Poetry Help, major writing block

Draupnir

I have been writing poetry, mainly just as an outlet, for quite a few years.

This particular piece of works is one I have had for about 6 months, it contains some strong themes for me personally and it is a poem I strongly feel I want to work to a conclusion. I have put it down twice and am now attempting to finish it a third time. However I am having major trouble and was wondering if anyone could provide some advice and criticism, here it is:

A dawn at night

A warm cold day outside a window,
The chill cuts through you like a knife,
The harshness of the blue sky feeds the passion of your pain,
What to do when lost in your lost life,

From their perspective it is a sunset,
In yours it is a weapon of the mind which burns a heart,
Scarred by the happiness of this vision from a different view,
Beauty is a blight when anger plays its part,

Sounds of joy reverberate inside the mind,
The discord is monstrous in its attack,
Causing damage to your pride,
Forcing the liberated to look back,
And see firsthand in their minds eye,
All the prizes that they lack,
In this struggle that is life,

When they smile do they feel it really?
Is it all just a fallacy of hope,
That they too can one day truly,
Leave behind the feeling of comfort when bound by rope,
Between two hearts entangled in a world where enemies lie closer than you think,

Go softly not when you could fight,
Prevail over darkness and embrace the light,
Painful sunsets will be revoked and the rise will be the tool,
With which to build a world again,
Tonight.

luckat

A lot of good stuff here, Draupnir. I particularly like:

"The harshness of the blue sky feeds the passion of your pain"

You've set up a very nice rhythm scheme in the first verse. It might be good to keep following that scheme - what do you think?

The "their/my" axis - do you maybe need to introduce that "them" a little more? Or do you think so?

I'm a devil for mindmapping - it often helps me to clear my way through a story. Are you familiar with it? You take the main images/characters/episodes in a story, novel or poem, and draw them out in a kind of spidery way on large pieces of paper, using different colours and connecting them with lines.

For instance, I'm working on a novel - like you, the first draft is done, but I'm not satisfied with it, though the bones are there. Yesterday, mindmapping it, I discovered that the hero was a stag.

No, not literally! But that was my image for him. That clarified a lot about how he acts, how others react to him, his place within the narrative.

Would you think of mindmapping this poem - "them", the "cold warm day", the narrator inside looking out, the morass of confused feelings, the resolution "to build a world again/Tonight", and any other underlying images, feelings, rhythms, rhymes and so on that may occur to you?

When you've done that once, get out and walk the poem. Bring it with you, get out to the mountains and walk, saying it to yourself - under your breath, aloud, in your mind, whatever - so that the rhythm clarifies itself in your mind.

You may find that this strengthens the rhymes, too, and that they adhere to the images and to the central narrative of pain released.

Good luck, now!

Draupnir

I like the input, makes a lot of sense, may change the rhythmic scheme to match the first verse alright, cheers