The ticks of time

[CiaranBlackburn]

This is the first poem I have ever written (aside from my year 6 homework). I hope you enjoy and please critique away.


The ticks of time

There's never enough time.
With each swing of the pendulum life ticks on.
The seasons pass, stripping the trees of colour, leaving them destitute.

Days fall into months as months coalesce into years.
Goals, ambitions, and dreams are dictated and crushed by the hands of the clock.

Family, friends, and lovers are given and taken away,
Arms are wrapped tight in final embraces as our loved ones cease to tick.

We obsess ourselves with future planning and lament the yesteryears,
Yet never find solace within the now.
To experience is to live, and to live is to experience.
Don't look back on a life spent looking forward.

[Macavity]

hi Ciaran
I like some of the sounds you've used - coalesce/solace/embrace. Personally, I would be engaged by less philosophy of life - more show than tell is often advised to feed the reader's imagination...smells, sounds, sights, tastes, touch to key into reader experience.

hope that helps some

mac

[Antcliff]

Hi Ciaran


For me the highlight was that being crushed-by-the-hands-of-a-clock-metaphor.

Although it is a familiar message I quite liked that reversal in the last line.

Do you need all of "goals, ambitions and dreams"? In the context they seem to amount to pretty much the same thing. If I put on my redundancy-o-scope I suspect I would get a warning sound there.

"Lament the yesteryears" sounds a little self-consciously poetic?

Seth

[Jackie]

Ciaran,

You have some very intriguing images here. You might select a few and try working each into a poem, seeing which takes you farthest. To pick one,

Don't look back on a life spent looking forward.

might present good possibilities. What does that look like to a passerby?

Jackie

[Firebird]

Hi Ciaran, good to see you posting here. I liked your poem but agree with others in that some of it is a bit abstract and could be improved by grounding it in real events, descriptions of things and images. Some specific comments below.

This is the first poem I have ever written (aside from my year 6 homework). I hope you enjoy and please critique away.


The ticks of time

There's never enough time.
With each swing of the pendulum life ticks on.
The seasons pass, stripping the trees of colour, leaving them destitute. (But the trees colour comes back in the spring?)

Days fall into months as months coalesce into years.
Goals, ambitions, and dreams are dictated and crushed by the hands of the clock. (I like 'dictated to by the hands of a clock', but not 'Goals, ambitions ...'. Too abstract for me. Why don't you personalise it, and tell us what these goals ... are?)

Family, friends, and lovers are given and taken away,
Arms are wrapped tight in final embraces as our loved ones cease to tick. (Nice image)

We obsess ourselves with future planning and lament the yesteryears, (bit too poetic 'yesteryears' for my taste)
Yet never find solace within the now.
To experience is to live, and to live is to experience. (Not really sure this line is telling me a lot. Maybe cut it?)
Don't look back on a life spent looking forward. I like the last line.

Thanks for an interesting read. Looking forward to reading a redraft.

Cheers,

Tristan

[CiaranBlackburn]

Thank you for the critiques/advice everybody. I will get to work on a redraft.