actually i disagree. i mean swearing isn't the best thing to be in a poem, but i suppose there are worse things.
Agreeing with the sentiment except for the part about "swearing isn't the best thing to be in a poem." Since poetry is all about expression, sometimes, swearing
is the best way to capture a certain image. It all depends on whether or not the word fits the situation. (You wouldn't, for example, swear just to be cool or swear in a fuzzy, fluffy poem. You swear to capture a crude sense of anger, which is what the poet is trying to do here.)
For a better example, proof that poetry isn't
always clean. These are also good examples of the idea that there isn't always such a thing as correct formatting, which is
another comment I've been seeing a lot.
My point is that I trust you guys to review, but commenting on poetry requires a
very open mind because it's more of a flexible form of art than prose. I can't say there's no right or wrong way to do it because there's locked threads in this forum for a reason (and there's such a thing as trying too hard), but basically, there are a lot of rules that are actually pretty flexible in poetry. As people trying to help one another develop your skills, you just have to be receptive of that and remember that everything's about capturing images and emotions.
(That and there's been a lot of "this poem is great" and things like that. You guys
do realize that constructive praise would require you to point out something
specific about the poem, right? You don't have to go as detailed as I do below, but... *motions to a few paragraphs as an example* Notice how I'm pointing out specific lines and commenting on what I thought about the poem in specific terms? This
helps poets develop their skills and hone in on the things they're doing right or the things they need to work on. Just brushing them off with general statements won't help them because they don't know what it is they should think about the most.)
That being said, about the poem itself, there's two things I want to say about the structure. First, I really like the symmetry you used, where you start almost every line with the word "stop." I know. That's the point, but it really emphasized your message. (I assume it's a general anger at the world?)
Second, on the flip side, I think the rhyme scheme might not have captured your anger that well. In some places, it feels like you were trying to force the rhyme scheme, so some lines come off as a bit awkward. For example, "Stop the disease that [you're?] forced to spread." This is a bit vague, which is awkward because the other lines tend to be a little less abstract. We're told the problems that the narrator has -- a problem with closet homosexuality, a problem with popularity, a problem with faking love, a problem with drugs, a problem with a person in particular, and so on. But in these spots (and there are a few others, such as "Stop being the person that can't even wait," which doesn't quite make sense because there's no context), you fall just short of really explaining what you're thinking to give us a concrete image of what the narrator is saying needs to stop.
Alternatively, there's some awkward lines like "Stop being the hooker, that all she does is taunt," which I'm not sure about the meaning. (Hookers are usually associated with sex. As in, they actually
deliver what they promise, as opposed to a significant other who promises
love as well as sex.)
I'm also not sure about the ending. It either means one of two things: that the narrator's audience isn't listening to zir or that ze's encouraging them to do everything ze told them to stop doing. Because of the latter, you may want to consider taking it out.
Considering all of this, I
would recommend considering other forms of poetry (blank verse, free verse, prose poetry), which would allow you to be as creative with your message as you want. I say "would" here because it's really up to you. There's ways of getting this pulled together with a rhyme scheme, but you'd have to remember that you can't let yourself be controlled by the fact that you need to rhyme. Maybe even consider expanding each line or using a different scheme that doesn't force you to rhyme every single line.
However, the rest of the lines -- the ones that deliver a particular image -- those ones are pretty powerful. And I do like the last few lines (before the actual last one). It feels like all of the narrator's anger is funneled into this message that ze just won't be satisfied by whoever ze is talking to.
tl;dr: It's got the potential to be powerful, but there's just a few lines that you'll probably want to polish up. Feel free to play with it to see what you come up with, but otherwise, not bad.
And yes, I
do think the swearing worked for it. (This is also why I'm a little iffy about the rhyme scheme. Rhyming in contemporary poetry tends to be used for poems that are geared towards kids or are meant to be read as being kid-oriented for irony. A lot of published poetry in anthologies geared towards mature lit lovers is actually free verse nowadays because this gives people room to explore different ways of developing their visions, whereas you might be more likely to find rhymed poetry in children's books. So, the scheme ends up making the swearing a bit jarring because of the perceptions of the form, but considering the fact that a lot of people in this forum use rhyme schemes, I get the feeling I'm pretty much the only one who thinks this way anyway. *shrug*)
