Insomnia

Unconscious suicide in insomniatic fervor,
the waking mind has been to sleep
while the body cannot;
the soul doesn’t know where to go.
My eyes have been burning and dry like
a garden in the summer year, but
they’re wilting in their sockets, too
drowned in a need of sleep to bloom—

Mocking dreams begin to dance
in between my broken senses,
driving reality to
quiver and cry in the dark corner.
I can’t tell what is real any longer—
not without a flesh-and-blood help
to drive away all these vicious fantasies,
as cowardly as that reality might be.
I can’t remember what I’ve done
or what I need to do, and
were my eyes willing to work
they would be flooded over,
and summer would become winter rains.

Ephemeral words drift, dazed,
and echo where my nighttime dreams
used to live—it’s been vacated
because they’ve been given free reign
into reality, a truly terrifying thought...
I’m sorry that I’ve
birthed these monsters into the world;
but believe me—
I would have reigned them in
with blessed sleep a long time ago
had I been able.


Jetlag. I'm a complainer.
Thanks for reading!
-Coral-

Evening, Persy. Let's head straight into this.

Alright, so you begin with a cryptic description of insomnia itself, which is tasteful, but may miss the mark on a note or two. Your use of the word ‘suicide’, while colorful, implies that the detriment to the body is intentional through insomnia. From experience, this isn’t the case. So while ‘suicide’ is a pretty (and powerful) word, try to change it around to be more precise in your description. “Insomniatic” is not a word, though it is an album by Aly & Aj. Between the lines, “while the body…where to go,” I would suggest changing the comma used after “cannot” to a semi-colon and removing the ‘and’ on the succeeding line. You’ll end up with:

the waking mind has been to sleep
while the body cannot;
the soul doesn’t know where to go.

The second segment of this stanza is rather beautiful, but still misses its mark on one note. “My eyes have been burning and blinking and watering like a garden in the winter year,” It’s a beautiful description upon face-value; don’t get me wrong. However, it lacks precision in the realm that you use “garden”. Now, there are two ways to approach this issue. My suggested treatment is to change the word ‘watering’, as it seems to fit the least with the remaining descriptors. Do you see it? The dissonance between verbs? The verb that precedes ‘watering,’ ‘blinking’, is also issue-laden for me. Read it by itself, and you get: “My eyes have been blinking like a garden in the winter year.” It’s a miss.

That can be easily-remedied with some fresh verbs, or maybe you’d like to change the description completely. Your call. Despite my issue with the first parts, the last two lines are rather beautiful. The only thing I’d consider checking is the direct use of ‘sleep’ in the last line. It’s a rather insulting giveaway to the reader.

Do me a favor on the first line of stanza two and change the word ‘and’ to an adjective. If those bland dreams suddenly become wicked or fiery or mystical, the description gains so much potency. The following lines after are very good; however, there is room for improvement. To sharpen this style, remove the word ‘away’ in line three. It verges on redundancy when you add in the next line. Also, the action of reality after it is driven away—trembling and quivering—seems redundant to me, seeing as how trembling is a more severe form of quivering. Change one of these to a verb of varied meaning and you’ll hit your mark.

In segment two, try changing the comma after ‘any longer’ to a dash—keep in mind that a dash and a hyphen are different things. I’ve used a few in this review. Just copy-and-paste one into its place. On the line succeeding this, you use a vague pronoun to reference what I imagine to be reality; however, if I have to imagine, then you may want to sharpen your precision.

Stanza two, in general, lacks the power to make me feel much for the narrator. Because of stanza one, I understand that she’s suffering. Well, the feeling and sympathy stop there; stanza two should make me want to donate to Insomnia research for her sake. Make me care more; I know you can do it.

In stanza three, I’d suggest eliminating the line break on the first line and leaving “drift, dazed,” as part of line one. The pause implied by that break is just too abrupt and does nothing for the flow but jostle the reader. In fact, give some thought to most of the line breaks in this stanza, as there seems to be a recurring issue that jars the flow out of sync. I’ll use quotes for the quips I have on punctuation.

it’s been vacated because they’ve been given free reign

Unnecessary comma (in fact, it breaks your grammar) here. Eliminated.

a truly terrifying thought…

Ellipses consist of three periods. However, if you were going for just one, then doctor that as needed.

When you hit segment two, something dramatic happens, and we hit an apology for something beyond her control. Change that comma after “world” to a semi-colon and you’ll be fine. You could also get away with changing the comma after “but believe me” to a dash. The comma after “a long time ago” can leave as well.

Despite what you said in your author’s notes, I did like the last stanza. In fact, it takes my favor over the second. You have a beautiful piece here with much potential. What I want to ask of you is that you put a lot of consideration and focus on the minuscule details within your words, within your lines, and give me a beautiful, potent piece that will make me proud to be one of your reviewers.

PM me or wall post me if you have any questions or comments.

-Lumi

Really great work, lass. I think you've set a new standard for yourself here
Lumi has given you a lot of great stuff, so I'm only going to hit on a few points that I came across and didn't see in his critique.

My eyes have been burning
and aching and dry like
a garden in the summer year

This seemed like description overload to me. Having 3 adjectives and a simile just to describe your eyes was a bit overwhelming and ended up distracting me.

Dastardly dreams begin to dance

Dastardly struck me as being a bit too whimsical for the tone of this poem, and the alliteration only added to the effect. The whole line seemed a bit too fun to fit in with the rest of the piece. This might just be me noticing odd connections in my head though, so just take another look at it and do what you think is best.

not without a materialist help,

I couldn't get "materialist" to make sense in context. It's a noun, but you seem to be trying to use it as an adjective.

Ephemeral words drift, dazed,
and echo where my nighttime dreams

The "dazed" technically works, but the quick change from present to past to present threw me off a bit. Consider changing it to: "dazedly drift and echo". If you like the way it is currently, it works, it's just not my favorite way of putting it.

You also seem to fall into the habit of long rambling sentences, which I have trouble with in my own writing. If there are places where you can break things up a bit without disrupting flow, I suggest it. It will make the poem easier to read and keep things from getting lost in an endless barrage of language.

That's all I have. This was stellar. You've found a nice balance between idea and image, and the language has a great flow. Really great work.

I made a poem called insomnia
But can I just say that mine was like a nursery-school version compared to yours?! How do you manange to piece together such as lot of big words? I wish that I was this articulate! Well done! Xxxx

I found this to be a very good poem and it is very descriptive. From this writing I would say that you have great talent.

I loved this. Read "Insomnia" a poem by Sylvia Plath, I have a feeling you would love it xx Well Done xx