You kiss me,
But your lips never touched mine.
You call my name,
So loud the universe can hear,
But I can’t tell if you are near.
You run across the street for me,
But I never see you jump the yellow line.
It’s like there is a cellophane wall between us.
My guard,
That I can’t let down,
Which always has you looking at me with a frown.
I never made myself so open,
For my heart has always been,
So closed.
Even if you are so close.
You anger wants you to raise Cain,
Break me out of the fortress of cellophane.
You don’t know.
You take iron for the plain,
Just cellophane.
Where we can still touch,
Except for a thin piece of plastic between our fingers,
I can see you,
I can feel you,
But still not sure if it is you.
It puts us two,
Very far,
Worlds apart, in fact
Because the protection I put to keep my heart intact.
I swore that I won’t be hurt,
To not be broken,
But it is having a reverse effect,
Just like returning a token.
The pain feels the same,
And my heart rips further deep.
To be without love,
Is worse than to be in protections keep
You say, “I love you.”
I give a stare and I whisper,”I can’t hear you. I need to get to my car”
You whisper with a frown,”So close, yet so far.”
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Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,022 Literary Works • 672,759 Reviews
I love it, it is really nice. But I do agree with what the others have said. Take out the car part. That just kind of made a question mark go over my head lol
. Also I think the token part shouldn't stay. The poem would sound a lot better without the token line. 
Punctuation. I'm going to echo Leja's bit about the punctuation. Don't put commas at the end of line breaks unless they really belong! Write sentences as you would normally.
For example, if you take out the line break, this reads:For my heart has always been, so closed.
And that's not right at all! It should read:
For my heart has always been so closed.
or
For my heart has always been
So closed.
Rhyme. I like the rhyme here. It's subtle, with a sort of different rhythm that's pleasantly off but not unsettling. In fact, I like the rhyme in most of the poem. I like that you included such devices without a rigid structure, something I struggle with.
I like this, too, particularly the last two lines, even though I have no idea what they mean. They sound cool, so you've done half your job as a poet. Now tell me what on earth that means.
Consistency and logic. This, to me at least, implies that the reason the speaker cannot see him jump the line is because of the cellophane wall. But cellophane would only block, somewhat, the sense of touch, taste, and possibly smell, not sight or hearing, which the poem sometimes implies, which is why this
makes more sense.
Imagery and metaphor. I as a reader am confused by the two main images in this piece. You have the street, because of the yellow line and the car (which, by the way, was like...WHAT? I don't understand why the speaker all of a sudden must go to it), but I'm not really sure why. And then there's the metaphor of the cellophane wall separating the speaker and the person he/she loves, and for some reason I get an image of two people standing in the middle of a road with a gigantic piece of plastic between them. Probably not what you intended. I think you need some more concrete images so your readers can get a firm hold before delving into the metaphor of the cellophane.
Diction. Stronger words would help you so, so, so much. Regular old boring words get the job done, but occasionally you ought to use something with a little more kick. This is not to say that you should go running to the thesaurus for every verb you write, but sometimes there are more appropriate (not fancier, just more appropriate) words to use!
Here, 'touched' is kind of boring and we don't really get any sort of image out of that. Did they touch softly, a light brush, a small peck? Might two pairs of lips press against one another? Part one another? Even collide? You have a world of opportunities for making this unsuccessful 'kiss' a little more interesting.
If 'touched' is boring, 'run' is even more so. People can jump, dash, jog, anything! You don't even have to use a synonym for 'run', you might find another word or image that's even more interesting. Readers love seeing words and phrases used in ways they've never seen before.
'Raising Cain' is a cliched phrase. It's boring. It doesn't mean much. Describe this in a way unique to you! It's not against the rules to use cliched or hackneyed phrases, but they should be used sparingly and wisely. Here it's just not doing much, and there are certainly more colorful ways of describing extreme anger. Use your imagination. It's good to get it out once in a while.
Here's an article I wrote about diction that includes a few examples: Right Word, Right Time
Length. It could also totally be shorter. Set a line or word limit for yourself that's maybe two-thirds of what the poem currently is. It'll force you to trim the fat and really make sure that what you have is quality.
Meaning. So overall there is the sense that these two people are very close but also very far away, perhaps to the point that they don't really know the other person. Perhaps it is a statement about the value of emotion in love, that while people can be physically close they must also be emotionally close to be in love. Or perhaps it is saying the opposite, that they can be emotionally close but physical barriers can present an obstacle to being in love.
Or maybe the speaker has placed him/herself in this situation, in an attempt at protection from love or hurt, but he/she finds that living in a bubble he/she or someone else made is really just not conducive to happiness, which I get a lot from these lines:
I'd love to see you work on the 'message' of your poem. Do not, by any means, blurt out the meaning, but be a little clearer on the dilemma in question, and what the causes and possible solutions are to that dilemma. It's up to you. Just help us put the puzzle together!
-Colly
i like the way you use the cellophane wall to portray the detachment. i also like your description of things and ideas. however, something that you could have done is to break up the piece into stanzas and also work a little bit more on loosening up the rhyme scheme. in some places the rhyme scheme sounds forced.
Hey! I really like the idea behind the poem because it’s relatable, but I do have some suggestions. I’ve quoted the whole poem, picking out any grammar points and such like, but I’ve made further notes under sections that required most commentary.
I didn’t fully understand this section, but assumed that it’s talking about a yellow line on the road and that I’ve just never thought about it that way!
I’ve scored some lines out of the next part because I feel like they’re ‘telling’ unnecessarily what you already ‘show’ in the first line. However, you might feel these lines are needed so, like with all the other comments I’m making, feel free to ignore them!
Like someone already said, the ‘closed’ and ‘close’ work well. However, ‘I never made myself so open’ doesn’t make sense here. The ‘so’ changes the meaning of ‘I never made myself open’ – you could just cut out ‘so’, but I think it would be better to rethink this line entirely.
I also didn’t quite understand the part in italics. I’m thinking that the other person takes something to be made of iron. The fortress? I could be completely off.
The speaker says at the beginning that she doesn’t see him ‘jump the yellow line’ so ‘I can see you’ seems to contradict this. I feel like the ‘yellow line’ image should be changed completely.
This section is weakened by trying to make it rhyme. If you wanted to keep rhyming, I reckon something simpler like
It puts the two of us worlds apart,
The protection/cellophane that tries to shield my heart.
would be a little neater.
However, if you do keep the rhyming, from this next quotation until the end it will need some work - it is tending to hurt the ideas in the poem. I’ve scored a couple of lines out to give you an idea of how you could edit it, forgetting about rhyme:
Cutting it down makes it more concise. However, the last line’s a little clunky. Maybe you could try rewording it?
The way this is worded doesn’t really fit with the beginning, where she can’t hear him through the cellophane wall she puts up. However, I still like the idea so you could perhaps make the last line something like:
I see the corners of your mouth turn down,
before it forms words I can’t hear.
I can’t be sure, but you might have said,
“So close, yet so far.”
‘I can’t be sure’ echoes the ‘I can’t tell’ and ‘I’m not sure’ earlier in the poem, and you still get the idea of the disconnection between the speaker and the other person.
Overall:
There are a couple of areas that need work:
- Sometimes, you are a little too wordy. Read the lines carefully and see if they are simply repeating an idea that you’ve conveyed better in a previous line. (For example, the ‘It’s like there is a cellophane wall between us’ section.)
- Secondly, rhyming. Although you don’t have a set rhythm, you use rhyme and sometimes it doesn’t work. Don’t try to force it, like in the following section (although I scored most of it out in the review):
‘I swore that I wouldn’t be hurt
To not be broken,
But it is having a reverse effect.
Just like returning a token.’
This doesn’t really make sense, so the meaning is sacrificed for the sake of the rhyme. If you can avoid doing this, you’ll see a marked difference in the poem.
As I said before, I loved the theme. However, I also liked the extended metaphor of the cellophane wall. I thought it was really effective in conveying how the speaker can’t let the other person in or tell them how she feels, especially at the beginning with ‘You call my name…’ and at the end.
I hope some of these comments help you!
First, there doesn't have to be punctuation at the end of every line. Try reading it aloud like this: "You kiss me [breath] but your lips never touched mine. you call my name [breath] so loud the universe can hear [breath] but I can't tell if you are near." It's very tiring to listen to after a while! So, since you seem to be intending standard grammar, put punctuation in the same place you would as if you were writing this out in paragraph form.
I must ask, why a cellophane wall? Only because it's something transparent? Why not a forcefield or an invisible wall or piece of glass? Second of all, why is there the cellophane wall? It doesn't sound like there's a miscommunication so much as the people mentioned in the poem don't really cross paths.
In general, I think condensing things (especially from the lines "but I never see you jump the yellow line. / It's like there is a cellophane wall between us" to the end of the poem) would be of great benefit here. See how much you can say in how little a space ^_^
Also, make sure that what you're writing about makes sense, rather than just writing to the rhyme. For example,
What's this business about a car? ^_^ yes, there was talk of the street and the yellow line before, but it hasn't really played into a larger image (though that would be absolutely awesome! Think about developing that more!), so other than rhyming with "far", the whole second half of that line doesn't do anything for the poem.
Hope that helps a bit! Happy writing!
this is the only thing in past tense, touched -> touch.
I love this, the double meaning of closed and close, great use of words.
You -> your
"because of" maybe?
I swore that I won't be hurt,
that I won't be broken.
The to sounds kind of wrong.
further deep doesn't really make sense.
What does this mean?
The images here are great, the cellophane wall between two people as an image of the walls and fortresses people use to protect themselves. The only problem I think is that sometimes the sentencese don't make sense because you switched them round to fit the rhyme.
Great images and language use though, I love the last two lines. Very intense and yet distant.