T.S. Eliot - Rhapsody on a Windy Night

RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT

by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Twelve o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium. 

Half-past one,

The street lamp sputtered,

The street lamp muttered,

The street lamp said, "Regard that woman

Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

Which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress

Is torn and stained with sand,

And you see the corner of her eye

Twists like a crooked pin." 

The memory throws up high and dry

A crowd of twisted things;

A twisted branch upon the beach

Eaten smooth, and polished

As if the world gave up

The secret of its skeleton,

Stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left

Hard and curled and ready to snap. 

Half-past two,

The street lamp said,

"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,

Slips out its tongue

And devours a morsel of rancid butter."

So the hand of a child, automatic,

Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child's eye.

I have seen eyes in the street

Trying to peer through lighted shutters,

And a crab one afternoon in a pool,

An old crab with barnacles on his back,

Gripped the end of a stick which I held him. 

Half-past three,

The lamp sputtered,

The lamp muttered in the dark. 

The lamp hummed:

"Regard the moon,

La lune ne garde aucune rancune,

She winks a feeble eye,

She smiles into corners.

She smoothes the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

Her hand twists a paper rose,

That smells of dust and old Cologne,

She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells

That cross and cross across her brain."

The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums

And dust in crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

And female smells in shuttered rooms,

And cigarettes in corridors

And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,

"Four o'clock,

Here is the number on the door.

Memory!

You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,

Mount.

The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,

Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life." 

The last twist of the knife.

Happy Sunday everyone! Just thought I'd ruin everyone's day with a poem about utter isolationism. Not really, it's just a good poem. As I mentioned, this poem talks a lot about isolation and a lack of communication. If we look at the poem, there are only a few spoken words, and those are said by a lamp-post. He only has one toothbrush, indicating that he lives alone. The closest he can get to another human being is a prostitute who can't even step out of the doorway to entice him in. The closest he can get to another living thing is to have a crusty old crab grab onto a stick. Most of the imagery in this poem has nothing to do with communication. All of the imagery is either visual or nasal, no sound, no touch (no taste either, but that's not really that important).

There are also a lot of symbols that indicate a sense of distance. Prostitutes are people's excuses for relationships, but there's no real connection. Crabs are crusty, hard-skinned loners who don't connect with others. The moon, used a lot in this poem, is bright, but cold. The moon will watch you with her "feeble eye," but "She is alone." The isolationism is overwhelming and depressing. 

I don't really have any personal connections with the thematics of this story, so I really don't have much to talk about on that end. I do have some experiences with walking around at night, and much of the moon imagery draws me back to those times. I also love this poem for the almost lyrical nature, it flows so well off the tongue and it's just beautiful to read, independent of the message. 

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed it, and thought it as beautiful as I did.

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

The Tree

O tree, thou art so kind
to shelter us always in our times of need
to hold in your broad boughs welcome and solace
for the weak and wan and lonesome.

Thou art so reliable, never waining, never wanting,
so true to the steady march of time.
Bud, blossom, bloom and die, a clock of years
for the weak and wan and lonesome.

Thou provides't what is needed,
always more, never less.
Play for child, food for all, and comfort
for the weak and wan and lonesome.

Thine companionship heightens all,
your lithe branches embrace the embattled soul,
an audience for the troubles and hurts,
of the weak and wan and lonesome.

O tree, you give me hope.
you provide stability in an unstable world.
You listen to our problems, feel the wants and needs,
of the weak and wan and lonesome.

Carry on brave companion
for you walk among giants, where few will dare tread.
If any man or woman could share your gifts,
to not be weak or wan or lonesome.

But none do share your heavenly gifts
all see but their own black hearts and rotted minds
carefully carving their own dark glob of worldly fame
unable to see the forest for the tree
but unable to see the tree for the wood
for these men and women are our idols
the focus of our satanic worship
the black succubi who carry us from our beds
to exploit our darkest secrets and desires
they reject the righteous for the easy
and the powerful for the simple
they coddle the slow and weigh down the fast
for equality ensures their power
and none will see their errors
for the lamb suit is impenetrable
while the wolf's greedy eyes still shine through
but if one man woman or child
could pull
                one
                      small
                              thread
the suit comes off
but then what is that man woman or child
but the next wolf.

Oh, if I were a tree, able to live my life
unencumbered by these horrors and wants.
But to leave them, leaves society, leaves a man
to be weak, and wan, and lonesome.

So, as it is now the first weekend, I figured it was about time to post one of my own poems. This one was part of a collection I did as part of my not-really-kind-of creative writing class last year. A little more explanation on that is probably needed. Last year, I did not have enough room in my schedule to take creative writing, so I decided instead to do all of the assignments for the class and submit them as an anonymous student. The teacher was fairly confused for the entirety of the course, and the last day I went and submitted my final assignment in person and told him that I was the one submitting the assignments. I think he was amused, but I'm not really sure. Either way, this is one of the assignments that I turned in for a freeform poem, so enjoy! Please criticize, I want to get better and I won't without knowing what's wrong and what's right. Thanks! 

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

Langston Hughes: Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run? 

Does it stink like rotten meat? 

Or crust and sugar over— 

like a syrupy sweet? 

Maybe it just sags 

like a heavy load. 

Or does it explode? 

I would count Langston Hughes as one of my favorite poets, and this is a poem that, while I may not be able to quote it verbatim, has stuck with me ever since I read it probably in middle school. From this poem alone and from what I vaguely recall from whatever English class I learned about it in, Langston Hughes seemed like a very interesting person. I'm always kind of thinking of hypothetical situations (let me tell you about parallel universes) so I have the inclination sometimes to say that me and current or dead celebrities would be friends, if we knew each other. I'd probably say this about Langston Hughes also, but maybe we wouldn't- we come from very different circumstances. It's been a weird day in which I lost my keys, lost my phone and got assaulted many times by a racquetbal ball but overall let's face it- I'm a privileged college student. Langston Hughes, if I remember correctly, suffered throughout his life. He had it rough, and his poetry reflected that. He'd probably be cool enough that we could still be friends, but you never know. It'd be an honor to be friends with him if we had lived at the same time. These are weird hypothetical things that I think about sometimes- would Langston Hughes and I be friends?


In this poem I like the idea that in all of his different metaphors, Hughes represents a dream (even deferred) as some sort of form of energy, or a force. It's a loss of water, the source of life with the raisin. It white blood cell pus in the sore. It's dying flesh with the meat. It's a chemical reaction with sun and sugar in the sweet. It's a heavy weight baring down on your back with the sagging load.


Or maybe it's something more violent and dramatic than that. Maybe the energy or force can't be contained and it's bursting and violent and an explosion. It's small and silly, but that last line just has to be italicized. It's representative of the severity of the situation, isn't it? It's a climax that the poem is inevitably reaching.


A dream deferred is a theme I feel like we've seen a lot: the idea of the sad, disillusioned middle aged person who is living a life they're very dissatisfied with. It killed Willy Loman, as Death of a Salesman came up in conversation today. (Occasionally when I'm in an area that's hard to navigate, I'll mutter to myself, "I'm all boxed in, the woods are burning!", a reference people who haven't read the play don't get.) "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads is a really scary song if you think about it.



Sometimes (like when I'm writing a poetry blog) I wonder if I'm in the right major. I've done a fair amount of creative writing that I really enjoyed doing, and I'm probably more of a right brain thinker than a left brain one, which I think matches up with me being left handed, but not necessarily a technical degree.


But I haven't felt like I wanted to switch majors at any point in this year either, and I feel like that's got to be a good sign for things. I came to RIT with no programming experience, and have been thrown into Python (oh, such a derpy language) and Java (public static void main (String[] args), unless you decide to name args something like Spaghetti). It's been rough but I haven't felt like I wanted to switch majors.


I think intellectually I believe people can have more than two dreams. I'm pragmatic (along with sarcastic, according to Sam), and I believe that when you're in a hard situation you kind of just have to get yourself through it, except I have quit things I had to, I think. Tech Crew (at the end of a season, didn't return Junior Year), Driving School (can't put that off altogether though). So maybe Computer Science can be my dream, too.


It may be one in the morning and I have a 5K to run at 9:30am and homework and work to do this weekend, but I'm surrounded by people I enjoy being with and doing things I enjoy, and I'm living the dream in that regard, at least.


"Val, Val. You're only 18 Val. You have your whole life ahead of you. It'll get better, I promise."
My mom said that to me in a much different, much harder context, but I think it'll probably hold true here, too. I may be 19 now, but I have my whole life ahead of me. I think I can figure things out, and not end up as "Once in a Lifetime", or maybe even "Call Me Al" by Paul Simon, regardless of Computer Science and my ability to cohabit.


I need to go to bed right now though.

Update as of 4/6: I ran a 23 minute, 36 second 5K (3.1 miles), which reduces down to 7 minutes, 36 seconds per mile, which is a new personal record and really exciting for me.

In more mundane news my laundry still isn't folded. Maybe I'll do that after I shower/eat.

Waiting

I have seen thousands of beautiful things

But only the ugly has ever felt real

Some nights I dream of Niagra Falls like

I am more than a floodgate waiting to break

Face-first towards the bottoms of hotel pools

Convincing myself in the way we try to dream with eyes open

Then I would learn to soar before

Rock bottom broke my bones

This world is marked by seven wonders
and seven billion broken hearts,
each playing cat’s cradle with fraying ties
and praying that perfect comes to those
who wait and wait and wait.
I grow an ounce more impatient
each time my toes touch the scale.

I drink for the aftertaste,
the bitter notes I can’t define and
the feeling I’ll get in seventeen years when
I hear tonight’s song on the oldies station
and convince myself in the way we try
to drown when we are swimming
that it’s stuck in my head and
far too pretty to escape.

Maybe in seventeen years I’ll sleep easy

And skip rocks across water with lights in my eyes

And a flick in my wrist to say swim

Maybe I’ll have learned by then

That it’s lovely to search for perfection

In the way children play midday hide and seek

And pretend it is more than a game

Maybe I will find myself

If I wait and wait and wait

Within the past month, the amount of job applications that I've submitted is almost astounding to me and now I'm in the phase of simply waiting for a reply. And literally it's driving me insane. I'm one of those people who really likes to plan ahead and know what's going on all the time so I can be prepared. And I'm sure we have all experienced this feeling. Waiting for a college acceptance, waiting for a job, waiting for Friday to come, waiting for summer break, waiting for an opportunity, waiting for "the one."

And it's just so damn easy to slip into wanting to give up. Many times have I thought of giving up on school work, giving up on people, giving up on life. But these are not good options, let me tell you. As dreadful as sitting in anticipation, getting worked up and depressed about a situation doesn't make you feel better about the situation or about yourself. When treading across the ocean, it's not an easy decision to choose to drown, that's not what I'm saying. But to be able to get what you want, to get what you deserve, to get what you've been working for, then you gotta keep on keeping on and swim harder, even if it means swimming in a different direction towards a different goal. 

Let me get off my soap box, sorry. 

This poem does have a lot of water motifs as you probably noticed. I'm from Maine and the ocean and water is a big part of my life and I really love it. During a storm, the ocean is always really rough and yet there are always a few surfers out there making the best of it. Plus after the storm, the water is so clear, so beautiful. Plus there's a bunch of shells and sea glass that you can then collect. There's also quite a bit of my childhood in here, especially the times with my sister. Whenever we go to dance competitions  we swam in the hotel pools with the other dancers and it was always really fun. Me and my sister also learned how to do cat's cradle so that we can do it with our eyes closed. We also really like listening to the oldies station: her favorite artist is Frank Sinatra (yeah, she's super classy for a 13 year old). She's one of my reasons why I keep on keepin' on, and everyone should have that. I think I might call her this weekend, I do miss her so.

I didn't mean for this to be so long and I doubt anyone has read all the way to the end. But if you have, thank you for listening to my rambling. Til next time. Godspeed. ~Sarah

Sylvia Plath - Daddy

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe 

In which I have lived like a foot 

For thirty years, poor and white, 

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 

Daddy, I have had to kill you. 

You died before I had time-- 

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, 

Ghastly statue with one gray toe 

Big as a Frisco seal 

And a head in the freakish Atlantic 

Where it pours bean green over blue 

In the waters off beautiful Nauset. 

I used to pray to recover you. 

Ach, du. 

In the German tongue, in the Polish town 

Scraped flat by the roller 

Of wars, wars, wars. 

But the name of the town is common. 

My Polack friend 

Says there are a dozen or two. 

So I never could tell where you 

Put your foot, your root, 

I never could talk to you. 

The tongue stuck in my jaw. 

It stuck in a barb wire snare. 

Ich, ich, ich, ich, 

I could hardly speak. 

I thought every German was you. 

And the language obscene 

An engine, an engine 

Chuffing me off like a Jew. 

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. 

I began to talk like a Jew. 

I think I may well be a Jew. 

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna 

Are not very pure or true. 

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck 

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack 

I may be a bit of a Jew. 

I have always been scared of you, 

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. 

And your neat mustache 

And your Aryan eye, bright blue. 

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- 

Not God but a swastika 

So black no sky could squeak through. 

Every woman adores a Fascist, 

The boot in the face, the brute 

Brute heart of a brute like you. 

You stand at the blackboard, daddy, 

In the picture I have of you, 

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot 

But no less a devil for that, no not 

Any less the black man who 

Bit my pretty red heart in two. 

I was ten when they buried you. 

At twenty I tried to die 

And get back, back, back to you. 

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack, 

And they stuck me together with glue. 

And then I knew what to do. 

I made a model of you, 

A man in black with a Meinkampf look 

And a love of the rack and the screw. 

And I said I do, I do. 

So daddy, I'm finally through. 

The black telephone's off at the root, 

The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- 

The vampire who said he was you 

And drank my blood for a year, 

Seven years, if you want to know. 

Daddy, you can lie back now. 

There's a stake in your fat black heart 

And the villagers never liked you. 

They are dancing and stamping on you. 

They always knew it was you. 

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.


From The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, Harper & Row 1981


So this poem has to be one of my favorite poems by Sylvia Plath. I know it seems creepy and almost masochistic, but hidden deep in the dark prose is a little bead of hope. Much of this poem is about the way the speaker's father was abusive, so she created herself "a model of you" and "said I do, I do." In essence, her father was abusive, so she found herself an abusive husband. The little grain of hope comes from the end, with the line "I'm finally through." This point turns the abuse from the present to the past, and makes it seem that she has broken off her relationship with this abusive husband. She also seems happy about it, acknowledging that "Daddy, you can lie back now," indicating that her father no longer controls her life. I think anyone who finds themselves in an abusive relationship can take solace in this poem, realizing that other people have been in the same situation, and perhaps for the same reason. These people were also able to find a way out of these relationships, so it is not a fruitless endeavor to work to better your life. Take heart, ye emburdoned friends, and carry thyselves to new and magnificent heights! (I have no idea why I decided to wax into Olde English, but it somehow fit the mood. I'm also writing this while listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, so that might have something to do with it.)

Anyway, another lesson I like to take from this poem is that even from the darkest things, we can still take something positive. This is an exceptionally dark poem; even so, it has a positive outlook in the end where people are able to better themselves, no matter the situation. I feel like this is a good way of thinking about things, no matter the situation. I hope all of you enjoy the rest of this wonderful Thursday and the rest of Poetry Month!

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;-

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

She was a child and I was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love-

I and my Annabel Lee-

With a love that the wingéd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud by night, 

Chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me;

Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud, chilling 

And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we-

Of many far wiser than we-

And neither the angels in Heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:-

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride

In her sepulcher there by the sea-

In her tomb by the side of the sea. 

This blog post is dedicated to two dear, really awesome friends of mine: Laura, who gave me my copy of Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems for my birthday (how perfect for National Poetry Month) and Xandra, who recommended "Annabel Lee" when she saw I was doing Poe, and who is also able to recite quite a bit of "The Raven" without prompting. As a whole I've always enjoyed the Poe I've read, although it's mostly been short stories- The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart in high school, The Purloined Letter and The Mystery of Marie Roget for Writing Seminar Quarter 1 this year. The Masque of Red Death is quoted in the beginning of Stephen King's The Shining. I've obviously read the "The Raven", also mentioned, but don't know much of the rest of his poetry.


With a name like Annabel Lee, in a kingdom by the sea, many and many years ago no less, the poem reads off like a fairy tale. I bet the kingdom by the sea was on a cliff, that's appropriately fairy tale. At first thought fairy tales doesn't really seem to suit Poe, except, when you think about it, he is really good at the long, sweeping, romantic syntax that needs to be the backbone of a fairy tale. Except this is Poe, so the woman ends up in a sepulcher by the sea. A tragic fairy tale. Those are things, right? Apparently the Little Mermaid actually commits suicide in the original tale, so tragic fairy tales are very legitimate.


Most fairy tales seem to center around a beautiful maiden, which is something I'm not sure I understand right now after midnight alone in the lounge (because nightblogging). What about women inspires swordfights and gallantry, far away lands, castles, and lines like, "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams" in their honor? What about my gender causes intense metaphor, the need for a quest and a bard to tell the story later? There's something about making the maiden the crux of any fairy tale that kind of removes her from the story, because she's this all encompassing force that has to drive so much action and language. Think of Rapunzel in the tower- the maiden's this beautiful symbol, a proverbial tower to be seen across the land, but who is she as a person?


Poe uses the intensity of a beautiful woman quite frequently in his works and even acknowledged in "The Philosophy of Composition" that, "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world". He backs up his use of this theme in "The Raven" in particular by arguing that true Beauty (like that of a woman, I suppose) effects not the heart or the mind but the very soul itself, just as sadness permeates the soul. Therefore combining the death, the pinnacle of sadness, with the paragon of beauty, a woman, will have the greatest emotional, poetic effect. Obviously this theme worked well for Poe, as he used it throughout his works, and I actually discovered that quote originally because someone had applied it to Christopher Nolan as well. This gets joked about a lot on the internet, actually, that every Nolan film has a dead girlfriend/wife in it. (Dark Knight- Rachel, Inception- Mal, Memento- Lenny's wife, it applies for his lesser known films as well.) I wrote about this theme in my write up for Writing Seminar about Marie Roget, citing Chandra Levy and Natalie Holloway as contemporary, real life examples of beautiful dead women still holding intrigue in the media.

Obviously I can't ignore the effectiveness of this theme, sure, but this sure is a lot of responsibility, importance and significance for Poe's Lenore to hold, having all of the epic "The Raven" be about her.


John Green, a young adult novelist in case you don't know, calls this the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" archetype, having men put a woman on a pedestal and have them signify so much. He, for his part, tries to write three dimensional young woman who are very flawed and therefore harder to see as perfect archetypes. Pudge may be infatuated with Alaska of Looking for Alaska, but that doesn't make any difference to the plot that splits the book into two parts (spoiler proofed in case you haven't read it- you should). I don't admittedly remember much of Paper Towns, but its arguably most popular quote is Margo saying, "Imagine me completely." I guess that's why romanticizing woman doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally, because I don't see myself as something inspiring quests, or something to be written sonnets about every other minute. I smashed two bottles of Sparkling Grape Juice on my foot a few weekends ago, I still don't have all of my Physics done for the night, goodness knows how long I left my laundry sitting in a dryer down in Sol's, and goodness knows how much longer it's going to be until I fold it. If you expect me to communicate within the first 30 minutes after I wake up, it's probably not going to happen.

This has kind of turned into a feminist post, I think, but not a radical one in my opinion. The Tl;Dr version of what I think about feminism is that I don't want to be an object, and I dislike the idea that people may only talk to me because I don't have a y chromosome. I want people to talk to me because I seem like a cool person overall. I dislike the fact that I am seen as a scarce resource because of the demographics of the college I go to, and that I as an individual are more or less something that obeys the law of scarcity. There's a reason I hang out with the people I do- they don't cause me to feel any of the above things (well, occasional asshole friend with the occasional asshole comment aside. He eventually apologized). In a semi-related note, we're watching Tangled this weekend, in which Rapunzel gets out the tower, has her own non-male fueled motivations, and fights along with the male protagonist instead of just being fought for by him.


It's not that I don't appreciate Poe's love of Annabel Lee, it's a beautiful poem that grabbed my attention as such when I read it. It's just that its beauty and the effect that that creates is a high standard to live up to even for a girl in a kingdom by the sea, I think.

(Untitled)

Staple me to a cross 

Pierce my side with a broken promise

And I will bleed all the crippled reasons

Why you deserve one more chance.

I whispered you stardust,

I spoke you into sunflowers,

I dipped my hands in forever,

Touched infinity,

Treated you as if you were the last molecule

Of oxygen inside a gas chamber;

I was good to you

I swallowed my pride and then it clawed its way out of my mouth.

If I could I would tie your arms to a daydream

And auction you off to my fondest memories,

I write this in my own spinal fluid

And put it on the backbone of a white flag

So before you read it you know that I’ve given up.

I’ll just keep you here

Shackled to the most important chapter of my life story,

Pressed to the basement of my eyelids like liquid salvation

So I remember you beautiful

With amazing underneath your wings and a sly smile.

You linger on my lips and kiss me with stuttering apologies

Taped to the roof of your mouth.

I still remember you like a dream

Tattooed to the inner walls of a long term memory,

But some days I wonder if

You existed at all.

Yet you still want to know how I got these scars

I got these scars the day I fell in love with you

I landed face first.

Happy National Poetry Month everyone! I hope you at least kinda liked my poem. I wrote it a while ago but it has enough feels in it to be an adequate first post to this blog (even though it lacks a title, don't judge me!)

A lot of the time, I write poems when I can't find colloquial phrases to express how I'm feeling to human beings, so a Microsoft Document is always a dear friend of mine when I'm feelin' bummed or, in this case, a little heart broken. Love is tough, it's maddening, it's amazing, it's terrifying, it's traumatizing, it's unreasonable, it's everything you want and all the memories come back and crash on the shore again and again when you just want to sleep. We fall, and sometimes you get pretty banged up by it, but why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up. 

Anyway, that's what the poem is about I guess, analyze it as you will, my fellow poetry lovers. But for now, I hear my homework beckoning me. Until next time. Godspeed. ~Sarah