I Can't Sleep

When the rain won't come
and clothes hang -- limp dishrags;
curtains sag;
walls stick like a half-eaten plum.
I don't rest.

Even when the rain comes
and there's a green smell in the rooms,
things are fine;
not ominous -- divine!
Flowers grow.
I don't rest.

And when the night falls down,
trips in the darkness and stumbles through town,
children nap
but I know adults snap
at each other, at offspring, at life.
I can't sleep.

In a world full of Stepford wives,
who's to know that there aren't lies
hidden behind those Plasticine faces?
Smiles smothered like Smart Balance
and peanut butter in traces.
They suffer underneath.

And the men!
They don't vent.
Lives in the office
Or lives on the farm,
They do no wrong.
They cause no harm.
They must be strong.

And the young ones
are they the fun ones
when their heads are in pillows
cringing at parents' bellows?
They whimper.

And that is why, my dear, I can't sleep.

Spoiler

I hate it when people tell me to "go to bed." I can't just hit the pillow. I have to think first. And sometimes my thoughts are about all the sorrows of the world and all the families who have it worse than I do. It's hard to sleep when you know there are people out there who may not even have a bed to sleep on!

Spoiler

Some of these rhymes won't sound right to some readers because I have an accent. For example "comes" and "rooms"

Hello, Miss Warhol. Here to (hopefully) give some helpful critique.

I liked this poem; I thought the ideas therein were easy to relate to, and the flow of thoughts wasn't painstaking to follow like in so much other poetry. With a simple idea of being concerned with the world and unable to rest because of it, you were able to expand and layer the imagery while retaining that core issue. You had some interesting analogies in this poem, and one of my favorites was probably in the stanza about nightfall stumbling into town. Lovely and different. It wasn't too flowery, so it didn't seem out of place with the atmosphere of the poem, and you did a great job with that throughout.

All that being said, the one part of this poem that bothered me was the rhyming scheme...or lack thereof. It seemed that rhymed words were tossed about haphazardly at the ends of phrases like corn kernels for chickens. Sure, the reader will pluck those up in a moment, since people like to see a good rhyme, but there wasn't a consistency.

So yes, poetry doesn't have to work inside the confines of sonnet form or whatever all the time, especially not the kind of off beat poetry youngsters write with today. But still. I felt a little ripped off. In your first stanza, it seemed that you were going with an A, B, B, A, C scheme which was cool. I liked the feeling it had, the sort of unbalance it gave and how that added to the tone of the piece. But the second stanza rolls around, and you throw something completely different at us. Upon my first reading, I thought that maybe the first stanza was just a mistake, how you rhymed "come" and "plum" was just accidental or something. But then I read your spoiler and realized that "comes" and "rooms" in the second were supposed to rhyme. I had to do a double take.

From there, yes, the stanzas do change, but then so do the contents. You are no longer talking about rain, you're talking about fake people, about men, women, children. And I liked that, I liked that you thought about the visual way you wanted to convey each new idea. With that in mind, I'm not referring to the off-kilter rhyming as transitioning through those new stanzas, mostly in the first three. Honestly, my only suggestion is to completely ignore this review and leave it as is, since I would hate to tell you to cut things or rearrange just for the sake of "rhyming properly." But hey, it's always your call. I humbly offer my opinion.

Well, while I was able to ramble on that one point for three paragraphs, it's really my only complaint. I enjoyed reading this, and I hope this helped in some fashion. Any questions, feel free to bother me.

skipperwhipped.

I liked this.. it felt so easy to read and it just went by so smoothly! I can totally relate too.. Sleep isn't possible without going through everything in life first... it's very soothing at times & very troubling at others.
I liked how the poem takes me from one thing to another, like first summer, then winter, then wives, then men and then the " Young ones " ... I would've loved it if it was a little bit longer, but that's just me! =)

Even when the rain comes
and there's a green smell in the rooms,
things are fine;
not ominous -- divine!
Flowers grow.
I don't rest.

Defintely my favorite part.
I mostly liked it because I can relate!

Hi. Let me say first off that I love how well you pulled off the rhymes in this poem and I love the idea you wrote about.
The first two stanzas were a beautiful way to set up the exposition: you can't sleep.
And then you had this lovely transition embedded in the third stanza

Abigail_W. wrote:children nap
but I know adults snap
at each other, at offspring, at life.

That lets you go seamlessly from not being able to sleep to the families you worry about while you try to sleep.
And then I love this description of a fake smile

Abigail_W. wrote:Smiles smothered like Smart Balance
and peanut butter in traces.

I love how it stayed with the image of the Stepford wives and their "cult of domesticity."
And then the men are also perfectly described.

Abigail_W. wrote:They can't sneeze.
They must be strong.

When you read the first line, it feels kind of glib and like you just wrote it to rhyme with the line previous, but when you read "they must be strong" it kind of ties the whole thing together and makes it work.

Abigail_W. wrote:And that is why, my dear, I can't sleep.

My only problem is with this last line; I don't like the use of the word "my dear." I assume, probably wrongly that you are speaking to a parent or an elder or someone who has the authority to tell you when to sleep. It feels a little condescending to call them "my dear." Then again, this could be a cultural thing that I know nothing about.
Anyways, great job and great rhyming.

Thank you all very much for the reviews and feedback!