The waves that wax and wane against my feet
and gusts of wind that break upon my beach
recoil as I breathe them deeply in,
then blow them backward, ne'er again to breach.

How strange that I should wield this much control
o'er wind and water, powerful and swift--
For who am I, ungodly human flesh,
To push and pull where others only drift?

I must be dreaming, must be soon awaking.
The realization always seems to rouse.
So fast I cling to sleep, to savor this,
this lucid dream, as long as I can drowse.

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Author guidance for This poem

Everyone is welcome to challenge themselves and add to this. The whole poem must be in iambic pentameter. (If you're unsure exactly what that means, please ask! Or read through the comments here; there are a couple different explanations.) There are no rules on rhyme scheme, number of stanzas, number of lines, or anything other than just: iambic pentameter, however you want to apply it.

The premise of the storyline is pretty simple. In the first chapter, the speaker realizes that she's dreaming, and wants to go enjoy it as long as it lasts, but no matter what she does, she never wakes up. [Edit: Scroll to the bottom for a sort of synopsis of what's happened so far.]

So, throughout the whole poem, she is eternally stuck in a dream. I don't know what she'll do, and where the story will go from there, but that gives us plenty of ideas to write about. If everything is a reflection of her own subconscious, is anything real? What does she do with her life, if it's entirely unreal? Is there any point to it? What are her interpersonal relationships like now? Is there any morality? How does she learn and experience new things, if everything already exists exactly the way she subconsciously believed it would be? And I'm sure you all can come up with lots of other creative ways to explore the idea. I imagine it to be a relatively philosophical narrative, but as for the narrative itself, I have no guidelines.

Bonus fun-- to help with continuity, you get to come up with the title for the chapter that follows yours. That way you can guide the next author along in the direction you think it should go.

That's it! Please add, I've been dying to see something like this done ever since I first joined Protagonize.

[General Synopsis:]
1 - She realizes that she's dreaming because she can sort of subconsciously control the waves of the ocean.
2 - She falls back into a more abstract dream of winter and the changing seasons.
3 - The dream turns into a still-abstract darkness, and she feels a distinct fear.
4 - She sees a light in the darkness and an angel coming to lead her out.
5 - The angel carries her out of the darkness and into a less abstract dream, where he turns out to be a regular (still handsome and angelic!) guy offering to guide her.

updated Aug 9 '10 by Rac7hel