Rejected (Version 1)

[tomoffing]

Hi mike,

With a few quick reads, I'm interpreting as follows;
Stanza one: You own the house, becoming a parent you realise opportunities missed and start to create your falsehood.
Your children grow somewhat oblivious to you being there

Stanza 2: as adolescents they now consider you a pest

Stanza 3: I'm reading your first lines as criticisms of their behaviour/life
And in light of these you create an alternative reality for yourself.
Your final line is this reality, but at the same time a wider symbol of all our lives.


Let me know if this makes sense and I'll give you some more detailed feedback in light of that.
Thanks for the read.

Very interesting interpretation. My intention in the poem was really about living beyond your means and what happens when you let that take over your life. Living a "false self".

okay, we're on the same page now.
I can see your intent more clearly with the explanation but some elements make this really difficult to discern.

You shift from I to we to children, to the owners, to pests, which is us, and then back to yourself in the first person.
This is a lot to consume then interpret as a single persona or character type. It's muddled.

I really like the owner/renter metaphor. I'd keep that.

Maybe you can capture this better by choosing 2 of your characters/personas to represent fake and the real.
Present both in contrast (even conflict with each other perhaps) then draw the reader to the conclusion that they are in fact the same person.

I hope that's in some way useful.

Best of luck, you have some strong images and potent emotion here. Keep at this one.

t