Poetry Forum

The gates swing wide and open
But someone’s missing from the crowd
there’s jeering and there’s cheering
But it’s just not as loud
I’m sitting and I’m waiting
For somebody to say
But noone wants to speak the words
So they’ll smile for the day.

It’s school and so there’s lessons
But we don’t want to know
‘When you grow up…’ they tell us
But that isn’t always so
Growing up is not our certain
As we’ve learnt the hardest way
So we’ll scrawl some words and day-dream
And smile for the day

There’s break and we’re just sitting
I’m still staring into space
Some people huddle, walking
At a racer’s sort of pace
And the gnawing cold and emptyness
Reminds us of just what’s wrong
We’re plunging down together
But we’re smiling all day long

One day we’ll be together
And I will not let you go
We’ll all crowd around you chattering
With all our things to show
And we’ve promised to be different
To you we’ll do no wrong
But for now we’ll keep on smiling
Cause smiling keeps us strong.

Nice piece. Though I would request you to cut down the "ing" - sounding verbs.
My take on this:

The gates swing wide and open
someone’s missing from the crowd
I’m waiting for somebody to speak the words

It’s school and so there’s lessons
But we don’t want to know
‘When you grow up…’ they tell us

we’ll scrawl some words and day-dream
And smile for the day

There’s break and we’re just sitting
I’m still staring into space

One day we’ll be together
And I will not let you go
We’ll all crowd around you chattering
With all our things to show

But for now we’ll keep on smiling
cause smiling keeps us strong.

Hope this is of some help.
Cheers.

Ayeshyy

Good to see you have posted again. Hope to read more of your work. I like the rhyming element of this poem as I am personally fond of rhyming verse. As I read through this I could easily relate to the first three stanzas. They brought to mind a time when I was at primary school and one of the children died from sickle cell.
I found S4 a little muddled in respect of it allowing the reader to establish the reasoning behind the first three stanzas. I hope you do rework at least the final stanza as now I am curious and would like to satisfy my reading of this. I don’t personally have any real issues with the rest of the poem other than maybe the capitals at the beginning of each line. Is that deliberate, or an MS Word kind of thing? I know some formal writings do use capitals to begin lines so maybe that’s what you like.
Either ways please feel free to disregard as you wish.

Thank you for the read. By the way I like your rhyme scheme here.

Danté