Analysis of 20: Incubus
I changed in the night
after two years of happiness
or something like it
one year of purgatory
I wanted you when you didn't want me.
Now it feels like the end of a dream,
the breaking of a spell,
the beginning of a reality.
Visited in the night by a thing, a thought,
a girl who wanted to travel, you could picture her looking ethereal,
worldly,
writing books in strange places, happy
married--but not to you
living--but not this life.
Not in a town where dreams go to die.
But as I made myself closer, I was trapped instead, bound eternally.
I'm in love--but not with you.
Visited in the night by a man
that I wanted who didn't exist.
Because I should have ceased years ago.
People look younger when they died in a past life.
Do I think about it?
Every day--visited by a secret, a sad truth
I can't.
But visions can carry you away.
| Scheme | ABCDDEFDGHDDIJKDILMNJCOPQ |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | Tetractys (36%) |
| Metre | 11001 10111100 11011 111100 1101111011 111101101 010101 00101010 10000110101 0111011011100100100 10 101011010 101111 101111 100111111 11111101110110100 1011111 100001101 111011001 011111101 101101110011 111011 10011001010011 11 110110101 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 832 |
| Words | 175 |
| Sentences | 12 |
| Stanzas | 1 |
| Stanza Lengths | 25 |
| Lines Amount | 25 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
| Words per line (avg) | 6 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 639 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 159 |
About this poem
I'll just keep the one I had in 2015. "Two years of happiness" would actually put me at twenty--this may have been written in the small TV room upstairs while I lived with my friend. I feel like I used the term incubus (a sex demon) because I had imagined a future where I traveled and wrote and felt guilty for thinking about it while I moved down a different path with my fiance. I also felt guilty for wanting both--dreaming about the future or feeling optimistic about my current path--because I was never supposed to live to be this old and have to make these decisions. Years ago, I had bought an old dictionary of superstitions from a thrift store and read that people who look young had died young in a previous life. (Coming of Age - K. D. Kilker) Years of handwritten poetry and stories will be typed for safekeeping online following a technological failure in 2013. I am currently twenty-one and the pieces range from the age of fourteen to nineteen. They may not be good, but they are revealing. #dream #suicide #future #dreams #reality #incubus #reflection #20 #twenty more »
Written on May 01, 2015
Submitted by kristenk.36568 on April 08, 2023
Modified by kristenk.36568 on April 08, 2023
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"20: Incubus" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 16 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/155759/20%3A-incubus>.
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