Weep
Written by WritingSugar
My days are cold and the nights colder.
Inside of me there’s a hatred that warms me,
A blanket at night keeping me alive
Children walking barefooted are heavy thuds
Sinking in my heart, lost and forgotten, Atlantis—
I still believe; hope still shimmers in distance.
A serrated knife cutting bones, a screwdriver
Stuck between a fence-assembling machine
Are just sounds in tune with my broken heart.
But thoughts of your smiles bring me back
Closer to salvation; a fading light, I can almost reach.
If I could smile I would, but I think I forgotten:
To spread my lips and shine my eyes. Darkness
Surrounds my cornea; Somehow it cannot interpret
The light shinning, for there is evil at every
Corner I turn-a child is found dead.
It’s such a sadistic state where I reside. Its partner
Pretends to rove the face of earth for justice,
When it shadows injustice and vice tighter than
A Boa constrictor suffocating its prey.
Your eyes give hope for freedom, so close yet so far.
A French bread molded with imps crawling on my skin
While I battle the line between reality and fantasy
Is just the daily dose of my unruliness amnesia.
Sometimes I wish for eternal sleep- an ending
Of all things; endless memories finally at rest.
But when I think of you-I am at start.
You are my sanity, for insanity is closer and
Sweeter than heaven. For in this world that
I am clouded in, unresolved issue and decision left
Astray brews a storm bigger than 1935 hurricane.
At times, I don’t know where you are but I know you.
And those memories, endless memories that they are,
Keep me dreaming and silently praying. When it gets so cold
At night, thoughts of you warm me like an electric blanket.
For a moment, my eyes smile but deep inside I sill weep.
This post has 3 comments
October 4th, 2009
Wow Sugar, this is amazing. The imagery is intense!
I love the Atlantis reference– the lost hope which still shimmers as a legend. And I love the next stanza with the sounds– I don’t know what a fence-assembling machine sounds like, but if I stuck a screwdriver into one I imagine it would go “clack-clack-clack-clack-clack” … and make the sound of a broken heart. I love it!
it gets better– Every corner you turn the light shines upon evil deeds… Justice shadows vice… The next stanza– is hope our fantasy, or is it evil that’s our delusional thinking?
What an amazing set of stanzas! The last couple stanzas feel like you maybe ran out of gas towards the end and were searching for something to say…. The story-line still works, but the energy doesn’t feel the same to me. There are no typos or editing that need fixing, but the feel is just not the same.
Can you can recapture the same spirit you felt at the beginning and close the poem with the same high energy? I think you might have been trying to bring the poem back to reality, but I think it belongs where it started. Don’t pull-back and instead end it with the same raw emotions that started the poem, I say!
Does my advice make any sense at all?
This poem is awesome, and taps into the 480 volt third-rail that makes the world turn.
WOW!
October 5th, 2009
Thank you.
Lol, I know what you mean.
The lost of energy is on purpose, when you read the poem, you’re supposed to get tired–almost has if you want to give up…
One of my teacher taught me that, if you can’t find the words, didn’t want to write’ I want you to feel drain, almost lost…lol’ but instead drain your words, images, and lines
We can’t keep the same emotion high all the time, eventually it’ll fade… e.g. why I ended the poem with ‘For a moment, my eyes smile but deep inside I sill weep.’ After all glimpse of happiness and love, I still ended up where I started from.
Your comment is very good, because it means that I establish what I wanted to do with this poem…I didn’t think anyone was going to notice the change of flow and energy, except Mr.jpd, you forgot to think deeper and read between the emotion given.
October 5th, 2009
Hi’ya Sugar, I’m glad you don’t mind my friendly comments — your ending makes perfect sense, but I just don’t feel the drain and loss you were going for.
“High Energy” was probably the wrong phrase on my part. I guess what I mean is that it seems like the poem stopped “showing” and started “telling.” So instead of showing the hurricane brewing inside you said the words instead. I wanted to SEE and HEAR the shutters clacking and the wind howling through your heart…. Curled up in a (metaphorical) electric blanket soaked with silent tears…
Know what I mean? Your ending is fine and your teacher is probably right– I’m just sharing my impressions. I wanted to cry halfway through this but by the time I got to the ending there was not the same sense of loss there. Just my opinion, and other people might read it differently.
One last opinion from me– “At times” and “For a moment” are phrases that dilute whatever come after them. If that’s what you were going for then okay, but both lines could be more powerful without them. Your voice became passive in the last stanza. Those phrases plus repeating “memories” plus the unecessary phrase “at night” took up half of the last stanza. You could draw a line through all of those phrases and I think the last stanza would work just fine without them.
Thank you for letting me critique your poem. I’m a friend enjoying your words, and they light-up my mind and compel me to respond. That’s a compliment to you and your poem! This one jumped off the page and grabbed me by the throat and commanded me to listen to it!
Well done