Analysis of 20 YEARS IN HELL(?)
There was a time starting in ‘68
A time I still remember well,
When through no real fault of my own
I spent twenty years in a living Hell.
A monster we named Muggsly
Had somehow trapped us in his lair,
Like a spider with its sticky web
He kept us tightly in his snare.
We worked from, ‘Can’t see in the morning,’
Until, ‘Can’t see at night,’
Slaves to this evil crawling fiend
Held there by our own fright.
We knew no way to escape him
Our future seemed forlorn,
Until one day in 1976
When our hopes became reborn.
With the help of John and Jock
We loaded up all of our stuff,
And fled for fear of being caught
While Muggsly was sotting in the pub.
Then with our hopes renewed
Denise, Mum, and I settled in Yarraville,
Ecstatic to at last be free
Merely being alive had become a thrill.
Then in the 1990s, I was shocked
When I took time to calculate,
And found that the time we lived in hell
Wasn’t 20 years ... just eight!
THE END
© Copyright 2021, Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Scheme | ABXB BCXC XDXD XEAE XXXX XBXX XFBF XXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101100 01110101 11111111 1110100101 010111 1111011 101011101 11110011 111110010 011111 11110101 1111011 11111011 1010101 01110 11010111 1011101 110111101 01111101 1111001 1110101 011011001 01011111 10100110101 1001111 1111110 011011101 1111 01 101010 100100010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 982 |
Words | 193 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 31 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 96 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
About this poem
One of four linked poems about my father's madness. The other three are: Witchery, The Great Escape, and The Story of Hell House. Witchery is the best, but hardest to understand of the four.
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Written on January 09, 2009
Submitted by PHIL_ROBERTS on June 30, 2021
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 57 sec read
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"20 YEARS IN HELL(?)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/103848/20-years-in-hell%28%3F%29>.
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