Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Pride, Death, and Guilt

She lies there amongst
the wet
dirt and yellow grass

Beneath the willow tree
the branches dance.
No music to hear,
only rhythm of the
breeze from the
flapping of their wings.

On bended knee he kneals
"NO MORE", he yells.
Day to day I dread
the falling of their heads.
Trench upon trench their
bodies stacked, like
flapjacks, endless till
ones content.

2 comments:

Becky said...

This is going to sound very random, but your poem reminds me of the poem about Lady Elaine "The Lady of Shalott". The first stanza is what brought it to mind, and that parallel continued for me up into the third stanza line 2 where I felt some Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven". Sounds odd, but this is what I thought of. This poem is so ominous that it draws you in and makes you feel so alone. It makes me think of how callused humans are because of the way you say "bodies stacked, like / flapjacks". You've put stacks of corpses on the same level as a common breakfast item, as if they are so common place that people have no feeling toward them anymore. This makes me think about things and I just really like that it does. Good work.

johnc said...

I don't know if this was your point at all but your poem completely reminded me of a war. The line in the last stanza is what really made me think of this, especially the line "trench upon trench their bodies stacked, like flapjacks," brilliant by the way. It reminded me of middle '90s Bosnia or WWI with the concept of a mass grave. I also really liked the way in which you broke from a traditional step by step narrative in the second stanza, it completely changed what I thought the poem was about while it again facilitated my image of war, "no music to hear...flapping of their wings" it brought the image of airplanes to mind. Also, I enjoyed the way in which you broke your lines. The line " no music to hear," really added to the poems sense of loneliness. Good job with this little guy..keep up the good work.