An old, broken pocket watch.
.
When it opens with a click,
The numbers inside show
A permanent time,
The hour three,
Minute two.
All because of a fear
Unreachable and vast
Of losing the memory
Of a faded life.
.
And when, every day,
I slump in an icy plastic chair
My chest is too cold
Too old,
And my thoughts aren't moving
Like I'd like them to.
.
Then there's my fingers,
Opening and closing
The poorly crafted lid
Of the bronze pocket watch,
Something that has no relation
To the actual broken memory.
.
Yet, as I sit in the cold chair
And stare
And think
And stare,
I make excuses,
False ties,
False connections.
.
Placing blame in myself
For what I didn't do,
To connect what is gone
With me.
.
Placing blame in time
For not moving on from
The month three,
The day two,
To connect what is gone
With reality.
.
And when I look
At the unmoving time
Of the broken pocket watch
It feels as if,
I'm glancing back the way I came
But I'm not seeing anything,
And I'm dreaming,
Looking,
Wandering.
.
Nothing is moving,
And when the unmoving pocket watch
Begins to tick again
Perhaps I can,
Maybe
Stop thinking.
.
Then
The cold plastic chair
Wakes me up from the snowy dream,
Yet I feel just as lost
As if I'm still dreaming,
And my hands
Are still around the pocket watch
And my eyes
Are still watching the numbers
Three
And two,
Thinking,
Dreaming,
In the past.
And my chest is too old
Too cold
And my thoughts aren't moving
Like I'd like them to.
.
There is something more,
Something that
My fingers
Can't quite reach
Yet.
.
And I close my eyes
And I reopen them,
Expecting to see something
Different
About the numbers in the pocket watch.
.
Yet after all this while
Of nostalgic excuses,
There is only the cold chair,
My cold breathing,
My cold chest,
And a bronze broken pocket watch
With the hour three
And minute two.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,007 Literary Works • 672,815 Reviews
Hey there. Newbie speaking. I was looking for things to review and yours popped up. I didn't know what to expect, and suffice it to say I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not much of a poet so I can't give you any critique in that aspect, but I did enjoy it. It was an interesting poem that I've never seen before, so bravo for the originality. Poetry: keep on doing it. I think you're good at it.
Hey there, Rhia here to review!
Your title drew me in right away, and I think that you managed to keep my interest throughout the poem, despite it being rather longer than I usually like and a bit repetitive. The repetiveness worked- it reminded me of ticking minutes. Though I liked it as a whole, I do have some nitpicks to help polish it.
Okay, one nitpick I have is that you basically only use commas and periods as punctuations. You have a lot of sentences that run on a little unnecessarily long, but would look and read much nicer with the use of dashes and semi-colons spread throughout it. I'll point out punctuation that you could change.
Try replacing the bolded comma with a semi colon, maybe? An en dash would work, too.
When I have interjections like this, I either like to write it like this "All because of a fear--/Unreachable and vast--"
or "All because of a fear, /
Unreachable and vast,"
The two likes here kind of garbles the words up in the mouth. Maybe "as I'd like them to" or "the way I'd like them to?"
The bolded bit, I like it a lot. However, I think it's more important than it's getting credit for in the wording of these lines. It's sort of lost in there, overlooked, or given the idea of something tacked on. It doesn't quite flow. Perhaps replace the comma after "watch" with a colon, or put the whole bolded bit in parentheses?
I'd read this out loud a few times, and try switching the "but" for "yet" to see which sounds better, and to see whether or not you like the repetition of "I" and I'm," or if you'd rather rearrange the sentences to cut out a few of those pronouns.
I'd put a comma after "lost" as well as the one you've already got.
I would think about putting a semi-colon after "still watching the numbers"
Just a sorta neat idea, possibly you could reference the watch even further by switching the "thoughts aren't moving" to "thoughts aren't ticking" or some other clock related verb (I don't really know a whole lot off the top of my head, sorry)
Otherwise, I quite like this a lot. It's smooth, it's simple. You tell a story and tell it well. Nice job. If you have any other questions for me, need further help, or want me to ever give you this extensive of a review on another poem (or other work but I'd prefer poetry) feel free to ask! I'd love to help.