Ticking words

I can't fall asleep. 

I have to go to sleep. 

Sleep is like a land hard to access. 

I need to travel a lot, change different vehicles, meet a few people down the road to ask for directions because it is always so unreachable. 

But once I reach the land, it's hard to come out of it. 

There are so many things-- dreams, nightmares, people I met but forgot, incidents that lost its shimmer, traumas that leeched onto me unnoticed, fears in their true form, dangers--so many things. 

But, it is not scary always. 

Sometimes I drown in the arms of my beloved whom I never got to touch in real life. 

Sometimes I am off on a journey with my friend or living the kind of life I always wanted to live. 

There is an uncanny freedom. 

A world of random.

A pocket full of fandom. 

Anything can happen. 

No logic prevails there and yet everything is so reasonable. 

The land of sleep is hard to reach but is blessed nonetheless.

Reviews

[Green]

Ahh yes, sleep can be so hard to achieve and anyone who has ever struggled with insomnia can really relate to this. The way it's written really works for this as well, with some of the lines being pretty short and then others going much longer, the hints of repetition but repeats but just hints not overdoing it. It really kind of felt like going on a journey without a clear map. I'm not completely sure how you managed to make it feel like that, but it is very immersive in that way.

[Mira]

I am glad that you like it.
Thank you for the beautiful review.

[JayG]

This poem is meaningful...to you, who know the whys and hows of the events that inspired it. It's a response to what motivates you to speak. It's effect without cause.

For you, it calls up memories of events, thoughts, desires, and more, all stored in your mind and waiting to be evoked. So, each time you read it, those events turn real and you feel, and feel, and feel again.

But what of the reader? For them, it calls up memories of events, thoughts, desires, and more, all stored in *YOUR* mind and waiting to be evoked. So, each time they read it...

My point is that in your poems you talk, primarily, about your response to what's meaningful to you, without making it meaningful to the reader.

Certainly, we write from our own chair, and about things that are important. But...when writing, never provide effect without cause. And make the cause as meaningful, and as emotional to the reader, as it is to you.

Nonfiction, the approach to writing that we were given in school, informs the reader. It tells the reader that someone we love died, and how that makes us feel. It informs the reader. The poet makes us love that person. Then, when we learn of their death, WE react without having to be told how to feel.

In other words, make the reader become emotionally involved, not factually informed. It's the primary difference between a report and a poem. And, the ability to do that —to evoke an emotion in the trader that WE choose — is a learned superpower. Our focus isn't on communicating facts, it's on making people feel and care. And, aside from the reader liking it better, the writing becomes a lot more fun,

If you've not read it, Mary Oliver's, A Poetry Handbook, can be a great help in shaping your words to have the same impact on the reader that they have on you.

https://www.docdroid.net/7iE8fIJ/a-poetry-handbook-pdfdrivecom-pdf

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow