A poem

[Rachel]

like this:
one day i just fell.
below my feet appeared
dark
powerful and black
like walking
on the middle of the night.

too much older than she,
and perhaps unwittingly aware,
i landed in my wonderland.
there, there was no darkness
only white white blinding light

was this what i was dreaming all along?

the very air was sugar,
dazzling white crystals on my lips,
and i drank the raindrops that
landed on my tongue,
as pure as the bright white of the sky.
and all of this you gave to me
little did i know the price.

inch by mile it began
a debt i have not yet repaid in full.
one day you asked me
what is food to you now
when the air and water are so sweet
right here with me?

and then you screamed who are these
that will wrench you from
my wonderland?
and here i am
in this place, where i belong.

the air is rife now
in your prison
and every raindrop burns me
as it falls.
but here i am, still waiting,

because i have seen so few,
so very few,
of your bones
and every glimse is worth
all that i have given to you
and all that i have left.

Hi, I'm Rachel, I'm new. I wrote this poem when I was anorexic and it seemed a good one to use here as a starting point for learning more about possible ways in which to write. I haven't changed it, although I was tempted, because I felt that would be untrue to what I wanted to write at the time.
I've read your postings to each other and I loved how analytical you were with each other's work. I'd love to get some comments and ways to move forward with my own poetry.
Thanks
Love Rachel.

[lemur]

Hi Rachel,

I love the line "the very air was sugar".

I found my appreciation of the poem increased when I read about the anorexic context - maybe a significant title for the poem would help readers?

I did find a couple of the lines a little jilting - "until I did not know the price". I'd like to see the relationship with the 'you' (the other self?) expanded a bit more - this seems to me the really interesting nub of the poem.

Julie

[Rachel]

Thanks for your message Julie.
I've gone for this instead.


little did i know the price.

inch by mile it began

I think that is possibly better. I wanted little when I wrote it I remember, but then I couldn't have so many littles surrounding each other... so I didn't.
I'm not sure about a title. I think at one point it was called just 'Wonderland'. I find that titles just as Anorexia, Anorexic and so on just piss me off. Couldn't tell you why... perhaps it seems too self aware, self-pitying. I wonder about that actually in the last stanza. I did feel like I had to make it a bit clearer at some point though. Maybe going about that the wrong way?

[Skript]

Yes,

apparently a very personal poem. It seems to be a conversation with yourself and your obsessions. Am I right here?

but it does tend to be so personally influenced that little explanations are offered to the casual reader.

example:

'too much older than she,
and perhaps unwittingly aware'??

[Rachel]

Well my experience of anorexia was very much that I could hear a very distinct foreign voice inside my head and it hated me. This 'girl' yelled and screamed inside my head all day long. This poem was meant to be about her and me. But yes, of course, they were both me. Which is interesting.
I do wonder about those lines. What I meant to say was older than Alice, too old to disappear to fantasy land and that maybe I also knew exactly what I was doing when I did that.
Much of the poem is sort of clouded by confusion and this was intentional, but I'm not sure if it really works that well, you know?
Love Rachel

[Bombadil]

Welcome Rachel.

Urm, an infusion of new talent seem we to be acquiring, oormm.

[barrie]

Rachel,

Don't change one word - The first verse is excellent, the rest are breathing down its neck! I think that it was Coleridge who described poetry as "a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" - That's exactly what your poem is.

Thanks.