Sleep Deprived

Hello there, Yatta! I'm Rosie, and I'm here to review this piece today!

Overall, this is a very good piece of work. There are elements to it that I adore, such as this stanza:

Yet wandering thoughts find
Weary, worried minds.
& force the rungs, gears, screws (and kind)
To turn the hidden clock behind
And feign daylight at darker times.

It's beautiful. You somehow managed to capture how my mind feels when it's wandering off just before before I fall asleep. How you've managed to take the complicated jumble that is the drowsy mind and organize it into a stanza like this is a stroke of genius. Great work here.

But, as always, I do have a couple of criticisms. My first and main criticism is how you've used parentheses.

I once read that all poetry is is art portrayed in word form. Great poets are able to take complicated emotions or mundane routines and, through poetry, express these things in ways that enthrall the reader. In my opinion, wonderful poets are essentially vocabulary magicians.

"And so the lids--worried, heavy, worn--
must somehow be put to form
And the breath which slows (in and out)
Must somehow learn to sort it out
And calming sleep is panic in darkness.
(Oh, what a mess!)"

In this stanza, there is an excess of punctuation, so much so that it detracts from the actual power of the words. My eyes leap straight to the two sets of parentheses, and since I'm looking at the parentheses instead of the words, reading this stanza isn't as smooth as it could be. If I were editing this stanza, I would do as follows:

"And so the lids,
worried, heavy, worn,
must somehow be put to form.
And the breath which slows,
in and out,
must somehow learn to sort it out.
And calming sleep is panic in darkness.
Oh, what a mess!"

In my opinion, this looks much more polished. But remember, this is merely my opinion. I am no master poet. If you like the way it looked before better than my suggestion, please feel entirely free to disregard it. At the end of the day, your opinion concerning your work is paramount.

All in all, great work! Always keep writing.

-Rosie

Ooh, goodie. It rhymes.
Usually rhyming sounds corny and juvenile,
but you had some good moments...

The "(in and out)" in parenthesis works for me.
At first I found it odd, but it makes sense because
it kind of subtly symbolizes the breath within the lungs.
Though whether this was your intention, I dunno.

I enjoyed the flow of the first stanza overall.
It's actually the most enjoyable.

I liked:
"that tics a hidden clock,
that tolls its time for bed"

The beginning of the second stanza-
particularly with the "hummingbirds in slow motion"
seems a little awkward.
I don't know why. *hrm*

"Fickle fledgling floundering in flight"
Shouldn't that be either "a fickle fledgling..."
or "fickle fledglings..." ?
I like all the "f" sounds, but it all comes too fast in one line, methinks.

The end of that second stanza:
simply "goodnight"
may be perceived as being a tad abrupt.

The third stanza adds to the substance of the poem.

You use "&" once.
Intentional?
Or do you want to be consistent throughout the piece?

The flow of the fourth stanza is a tad -"eh"
It can be worked on.

The ending is rushed, which makes me sad because it started off well.
And the rhyming is too simple-- aka the very reason why I don't prefer rhyme-y poems.

Your stanzas vary greatly, and there is a lack of consistency with the rhyming scheme in each one.

This poem has potential. I would like to see you continue to work on it.

End.