Fever Gleam
The piper played spades
A part to play in the jovial parade
Eyes blinded by the charade
Minds splayed, lives delayed
The ceiling talks?
“I am me, I am certain and if I’m not peel back the curtain
And we’ll play, you and I, in the jovial parade.”
The ceiling talks. The doors lock. The white waves try to persuade.
The piper’s spade displayed in gray as my mind fades.
The man with a lisp whispers quips and my head cracks like a whip
He brays while dead, long since red, in my sleepy head
“Give it some pip” he says, giving me lip
I put it to bed, he owns no space in my head
Posted Oct 4, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC
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[deleted]
Your interpretation is pretty accurate; I don't usually directly give what a poem is about when I write one. I like for my writing to be sort of cryptic and strange. The title fever gleam refers to a state of confusion during a fever dream. The gleam part being a "blindness" or impaired awareness.
The piper in the poem is a reference to the Pied Piper of Hamelin which I think is a folk legend in Germany where a piper plays music to lure children away from their home; the piper here refers to the illness pulling the narrator away from themself; the piper's spade is a reference to gambling and implies the piper is winning. A lot of the time when I have a fever dream I'll hear disjointed music, so the piper is a personification of that.
The man with a lisp and the jovial parade are metaphors for the disorganized thoughts of a fever dream like conversations within the dream that make no sense and just sputter on in a whisper or a cacophony of voices speaking all at once.
The "ceiling talking" is the narrator talking to themself as they stare at the ceiling and fade into a subconscious state. The doors lock because there's no going back as they fade and the white waves refers to the white paint on the ceiling
That’s very cool. I really liked it. Thanks for posting.