Thread: Unaware

• Unaware,
  we did not think it strange
  To stay upstairs to play our childhood games
  Not ours the right to venture down -
  we did not dare stray
  Beyond the confines of the cage.
  
  Not knowing better
  we did not think it odd
  To live apart from mum and dad
  And hearing from below the shouts and screams
  We instinctively suppressed
  our doubts and fears.
  
  Insecure
  at night I hammered on the bedroom floor
  A desperate cry for them to love me more
  Until they came at last
  to stop the noise
  And tell me I was being a child.
  
  Naive
  we thought we were at fault
  Blaming ourselves for the loneliness we felt
  And so, neglected
  as they played their adult games
  How could we expect any love from them ?

I hope you are writing this from a fertile imagination and not from a factual circumstance ....Great flow --this just rolls right along telling a poignant and distressing story ---one that will haunt me for a long--long time. well done...Peace...Jul

Heartfelt stuff, somewhat deep. Divorce permeates the poem in two senses, most obviously in the tension between the couple (who I assume are married), but also the physical and spiritual separation between the siblings (?) and their parents.

I have a few compositional suggestions. One is that the poem would greatly benefit from punctuation in order to regulate its flow. An example to clarify what I mean:


Not knowing better,
we did not think it odd
To live apart from mum and dad. (by the way, I like the flow here)
And hearing from below the shouts and screams
We instinctively suppressed
our doubts and fears.



Also some grammatical suggestions:


And so, neglected - "And so" is not necessary. The narration of the poem already progresses naturally.

And hearing from below the shouts and screams - "from below the shouts and screams" is clunky and impedes your flow. "And hearing the shouts and screams from below" is smoother. To keep the rhythm I would reword the line and incorporate "underneath" or "beneath", but I need to emphasize that that is my own personal approach and is not necessarily the right one.

Not ours the right to venture down - Grammatical inversion is a common mistake many new writers make because they think it sounds poetical. It doesn't. It's archaic. "Not ours the right" is just as easily rephrased as "without a right" and it circumvents that particular problem.

The capitalization's you use at the beginning of some lines appear, imo, arbitrary.

Overall the poem flirts with being angsty, but never quite descends to that level because it is so visceral and accessible. Angsty poems sometimes feel hollow, like the author sets out to convey pain but ends up only describing it. But you give us the scenario and let us fill in the emotional heart of the poem on our own terms. For that this piece deserves praise.

Cheers. Much enjoyed.