Youths! why have you become so complacent?
Why have you lowered your self esteem? why are you no longer confident?
Why are you no longer determined and focused? why are you no longer ambitious?
Why have you accepted defeat when you have all that it takes to be victorious?
Why do you undermine yourself, dwelling on the negatives
why not focus on the positives?
No! you’re not a failure, No! you were not created to suffer
Life is filled with challenges but it’s not a disaster
you constantly analyse all the wrong decisions you’ve made
thinking to yourself ” all i do is fail”
I’m a looser,i’ll never be a winner
Stop! i urge you to replace the negatives with positives and you’ll be an achiever
Stop! Now is not the time to be thinking negative
Instead believe in yourself, focus on the positives
Be confident and you’ll achieve greatness
Ignore the thought of being a failure, or the feeling of emptiness
Now is the time for you to attain that which you desire , now is not the time to retreat
Nor accept defeat
Stand! focus on that which you desire to achieve, now continue on your journey
Remain focus on the present for the past is history
Your future is shaped by the decisions you make today
stay true to yourself and be the best you can be and you achieve all that you desire one day
Learn from your mistakes,don’t live in regret nor blame it on your imperfection
Instead stand, analyze yourself and the mistakes you’ve made, i repeat do not blame it on your imperfection
Life’s challenges are not meant to torment us
But to make us better person’s so get up and shake off the dust
You focus on the negatives and constantly pull down yourself, why not focus on the positive and rise?
There are people who look up to you, people who believe in you and people who love you, so i urge you to rise
They see the good that fights to overcome the bad, the talent that shines like the moon
The great potential within you that’s ready to bloom
Believe in yourself, have faith and be the person that you know you can be
Youths embrace your destiny
Be ambitious, be determined and you’ll attain victory
Go on!! Go for it, you can make it, nothing is impossible
Will like to perform this
P.s we are all to accept responsibility for our actions and if we were to each believe that we can make a difference and try then we would, but to be living in doubts and disbelief we are already defeated.In the past persons saw it fit to try to contribute, Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa,
Thanks everyone for the feedback on the poem. The poem was a collaboration that we saw fit to put together to try to uplift and encourage our youths because of the many challenges that we as youths face in today’s society and with such message others are able to relate and be inspired
if the youth are lacking it is not totally their fault….they didn’t make themselves, nor did they create the world they were born into… those who came before bear the brunt of the responsibility, get off the backs of young people and address then problem at its roots!
Just a note: People don’t lower there self esteem. They either have low self esteem or they don’t. Or its developed over time. But in all your poem was good..
Just my 2 cents.
Although the message is generally “good,” it’s also a series of cliches, not least of which is that the poem is made up primarily of rhyming couplets (i.e., every two lines are supposed to rhyme), though it breaks from this here and there. If you want your poem to really do something, then look at it more as a work of art, as a poem, than as a call to arms, as an announcement. After all, if you just want to sermonize, you could do so in prose. Why not try to convey a similar message through a series of images? Try suggesting what you mean rather than explicitly saying it. (Show, don’t tell.) Try, also, to avoid abstractions, like “negatives.” Use specific images.
There are many poets you can read for advice, from contemporary dub and spoken-word poets to writers like Walt Whitman,Pablo Neruda, Derek Walcott, Lorna Goodison, William Carlos Williams, Rita Dove, etc.
Good luck on rewriting, and thanks nonetheless for sharing the message.
I am a young person in Dominica, and i have this to say. Our leaders and Older people in society KNOW OUR PLIGHT!!!!! Then they act like hypocrites pretending not to know what ails us and the rest of our society….while some people shout horrayyyyyy for new roads and bridge and infrastructure, we wither on the way side with our educations that our parents fought tooth and nail to ensure that we got….we look as big shots pass with their “TINTED GLASS” and like dice sang THEY REFUSE TO SEEEE… they entice us with “things” VERY FEW will teach us values. They enjoy being able to hold their head up and open their broad chest and feed their EGO KNOWING THAT THEY HAVE MORE THAN WE CAN EVEN WISH TO AQUIRE. They have the string to pull to get the jobs, loans, land, house, car and the Dominican Dream. but there is NO ONE willing to show us where to start, they keep that knowledge to themselves so that we may always be at their service. to sell our bodies and kill each other for the nice things that they boast….i cry and i cry and i cry, because the pride that i once had in myself it fell somewhere along the road and no matter how i look i cannot find it….dont you think i want to hold my head up high, and be proud like u MR BIG SHOT???? i may not even want to show off and belittle people like u, i may just want to be a humble man or woman with thee comforts that come with my hard work….to be able to get a decent salary, to save, to buy a peice of my homeland, and build my own home, and become the kind of person that my children can look up to. rather than them being ashamed of me and in awe of you! ive seen my parents work work work work work work and work and never being able to aquire any of these things. and i wondered why my mother lying to me and telling me work hard and i will have all what i want…..i am a young person. but i see no future in working honestly, especailly in a society where only the favoured will prosper… and when i talk everybody saying dont blame the government,or everything is politics. but i dont think i have the power to change the historical behaviour of my society, i feel powerless in dominica. so i drink and binge and smoke and party so hard and wish to die. because there are things that are worse than death, and i already see before me a life of slavery with no reward and constant shushhing like highschool never finished….only the favoured my friends only the favoured.
this is a very nice poem.keep up the good work. keep writing good poems like this one.