Cruel Melody

Hi there, AJW!

Que here to review your poem today.

I read through the whole thing before seeing your comment at the bottom that this is multiple poems put together -- that makes a lot of sense to me, since I was seeing a lot of different ideas and feelings that sometimes contradicted each other.

I'll just go through stanza by stanza and then try to make out some overall thoughts and themes.

Most people love to hate one another.
But I hate to love you.
You are the one person I entrust with my secrets.
I hold those close to me.
Years of lies and separation.
They burden you.
They burden me.

I think you start out with an interesting little inversion: most people love to hate, but I hate to love. It pulls me in because I instantly want to know more about why this would be the case. I'm not sure I really find out why in this stanza. I was a little confused about how the "you" is close enough to be entrusted with secrets, but there are "years of...separation." I do like the repetition in your closing lines, though!

You still haven’t realized.
This isn’t about me anymore.
You say differently than you act.
Maybe one day you’ll realize why that is.
I guess I’ll have to wait on you.
Would you mind that?
Would you wait?

Again, I really like the closing lines of this stanza, and again, I think it might be the repetition. It just sounds good in my mind, most of a line repeated with a slight change -- it has a nice effect.

As to the first four lines, I'm not quite sure what they mean; it seems like it would help if readers knew something a little more concrete about the situation. I can't really connect how the situation isn't about the narrator with the listener's internal differences, and the narrator waiting then the listener also waiting.

What if I have nothing left to say?
What if you want nothing more to do with me?
Leaving nothing but the silence that fills the air.
Is that too cruel?
Would you mind the silence?
It tends to speak volumes of my thoughts.

Again, I like the sound of this stanza, with repetitions on silence and nothing. The meaning is a bit harder to pick out. Although "nothing" connects the first two lines, they seem thematically different. So far, I'd say the narrator of this poem just has a lot on their mind and is sort of swinging back and forth between various thoughts about their own attitude and their listener's.

I do enjoy your company.
I'm quite shocked that you may enjoy mine as well.
You say you do.
I'm not sure why it is so hard for me to trust that.
I was told how "words mean nothing."
It was my goal to prove him wrong.
To think I now hesitate before each breath I speak..

This stanza seems a bit gentler compared to the others; the narrator has enjoyment, and is a little more open about feelings than the more defensive or accusatory questions in the other stanza. Those had a bit more bitterness about them. This stanza feels more like having a crush after having been hurt before.

I'm not sure what the relationship to the "him" is--seems a little disconnected from whatever is going on with the "you," whether or not it's the same you this time.

And then there are the songs I cannot listen to without hearing you.
Perhaps now I should change the lyrics, right?
The rain sings me to sleep.
A lullaby from my memories.
A repeated nightmare from my dreams.
To my mother, that I will never meet.
I don't want your cruel melody.

I think this might be my favorite of the stanzas. Instead of directly interacting with the "you" in questions and thoughts, this stanza is a bit of a step back. I like the imagery of dreams and nightmares, and how listening to songs and thinking about someone connects to that person's "cruel melody."

Reading this stanza makes me think that the rest of your poem might benefit from having more of this imagery. It would give the reader a little bit more to cling to than the questions and might help in giving the stanzas more of a connection and cohesion.

I miss you.
You haven't even left yet.
I can't help but feel like an obstacle.
One that you'll forget about once you step off the stage.
I'm sorry for being your obstacle.
I'm sorry that I care.
I wish I didn't.
I try not to each and every day.
You're too nice.
It's surreal.
A fever dream.
And I have yet to wake up.

More emotional development! This one feels most similar to the first stanza -- hating to love. One image I didn't think quite worked was the "stage" -- it doesn't feel like it really refers to anything. Since the narrator talks about being an obstacle immediately before and after that line, it would make more sense to me to use an image more like this: "One that you'll forget about once you push me aside." That's kind of calling back to being an obstacle, it's using the same simile/metaphor.

You are blind.

I didn't have too much to say about this stanza! I think it was sort of building on the same kinds of ideas we saw earlier -- burdens, blindness, silence, tension.

I'm sorry, sir.
I never got to say goodbye to you.
I didn't even know about the funeral.
Not until it was too late.

This stanza, to me, feels like a huge shift. It almost seems like it should be its own poem, since the previous stanzas aren't necessarily building towards this moment. There's another character introduced, the "sir," and the tone gets a lot more serious because it's clear that there's death involved and not just the tension and questioning that was the focus of the first part. It feels really separate both in tone and in subject matter.

The last stanza sort of ties it back in -- the "you" is back here, and the crying and comfort link this scene to the funeral. And the "silence," connection is back, but with a slightly different angle.

I particularly like this little exchange:

You hurt me.
I comforted you.
I regretted it.

Overall thoughts

Phew! I hope that wasn't too long. I was just trying to process through each stanza.

One thing I noticed was that every line ends with either a period or a question mark. To me, that conveys the sense that the narrator maybe struggles in saying each line, and that there's a firmness to every single thing they say. I think that firmness can be a little overdone; after a while, the periods don't quite have the same effect anymore. It might be interesting to experiment with longer sentences and line breaks, and it might help with a little more continuity as well!

The continuity is my main comment. It feels like there's a lot of different directions that this poem is trying to go, and it's a little overwhelming to see them all. It might help to pick the most important ideas and really focus in on those; sometimes I cut out certain stanzas that I really liked that don't fit thematically, and you can always save them for later to be their own poem. Focusing in a little more also doesn't mean you can't be contradictory -- if the poem's about conflicting thoughts, which I see a lot of, then that makes sense! But if that's the big takeaway, then it would be cool to see that conflict heightened, to see even more back and forth in the narrator's voice.

Even though I couldn't "make sense" of the poem as a whole, I think there are a lot of standalone lines that are really pretty, especially when you use that repetition. And I think you have a lot of cool images and ideas -- blindness, silence, songs, burdens, obstacles. I'd just love to see you hone in on a couple of them even more.

Hope this helps, and sorry if it was a ramble! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Have a great day!

-Q

Hello, My Friend!

You've woven together many powerful stanzas into one long, beautiful poem. Feelings of sorrow, frustration, and nostalgia all carry through the lines. The message beneath feels complex with multiple targets, and I don't trust myself to form just one interpretation from it. It sorta feels like one of those pieces that you understand, and at the same time, you don't. Or perhaps that's just my excuse lol.

*Ahem: on a more technical level, this was a great example of free-verse poetry. I couldn't find any errors or the like, everything flowed so smoothly, and the structure was great.

Again, I don't quite trust myself to form one interpretation, but one of the lines that stuck out and became my favorite was this:

And then there are the songs I cannot listen to without hearing you.

Perhaps now I should change the lyrics, right?

This is where I sense that frustration most, and a bit of snarkiness (in a good sense) behind the second remark: the narrator, upset about a vivid reminder of someone else. But by now they can predict that the only response would be something so dismissive yet impossible. Or so, that's what I can understand from it.

This is probably a lackluster review, which I apologize for...But overall, I really enjoyed the poem, and you did a great job writing it! Nicely done!