Poetry Notes

All Woman Next to You

I watched you as you lay

Sleeping in the early eastern light.

The urge was so strong

I had to fight it down

Beat it back

To hold you, for just one night

How can you keep

Sleeping like a child

When I'm all woman next to you?

I drown in your dominion.

As the music pounds my mind,

In a room full of people

You are all I find

When I look up.

And the morning after

You lay sleeping

Like a boy-king

Sprawled across your throne.

You won't even meet me eyes

To offer me a bone to chew on.

I could scream till my face is blue;

How can you keep

Sleeping like a child

When I'm all woman next to you?

We won't speak

Of this, we never do.

One more twisted cigarette butt

And oh, there's quite a few

Under the carpet this morning.

How can you keep

Sleeping like a child

When I'm all woman next to you?

This poem focuses on a woman's unrequited love. The structure is built loosely on a lyrical pattern; the repeated refrain:

How can you keep Sleeping like a child

When I'm all woman next to you?

acts almost as a chorus would in a song. I played with an off-metre rhyming scheme in the stanzas to reinforce this lyrical feeling.