Poetry Forum

I built a wall to keep the inside in;
it was not high enough to stop my love.
Bits of me kept clambering to the top
and in thin air, fell silently to ground.
I heard you built your wall ten lifetimes high
where every day was where I used to sleep;
dreams I had were curled up on the roof
so only those who flew above…saw me.
 
I built a wall to keep the outside out,
higher than I needed it to be.
I never heard you  knocking on my door
or saw you begging to be here with me.
I didn’t think ten lifetimes would outlast
the endless, deep-sleep nights of guilt and pride.
You win, I know now you can’t fly,
so I can hide up here and dream…or die.
 
 tectak
1972

(07-06-2017, 12:11 AM)tectak Wrote: [ -> ] 
I built a wall to keep the inside in;
it was not high enough to stop my love.
Bits of me kept clambering to the top
and in thin air, fell silently to ground.
I heard you built your wall ten lifetimes high
where every day was where I used to sleep;
dreams I had were curled up on the roof  
so only those who flew above…saw me.           maybe better “those who´d fly above”,  otherwise it distracts from the person the subject is addressing in my opinion.
 
 
I built a wall to keep the outside out,
higher than I needed it to be.
I never heard you  knocking on my door
or saw you begging to be here with me.
I didn’t think ten lifetimes would outlast
the endless, deep-sleep nights of guilt and pride.            sleepless would fit better than deep-sleep in my opinion
You win, I know now you can’t fly,                     "you win" puzzles me, as there is no sign of fight or competition before
so I can hide up here and dream…or die.    in the above stanza only bits of the subject and his dreams curled up there… so how did he get there?

I  like the metaphor of seemingly insurmountable walls and forgetting about doors, especially in connection with pride (which, in the last line the poem reveals as something to hide in or fall from - at least in how I read it)