Bedlam (Edit 1)

[Brownlie]

This line gave me pause:

"Inside then maybe you could see
What they can feel, a lock."

Maybe

Inside then maybe you could see
What they can feel's a lock.

Maybe I'm misreading your intent, but that seemed what you were trying to say...maybe not.
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The first stanza reads a bit awkward, but from there on it reads smoothly.

This was a nice stanza:

"I had my day of lunacy
Inside and know the way
that wasted men can feel their lives
that slowly slip away."


Dale

I deviated a bit from the pattern in the first stanza so I could see how that could come out awkward. For the most part your proposed change preserves the intent of the poem, though the comma emphasizes lock more it does slow the poem and take away its momentum, good catch. Thanks for the feedback.

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Hi Brownlie

The first two stanzas made me think of a psychiatric ward, with the references to bedlam and lunacy, so i was a little surprised when it turned into a poem about jails. Still it could be a high-security psych ward...

that wasted men can feel their lives
that slowly slip away. ('that' doesn't seem to fit- i would have used 'slowly slipping away' but that might mess up your meter)

i liked the alliteration in 'soil heavied clothes are sodden down by scripts' , and the alliteration of C and P in the third stanza.

Unsure about rhyming crafted with fact - though it is alliterative and the stanza reads fine - the following rhyming of fact and trapped in the first line of the next stanza carries the rhyming along even though it's not in a second or fourth line.

Overall, I thought it was quite well done


Marianne

Thanks for reading I really appreciate it. Lunacy has implications of a temporary diagnosis of insanity. You make a good point that the syntax is a little strange in that line you referred to I hadn't considered that before you pointed that out, thank you.