A Captain's Oath

[A_Perfect_Sonnet]

Ben Stivers
6/17/05

A Captain's Oath

Here's to you,
And when ever my ship breaks through this storm,
I'll toast to you instead of my safety.
In the passing of the hours,
I'm not the one who is pretending it's not over,
Looking at myself through a stained glass window.

How jaded it makes you seem,
A slight shade of red darling.
When your palor has disappeared,
Here's to us.

I left the deck before the first waves hit.
I left the deck before it broke my men.
Now I'm writing this on a cannon ball,
It's going down with the ship.

I'll surrender so much, but keep it quiet.

[flywithdiamonds]

Nice concept but you're let down by weak structuring in places. Lines like:

"In the passing of the hours,
I'm not the one who is pretending it's not over,
Looking at myself through a stained glass window."

don't seem to glue together at all. My advice would be to step back from the imagery a little and try and look at tightening the weaker sections up I'm sure you have your own opinions on where they are. The last verse is excellent though, try reading out loud what you've written and I'm sure you'll see a noticable improvement in your poetry :)

[spnj]

You've got a workable idea here, but as flywithdiamonds mentioned, your structure is failing you. Also i noted that your method of phrasing things is making the lines more complicated than they should be.

for example:
I'm not the one who is pretending it's not over

this sounds so awkard grammatically it makes my head spin... the double negative is harsh.

maybe instead say:
in the passing of the hours
I pretend that its all over
As I stare at reflections in the
stained glass window.. or something like that... just a simplification