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100///212
I can still see the sun through the storm
But let me tell you, I feel anything but warm
The waves rose and took from us the beach
The land crumbled and sank back into the sea
And somewhere out in the cold of the Pacific deep
Opens its eyes and flexes its fins, tryna break free
It’s the world, it’s our heart, it’s in our lungs
Rising up with the swell of the ocean
And the time that it took to wake back up
Was more than enough to keep it locked shut
But in the haze of a life lived back to front
No one stopped to make sure that it didn’t erupt
And as the storm rolled in I tried to forget
All the useless shit I’d kept in my head
All the things that I felt, heard, and read
And all love left to give that had never been said
And I thought that I’d never again find that warm place
Until the record needle skipped my vein and everything was erased
Now I weigh one-hundred and I can never escape
Even with my skin breaking off as I increase the dosage I take
And the rain lashed like tongues, soaking me through the skin
It was then I knew how much trouble I was in
I felt like I was going to turn to a tree in the leafless grove
And leave just like Plath through the kitchen stove
Someone left it on so the water would turn back to steam
The tide rushing through the halls to lap at my feet
Biting my tongue, I suppressed a scream
And wondered if I was stuck back there in that dream
But let me tell you, I feel anything but warm
The waves rose and took from us the beach
The land crumbled and sank back into the sea
And somewhere out in the cold of the Pacific deep
Opens its eyes and flexes its fins, tryna break free
It’s the world, it’s our heart, it’s in our lungs
Rising up with the swell of the ocean
And the time that it took to wake back up
Was more than enough to keep it locked shut
But in the haze of a life lived back to front
No one stopped to make sure that it didn’t erupt
And as the storm rolled in I tried to forget
All the useless shit I’d kept in my head
All the things that I felt, heard, and read
And all love left to give that had never been said
And I thought that I’d never again find that warm place
Until the record needle skipped my vein and everything was erased
Now I weigh one-hundred and I can never escape
Even with my skin breaking off as I increase the dosage I take
And the rain lashed like tongues, soaking me through the skin
It was then I knew how much trouble I was in
I felt like I was going to turn to a tree in the leafless grove
And leave just like Plath through the kitchen stove
Someone left it on so the water would turn back to steam
The tide rushing through the halls to lap at my feet
Biting my tongue, I suppressed a scream
And wondered if I was stuck back there in that dream
I have mixed feelings about this, mostly because for most of the things I see that are inconsistent, I can also think of perfectly justifiable reasons why they could be.
For one, there's no meter here, and the rhymes are really inconsistent. Some stanzas have different rhyme schemes than others, some don't seem to have one at all, unless you're really stretching for what's a valid rhyme. But since you're not using a particular form, there's not really a reason it has to be regular.
There's no rhythm, but when coupling that with the near-rhymes most of the lines have (and maybe the shifting rhyme pattern, though that's harder to accept), this feels less like a poem to be read and more like something you might see as song lyrics. It's pretty common for those to have weaker rhymes and to use different cadences to fit lines of different lengths into the same number of beats, or to have musical phrasings of different lengths.
So overall, I take this more as a song than a poem, and in that context, I like it more.
There's a pretty clear theme (to me, at least) of substance abuse and depression, so I'm not left mystified as to what this is about.
The only thing that rubs me the wrong way is that there are 3 poems that have the same kind of title, and I'm betting they'll all turn out to be by the same person. If so, then that creates two problems, and since this is the first of that batch I'm reading, I'll only mention it here.
One, I at least hope the 3 will tell different stories. Someone tried telling a bigger story than they could in a single entry in a minific round before by splitting it over several entries and titling them as successive parts, and that violated the rules. Here, you could have made them all a single entry without going over the word limit, so it's not that you were trying to get around the rules. If they do end up being a unified narrative, I'm not sure how that would come into play then. I'd think it would just weaken them all, since none of them tells a complete story. But since that may not even be the case, I'll wait and see. However, it does tend to make it too obvious that the same author wrote all three, which probably technically doesn't break the anonymity rule, but it still kind of doesn't sit right with me.
For one, there's no meter here, and the rhymes are really inconsistent. Some stanzas have different rhyme schemes than others, some don't seem to have one at all, unless you're really stretching for what's a valid rhyme. But since you're not using a particular form, there's not really a reason it has to be regular.
There's no rhythm, but when coupling that with the near-rhymes most of the lines have (and maybe the shifting rhyme pattern, though that's harder to accept), this feels less like a poem to be read and more like something you might see as song lyrics. It's pretty common for those to have weaker rhymes and to use different cadences to fit lines of different lengths into the same number of beats, or to have musical phrasings of different lengths.
So overall, I take this more as a song than a poem, and in that context, I like it more.
There's a pretty clear theme (to me, at least) of substance abuse and depression, so I'm not left mystified as to what this is about.
The only thing that rubs me the wrong way is that there are 3 poems that have the same kind of title, and I'm betting they'll all turn out to be by the same person. If so, then that creates two problems, and since this is the first of that batch I'm reading, I'll only mention it here.
One, I at least hope the 3 will tell different stories. Someone tried telling a bigger story than they could in a single entry in a minific round before by splitting it over several entries and titling them as successive parts, and that violated the rules. Here, you could have made them all a single entry without going over the word limit, so it's not that you were trying to get around the rules. If they do end up being a unified narrative, I'm not sure how that would come into play then. I'd think it would just weaken them all, since none of them tells a complete story. But since that may not even be the case, I'll wait and see. However, it does tend to make it too obvious that the same author wrote all three, which probably technically doesn't break the anonymity rule, but it still kind of doesn't sit right with me.
We rise up from the sea
Unsure of what we're trying to be
We try to change our chemistry
Don't close your eyes or you might see
A wet dream, a burst of steam,
A laugh, alas, life sure is a gas!
Unsure of what we're trying to be
We try to change our chemistry
Don't close your eyes or you might see
A wet dream, a burst of steam,
A laugh, alas, life sure is a gas!