplistic rhyme of "play" and "day". Of course it would be difficult for the second line to follow the first as the first is fairly nonsensical. The second line does not even finish the thought, "take a day", take a day what? a day off, a day from the store for .59 cents..
Here is my version.

You're more than bitter more than sweet,
come home and I will wash your feet.  


"make our colors vibrant,"   She should be sure and pick up vibrant colors at the paint store unless she has a magic wand or something.

"Lets let the rain start a beat.
Heat it up, pick a cup, lets erupt."

"Lets let the rain start a beat." Man you must be powerful to decide if the rain is going to start a beat or not, are you the rain god?

Heat it up, pick a cup, lets erupt."  Heat "it" up. Heat what up? the rain? The beat? The cup? Oh, here's a place for a senseless rhyme.

"Heat it up, pick a cup"   What does heating it (whatever that is)up, have to do with picking a cup?

Beat him up, his name is duff.   That makes more sense than "Heat it up, pick a cup"




"I want to hear you singsong all day,"   Are you sure you know what singsong means?

Definition Singsong, used as an adjective: "monotonous in rhythm and in pitch."    (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/singsong?s=t)

well at least  pingpong is an actual word, I was expecting bingbong, of course "pingpong" is written as either ping-pong or ping pong.
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pingpong?s=t)



"angels are our spot light." I was not aware that they served in that function. Maybe I can rent a couple out for a party I'm having next week, do they bring good luck with them keep demons away. I have such trouble with demons, I can't understand why?

"Let this day be long." Yes indeed, time travels much slower when you are miserable. Good thinking.

Well I guess I'll stop there, although there is still a line left, but this is mild critique.

Having gone over this poem a few times now, I can say with a fairly high degree of reliability that had one taken your instruction to heart it would have not meant a thing. In fact I see nothing here that would have compelled you the write such a thing. There are certainly bad choices, but there are no choices that indicate that a choice was made between where one might go, and where one would go if it was to be read aloud, that is to say to enhance the sonic quality of the piece in some way. So see, you could have saved yourself the trouble and I urge to seriously consider never giving instructions again. It may feel imperative at the time, but in retrospect we nearly always see, it was not.

As I already said the worst time to write love poetry is when you are in love, another bit of information about love poetry is, that it, along with religious poetry, is undoubtedly the most difficult poetry to write...well. Generally no one will listen to me on this next part, I know I wouldn't, I'm sure I would have just taken it as a challenge and failed miserably. But here goes, wait until you have been constantly writing for 5-10 years before trying to write love poetry. If you intend to persist, I recommend trying to do so without the love words, the words that always seem to appear in love poetry. Some are: Love, heart (or any words that could remotely be a synonym, same for love) any body part (this includes internal organs) either specifically or alluded to, this includes sex parts, the colors blue, red, pink, black, gray, or grey, sun, rain, any of the seasons, any words that are a synonym for couple, break, breaking, breaks, ache, longing, longs, feel, emotions, emotes, weeps, cries, orgasmic (or any word that is remotely similar) money, silver, gold, jewels, or anything of great value, the oceans and /or seas (or words that describe them), nothing that sounds anything like a song lyric, or anything to do with any of the arts, god, angels of any kind, the devil, suffering, eternity, heaven, hell, and time. This is not a complete list but I don't feel like writing a full one as nobody will ever use it anyhow.

If you insist on writing Love poetry, I suggest reading some Rumi. http://archive.org/stream/BM011999rumi/B...i_djvu.txt
So at least you'll have an idea about what good love poetry looks like.

If you do read Rumi, you are allowed to use the word "beloved" once per poem.  

Dale  








Dale

[amiwrite]

Please keep in mind I am using this as a spoken word piece, but it may also appear as a paper copy.
--first critique-able draft.
It may be raining, but we don’t have to go outside

Let me be the remedy for the season,
it may be raining, but we don't have to go outside.
Take the flow and slow dance in our arms,
and just take a bath in it.
You can be the scented candle,
we can be the flame.
Don't worry about the rain, we don’t have to go outside.

We can bundle up, and sing our song.
We can dance forever, the night is long
and we can pretend it’s a saturday, because there's nothing I’d rather do
than spend the day with you.

You're more than work, and more than play,
so lets relax and take a day.
I’ll bring you chocolate, we melt worries away.
Everything is so expensive, we don’t have to go outside.

Make our walls bloom with colors,
make our colors vibrant,
vibrant like our romance,
romance like a supernova.

Lets let the rain start a beat.
Heat it up, pick a cup, lets erupt.
I want to hear you singsong all day,
we can pingpong back and forth,
you’re my rebirth.

So sing us a song, take my hand...dance along;
angels are our spot light.
Let this day be long.
We don’t have to go outside.

I have never been a fan of love poetry, only because of common cliches that so often appear when associated with love and romance. I feel as though this was meant to be a personal piece and I can not take that away from you, if it holds meaning who am I to object to that? I feel as though this piece would work exceptionally well as a song.

[B888IE]

Please keep in mind I am using this as a spoken word piece, but it may also appear as a paper copy.
--first critique-able draft.
It may be raining, but we don’t have to go outside

Let me be the remedy for the season,
it may be raining, but we don't have to go outside.
Take the flow and slow dance in our arms,
and just take a bath in it. This doesn't sound right, i'm not sure how to correct it though... 'Let's take a bath in it?
You can be the scented candle,
we can be the flame. This and the last line don't sound right to me, because you've already said what she is.
Don't worry about the rain, we don’t have to go outside. Nothing in the poem is refering to going outside, so it doesn't sound right to me.

We can bundle up, and sing our song.
We can dance forever, the night is long I like this.
and we can pretend it’s a saturday, because there's nothing I’d rather do
than spend the day with you.

You're more than work, and more than play,
so lets relax and take a day.
I’ll bring you chocolate, we melt worries away. Grammar is wrong here
Everything is so expensive, we don’t have to go outside. Same problem here as in first stanza

Make our walls bloom with colors,
make our colors vibrant,
vibrant like our romance,
romance like a supernova. hmm the word supernova just doesn't fit the theme of this poem for me

Lets let the rain start a beat.
Heat it up, pick a cup, lets erupt. Heat what up, why a cup?
I want to hear you singsong all day, grammar not correct
we can pingpong back and forth,
you’re my rebirth. this line stops the flow

So sing us a song, take my hand...dance along;
angels are our spot light.
Let this day be long. This is ok.
We don’t have to go outside.

Well done!

[somnium]

Very beautiful, but I must sy why fear the rain? I would like to see an acceptance of all the elements together, wind, earth, fire, water and spirit. It is just not ocmplete without all of them. But yes I am a fan of the flame but sometimes the fire needs to chill, and cohesion on that new ground, or new flowers on the wall, need a drink and left to be. Without water they would just burn away. I know you didn't intend that imagery but still it is what came to mind, unbalance. Lovely piece though overall. Very positive too, thank you.