A man with a bottle enters the door--
Yells in anger, but the voices and I
Laugh together in a timed burst
(though I don't know why).

The familiar music plays; it is their--
No, it is MY anthem--for I know
Them all, their lives (a baby cries)
Probably more than I know my own.

Mary--the melodramatic one--said
She would die; Jerry could not love her.
I laughed: she cried so pitifully and
Spoke so ill (is that yell my neighbor?).

I know all their birthdays, their
Memories (Sarah and I got sick together);
Jessie, Evan--oh, Sandra and Johnny--
I swore they'd be married forever.

A song, some words--the hour is over.
A man with a bottle enters the door--
Yells in anger, but I run in fear;
The voices are not laughing anymore.

This was an experiment in a new style for me, and it was hastily thrown together in between my classes. I posted this on PoetsAlley, and I got back comments that I pretty much expected.

• "I think you have the foundation for a really good poem here. The biggest thing it could benefit from is more imagery. You say in the 2nd stanza that you know these people's lives better than your own so you need to show their stories to us. I got no real sense of any of them. I thought the meter was fine though and welcomed the line breaks and parentheses as well placed pauses."
• "I do like the topic you have chosen to begin. I think there needs to be more links between the different characters you introduce and especially to increase the imagery surrounding them. I just feel that we, the viewer, should be drawn in, in the same way that the narrator is. Otherwise it becomes just a series of names. I like the ending, it is good and strong."