Sweat trickles
On my palm
My heart races
Like ambulances
Through red lights
Breathing exercises start
As the room starts to move
Oh, how I wish the phone would ring
Even if it is a telemarketer
Trying to sell useless
Accessories
Thoughts are vivid now
Like a front row seat at a matinee
I start to pace the room
For a panic that is within
People start to stare
As they begin to whisper
Are they talking about me?
Paranoia also came uninvited
I forgot the xanax on my dresser
And my phone ran out of battery
Lady luck seems to have moved on
A whispering voice from within
Reminds me that I will be fine
As I am held my heart slows down
As my sweaty palms dry
I know that the
Voice of hope is mine
Comments
I'm not qualified to comment well on free verse,
but this is interesting. The subject is traumatically familiar if not precisely the same.
If I have a gripe it is this and the concept has been batted about a lot here lately in Jess' workshops. Punctuation. I would never ask a poet to change his style for me, but a lack of punctuation makes me a little goony. Although your line structure for the most part does not require it (as I assume is the idea), there are still occasions when I have difficulty perceiving where a sentence ends and another begins.
But that's just me.
The poem itself is intense.
wesley
in reading of trauma and surviving
panic attacks for years
before I let the ego just take over
(at a rather alarming cost)
So I read books about survivor
veterans of emprisonment
and horror Mechanics of
what man can inflict upon
others and the study not
of the enslaver but of the
survivor and the most vivid
thing was discovered
That first was the thought of
self Then others and of
hope those focusing
to stay helped others and
in that empathy found a
spiritual realization regardless
of how hopeless it seemed
Losing hope was losing self
and losing self was losing
empathy and being consumed
with the emplaced destruction
offered as an illusion of the only
outcome it was startling when
I moved through all that material
Hope is an amazing thing Paul
i gotta admit the 2nd, 3rd
i gotta admit the 2nd, 3rd and 4th S's fit me to a T these past couple of months. very well written, though i agree with wes on the punctuation.
cheers to the (hopefully) upcoming christmas miracle!
damn
girl you are good please dont leave neo
Amazing
I was lucky enough to spend time in High School with
the Valedictorian of 1984 (she was my girl the following year)
she also was able to communicate intelligently with instruction
the skills of her passion and observative powers for teaching
(she became a teacher)
I just read through Beau's offer of critique and am blown away
by its content and teachings for your poem
and like you Paul I agree we need poets like Beau
content like this makes my heart grow fonder for Neopoet!!
How about...
like ambulances through [intersections]
[I'm pacing the room]
People are starting to stare
[And] they begin to whisper
My sweaty palms are drying
And I know that the
Voice of Hope is mine
~ Geez.
.