It's the 2026 Revise-a-Poem Challenge (Comments welcome!)

[SapioSexual9]

En

I got back into writing poetry and taking it more seriously a few years ago thanks to a class I took at my community college. I originally wrote this as one of my assignments and I always liked it and liked the idea of linking time going by and feeling faster to the seasons. I do think it was kinda rough in places though so I wanted to change a few things. Here’s the original.

An Elegy for Long, Colorful Days (original)

I often think back to when I
Was a child, staring at a clock
In the light of a warm spring day
Watching the seconds crawl by
Like the vines of a plant
Turning towards the sun over many hours

Every day seemed to last weeks
The years of summer felt eternal
And even on the coldest days
The snow felt friendly and playful
And shined with a beautiful iridescence
As it reflected the hope of blue skies

Now, in the deepening autumn
As the days get shorter and the years quicker
I barely see the changing colors of the leaves
I'm starting to understand why I've heard
The veil between the living and the dead is thinnest now
I recognize more faces behind the shroud

As the days get overtaken by the night
And all sense of time spirals outward
The longest days are fleeting grey wastelands
And the snow no longer shimmers with warmth
But is instead a black and brutal cold
How much longer till winter's end?

I wanted to even out the line lengths and keep to pentameter and just generally keep the same idea but rewrite it. I do think it’s an improvement but I’m sure I could revise it even further.

An Elegy for Long, Colorful Days (revised)

Often when I think of my childhood
Spring days in classrooms I’ll remember most
Watching the clock’s hands crawl by painfully
Slow. Eternities spent in hazy warmth
All the time wishing that class would end soon
Now all too aware how quickly spring ends

In those years it felt like days would last weeks
I didn’t think summer’s decade would end
I was too used to the hot sunny joy
To worry how time marches on always
I just enjoyed how even snowy days
Felt warmer than summers I’d come to know

Now in my autumn when I look around
Seeing leaves drained of color lying dead
On the ground, or piled in gutters I
Can’t stop thinking how nights come much sooner
Feel colder and bitter, and how many
People I’ve known slip away like past days

I know winter must come, nights must be long
And every years’ end always feels too soon
I just wish the chill weren’t quite so deep
And the nights more starlit when I think how
The fewer days left, though they’re more treasured
Still feel that much quicker every sunset

Enjoyed the complex imperfect rhymes.

 

[SpermFactory]

I got back into writing poetry and taking it more seriously a few years ago thanks to a class I took at my community college. I originally wrote this as one of my assignments and I always liked it and liked the idea of linking time going by and feeling faster to the seasons. I do think it was kinda rough in places though so I wanted to change a few things. Here’s the original.

An Elegy for Long, Colorful Days (original)

I often think back to when I
Was a child, staring at a clock
In the light of a warm spring day
Watching the seconds crawl by
Like the vines of a plant
Turning towards the sun over many hours

Every day seemed to last weeks
The years of summer felt eternal
And even on the coldest days
The snow felt friendly and playful
And shined with a beautiful iridescence
As it reflected the hope of blue skies

Now, in the deepening autumn
As the days get shorter and the years quicker
I barely see the changing colors of the leaves
I'm starting to understand why I've heard
The veil between the living and the dead is thinnest now
I recognize more faces behind the shroud

As the days get overtaken by the night
And all sense of time spirals outward
The longest days are fleeting grey wastelands
And the snow no longer shimmers with warmth
But is instead a black and brutal cold
How much longer till winter's end?

I wanted to even out the line lengths and keep to pentameter and just generally keep the same idea but rewrite it. I do think it’s an improvement but I’m sure I could revise it even further.

An Elegy for Long, Colorful Days (revised)

Often when I think of my childhood
Spring days in classrooms I’ll remember most
Watching the clock’s hands crawl by painfully
Slow. Eternities spent in hazy warmth
All the time wishing that class would end soon
Now all too aware how quickly spring ends

In those years it felt like days would last weeks
I didn’t think summer’s decade would end
I was too used to the hot sunny joy
To worry how time marches on always
I just enjoyed how even snowy days
Felt warmer than summers I’d come to know

Now in my autumn when I look around
Seeing leaves drained of color lying dead
On the ground, or piled in gutters I
Can’t stop thinking how nights come much sooner
Feel colder and bitter, and how many
People I’ve known slip away like past days

I know winter must come, nights must be long
And every years’ end always feels too soon
I just wish the chill weren’t quite so deep
And the nights more starlit when I think how
The fewer days left, though they’re more treasured
Still feel that much quicker every sunset

A clever writer with a clever name. Not sure what you could do to improve a poem like this?

 

[SpermFactory]

Referring to the brilliance of the classics does do heavy lifting for both poet and poem. I wonder how you will engage your reader with pop cultural icons we may not readily understand? Or know. Or like?

Feeling languidly lazy today. I would ditch the poem and keep the idea. Snap out lines followed by lines that evolve. Like an old school photograph. I really like that idea. Especially how it illustrates how you are approaching your writing in this poem. Thinking about your technique through combining lines in different ways that reinforce the poems subject matter.

On the other side of your lens: I was lost when reading this poem. I also wondered, why is it important to you or I? What makes me want to contemplate it? Or easily resonate with it? You need to take your reader with you (to quote you).

And, I am also repeating your advice to always simplify and make sure a poem is relevant as a first step.

Perhaps you, 42, got snapped writing backwards? The idea seems to be the technique with an after attempt to overlay a poem? Then loosely associated pop cultural theme?

I appreciate you often write like a big jungle cat. True to your vision. Very Manly. Doesn’t give a damn. Sexual self confidence. Unthreatened by other’s opinions. Or sexuality.

However, 42, Sapio is right in some respects. Perhaps reconsider your Lust Is… poem? Especially the second line?

 

[42BelowsBack]

Welcome @Waeponwifestre.

A request, could you explain your choice of punctuation? (I am curious is all), I feel the why is thematically self evident It would still be very interesting to ‘hear’ how you arrived at your decision: To start each line in all caps while leaving the ends of the lines punctuation free

Personally I think the punctuation works perfectly

 

[Waeponwifestre]

Oh gosh thank you for the lovely comments and lovely welcome!!

En

Enjoyed the complex imperfect rhymes.

Thank you!

A clever writer with a clever name. Not sure what you could do to improve a poem like this?

I’ve been on a medieval stuff kick for a while now and as a trans woman I was laughing when I was trying to come up with a username and that popped into my mind.

I am not entirely happy with the second stanza but I am also not entirely sure just what it needs - maybe it just feels a little weaker than the others to me? I may go back to it after more time away.

Welcome @Waeponwifestre.

A request, could you explain your choice of punctuation? (I am curious is all), I feel the why is thematically self evident It would still be very interesting to ‘hear’ how you arrived at your decision: To start each line in all caps while leaving the ends of the lines punctuation free

Personally I think the punctuation works perfectly

I hate to say it and break the illusion of clever intention on my part but honestly, I don’t really think too much about punctuation at the end of lines - I’ll throw a question mark or (rarely) an exclamation mark if the line warrants it but as far as periods go it’s kind of just however I’m feeling at the time. Sometimes I even just like to kind of leave it a little ambiguous.

Reading back over this though maybe I was intuitively trying to keep a sense of an unstoppable cadence that picks up more in the 3rd and 4th stanzas (which I did want to read faster and like it’s almost about to break out of the structure of blank verse).

 

[SmilingLez]

Now, in the deepening autumn
As the days get shorter and the years quicker
I barely see the changing colors of the leaves
I'm starting to understand why I've heard
The veil between the living and the dead is thinnest now
I recognize more faces behind the shroud

Now in my autumn when I look around
Seeing leaves drained of color lying dead
On the ground, or piled in gutters I
Can’t stop thinking how nights come much sooner
Feel colder and bitter, and how many
People I’ve known slip away like past days

As a lover of autumn, these lovelies hold my heart

 

[42BelowsBack]

Th

This poem needs a lot of revision to be anything.

An old school camera and a high powered riffling.

Outside city rain. Under an umbrella of multi-colored rain-coated streets.
Inside on a bed. Photographs. Fanning out. Hidden forms. Full polaroids.
O images swimming into view through potassium bromide, the agent
developing in a pita patter pattern of glassy matter.

I wanted snap out images. Outside city rain. V Outside rain. V City Rain. Outside.
And images to evolve in longer lines. Under an umbrella of multi-colored rain-coated streets.
In a hybrid twist vibe with the original BLADE RUNNER. Which would require color.

To create a narrative I am thinking…

All Day Every Day. Once upon a time. The beginning: character, moment, movement, tense, tone.

The MID-RIFT: tension, insight, spark, drive the message.

THE END: feeling, call to resolution or emotion? I don’t want to bow tie the poem off in a pretty little package. And the original BLADE RUNNER was messy, disturbing, dystopian.

(Why am I inspired by modern pop culture instead of the ancient classics? Or disinterested in writing all-full syrupy look at me poems?)

So I took much of your advice @sapio and @sperm.

The original

An old school camera and a high powered riffling.

Outside city rain. Under an umbrella of multi-colored rain-coated streets.
Inside on a bed. Photographs. Fanning out. Hidden forms. Full polaroids.
O images swimming into view through potassium bromide, the agent
developing in a pita patter pattern of glassy matter.

Rewritten. The objective being punching out lines.

PAWN. INSTRUCTION LABEL.

Pawn. Chess objective. Become a Queen. Cross the great divide.
Driven. Hunt down. Terminate the murderous. Pawns all self actualized.
Do. Not try. One square moves: Reach the other side.

I think a bit of further experimentation with the fundamental idea / technique will conclude this itch to scratch. Of course nothing I do hasn’t been done before. Ultimately I think it all leads to iambic pentameter (or a poem written in erotic panta-meter?) Grrr grrr iambic pentameter. Grrr probably spelt it wrong.

 

[Waeponwifestre]

PAWN. INSTRUCTION LABEL.

Pawn. Chess objective. Become a Queen. Cross the great divide.
Driven. Hunt down. One square moves. Pawns are self actualized.
Do. Not try. Terminate the murderous: Reach the other side.

I really like this.

Maybe it’s a touch too late, but I was actually just thinking about spondees today and trying to write something using them heavily and the minute I saw your poem I thought maybe you’d want to incorporate them heavily? I think a militaristic chessboard theme would have a lot of potential to utilize some of their slow, kind of violent sound. Just off the top of my head I see a lot of cool opportunities!

Chessboard. Rook’s stone . Knights fly. Priests kill. Pawns fall. Queens rule. Kings die. White’s war, Black’s brawl.

 

[42BelowsBack]

I was actually just thinking about spondees today and trying to write something using them heavily and the minute I saw your poem I thought maybe you’d want to incorporate them heavily? I think a militaristic chessboard theme would have a lot of potential to utilize some of their slow, kind of violent sound. Just off the top of my head I see a lot of cool opportunities!

@Waeponwifestre, thank you for your feedback. It’s never too late to share insight:

Spondees would be perfect for a poem about a game of chess.

I have this idea about writing a Cyberpunk poem inspired by the original BLADE RUNNER. The original BLADE RUNNER is underpinned by moral philosophies and philosophies of the mind: Within the context of classical Greek drama.

Of direct poetical interest, linguistically the original BLADE RUNNER draws on the poetry of William Blake.

BLADE RUNNER thematically refers to The Immortal Game, played in 1851 between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. The Immortal game was played during the London chess tournament of 1851.

The Immortal Game symbolizes the struggle against imposed morality. Thus my poem PAWN. INSTRUCTION LABEL. Yeah I write shyte titles but let’s all get over that and consider it a unique gift that I have,

Perhaps a better title would be PAWN. The instruction label came about via the brevity I attempted to write with. Inclusive of sentence word counts: 1. word. 2. words. 3. words. 4. words. Further rendering into formalized basic rhythmic units would be more akin to chess, but, perhaps wouldn’t read dystopian Cyberpunk failed tech? Which I’m not saying I achieved.

Decisions decisions. A smart poet pays attention to their readers. Grrr spondees are worth a look. Primarily my focus is on technique. The poem is ancillary. I still have a lot to learn.

Thanks again for the feedback. Ps, I think you would write a fabulous poem about chess. Hint hint () so not dodging lol

Note: there are a total of 6 versions of BLADE RUNNER. The original screen play rocks the rest suck.

 

[SpermFactory]

@Waeponwifestre, thank you for your feedback. It’s never too late to share insight:

Spondees would be perfect for a poem about a game of chess.

I have this idea about writing a Cyberpunk poem inspired by the original BLADE RUNNER. The original BLADE RUNNER is underpinned by moral philosophies and philosophies of the mind: Within the context of classical Greek drama.

Of direct poetical interest, linguistically the original BLADE RUNNER draws on the poetry of William Blake.

BLADE RUNNER thematically refers to The Immortal Game, played in 1851 between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. The Immortal game was played during the London chess tournament of 1851.

The Immortal Game symbolizes the struggle against imposed morality. Thus my poem PAWN. INSTRUCTION LABEL. Yeah I write shyte titles but let’s all get over that and consider it a unique gift that I have,

Perhaps a better title would be PAWN. The instruction label came about via the brevity I attempted to write with. Inclusive of sentence word counts: 1. word. 2. words. 3. words. 4. words. Further rendering into formalized basic rhythmic units would be more akin to chess, but, perhaps wouldn’t read dystopian Cyberpunk failed tech? Which I’m not saying I achieved.

Decisions decisions. A smart poet pays attention to their readers. Grrr spondees are worth a look. Primarily my focus is on technique. The poem is ancillary. I still have a lot to learn.

Thanks again for the feedback. Ps, I think you would write a fabulous poem about chess. Hint hint () so not dodging lol

Note: there are a total of 6 versions of BLADE RUNNER. The original screen play rocks the rest suck.

42. Very interesting. To readily link hidden ideas in ever line, I think The Immortal Game (linked) is the title. Further thought is needed to work in the BLADE RUNNER connection. If that is your intention.

Think about it. I know you don’t like bow tying a poem off. This poem would benefit from a bow tie.

Ultimately I still think you started off with an idea regarding sentence word counts and reverse engineered in the underpinning themes in Blade Runner. Which is cool. I think your super power as a creative is you start off sailing then spot the opportunity to ditch the boat and go kiteboarding.

 

[42BelowsBack]

42. Very interesting. To readily link hidden ideas in ever line, I think The Immortal Game (linked) is the title. Further thought is needed to work in the BLADE RUNNER connection. If that is your intention.

Think about it. I know you don’t like bow tying a poem off. This poem would benefit from a bow tie.

Ultimately I still think you started off with an idea regarding sentence word counts and reverse engineered in the underpinning themes in Blade Runner. Which is cool. I think your super power as a creative is you start off sailing then spot the opportunity to ditch the boat and go kiteboarding.

Name change done. Oh fun. I wrote an immortally needing revision poem. Bow ties, spondees and further thought. Whose idea was this revision thread!