Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

D
This poem is part of the contest:

Neopoet Weekly 06/28/26 to 07/04/26

(Read More...)

What do I want?

I want to see your eyes shining 

I want to see the sun rising from the dark 

I want to see mountains getting higher 

I want to see the last fire spark 

 

I want to feel the warmth of your heart

I want to know you're still doing fine

I want to hear what's crossing your mind

I want to clear what's been left behind

 

I want to feel alive, sing and dance

and live the life, I just want to write

I want to believe, no need for proof

I want to trust there's still good in us

 

I don't want to give up on real life,

the angels walking on Earth 

dressed as people, fluffy butterflies,

ladybug, a piece of grass... 

— Džein, Jul 01, 2026

About This Poem

Style/Type: Free verse

Editing Stage: Rough draft

About the Author

Country/Region: CZE

This user supports Neopoet so it can be free to all

More from this author

Critiques

neopoet

neopoet

1 week ago

Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]

The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:

The anaphora of "I want" gives this poem a clear engine, and its repetition builds a cumulative momentum that suits a piece about longing. The structure lets the speaker's desires accumulate like a litany, and by the final stanza the shift to "I don't want to give up" registers as a meaningful turn — the poem pivots from reaching toward something to refusing to release it, which is a smart move for a closing gesture.

The strongest images are the concrete ones. "The last fire spark" carries a quiet finality that earns its place, and the closing catalogue — "fluffy butterflies, / ladybug, a piece of grass" — grounds the abstraction of "angels walking on Earth" in small, observed things. That descent from the grand to the tiny is where the poem feels most alive and least generic.

Where the poem lands less securely is in the middle stanzas, which lean on phrases that carry less specific weight: "doing fine," "there's still good in us," "live the life," "feel alive, sing and dance." These are sentiments many readers will recognize, but recognition is not the same as revelation, and the poem risks telling the reader about feeling rather than showing it. The first stanza demonstrates the alternative — "the sun rising from the dark," "mountains getting higher" — where wanting is rendered through image. Rewriting the abstract wants in the second and third stanzas as concrete scenes, the way the first and last stanzas do, would let the whole poem speak in one register.

One more concrete note: the line "and live the life, I just want to write" breaks the anaphora mid-line and introduces "write" without preparing the reader for it, which reads more as a stumble than a deliberate variation. Deciding whether writing is a genuine thread in this poem — and if so, seeding it earlier — would resolve the ambiguity.

The rhyme in the first stanza ("dark"/"spark") sets up an expectation that later stanzas do not consistently meet, with near-rhymes and unrhymed endings following. This is not a flaw in itself, but choosing deliberately between a rhymed structure and free verse would make the sound feel intentional rather than intermittent.

Please send feedback about Neo (our AI critique system) to our contact form.

Join Neopoet to leave a critique

Neopoet is a free community of poets who critique and support each other's writing.