Analysis of The Life Unlived

Jeremy S. Turner 1980 (Mountain View, Arkansas)



The life unlived is the dream deferred.
It does not resemble a withered piece of fruit
or the gross images of draining sores,
rotting meat, or pent-up postal worker
explosions.  It will never crust over.

The dream deferred is an ordinary man
driving to work, shuttling the kids to school,
who, when he sits alone on the edge of his marriage bed, removes his wedding band and remembers
the boy he used to be and the boy he feared to love.


Scheme XXXAA XXXX
Poetic Form
Metre 01110101 111010010111 1011001101 1011111010 0101110110 0101111001 10111000111 111101101111010111010010 0111110011111
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 438
Words 86
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 5, 4
Lines Amount 9
Letters per line (avg) 38
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 173
Words per stanza (avg) 41

About this poem

A gay man's riff on a Langston Hughes classic.

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Submitted by jeremyt.40101 on June 30, 2023

25 sec read
106

Jeremy S. Turner

I am a forty-three year old gay man with degrees in English Literature and Theatre. I live in rural Arkansas near the town of Mountain View. I live life for my beautiful nieces and nephews and my cat. more…

All Jeremy S. Turner poems | Jeremy S. Turner Books

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