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Denial

I feel the cat’s claws, digging into my tongue
When my reflection, asks who I am
Cause I never mourned you
Just fed you to my shadow

Heartbreak led to hedonism
Created a cornucopia of denial
With neatly decorated lies
And cleverly crafted excuses

Disenchanted and desensitized
Desperately clinging to vanity
As insecurity starts to claw through

Speechless
Crawling back to my castle
Where phantom limbs
Caress romantic memories

Hi jabble
I like this piece a lot.
Is the punctuation in the first verse intended as it is ?
Just an observation

I specially like these lines but wonder about the word 'cause'

jabble524 wrote:Cause I never mourned you
Just fed you to my shadow

I know it's strange, but the punctuation in the first verse is intended as it's written. Personally, I have never been good with poetic structure. The word "cause" probably shouldn't be in there, but I usually listen to music when I write, so in retrospect "cause" probably fit with whatever beat I had in my head at the time. Creatively, I wanted to explore denial because I think it creates illusion. Specifically, I wanted to explore what happens when denial persists, and illusion eventually intersects with reality. Because I think madness is the point where illusion and reality intersect. So really the poem was about creating a character who has descended in madness, but isn't exactly sure how they arrived there.

jabble524 wrote:I know it's strange, but the punctuation in the first verse is intended as it's written. Personally, I have never been good with poetic structure.

I dont suppose there are any hard and fast rules with poetic structure and ' your ' voice is 'your' voice
As I review stuff I have written I can alter it many times and will know when it sounds right to me .
I like the notion about madness being the point where illusion and reality intersect .Its a very thin line they say

jabble524 wrote:Desperately clinging to vanity

Is this the point of no return I wonder .

I am not sure if it's the point of no return. I just think that vanity is often used as a defense against insecurity. In a strange way, I think that insecurity often evolves into vanity.

Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.
One of Mason Cooley's aphorisms is "Vanity well fed is benelovenet.Vanity hungry is spiteful.

That is a really interesting way of thinking about vanity. I had not looked at it from that perspective.