I sometimes wonder if it’s raining
or if it's the pattering clicks and clangs of my memories -
fragmented and rigged as they are -
piecing together, one by one, before splitting around the edges.
I would pick apart each image till they bled,
remodeling like the furniture mum would move about the living room
every six months, until she was contented
and I would be contented, with holes in my thoughts.
the rain seems a much more welcome subject
then the times I skinned my knees,
broke skin in patches, like the day he said I was beautiful.
but gravel sticks to damaged flesh, and the nights I hate are roaring
thunder in my ears. why I shudder at the sound.
and the wet, cold, damp sings lullabies as I tear each still-life
down.
I woke up with a hole in my heart
mistaking it for the steady thump of a rampant sky,
and the hurt kept fraying the wound smooth and hot, gurgling
with a thicker substance than pattering rain.
it took more damage than the shed in our backyard that first wind storm
or the peeling brain I had torn apart in trying
to escape all things I wished to forget.
but I couldn’t forget.
not these storms inside my heart and head.
Hey there, Dream! Long time no see but I saw your poem and the title put a ditty in my head and that little ditty turned into a really annoying mental itch that I couldn’t scratch that eventually forced me to review your poem in the hopes that I would distract myself from this devilish tune.
Right off the bat, I have to say, that visually, just the way I guess it looks to my eyes is really nice. There aren’t any lines that look too long or too short and I really enjoy that. I don’t know what it is but I always take that into account when I read anything.
A couple tiny nitpicks.
I don’t know if it was something about where I was raised but I was always told to write the abbreviation of “until” as ‘til. Maybe I’m just weird or maybe it’s just something I was taught to do weird. Or maybe Word just likes to auto-correct everything I believe. *shrugs*
Well that was less of a nitpick and more of a comment I suppose.
I really like these two lines. The very un-relatedness of the images makes the feeling suddenly more relatable. I mean, I’ve got big awful gashes on my both my knees and they are not at all welcome.
The italicized line seems odd to me. If the “why” is supposed to be an exclamatory, it could use a comma after the “why.” If it’s a question, it could use a question mark to make it more understandable. Unless I’m just misunderstanding the line all together, in that case ignore my senseless jabber.
This was just another line I really liked. And I thought you should know. So I told you.
The ending two lines of this blew my mind because they’re so very simple. You broke it down and showed the bare bones of the poem and the words are very honest.
Overall, I really like this. Occasionally, I would feel a little jumbled by your word choice but I blame it more on my sleepiness than your actual word choice. I think it’s because the poem had nice flow but it wasn’t really smooth. It had a nice rup-buh-dah-bah-dah if that makes sense. It’s something my high school band director always used to say about playing drums. It had the right kind of rhythm without being smooth I guess. Like, well, rain.
Anyways, great poem again, Dream and if you have any questions, feel free to PM me or leave a note on my wall.
~lilymoore
I really enjoyed reading this poem even if I got a little confused when reading it at times. I had to re-read it, and I'd like to say you have a way of incorporating emotion in an almost visual way through the words. I agree with 'tgirly' that the title could use some work or at least capitalize it.
I found only one spelling mistake:
"then the times I skinned my knees" should be "than..."
These two lines don't quite make sense to me, maybe it's missing a word? Maybe it could be broken to two lines at a different place?"and the wet, cold, damp sings lullabies as I tear each still-life/down." Also wet and damp mean basically the same thing so I might take out one of them so it's not too repetitive.
I also don't quite get the dashes between the lines... are they suposed to symbolize the rain drop sound and the memories? or is it just a strange break in lines? And then where did these mysterious dashes go in the 2nd and 3rd stanzas??
There were some other strange line breaks so you could take a secound look at that, but for the most part I thought the flow, and breaks were good.
Thanks for posting, keep writing!
~Alliyah~
The dashes were actually a punctuation bit I took from prose xD. If you look at the line written out without the breaks, it would look like this;
I sometimes wonder if it%u2019s raining or if it's the pattering clicks and clangs of my memories - fragmented and rigged as they are - piecing together, one by one, before splitting around the edges.
Makes more sense in prose form, ne? I used them for effect in which case, they did appear to be a bit random. Anyways, thank you kindly for the review!
Wow. Very dramatic. It's just oozing with emotion. I love the metaphor.
I'm not sure the title really fits with the poem; the title makes me think it's going to be some light, silly poem, and it's not like that at all, it's very intense and deep. You could call it "Storms Inside my Head" or something. I'm not that good at coming up with titles, so good luck with that.
"mistaking it for steady thump of a rampant sky."
Should be:
"mistaking it for A steady thump of a rampant sky." I think.
No other spelling or grammar mistakes that I see, so good job on that.
Awesome poem. Hope my review helps!
-tallywa
Kudos on catching that awful error xD. And I have a bit of a habit of writing really ridiculous titles these days. Nothing really seemed to mesh well with this so I simply went with what came to my head first. Nonetheless, thank you kindly!