My Prison

museless

Blackness envelopes me, and I can’t see my fingers waggling in front of my face,
It’s cold too, that kind of cold that chills you right to your bones, that seems to seep through your very pores and into your soul,
You know the type; we’ve all felt it at one stage or another…

Panic wells up inside me, a wordless scream in my mind, as icy tendrils snake their way through my veins and into my heart,
I can almost feel it freezing over, and although I know it’s all in my head, it doesn’t help me shake this feeling or doubt,
I try to walk out of this blackness, this cold icy grave, but my feet are encased in clay, I’m making no progress at all,

And then it starts, that sensation at the back of my neck, that raising of goose bumps as my hair stands on end and I know, I just know,
That my worst nightmare is standing right behind me, its fetid breath coming shallowly from it’s rasping throat,
It’s hunger evident and radiating off of it, and even though I can’t see it’s eyes I know that they are burning like the pits of hell, full of hatred and boring into my head,

Slowly I turn, thinking how this is just like a bad horror film, but intoxicated by my fear I can’t help myself,
Head down, I’m greeted not by some monstrous biped, but instead a regular pair of legs, wearing normal shoes and trousers,
As I lift my gaze I see a shirt and a regular torso, and I start to berate myself internally for my overactive imagination,

Then my eyes rise to its face, and my lungs finally manage to release that pent up scream I’ve been holding since the first moment I entered this blackness,
For staring back at me is my own countenance, eyes devoid of emotion and desire,
A soulless husk, zombie like and purely existing rather than living,

I wake screaming and bathed in sweat, and as my breathing regulates and I hug my knees to my chest,
I realise that the zombie wasn’t the nightmare but the reality,
A reality that I have shaped and readily embraced, and somewhere in my withered heart there is a brief pang of regret,
As moisture rolls down my cheek….

Shad0r

I really enjoyed reading that and would love to read more.

My only criticism is that it reads like prose but looks like poetry. I'd say pick one or the other and write either poetry or prose, instead of writing 'proems'. In this case its a much better story intro than it is poem, imho.

shiv

How do you define what "looks like poetry" exactly??
Are we all not just adhering to a popular format?

Does museless' work look different because there's commas, lack of normal punctuation?
Does every line have to start with a capital letter?
Should there be obvious or internal rhyming?

Where do people stand on slashes instead of new sentences as stops (i.e. roses are red/violets are blue/writing poems is tricky at best/but what else can you do?)

Sorry for all the questions, but I find it difficult to accept that something must look a certain way to be considered poetry.
What about found poetry?

Shad0r

shiv wrote:

How do you define what "looks like poetry" exactly??
Are we all not just adhering to a popular format?

Well what I meant in this case was that it 'looks' (from a purely superficial point of view) like a poem, in that poetic license is employed. I.e. - The author is breaking each sentence it seems everytime he happens upon a comma.

From a more ‘after reading it’ perspective I would say that it reads more like a piece of prose than a poem and formatting has nothing to do with that assesment. But I suppose if you are of the opinion (one I don’t share) that any combination of words with a comma at the end of each line and a capital letter at the start is a poem then maybe it is.

shiv wrote:

Does museless' work look different because there's commas, lack of normal punctuation?
Does every line have to start with a capital letter?
Should there be obvious or internal rhyming?

Yes.
I think it depends on what it is. If it’s a Poem it should, if its not then it shouldn’t.
Rhyming has nothing to do with my point.

shiv wrote:

Sorry for all the questions, but I find it difficult to accept that something must look a certain way to be considered poetry.
What about found poetry?

I don’t think that it has to look a certain way to be poetry. But I do think that it has to read a certain way. For example, if you reformat a poem, taking out the commas at the end of each line and turn each verse into one or more sentence(s), it should not in my opinion make any sense.

This ‘poem’ reads like prose. There’s nothing wrong with it being prose, in fact its quite good prose but I think the author (as I said before) needs to decide which it is. In this case I would encourage the author to start writing stories and discover the wonder of the full stop!

shiv

Hi Shad0r,
Thanks for your thoughts Hope I didn't come across as overly agressive, I guess I get my back up with creative "rules" or assumptions (i.e. that every new line in a poem has to start with a capital letter, or start with one for that matter).
I agree the piece reads more like prose, and is very moving by the way Museless
Sometimes really good prose, especially when it's short, though, is its own kind of uncoventional poetry. I guess I'm thinking specifically of Leonard Cohen.

museless

ok, apologies for the delay in replying to this.

Firstly Shador and Shiv, thanks for your feedback, it's always good to recieve some whether it's good or bad. It keeps us on our toes and ensures that we strive to improve ourselves.

To answer your post Shador, you're right of course. I started out wanting to write a poem and with that structure in mind, but ended up writing what was in effect a piece of prose.

I find I do that more and more lately, I used to be a poet first and a storyteller second, but over the years that's changed. I think the main reason for this is the different sources for each. For me poetry has always been about emotional response to your surroundings or incidents in your life, whereas prose is structured by your imagination without emotion being a prerequiste. My emotions have numbed considerably over the years whereas my imagination has become more and more active, and so I find myself writing far more prose than poetry.

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback I might post some more stuff here, always interesting to get another viewpoint.

Shad0r

museless wrote:

For me poetry has always been about emotional response to your surroundings or incidents in your life, whereas prose is structured by your imagination without emotion being a prerequiste.

I would agree with that for the most part, but I think its a pretty well established fact that if you are sitting at your keyboard laughing your ass off, or bauling your eyes out that the reader of your piece is quite likely to be doing the same. Emotional transfer you might say. I'm talking about prose btw.

Also while I agree that it is not a prerequiste I'd be willing to bet that if you know those emotions well yourself you will be infinitely better at writing them.

All my comments aside, I did really enjoy your writing and would love to read more. Keep it up.