tether me to reality,
you crazy little pills,
or else I might just fly away
and taste madness once more.
accelerating through the world,
eluding sleep to talk to god
finding magic in mundane,
and dancing to music only I could hear.
the finest pleasures of earth,
a victor's feast, a lover's touch,
cannot compare to this ecstasy
of soaring in a deity's plane.
but then lights assault me,
as I run on a treadmill of thoughts
and they ask me my name but I can only speak
in confused parables from the bible I tried to write.
no lullabies here, just scary little pills
and harsh words saying time for bed,
as if somehow I could sleep when there's puzzles to be solved.
lavender paint splashed upon the walls
won't make me stop begging to feel
the chill of march, a hell I never thought I'd miss.
my god has forsaken his last prophet
and my body shakes so I can't even hold the book.
will they keep me here forever?
the ride stops. I am free to go,
but I neglect the nasty little pills so I
fall to a place
where not even sunlight
can kill my grief
for life before the hospital wing.
hear no joy now, only taunts
from those who never feel the pain
of keeping a secret the world can't know
or you'll go back, never again to taste the
snow on your tongue, alive but feeling nothing.
but green returns, and with it I see that
spring won't kill me, only a mind that hates
to love these sweet little pills
that keep me sane, and if it means
I write no more, then so be it,
for I prefer forests to lavender walls.
The words in this are excellent. They capture a cetrain sophisticated insanity in which I love. You fold them all nicely together and you use them in just the right places.
It sets up the entire poem and shows the feeling of the narrator. I really do like this line.I am a little hesitant on if I agree with your lack of capitals. I see where you are coming from by omitting them but I would have to have a visual representation of both capitalised version in order to decide what i think works better and I simply do not have time to do that right now.
I think my favourite line is the first line
I like the idea of a rid. I think you should put a comma there and switch around the fullstop like so:
"the ride stops, I am free to go.
I neglect the nasty little pills so I ..."
anyway, good job and I love you too.
Hi there, niteowl!
You use some amazing imagery in this poem that really steals my breath.
This stanza in particular is awesome:
I love the seemingly random images that come together to form a whole.
I want to see more of those images. I want images pouring over this whole poem. You have a lot, but I want even more.
Compared to the rest of your imagery, these two lines are quite bland. I want to know what kind of magic, and what kind of music (also, the second line there has been done before, and borders on cliche).
At first, I thought this was a strange image. Gods have planes? Do they give out frequent flier miles rewards? But then, I thought about a different plane of existence. It's an interesting double image that is only made more mysterious by "soaring." I like it.
I suggest putting "time for bed" into quotation marks or italics. It would lend a feeling of OTHERS in your poem. As it is, I could skip right over it. But if you make it different, it feels alien and hostile, the way you seem to be characterizing the voice.
First of all, my inner grammarian is twitching at your lack of capitalization. It keeps saying to me, "MAKE THEM CAPITALIZE MARCH," but you're the poet, and you decide the capitalization (she said as her eye twitched). Secondly, I feel like "chill" isn't quite the right word here. I'm not averse to chilly weather. I am averse, however, to raw weather. The word that I think works here is "rawness." But again, that's your decision.
The third to last and the second to last stanza aren't quite working for me. I mean, they're good, but they're a little foggy compared to the crystal quality of the rest of your poem.
I enjoyed both reading and reviewing this piece, and I hope that this is helpful to you in some way. Nice work. Happy poeting!
Thanks for the the review! I agree with pretty much everything you said. Normally I do capitalize normally, but I decided to try something different with this piece. But March needs to be capitalized.
Hello my dear niteowl! Dogs here with your review today. Ok I really love how you used a common and slightly overused topic and made it into a magnificent piece of writing. There is so much wondrous imagery and description here. You do it incredibly smoothly which is very impressive, so sorry to say I have to throw on my extreme nit pick hat to actually find something wrong.
So the real main problem I found in your writing is the rhythm, your description is so good that sometimes it's too good and you use too many words which throws off the rhythm of your writing.
I think your first stanza is just marvelous, absolutely wonderful. Love love love it!
Second stanza... again spot on. The imagery and vocab you use is superb I really must say. I LOVE the line about eluding sleep to talk to God. Brilliant use of taking the capital off God.
Still nothing to complain about... DANG! Nearly no one has gotten three stanzas into their writing and I have still found nothing to nit pick about!
Ok in the fourth stanza is where your rhythm starts to fall off and you use lines that are a little longer then they should. Also when you say: "but then lights assault me" this just sounds weird, mostly because of "lights," I'd use an entirely different word to help the flow. It's just because "lights" is a weird word to say and it breaks the wondrous flow you had rolling.
"as I run on a treadmill of thoughts"
great line but too long. treadmill and thoughts have too many syllables here and it breaks up the flow.
the next two lines are also too long. I think you could switch around some words and try to say: they ask my name, but I can speak/ only confused parables from the bible I wrote. Regardless that last line still seems a little choppy.
"as harsh words..."
Oh come come now, you can think of a far more creative vocab word then "harsh." It's a big opportunity to pull out the big 10$ and 100$ words.
"a chill of march, a hell I never thought I'd miss"
Ok, definitely awkwardly worded and far too long for a line. Either split it in two different lines or cut off some bits from the second half of this line.
"for life before the hospital wing"
This line seems just loosely thrown into the poem and doesn't seem to make much coherent sense because it doesn't transition well enough from one line to another. Make that line a littler clearer.
"show on your tongue, alive but feeling nothing"
aggghhh for some reason as your stanzas go on, your lines get longer! And your rhythm gets choppier. Keep it short and concise like you did in your first comple stanzas.
I like the ending though, you might want to check up on the rhythm again there but it's pretty good. All and all this is an excellent poem with only issues with rhythm. And only cause I'm just a major nit picker. I think this is a wonderful piece of poetry and I greatly look forward to the prompt poem piece. Let me know if you ever need a review, keep up the good work!
TuckEr EllsworTh
Thanks. This is actually the piece I was referring to in my status. And usually I'm told to make my lines longer here lol. I'll let you know if I revise it (which I probably will, but not right now).
Hey Knight Nite,
I know this is very personal but I'm going to say you'll have to suck it up a bit. I know you already know that, the act of posting your work on the YWS is a massive step when you're writing things which mean a lot to you, and you'll already have prepared yourself a bit. I'm just reinforcing that by saying I think you're rad and I hope whatever I end up saying isn't too hard!
Okay, so. I'll be blunt because I usually am, this is far too long. I know what's going on and you have all that description and we need it for what you're saying. However, it just goes on for too long without the tight sense of direction. You can write poems tightly without forcing them to look tight, if that makes sense? And I've read your work before and I know you have the skills for this. Partially we're working harder because it's personal to you and that makes it difficult to read it dispassionately, you'd think. As a matter of fact, I am missing most of the emotion here. Maybe it's because I don't relate, but I feel like it's rather because we start on a weak stanza. You have all the elements of a super solid poem but it's not making the grade because it's far too placid, too passive in voice.
I want some of that muted nature, when were talking about the lavender walls and such it's the right way to go. But I expect bursts of colour and harder, sharper or more forceful imagery for the floating and the talking to gods. I want to see the feeling of it, the fluid or jagged or rolling feeling of the talking and the flying and the cold constricting nature of knowing nothing but verses from the bible she wrote. I'm missing that. A lot of my issue with missing that is this is what connects me to poetry, the emotional hook is needing to be imagery related for me a lot of the time. I feel like right now your poem does all the right things, talks about the right things, but does it slowly and passively. Maybe you're making a wider comment about the nature of the sweet little pills, but if that's the case then we need some sharp, fast, hard for the crazy little pills.
Thinking on it, you could potentially do a lot by splitting this into two sections, one part for the pre-pills and the second for after. They can move in a wave of imagery, intent and emotion and I think using that style for now would sort out for you how to articulate the images without just saying "eluding sleep to talk to god" (I'm mentioning that a lot because I like it conceptually). You want to express and putting this down is the first step, now you need to stick the knife in and gut it until all those sights, smells, tastes, sounds and feelings rush on up out of the slit and onto the page. You don't need to destroy the poem or the intent or the meaning, just use it more mercenarily.
I think you can do that, but if you don't want to, this poem is a good poem. It isn't great, but there's nothing technically wrong with it. I just know it could be amazing and that you've got the skill to do that.
Thank you for posting this, I know it's hard to beat that little voice! Talk to me whenever you want or need, always.
~ Pen
Thanks! I appreciate the feedback, since I felt that it was honestly the best I could do on my own. I'll probably play with it again, but it might take time. Not sure about splitting up though.
The splitting it up isn't a in-the-end look, it was just so you could see the difference between situations? In terms of poetic description. But I dig being unsure about it. If you ever want to work on this with someone, I'm always up for it.