I swear I'll never live to die.
And solely watch the day go by.
As long as it seems, a second to some
The hour it ends I'll be second to none
The clouds light ablaze in my victory soar
But I'll keep on striving, striving for more
I'll fly higher, further and faster than any
So that I'll never be just one of the many
Whose years pass and their day's gone by.
And all they've ever done is say: once will I fly.
You can find more of my works here
Enjoyed your motivational, self help diatribe. The song "I believe I can fly" comes to mind. Welcome to the site. Continue to fly your sentient kite!
This is a decent effort, for one of your first posts, Writing Penguin, but overall I can feel the form dictating the content of the poem, as you strain to reach the rhyming end word, regardless of the rhythm of the rest of the line. This makes for a weak poem, after what starts promisingly – the opening couplet of iambic tetrameter (IT). It would be good to keep working on this, because I think there is a fitting sense of urgency created in rhymed couplets of IT that suits the personified mayfly’s attitude. You’d also need to iron out the syntax of moments like ‘The clouds light ablaze’, which held me up and slowed the poem (and I still can’t work it out), and ‘So that I’ll never be just one of the many’ is clumsily expressed – ‘And never be just one of many’ might be better.
Personally, I don’t care for the narrator’s ‘striving’ attitude – he or she sounds like they’re in a musical, or is one of those punchable berks on ‘The Apprentice’ – and the conceited ‘me, me, me’ individualism and sneering at others make for a dislikeable character. But these people exist, and I can see how the voice works in the context of the poem. Perhaps there’s a note of irony, that the poem is suggesting that everyone dies, regardless of how much they strive in life; all is futile, etc. But I think I’m bringing that to the poem, rather than finding much evidence for it in the piece itself.
Have you read ‘Mayflies’ by Richard Wilbur? There’s a lot you can learn from Wilbur’s mastery of form.
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