Between the lines of no more

At the poetry dump
seagulls rummage
through lines discarded,
a verse blows in the wind
torn from its moorings,
the critics hungrily
chew on the remaining carcass
spare ribs on the menu.
Readers get a glimpse
the heart still beating
the meaning lost
a hit and run
only blood stains left
while the spine
to be fossilised reads
“Poem remains rest here.”

Reviews

[Vol]

Andrew,
Boneyards everywhere you look, some fractured, some strewn so you never know the source, stuck in mud... petrified.
Vol

[D. Mansfield]

The carcasses lay all over house. In my brain, on pieces of paper stuck to floor mats. Not an easy thing being poetry waste.

[Kane Hagwood]

Dang, this hits close to home somehow. Perhaps its my own understanding of the work, but this really reflects to me the status of the soul of poets and writers everywhere. All of us trying to put our heart on display, for our own reasons, only to have the world come along and decide its monetary value.

"....the critics hungrily chew on the remaining carcass. Spare ribs on the menu."
To me, this line feels like "You know, you're looking at the WRONG place if you're trying to find value. Have you considered the heaping mound of worth in which my words hold? No? Yeah, just devour it then for you own needs I suppose. Tear it apart until the reason it was written was forgotten.

And even then, in some strange way, the little ending bit of the poem gave me an odd comfort. "Poem remains rest here" feels to me like "Even if many miss the meaning, the memory of it survives, to those who look hard enough.

Hopefully I didn't go TOO far off the page on that one. Thank you for this heartfelt poem :)

[andrew mitchell]

Thank you for an epic review Kane.

[Kane Hagwood]

You're very welcome, and it was a pleasure to write said review!