Mornings — Poem analysis

My teeth are white My coller is blue You forgot to feed me So I hate you

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

Four short lines, and a whole relationship goes sour before breakfast. "Mornings" is spoken by someone who has been left hungry. The speaker is most likely a pet, judging by the collar and the helpless "feed me", though the poem never names an animal. What looks like a throwaway complaint turns out to be a compact study of dependence: when you rely entirely on someone else, one lapse can turn trust into resentment.

The construction is a small lesson in pacing. The first two lines are twins: "My teeth are white / My coller is blue." Each has the same pattern of possessive, noun, verb and adjective, so they read like an inventory, or the details on an identity tag. The speaker introduces itself through its body and its belongings, and both are in good order. Then the grammar swings outward: "You forgot to feed me." The "My" of the opening gives way to "You" and "me", and the other person enters the poem for the first time as the one at fault. The last line, "So I hate you," ends on the pronoun that has just been blamed, so the poem closes with a pointing finger.

Sound does much of the work. The lines are short and loosely two-beat, close to a chant or nursery rhyme, with stresses falling roughly on TEETH, WHITE, COLler, BLUE, forGOT, FEED, HATE. Only the second and fourth lines rhyme, "blue" with "you", leaving "white" and "me" unmatched. That rhyme is quietly clever. A collar is what ties an animal to its owner, and the rhyme ties the collar to the person being addressed. I'd suggest this hints at a loyalty that the final line denies: the speaker can only hate someone it belongs to. The misspelled "coller" adds to the effect, giving the text an unedited, spontaneous voice, though we cannot tell whether the spelling is deliberate.

The key words are carefully chosen. "Forgot" matters most. The speaker doesn't say "refused" or "starved", only forgot, so the offence is neglect rather than cruelty. The injury is not being thought of, which makes the reaction comically out of proportion and also oddly true. Then comes "So", a tiny logical connective that presents hatred as a tidy conclusion, with the flat reasoning of a creature for whom hunger is the only argument. "Hate" itself is a blunt single syllable, with no "a little" or "sometimes" to soften it. The plural title also deserves attention. "Mornings" suggests a habit rather than a single incident, so the grievance may be a recurring one. The name given as the poet's, "No1UCareAbout", can be read as "no one you care about", which echoes the theme of being overlooked, though nothing tells us whether that was intended.

The two images do double duty. White teeth suggest health and good care, which sits oddly beside the accusation of neglect. Perhaps this is a speaker who is usually looked after, which would make the one failure sting more. But teeth are also weapons, and placed just before the word "hate" they read as a faint threat, so the display could be a grin or a snarl. The blue collar may also carry an echo of "blue-collar", the working world of early starts, though that is a possible reading and not a certain one.

The poem's significance lies in how much it does with so little. It never explains, apologises or resolves. We get no breakfast and no reconciliation, only the moment of anger, and the reader must imagine what comes next. Its dark humour comes from the gap between the tiny cause and the huge word, yet the feeling underneath is one everyone recognises: the irritability of hunger, and the sharp hurt of being forgotten by someone who is supposed to care. In under twenty-five words, the poem shows that need and anger can sit very close together, and that the loudest accusations often come from those who are most attached.

Read also

More by No1UCareAbout

All poems
CheerfulNo1UCareAbout

Play time

Roses are black Vilots are black I am a dog I am color blind
CheerfulNo1UCareAbout

When you get home

It's been so boring I'm so glad that you're here! Wait, you have to leave tomorrow? That should have been clear