Have You Ever Felt...

Have you ever felt

On the edge of life but not quite part of it?

Like happiness is at your fingertips

But just beyond your grasp?

 

Have you ever felt

That you were looking in

From a cold night

Through a lighted window

At a warm room

Where smiling people

Share a meal and a drink,

Music and affectionate companionship?

That maybe you could go inside,

Be a part of it,

If only you had the courage

To ring the damn doorbell?

 

Have you ever felt like a child

In a world full of grownups

All beautiful and accomplished,

Intelligent and articulate?

That anything you have to say

Is so elementary to them?

That to them inevitably

You are only a child?

 

An orphaned child

Who never has and never will know

The love and warmth of family?

Have you wondered how much

You’ll ever truly matter to another?

How much you can accomplish in life?

 

If you understand what I say,

You know how easy it is to despair.

You learn to function despite those demons

You and I share.

You keep a stiff upper lip.

You carry on, but they’re always there.

The darkness resurfaces now and then

And you don’t even know why.

I wish I could meet and talk with you

And together we could keep them at bay.

 

If you don’t understand,

And I hope you never do,

Sympathize and be kind because

You never know what lies

Deep beneath the surface

Of those you encounter on any ordinary day.

Reviews

[Adam Adams]

Such a "humanitarian" write!

Thought provoking stuff, it is that speaks the heart very well. You envision the shades, the moments, the scenario & the perspectives of vast world to your very eyes & nicely so smoothly let it leap down in words form the walls - the corners of your creative head. Lovely. You show a very heartfelt through realistic scenario of world... in ... through words. Excellent job!

My fav. line:

If you understand what I say,
You know how easy it is to despair.

Ah... so much and many things you creatively say in such ... few evocative lines. If the world underestimates or ain't understand what's meant to be understood then it'll never understand what's made to be worth or valued: "Humanity". Brilliant!

[Jennie Baron]

Wow! This review made my day. It means so much more than reviews that say little more than "I liked it." Actually, I don't know how much credit I can take for this one because it came to me so easily... But such a wonderful review is much appreciated!

[Becky Villareal]

If this came easily, it's because it came straight from your heart. Write on!

[Jennie Baron]

Thank you so much, Becky! It was good to meet you at the writers' group and a pleasant surprise to see you here. And I'm so pleased at your kind review. If you post some writing here, send me a read request. Or message me on Facebook, or I believe you mentioned you were on LinkedIn? I hope to get some chapters of my novel on the Cafe soon, too.

[Becky Villareal]

It was nice to meet you too. I will be posting things here as well. Take care.

[Samuel Dickens]

This really gets me. I feel almost as if you've gone inside my head and discovered my deepest thoughts. I couldn't have said these things as well as you have, and you hit all the nails right on the head. Erie, for certain, but outstanding.

[Jennie Baron]

Your reading and your words are much appreciated, Samuel! The reaction to this poem has been a pleasant surprise.

[NoelHC]

I can relate to your words so well, a number of family members deal with a bipolar disorder to some degree or another, and while they put on a brave face to the world, sometimes they can slip over. One has the deepest depression for weeks or months. He has found getting away from winter and going to warmth and sun helps him. Another experiences the highest highs and commits all manner of manic behavior, wild spending, running away etc.
It is hard for those of us fortunate enough to not have issues like this to comprehend. Your words go a long way towards explaining it.
Well done.

[Jennie Baron]

Yes, in hindsight poems like this seem to indicate the depression I have at times, although I assure you it's mild and often easily dealt with. Although I usually maintain a sunny disposition, now I also recognize in myself what I read from other writers. This one seems to have resonated with readers, and it's a possibility for a poetry reading or publishing if I get that opportunity. As always, your reading and reviewing are appreciated and invaluable. Regards, Jen

[wordman]

a mild case of depression,brought on by a lack of self confidence
and I have felt this emotion a few times,a great write and thoughts to ponder

[Jennie Baron]

Yes indeed! Glad you related and found something to ponder. Thanks very much for your reading and the good word.

[wordman]

always welcome

[Nusquam Esse]

I think many people can at least somewhat relate to this one; I for one can. Those moments where you look around, and enough things are going right, that you can't understand why you are not particularly happy. And yet, there is certainly something lacking; it feels so close, yet so far. I just feel so worn down most of the time, unable to identify what exactly is causing it; I just feel far older than I actually am, and with it, a very dissonant emotional connection with things. Particularly odd, is that most of the people in my life consider me to be a bubbly extrovert; when I tell them that I am a recluse, or that I usually spend my time writing alone, they think I am exaggerating or joking. So I can totally see other people being the same; looking very different than they are.

[Jennie Baron]

Yep, you never know the experiences and motivations of anyone you meet. As you can tell from this poem, I know what you mean by that dissonance. Thus that last stanza. Kindness is always the way to go. As always, I'm pleased to hear from you and benefit from your opinions about my writing. All the best...

[magenta24uk]

Beautiful. Sad and full of emotion. This really touched my soul and inspired me. Thank you.

[Jennie Baron]

I'm so happy for your kind words and happy that my poem spoke to you. I should thank you!

[B]

I can totally relate to this piece

But i believe in good intention

You make everyone that meets you be kind

If you entertain it

Very well rounded and it hits so many ideas

[Jennie Baron]

Thank you very much for stopping by and for the kind word! I'm happy that so many reviewers have had positive remarks about this poem.

[Brittany Zedalis]

"You learn to function despite those demons" I relate to this so very much. In fact, I relate to everything in this poem. I constantly feel like I'm outside looking in. Life has been tough since I was 4 years old, and I've been one of those people who just keeps going. Friends have told me I must be superhuman or something to still be functioning like a normal person. Little do they know, what you've written in this poem is what I feel almost all of the time. I envy those who live without these demons.

[Jennie Baron]

I'm so gratified that you relate to these feelings. Seemingly many do, and there are more kindred spirits out there than I realized. I also have had life tough in some ways, although I've been very fortunate in others. Very few of us live without some kind of demon. Thanks for your kind review and reading.

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear Jennie

I thought I would turn my attention to you after your being so kind as to start a review of Split.

I will if you wish start a review of your novel shortly.

But I thought I might look first at your poetic side and take this as a sample off the top of your list.

I often do very structured reviews of poetry, as it provides me with a wide framework within which to analyse a poem as thoroughly as I can, though I will at times adopt other styles of review.

Let me keep this structured on this occasion and take it step by step.

Form: Six stanzas of differing length. You are not therefore trying to fit this into any strict form. You begin where you begin and end when you end. But within each you capture a thought which advances your theme. Had you tried to formalise the structure, you would have lost something here. What you seek here is to let substance override form. I think that's a good choice, though my poetry can often but not always have a clear shape.

Rhyme: You don't seek to, though I note at times you do, but not I believe with the intent of rhyming. But what you do do very effectively instead is to start the first part of your piece with the same question 'Have you ever felt' before moving on at the end to the notion of understanding. I find that consistency is a major positive attribute of the poem. Likewise the repetition of 'You' five times as the first word at the beginning of lines in your penultimate stanza.

Rhythm: There is no constant beat to the bar. But, except in places, if you simply look at the way the words are presented on the page, the lines are often of equal length. There is therefore an underlying melody.

Type of verse: You could call it free verse, but I prefer perhaps here the notion of prose in poetic format.

Use of English: You keep it simple. You do not seek sophistication. That I feel fits what you are trying to say here.

Metaphor / simile / analogy: There is nothing precise. Yet you could argue that the whole thing is simile in question: 'Have you ever felt like?' As I have said this is an effective technique in making your point.

Meaning: And so what is the point you make. Given the deliberate simplicity of your words, it is clearly stated. In my words? You consistently ask the reader in several different ways, several times at the outset if they feel like you do, an outsider looking in at life but somehow never taking part. Then you cleverly move onto first asking if they understand what you are talking about and the key revealing wording is 'despair'. Then you would like to talk to the to find comfort in mutual sharing, because only they will understand that despair.

Finally you switch to what if the reader doesn't understand, then you ask them for their sympathy and understanding even though you hope they never get there.

Perhaps I am stating the obvious. But all I all really doing is try to briefly summarise your point.

Before I move onto the key thing I want to talk to you about here - my emotional response to this piece, I just want to quote a couple of my favourite lines from this poem.

Favourite lines:

The first verse nails it for me in its simple eloquence:

'Have you ever felt
On the edge of life but not quite part of it?
Like happiness is at your fingertips
But just beyond your grasp?'

Next:

'Have you ever felt like a child
In a world full of grownups [ a powerful analogy]

I could go on for ages, but last:

'If you understand what I say,
You know how easy it is to despair.
You learn to function despite those demons
You and I share' [the one time you rhyme and it is effective here]

My emotional response: Huge!

As I will often say in my reviews, perhaps as a writer, we feel we are writing for an audience. That is only in one sense true. What is actually happening is a conversation between the writer and each reader individual, the one with the book in their hands or the laptop on their knees and it is an intimate conversation.

The product of that is that you may get as many emotional responses as you have readers because it all depends on each readers experience of life.

Having said that, I feel there to a generic in here. I doubt that few readers will not have had this experience in life of an outsider looking in at life and not taking part at some point in their life. Yet having said that, the reasons for anyone ever feeling like that may be very different.

So to my emotional reaction and why I relate closely to your theme here.

1) This may sit to one side of what you are saying here. But as a child and in later life, it wa almost as if I did not want to take part in life or rather a better way of saying it was that I did not want to be in with the in-crowd as often I was not happy with the way my peers reacted.

Amusingly when I was a raw 19 year old in a Bible College in Paris for a year, I said rather innocently to one of my older friends. 'Do you know what, I really don't want to fit in'. His smiling response was 'Then James that means you fit into the type of people who don't want to fit in!'

Perhaps that is just a start of a feeling, one type of it where I felt like an outsider looking into a life where I disliked some of those round me and how they behaved. It was almost a question of walking left if everyone was walking right. I wanted to be different as I had issues with how others around me behaved - selfish, self-seeking, cruel, aggressive, nasty ... and I could go in.

2) However that is only one small part of the deep recognition I find in this piece.

Another. When my first wife left me for another man, I was heart broken by the experience. For a year afterwards I simply could not deal with the pain. I cried every day out of sight, including when I was driving to work, when I had to wipe the tears out of my eyes so as to see the road in front of me.

Then I started to see families, happy couples, smiling and laughing round me and that added to my sense of despair. I looked in shop windows on Valentine's day and realised I no-one any longer I could send a Valentine's Day card to.

I was working out of France at the time and I felt so lonely. I would walk the streets of Marseille, with my head down lost and sit at tables in restaurants all alone and watch the happy gatherings round me, laughing and smiling when I couldn't cope. It only made my sense of loss and despair so much deeper.

3) I could to you so many more example in my life, but let me end with the most significant example and I live it to this day.

After 45 years of often but not always feeling apart of life at least if only with other partners and work colleagues round me, I had a nervous breakdown, which if you continue to read Split led onto the appearance of bipolar disorder (late onset) which had lain dormant most of my life. The positive energy the disorder had given me (its upside or blessing had been that it made me highly successful throughout my life in the world of academia and then in my business life.

But following the breakdown at the age of 45 in 2005, ten years ago now, the curse of the disorder became evident. That drive had nowhere anymore to go and began to show itself in antisocial ways which then thereafter completely devastated my life. I had to retire early in 2006 on an ill health pension and I have never worked since. I thereby exited the mainstream of life to which I had belonged and my second wife left me because she could not deal with it.

Thereafter there have been huge stretches of my life, where I have lived alone in complete isolation. I fell into patterns of self-neglect and with the drugs I was talking I often felt dizzy and would collapse. On one occasion I hit the tiled floor of my kitchen, passed out and then woke in a pool of my own blood. I realised then, it would be ever so easy for that to kill me next time and it would be months perhaps before anyone found my body as I had no visitors.

That led to agoraphobia. I lived the life of a recluse. I wanted to hide but yet at the same time, I yearned for company. I had medics, but I desperately wanted even if just one person to be part of my life who would understand and with whom I could share (a heavy part of your theme in your penultimate verse. But then I wrote split to try and people who didn't understand mental health disorders but walked away to try and help them understand and not walk away (the substance of your last verse).

And that's it Jenny. Often in my reviews in terms of trying to achieve balanced critique to measure what is well written and other parts where parts things could be better written (always in a kind way) I find nothing adverse to say a bout this piece of verse or lulling prose in poetic form.

At the outset of this review, I looked at technique objectively, then meaning. But when I am reviewed not only do I seek that balanced critique (especially in Split - how can I make it any better if no-one tells me what's wrong with it?) but I above all want to have a view on the reader's emotional response. The latter is key to me, whatever else a reviewer may be doing. Because if you manage to move the reader and connect with the reader, you have as a writer made the impact you set out to achieve.

Jennie, I can only hope that this review has some value to you and that you see clearly the huge impact that you have had one just one reader, me.

This is a well written poem. It is delicately sketched. And I believe it has a generic meaning which may affect many.

With my kindest regards

James

[Jennie Baron]

This is certainly one of the most beneficial reviews I've received, for which I thank you profusely. Such intelligent critique made me feel very gratified at the positive words. And I enjoyed hearing about your experiences in terms of the feelings my poem evoked. I'm honored that you stopped by to read!

I will definitely get to Split ASAP although I have a couple of busy days coming up. If you wish to visit my novel, you're most welcome, although having such a critic read it makes me nervous! It's still very much a work in progress, and in response to critique, I keep trying to add more emotion and conflict. It has conflict in the beginning, as friends reconnect and find themselves attracted to each other, but wonder about the wisdom of starting a romance. Then I'm afraid it kind of sags until the secondary story arc in the last few chapters. The middle is more or less about everyday life, more or less showing their dedication to each other and their teamwork in raising a family and furthering their careers. It's about a girl somewhat like me growing up in Texas, and begins in the late 1970s. Her love is a fantastic musician, so the story has a backdrop of some of the classic rock music I love. Warning, it's really a romance but has some explicit sex, some of which may be gratuitous but is intended to contrast with what my couple have together. It may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Thanks once more for your review, and best regards to you as well.

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear Jennie, Thank you for that. I look forward to reading more. Your friend, James

[alf]

Hi Jennie. For so many who suffer the demons of insecurity, I thank you for writing this poem. Your translation of thought is so clear and expressive, and only a person who has been there could plumb the depths of one's emotional pool, to bring these words to life. Love this because it tells it like it is, alf

[Jennie Baron]

Wow, I'm flattered! Yes, I've been there, not so much anymore but when I was younger. Thanks much!

[Terpsichore]

A special poem, it resonates deeply; and that third stanza, oh, that is so, so relatable. T

[Jennie Baron]

I'm so happy that you found it special. Yes, I did draw upon that insecure child inside to write that third stanza. Thank you so much!