A sensory poem needs to describe an emotion. Make sure that the purpose of the poem is not to describe the effect of a certain emotion. Your poem does not need to state how the emotion makes an individual feel. Instead, you should try to describe the emotion as if it has a life of its own; try to capture the essence of the emotion. For example, if you want to describe misery, think of words that make the reader feel the misery -- like dank, stale, dreary -- and use them in your poem.
The poem should be objective. Do not attempt to describe a feeling based on what you feel. Try to produce an emotion based on a common idea of the emotion itself. If you have a happy memory that you link to the color blue, it might make you feel happy, but it will not have the same effect on the reader. Yellow is a color that is generally connected to happiness, and therefore would be a more appropriate color to use.
The use of action verbs must be frequent. Action verbs are dynamic verbs and are essential in sensory poems because they have a powerful ability to express the essence of emotions through words. They help you to avoid stating what the emotion is by using "feels like" or "sounds like." If you wish to express loneliness in your poem, words like "creeps" and "lingers" help get the feeling across.
Sensory poems do not have to rhyme. Writing in free verse is acceptable because the sole purpose of this type of poetry is to make the reader hear, touch, smell and taste. Focus on describing the emotion and sharing it with the reader and the structure will form itself.