Thread: Thoughts

Thoughts.



How fleeting they are.
How quickly they come.
How quickly they go.
Once gone, gone forever,
if not taken hold
and held in the mind,
they take their wings
and fly away,
never to return.

Nice poem scott. I really liked your repetition in L2 & L3.

I would point out that the "sentence" in L4-L9 doesn't make sense and is a run on. Obviously this is poetry and sentence structure is quite pliable. Perhaps your construction is intended? If not, a period instead of a comma at the end of L4 fixes the problem. Moreover, a periods finality matches the thought in L4.

Thanks for the post.

In what way does it not make sense?

Thoughts Once gone, gone forever, if not taken hold and held in the mind, they take their wings and fly away, never to return.

This part is nothing more than repeating what is said in the 1st three sentences but in a different way.
I truly don't understand how it don't make sense? Please enlighten me.

Oh forgive me. I didn't mean to say that the idea doesn't makes sense, just the construction.

Because you use a comma after "gone forever" the conditional "if not taken hold and held in the mind" seems to modify the "once gone,gone forever". It doesn't though. Once the thoughts are gone, they are gone. No modification needed. The phrase "if not taken..in mind" actually needs to modify "they take their wings and fly away". By adding a period at the end of "gone forever" you solve this problem.

It isn't an issue of not making sense, so much as making sure there is clarity in your construction.

Edit: as I said before, poetry is very pliable. I just made this note because you are otherwise using puctuation in a typical prose manner.

I'm sorry for misunderstanding. So what is the correct way to write that according to grammatical rules? And then what do you mean, "you are otherwise using puctuation in a typical prose manner?" I don't know what prose is, sorry.

You could say that prose is anything that isn't poetry. Prose uses normal grammar rules. Poetry rarely does this, as you know. That said, your piece here was following what I would consider to be a typical grammatical structure, at least as far as punctuation is concerned. It could make it harder to understand if you change from that in the middle.

That said, the only thing that you need to correct is changing the comma after "Once gone, gone forever," to a period. "Once gone, gone forever." This does 2 things. It will make forever seem more final. You have a period there, so once the thought is gone it is the end. It will also seperate it from the next idea, which is about how to keep the thought from going.

See what I mean?