Rib-Cage

You live a life combined of colour
and empty space
and in-between.
While outside, a grey slate wing sky
gets progressively less blue
(memory may be rose-tinted, but my life
is a deeper blue than anywhere else in the world,
the kind you can fall into).
Sound drifting through recycled air
occupies a certain quantity of sensation
as do the surrounding voices
and the thoughts that whisper through
like electric humming.

With the banishment of passing fancies,
there is only commune with arbitrary thought
left to garner love of the flitting sense
(flickering sensibility, thoughts that may drift
into sensation like vanilla perfume
but always seem to set to rot in the end).
So, turn thoughts and eyes to the threadbare,
tight-drawn sky
and ground that shows as patches of rust,
the tendrils of cloud dissembling themselves into empty air –
You could be so as well, but I’d say your rib-cage is just that
like your eyelids
and flesh shuts itself in.

It's too poetic.

Curiously, it's poetry. Do expand, my dear.

I've just always wanted to criticize a poem by simply stating the aforementioned. Shits and giggles have been had.

Serious Crits:

1) Using brackets in poetry. It makes it seem like you forgot to mention something the first time around and had to sneak it in. In this situation I think they're unnecessary.

2) "You could be so as well, but I’d say your rib-cage is just that" Sounds conversational and flippant conflicting with the serious emotions you're evoking surrounding this passage.

3) I didn't understand it. The central metaphor of 'Rib-cage' was completely lost on me. When I tried to put the poem into the context of the title, I found I couldn't make heads nor tales of it.

I agree with Logan's #3, but I disagree with #1 - I like the brackets.

This, however:
Sound drifting through recycled air
occupies a certain quantity of sensation
as do the surrounding voices
and the thoughts that whisper through
like electric humming.

WHERE IS THE PUNCTUATION?! Seriously - try reading that aloud; an enter does not a breathe equate.

Also, use of 'progressively'.. it just doesn't scan well and its audibly at a contrast with the softer-sounding tone of the the rest of the poem.

Oh i kinda see the bracket effect now. *crit retract*

Thankies darlings. Too late now, but there will be rewrites in the morning...

Yes,

1) Aforementioned punctuation - perhaps semi-colons or end stopped lines may aid the structure of the poem. Particularly before the parentheses.

2) Diction.

"Into sensation like vanilla perfume
but always seem to set to rot in the end"
The word 'sensation' seems too heavy and emphatic juxtaposed with the light sensuousness of the luxuriant vowel sounds in 'vanilla perfume.'
"Seem to set to rot in the end" - Phrasing; this could be more concise. It seems a bit clumsy.
I find that there are voices that don't quite flow together just yet. There's the colloquial first person voice and there's the omniscient persona. I like the ending, but it seems a bit sudden for the first person to appear. I don't think it necessarily detracts from the rest of the poem however. Perhaps more fluency in the voices would tighten the poem together.

Also, the parentheses you have used are brilliantly crafted. It is as if a whispering voice subliminally elaborates on the central ideas - adding depth to the poem and evoking multi-faceted layers.

It's a poem that needs to be pruned, but it's good stuff.

I still don't understand it.

Me neither.

Hmm perhaps that's why?

No, I understood it when I wrote it. But that was a couple of months ago... mm...

And I'd actually have to concentrate to remember WHY this poem was...

I like how it's ambiguous.

Yes! Ambiguous! That was totally what I was going for!

your mind scares me.

Not just sometimes, but a lot.

I'm glad. <3

Okay, so after several overlookings and pokings with a pointy stick, I've affected some minor changes in the way of flow and punctuation. However, I've added nothing to make it clearer to understand, because I remembered what it was about... ^^o
The entire thing is the avoidance of a central thought - the central thought being allowing the mind to rest too long on the 'You' directed to at the start and end. And everything else - observations (oh yeah, by the way, written on a plane), the sky that high, that weird quality of sound in a plane, these are just things the speaker focuses on to avoid the 'vanilla perfume' thoughts that she knows aren't good for her. And the rib-cage as a theme has a double meaning, the speaker observes that the 'you' is introverted, locked within his own personal space "your rib-cage is just that": a cage for the heart. But also, she is locked within her circumstances, and the circumstances lock him away from her.

So, with that in mind, round two:

You live a life combined of colour
and empty space
and in-between.
While outside, a grey slate wing sky
gets progressively less blue
(memory may be rose-tinted, but my life
is a deeper blue than anywhere else in the world,
the kind you can fall into).
Sound drifting through recycled air
occupies a certain quantity of sensation;
as do the surrounding voices,
and the thoughts that whisper through
like electric humming.

With the banishment of passing fancies,
there is only commune with arbitrary thought
left to garner love of the flitting sense
(flickering sensibility, thoughts that may drift
into sensation like vanilla perfume,
but, they always seem to set to rot in the end).
So, turn thoughts and eyes to the threadbare,
tight-drawn sky
and ground that shows as patches of rust,
the tendrils of cloud dissembling themselves into empty air –
You could be so as well, but I’d say your rib-cage is just that,
like your eyelids
and flesh shuts itself in.

Hell! I can even give you illustrations! XD

Okay, so I didn't specifically get the Rib-Cage bit, but it's always nice to leave something that has to have a little effort to unearth. But I did fully get the overwhelming aura of unrequited schoolgirl crush... Which, while being an unholyly (it's a word now, deal with it) dull subject for poetry, is conveyed eloquently enough... some nice turns of phrase, now just try and talk about something rather than nothing for a change...

I know, but you know what's even worse? Teenagers writing about things they've never experienced. There is nothing more awful... so I stick to my dull reality...