Sincerely, The Poet

I began liking poetry in eighth grade. Before that, I hated poetry. I didn’t want anything to do with it. But in eighth grade I began reading poetry, watching spoken word poetry, (shoutout to Sarah Kay) and most of all, writing poetry. Since then, writing poetry has been one of my biggest hobbies. I now have a huge collection of poems, so I thought I would share one of my favorite ones with you today because while I still don’t love analyzing poetry, I usually either understand the poem or I don’t, I do appreciate the chunking technique that we have been learning in class. It makes analyzing poetry much more tolerable. 

          This is a poem called Numb. I chose this one to share because not only is it one of my favorite poems that I’ve ever written ( I still don’t know how this specific combination of words came out of me) but because it has a clear shift and can be chunked for analyzation easily.

Numb

Take her on a roller coaster

She’ll sit in silence

Solemness created by the absence of screams

Take to the haunted house

She’ll be the zombie

Beauty and boredom bordering on ballistic

Kiss her senseless

And her lips lie limp

Lifelessness that refuses your lust and longing

Drag her to the graveyard

She’ll sleep right through it

Numb to the never-ending names and nemeses

          Halfway through there is a shift. It can be inferred that the girl, seemingly, no longer has a chance at happiness - at life. No longer is she just being taken to places and not responding in a “typical” way to her surroundings, now she is resisting all emotion, or rather, is unable to feel any emotion. And therein lies a life devoid of any reasons to live. Therefore, the first two stanzas can be chunked together and the last two stanzas can be chunked together. The situation in each stanza gets progressively worse until the conclusion in the last line has many possible interpretations as to what the lesson or theme of the poem is. Is all hope completely lost or is enough clarity and awareness of the real problem gained in order to help the girl?

Sincerely,

The Poet