I write poetry about taking naps because I'm an intellectual....

So I was tasked with writing a poem.  Not too bad, because I do that for fun normally.  But then my professor decided to open my mind a little bit and she said our poem had to be a pantoum, which totally threw me off.
Anywho...
The basic idea of a pantoum is that you repeat the same line (or general idea of that line) in different stanzas, and it makes the whole thing nice and continuous.  It doesn't have to rhyme, and the letters here correspond to lines and not to patterns of rhyme.

A
B
C
D

B
E
D
F

E
G
F
H

G
C (or something new, if you want to keep going)
H
A (or something new, if you want to keep going)

The idea that popped into my head immediately after being given this assignment was a snotty little poem about how I don't like using specific forms and rules to write poetry.  But then I realized how ridiculously arrogant and childish  that would sound (and how absurd that attitude is for someone who is in college to learn creative writing)..........
So I put it away, and then returned to the idea a few days later, at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, when I felt in dire need of a nap.  I wrote the following pantoum

Beneath the eyelids—

a time spent in stasis,

blissfully unaware

of the noises in the hall.

A time spent in stasis,

immune to the scurrying world

and the noises in the hall—

drowning in comfort.

Immune to the scurrying world,

hidden from the light,

drowning in comfort—

it’s a secret world.

Hidden from the light,

blissfully unaware,

in my secret world

beneath the eyelids.

Actually, that's not true.  I just finished re-writing pretty much the entire thing, and I like it a lot better now.  The only line I don't like is the first and the last - "eyelids" is a little freaky and awkward, because it reminds me of a scene from The Haunting in Connecticut where the eyelids of dead bodies get cut off.  And if that isn't graphic enough for you I even found a picture!

ewwieeee
so I'll probably change it again to something more along the lines of "consciousness".  At first it was something about blankets, but then that sounds like I'm talking about something entirely different.

"Consciousness" gives a light to these words other than what I had originally intended.  What's most powerful about naptime, at least for me, is being awake enough to appreciate how warm and snuggly you are.  You can't really do that if you're asleep.  If I started off like that it would feel more like a third party is telling this story/experience, not the person who's napping.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just something I hadn't anticipated.  Yeah, let's go with "consciousness"...or at least some variation of it.

I'll be back eventually with a new-and-improved version of the first and last lines.  But that most likely won't be for a while.  Unless of course I get inspired while pulling my static-y laundry out of the dryer...