These Four Walls

Trapped in these four walls,
Not knowing where to turn,
There is nothing left for me,
But to silently scream.

Glass is easily broken,
And permafrost never melts.
I am confined to this existence,
Where there is little else to see.

A sharp thorn in my side;
How cold it is within this place,
In this pallid room of gray,
Ice packs like styrofoam peanuts.

Take my fist-sized heart,
It is the only color here,
Inside this stifling space.
I breathe my last breath for it.

For it! For life!
For color! For sound!
For sight! For warmth!
For touch! For you.

Anon, my pulse will cease,
As I stare through these walls.
And ignorant, so negligent;
You don't know I die for you.

My lungs expand once more,
And my eyes flutter weakly.
My heart on the floor,
My head in my hands.

Coughing up blood,
Blood! Colorful blood,
Does relieve the dreariness,
Of this ashen place.

A hemorrhage, an aneurism,
Or perhaps asphyxiation.
I cannot breathe, I cannot hold on;
These four walls are closing in.

No! There is you, always you,
Always your face painted under my eyelids,
That silken voice so long ago memorized.
You; my saving grace, my lifeline.

Your name on my lips;
Drawing in a shaky breath.
There is you. There is love.
There is light. There is life.

Honestly? No one's gonna comment on this?

Ohhh....you got me. I'll bite. And I will bite *evil laugh; cracks knuckles*

Trapped in these four walls,

Not knowing where to turn,

There is nothing left for me, At the end of the review I'll go into a diatribe about punctuation in poems. But I hate this comma so much I had to call attention to it.

But to silently scream.



Glass is easily broken,

And permafrost never melts.

I am confined to this existence,

Where there is little else to see. This stanza is excellent. No suggestions.



A sharp thorn in my side; I like this semi-colon here. It effectively separates the line...

How cold it is within this place,

In this pallid room of gray, I would substitute 'a' for 'this', because you just used 'this' in the last line, and because 'a' sounds more desolate, which is what you're going for. (Right?)

Ice packs like styrofoam peanuts. Love this.



Take my fist-sized heart,

It is the only color here,

Inside this stifling space. I feel like this would work better in parentheses. I don't know how much you like them, but I am a big fan, and since this line is clarifying the 'here' in the previous line, I think they would work. So, let's see:
it is the only color here
(inside this stifling space)
i breathe my last breath for it.
I think it works. Anyway, that's purely my opinion, just think about it.

I breathe my last breath for it.



For it! For life!

For color! For sound!

For sight! For warmth!

For touch! For you. In any other poem, I would hate the excessive use of !'s, but it works here. However, I would omit the 'for it' because it's repetitive, and perhaps reorder your list, like say: life, color, warmth, sound, sight, touch, you. Again...the words just work better like that in my head, but it's probably just me.



Anon, my pulse will cease,

As I stare through these walls.

And ignorant, so negligent;

You don't know I die for you. No complaints here.



My lungs expand once more, I though you just breathed your last breath...for your heart or something. Keep this line, but you could change the last one so it's 'I breathe my penultimate breath' and it will make sense then.

And my eyes flutter weakly.

My heart on the floor,

My head in my hands.



Coughing up blood,

Blood! Colorful blood,

Does relieve the dreariness, Omit the 'does' and go with 'relieves the dreariness...'

Of this ashen place.



A hemorrhage, an aneurism,

Or perhaps asphyxiation.

I cannot breathe, I cannot hold on;

These four walls are closing in.



No! There is you, always you,

Always your face painted under my eyelids,

That silken voice so long ago memorized.

You; my saving grace, my lifeline.



Your name on my lips;

Drawing in a shaky breath. Oh, never mind, I get it now, ignore the 'penultimate breath' suggestion. Very well done.

There is you. There is love.

There is light. There is life.

Overall: Oh, wow, no one reviewed this huh? Probably too intimidated. Anyways, this is excellent. Really. That was way less suggestions than I usually have. I love your idea, the person just holding on for someone else, for life, etc, etc.
*a gold star magically appears*
I guess this won't be as much a diatribe as I thought but here goes: You use punctuation at the end of every line of your poem and usually it's not necessary at all, and sometimes incorrect (remember the comma I hated?). In poetry, punctuation should be used to emphasize a point, while line breaks do the pausing instead of commas and periods. Sometimes it is used effectively (like the semicolon, the !'s, and your last two lines), but the unnecessary punctuation in the rest of the poem takes away from that. So read it over, decide where you really want punctuation and where it isn't needed.

It was my pleasure to read and review this. Thank you.

This poem is amazing! Truly, I'm speechless!

You have talent, there's certainly no doubt about that!

I enjoyed this so much...And I can truly relate to what you're saying in it.

Bravo, Explosive_Pen.

Explosive_Pen wrote:Trapped in these four walls,
Not knowing where to turn,
There is nothing left for me,
But to silently scream.

Glass is easily broken,
And permafrost never melts.
I am confined to this existence,
Where there is little else to see.

A sharp thorn in my side;
How cold it is within this place,
In this pallid room of gray,
Ice packs like styrofoam peanuts.

Take my fist-sized heart,
It is the only color here,
Inside this stifling space.
I breathe my last breath for it.

For it! For life!
For color! For sound!
For sight! For warmth!
For touch! For you.

Anon, my pulse will cease,
As I stare through these walls.
And ignorant, so negligent;
You don't know I die for you.

My lungs expand once more,
And my eyes flutter weakly.
My heart on the floor,
My head in my hands.

Coughing up blood,
Blood! Colorful blood,
Does relieve the dreariness,
Of this ashen place.

A hemorrhage, an aneurism,
Or perhaps asphyxiation.
I cannot breathe, I cannot hold on;
These four walls are closing in.

No! There is you, always you,
Always your face painted under my eyelids,
That silken voice so long ago memorized.
You; my saving grace, my lifeline.

Your name on my lips;
Drawing in a shaky breath.
There is you. There is love.
There is light. There is life.

If you really are 13, I applaud you.... The key word for you is talent... But you have to learn to listen for advices and critics...and more important to stay yourself...

Pfft. 'Tisn't talent, 'tis just the words swimming around in my head. They align themselves; my job is to simply put them on paper.
Thsnk you for your praise and critiques/suggestions and such. I'll be sure to take them into account.

I love this poem, it's so passionate and so compelling. It just sucks you in and then your the one dying for love. It just comes across perfectly. For just words within your head, you do an amazing job at getting it all down.

Comments are in Bold.

Trapped in these four walls,
Not knowing where to turn,
There is nothing left for me,
But to silently scream.
Like one of the other reviewers, I do agree that you have a lot of unneeded punctuation. One good way to tell whether you need the punctuation or not is to copy your poem and then delete the spacing for the lines, that can help you to see where normal grammar is for a start and then you can look for special poetry grammar. I think the punctuation for the first and second lines could actually be dashes, or even parentheses, because it seems like there are a lot of commas in this stanza. Also, you could probably delete the comma on the third line, because the spacing will give you the pause you need before the but clause. This is a real strong beginning, though, and it really does draw the reader in.

Glass is easily broken,
And permafrost never melts.
I am confined to this existence,
Where there is little else to see.
I think that you could also get rid of the comma at the end of the first line, as the and clause will work just fine without it. Then, I think the poem might work better with out the last two underlined words. I think it fits the rhythm of the poem better to end on the 'little else.' Of course, the 'to see' does work, but it still doesn't quite connect with me.

A sharp thorn in my side;
How cold it is within this place,
In this pallid room of gray,
Ice packs like styrofoam peanuts.
I love how random this whole stanza is. Although, my mind can't connect the tenses between the last two lines. I can totally see what you're talking about when I look at the last line on its own, but I still can't connect it to the line before it. When it's connected to 'In this pallid room of gray' I want to change it to 'Ice packed like styrofoam peanuts,' because my mind just stutters away from it. You might need to change the ending punctuation to give more stopping power between the two lines.

Take my fist-sized heart,
It is the only color here,
Inside this stifling space.
I breathe my last breath for it.

For it! For life!
For color! For sound!
For sight! For warmth!
For touch! For you.
This is my favorite part, where the narrator finds her warmth for a brief moment to exclaim to the sky. And I love how the last sentence is ended by a period, a simple period. It's like the rest were all exclamations of joy and the last sentence is a serious declaration. Beautiful.

Anon, my pulse will cease,
As I stare through these walls.
And so ignorant, so negligent;
You don't know I die for you.
I'm not sure if I really like the underlined word. I do know that it works, but it just seems like it has too many syllables in one word and I also keep stumbling over it. Not saying you have to change it, because it might just fit the best, I'm just saying that I keep stumbling over it. Also, I'm not sure if you've quit connected the last two lines to the first line. I think it might be missing a 'so,' as the third line is really meant to be an appositive, but you really don't need any more commas.

My lungs expand once more,
And my eyes flutter weakly.
My heart on the floor,
My head in my hands.

Coughing up blood,
Blood! Colorful blood[s],[/s]
Does relieve the dreariness[s],[/s]
Of this ashen place.
Even without the comma this part could use a bit more work to connect all of the pieces. I'm also not sure about the ending punctuation on the first line, because it just seems to emphasize the repetition of 'blood' instead of setting apart each meaning. Of course, by same trade, you could also say something like: Coughing up blood-- // Blood! Colorful, it // does relieve the dreariness // of this ashen place. I actually like that a bit better.

A hemorrhage, an aneurism,
Or perhaps asphyxiation.
I cannot breathe, I cannot hold on;
These four walls are closing in.
Firefox says that aneurism is spelled aneurysm, but you might want to check a dictionary or something. Spell checkers are funny things. I do like this line, as the character winds down again before picking back up in the next stanza.

No! There is you, always you,
[s]Always[/s] your face painted under my eyelids,
That silken voice so long ago memorized.
You; my saving grace. My lifeline.
I think that it might work without the repetition of 'always.' It makes the word stronger with just the one use, and it also shortens the one line that seems a bit longer than usual. Then, I think it would be stronger to have a period after saving grace, and it would make 'my lifeline' be more bold and serious.

Your name on my lips;
Drawing in a shaky breath.
There is you. There is love.
There is light. There is life.
I like how this is a more somber repetition of the stanza before with all of the 'for's. Although, and I'm of two minds about this, I think it might also work to have 'there is you' at the end of that whole list. I mean, I do see how it leads out, there is 'you' and love and light and then life. But, I think it could also work to say 'There is love. There is light. // There is life. There is you.' Just thought that I'd mention it.

Overall: It is a brilliant poem full of imagery. One really does feel trapped within that frozen, desolate place with this person and then we are renewed through this one person, the love of this person's life. It shows that there is hope even in the darkness. It's wonderful. Mostly, I think your biggest thing is straightening out the punctuation and after that your poem will truly shine!

Good luck with your poem!

- Tatra

Twin! This is awesome!! I love the stanza :
Glass is easily broken,

And permafrost never melts.

I am confined to this existence,

Where there is little else to see.

Hehe, mainly because you used the word permafrost. Yay for fancy words!!

This stanza has rhythm problems :
No! There is you, always you,

Always your face painted under my eyelids,

That silken voice so long ago memorized.

You; my saving grace, my lifeline.


Anywayz, good job on this and gold star for you...as usual xD

fluteluvr77<3