The Iris Masquerade // Poetry

Last year Brittany and I did our AS level based around a poem and this year will be no different, we are both avid lovers of poetry and enjoy writing lines, I am not a very confident writer as I tend to take criticism to the heart (for anyone that read the perfectionist post… yeah) so I try to stay away from showing my poems as much as possible.

when looking at how I want this poem to come across I did some research on sleep paralysis and others perceptions of what sleep paralysis is like, within my own poem there is hints and obvious hints to the sleep paralysis, one poem said

This poem to me is a sum of the feeling of sleep paralysis the disturbance that comes with it and constant fight with the mind and the body, this inspired some of the lines in my own poetry for example “my lungs are full of water but I am not drowning”, I have also taken inspiration from the imagery of the photography Bruno when adding in this metaphors

Anyway I will keep this short as the poem itself is quite long, I recommend you listen to the poetry rather than read it as different emphasis on different words change the meaning but you do you!

Deception is a clasp to the dark

Where my screams don’t echo

But my lungs feel blank

This reality you say is not real is pricking my fingertip

Like a rose that has no flower

This is a masquerade of the iris

The dance that ends in death

That I shall stay paralysed

When she arrives by my bed

The thought of feeling everything makes me want to feel nothing

I want to blend with white that has no annotations of black

I’m thrashing but to you they look like shivers

But I’m not scared of being cold

A tunnel to hell is perceived as the light

My thoughts rejected by my own body

My lungs are full of water but I am not drowning

My dress is soaked but I am not wearing clothing

I don’t see you when the dawn hits my bed

But retract that motion and I feel you on my chest

I am scared but my heart beats no faster

As I know I am the slave and you are my master

I will carry on wearing my chains

As long as I carry on breathing

And even then who knows what the true reality is

How do you know the demons I see are not lurking behind you

You can not see everything but apparently I can

Why can you believe in Christ but I cant believe in Satan

Do not tell me I am mistaken as there breathe down my neck

Feels just as real as the wind

There laughter in my ears

Makes me want in on the joke

Are we laughing at my misfortune

Or are we laughing at my chains

That I locked to myself and the key was never forged

I imagine it would be gold

As that’s a colour I dream to see

My dreams are so rich with vision but so numb to a palette

They started out as two paths interlocked by a connection

But as that connection from the reality blurred

I failed to see the difference

And confused your dance for mine

As I spun mindlessly awake

They scream we are all unique

But will mould you into a structure

And if you do not fit then you must pretend that you are a

Heroic overcoming the fears

Or isn’t that so tragic

You look at me as if I begged on the floor for your pity

That I took your hand and kissed it gracefully

When in reality or perhaps not in reality

I cant quite make up my mind

You see they change

Not to you, I don’t know what you see

But I see a chain of animalistic bodies all tied by their eyes

All screaming the same words

Deception is a clasp to the dark

Where my echo’s don’t scream