cardboard dreams

disjointed, will revise soon, comments always welcome

i walk, ghost-like, along the halls
of white-veiled dreams, of dust-coated reality

i sleep on the floor of whispers
under a flimsy cover of vague longing

there is no dream better than a memory
of waking next to a reality of you,

but yours are not the whispers i hear
not the memory i remember, not the haunting i need

not the crow's beak on the window,
not even close to the beat of my heart,

that is the only thing alive in the room,
i am plastering the walls, boarding the doors

with the promise of goodbye, i am burning
with a matchstick desire to forget you

i am one heartbeat behind, one footstep away from you,
for every time i come back without mourning

this cardboard house, this cardboard dream,
tonight, i will be waking with a pillow on my face,

finally

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

at the end i see suicide...or wanting to die...this feels like plath with the idea of the desire to forget (Ted?)
the speaker feels like a ghost of herself...who she was was lost in the other person...and now she can't find herself again...and her heartbeat could never catch up with her heart's desire to love again, to bounce back from this flimsy cardboard life.

like she almost wants to be that ghost.

i find this poem intriguing...i like how it is now...i suppose you could find places to tweak it...but i also think often we start out with a really good piece of writing that is spontaneous and natural sounding...and then over-revise...and kill the spunk of it.

but that's just me.

j.

[highonwords]

hi jacob - actually, all i had was hope to make this poem work, really didn't have a lot of ideas to begin with - more like a jumble of ideas, a glimpse of this and a little bit of that - will refresh my mind and get back to real work, will revise soon i hope

always,
steph

[highonwords]

i don't like at all the idea of plath going crazy over ted, but she was - eventually committing suicide - don't like the thought of women destroying themselves for men

steph

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i like as is...just saying...what comes out by itself, on its own..maybe we don't feel so much in control of what we are writing...and maybe the poem is writing us...but this does not sound disjointed to me...it feels held together with metaphor throughout.

[highonwords]

thank you, jacob, for the encouragement - i just thought the poem's unwieldy - actually started working on it last night, then the poem changed course this morning - felt kind of helpless writing it, if some ideas find itself in the poem, perhaps i'll edit it - if nothing comes, i'll let it be

always appreciative of your visits,
steph