More than emotion but less than a life

My window is wide open.
The truth hides behind my door.
Those voices are in the shadows.

Ideas search through my closet.
My emotions are under the bed.
My soul is lost.

I know it's all in my head.
The words go unsaid.
I know it's no time for crying,
but slowly my dreams are dying.

I love the title for this piece, Max, but I think you need to expand on some of your images. At the moment it seems a little fragmented and the flow could be smoother. For example, you could make the first stanza more interesting by adding a little bit more -

My window is wide open,
allowing the truth to seep past the pane
and across the floor to hide behind my door.
The elusive voices call to me
from shadowy eternity.

If you just add those extra details then this could be really good and I like your use of rhyme towards the end. Maybe remove the comma after crying though.

In general, I think that the concept is good and it already has a slightly dark, gothic feel to it but spend a little more time describing the shadows and the darkness of the room.

The title, in my opinion, says the most here. It really is well put.

I like the, for the most part, subtle rhyming.

Lengthening the stanzas with a bit more imagery would be fabulous, because I think you've already said a lot that can paint a picture in people's heads but saying more would drive the statements home and let the poem outshine that amazing title of yours.

Hmmm.


Honestly, I'm not sure what I think. But I'll try to make sense of it for you. ^^; The emotions weren't described well enough. You had good metaphors, but they weren't good enough, if that makes sense. You are writing a poem about what you are feeling, and so you feel it, but you have to make me feel that, as well. I do hope that makes sense...

I agree; the sentences were choppy and you weren't very articulate in expressing emotion.

Structure and Tone. Poets can use sentence structure and tone to their advantage; here, I don't think the overly simplistic sentences and flat, boring tone were all that good for the poem. It just goes, "This is like this. This is like this. This is like this." Well, where's the fun in that? Sometimes a flat tone like that can be very good for a piece, but here I feel it was not well used, if it was intended.

Metaphor. I find that this poem is mostly built around abstract, vague metaphor and ideas.
Example:

My emotions are under the bed.

I can't visualize this; what does an emotion look like? Why is it under the bed? Again, this might have been used well in another poem, but you don't really build on it. Maybe you should pick just one of these metaphors and focus the whole poem on it; that would give you room to really explore what you're saying.

Cliche.

I know it's no time for crying,
but slowly my dreams are dying.

Oh no. Please. This kills my soul. "My dreams are dying"? I know you can do better than to borrow from the countless other people who have said the exact same thing. You can do better!

Keep at it!
-Colleen