My Ghost

Hello! Ripple here on this... interesting... Review Day.

One of the things that really stuck out to me was the overall rhythm of the piece. You do an absolutely fantastic job with it, and it's one of my favorite parts of this work. The literal narrative is also fairly straightforward and easy to understand, even if the deeper meaning isn't. (Which, of course, is acceptable for poetry. Not everyone will understand the point hidden underneath it, and frankly, they shouldn't. That would just make it boring.)

Some other things I noticed:

There's a hall I once walked--

and inside, people I still know;

although my feet won't tread its floors again

I still walk there, and will never go.

The third line of this stanza is the only one that doesn't have some sort of punctuation indicating a pause at the end. Grammatically, I think that there should be, and it just isn't consistent with the rest of it. In poetry, punctuation rules are very flexible, but this just seemed out of place.

Do you believe in ghosts, my friend?

Do you believe stories?

Do you believe in me, my friend?

For I'm a ghost--yes, this I know--

of places that I'll never go.

This is a decent way of introducing the ghost into the poem, but I feel like the repetition of "places that I'll never go" was sort of awkward. It works fine with the rhythm, but it didn't seem like an element that really needed repeating.

But then my ghost will walk with them, with the people I once knew;

and then they'll all remember and I'll be with them through and through;

A piece of me that once was young, and saw them ev’ry day.

My ghost will always live my friend.

Now there's no more left to say.

The punctuation in these last two lines seems a bit off. From the rest of the poem, I expected it to mirror typical grammar rules, and I think it would flow better grammatically if you ended with a comma in the second to last line, and perhaps one between "live" and "my." Again, there aren't really any punctuation rules as far as poetry is concerned, but it seems out of place compared to the rest of the poem.

I also noticed that your lines have the default line breaks in between them that the publishing center does whenever you press {Enter}. If you don't want those, try holding {Shift} down, then pressing {Enter}. That should make it so it doesn't have those odd line breaks.

Overall, I really enjoyed this piece. It flows beautifully, and while I still feel like I don't understand it, it's one of the better poems I've seen on the site. Excellent work! I'd love to read more of your work in the future.

This is Kaos here for a review!

There's a hall I once walked--

and inside, people I still know;

although my feet won't tread its floors again

I still walk there, and will never go.

This is an okay starting stanza, though I did feel like it was rather weak. It sets up for the rest of the poem, but that's all it functions as. I thought it could have been a good starting stanza, along with having some sort of imagery inside of it. I suggest sort of chopping the lines up into two, with a period after the second line, because you're dragging it out. The first two lines don't feel like they need to be connected to the second two with a semicolon, because they're a whole thought. With the semicolon, they're still supposed to be two independent clauses, but the second set of lines doesn't feel like it's able to stand on it's own. To fix this, I suggest putting a comma after "again".

Do you believe in ghosts, my friend?

Do you believe stories?

Do you believe in me, my friend?

For I'm a ghost--yes, this I know--

of places that I'll never go.

You're trying too hard to have a voice in this stanza that it makes you voiceless. The "my friend"s and "this I know"s in this poem make it feel like you're trying too hard to sound like something thought-provoking or something of the sort. Instead of this, write the poem. I don't mind things like "this I know" but using "my friend" feels over-the-top on trying to capture the emotion, especially since it's used twice. You ask three questions in this stanza, but I felt like the second one was out of place, and none of them tie together due to this. My thoughts were that you were trying to ask if the person believed in ghosts, stories (assuming ghost stories), and if they didn't believe in ghosts, they didn't believe in you. Which, could have made for some more interesting lines.

The last two lines in this stanza felt kind of standard and didn't really add anything special to the poem in my opinion, kind of repeating what was already said in the first stanza.

There once was a time I was young and foolish,

and there once was a time I thought tomorrow was forever.

But a tomorrow is a tomorrow is a tomorrow is a tomorrow until a never,

and there's a “never again” buried in these walls as I wave it goodbye.

This stanza sort of goes off from the original topic of ghosts, but I like it. It does what the other stanzas don't and actually starts to make the reader think, and implants some imagery in the heads of the reader. I liked what you /tried/ to do with the third and fourth line, but it felt like sort of a mess. I didn't see a reason for the "as I wave it goodbye" to be there, and thought it flowed better without it being there.

A ghost of me is left behind, an impression 'pon the place;

a piece of me is left behind, though that piece I still did take.

It's hidden 'neath the bleachers, or just past the library door--

but a ghost is still a ghost and I could never ask for more.

I noticed that you were faintly rhyming throughout the poem, but it wasn't loud enough for me to hear it. I personally think that it doesn't need to be in the poem, as it already has enough to focus on, on its plate. The "'pon" and "'neath" in this stanza are, like I said before, pushing the voice of the poem and here it just feels unnecessary enough to the point where it would be better if you decided to just have it taken out.

I like the concept of the poem, I do, but by now you're just repeating yourself in different ways with being a ghost behind. There are so many other things you can do with this poem, with the "being a ghost", you could do a stanza on how only your imprint is there anymore, or how being a ghost is like a wind coming through but there's no evidence of someone ever being there. Or that you're now only faintly there instead of being fully present, or that you're erased words or pictures on a piece of paper, and all that's left is the outline. Do. Something. More. With. It.

One day they'll cut the old place down; one day they'll say goodbye;

one day they'll look upon it with a teardrop in their eye.

One day they'll see the living dead, walking all around:

a million of us, stuck in time, 'til the ceilings hit the ground.

The rhyming was more apparent in this stanza than others, but why decide to do it more full-blown now? It didn't really help the poem, and if really anything, restricts the poem from having the freedom of describing things which already feels kind of only faintly there. I like the imagery that you put in the mind of the reader with the millions of people stuck in time and the ceilings hitting the ground, but you didn't take it anywhere further than that. The first two lines were fine and set up for it, but weren't anything strong.

I didn't know why you felt the need to use an excess of semicolons in this poem to the point where the punctuation gets repetitive due to you trying to change it up but really the structure of the stanzas get rather boring as well because of this. Mix it up without having to do anything special with the punctuation in every line. I'd even suggest taking some of it out, or the things that are unneeded, and instead work around that. Give the reader a bit more of a breather.

But then my ghost will walk with them, with the people I once knew;

and then they'll all remember and I'll be with them through and through;

A piece of me that once was young, and saw them ev’ry day.

My ghost will always live my friend.

Now there's no more left to say.

You start a line with a "But then" at the beginning of a sentence, which doesn't really work. In the first two lines, you use two semicolons in a row, which /doesn't work/. Semicolons are used to connect two independent clauses, meaning you shouldn't really be using two of them in a row, and it just reads rather oddly. I suggest chopping the lines up, because if you're thinking about it, the first three lines are supposed to be read or thought of as, as all one line. Instead of "ev'ry" just do "every", it doesn't really make it a difference in the poem or it doesn't make it better. The fourth line in this stanza just repeated again, which felt weak, and the last line feels like it should be connected to the fourth. You could have decided to have an ending to this poem with a stronger impact, but that didn't really happen. You could have done something more with the idea in general, but that didn't really happen and the poem felt like it had some wasted potential, but it also had the idea right, it just needs to fix the execution of how it was done.

That's all I had to say about this poem, I hope this helped and have a great day!