Gusty

In memory, everyone is immortal...

The reapers have gathered on the hillside
a dark, soft mass
speaking in hushed tones
raising scythes
preparing
again
for decent…

It's as though we'd gathered at her wake
three years before she died
A single mother
struggling to grow two children
never enough money
never enough time
drowning sorrows in cough medicine
and powdered dreams

Everything seemed to go wrong
as a rule of thumb…
she'd tattooed on her n*****s

Intrinsic fate always at odds with entropy,
she'd stay up late
echoing the apartment with the staccato rhythm
of earth-bent fingers on yellowing keyboard

Sex, for her, was a way of life
a plaything
neon yellows and greens blister packed
buzzing and straining
against the polymer
of her thin-stretched life

It's a shame…
we watched her die a little every day
and never lit the funeral pyre

Among so many lights,
we never noticed the loss of gleam
from one that strained against the reaper's wind

… pitching the last cigarette butt,
shouldering the solemn weight
of folded steel and bone-light wood,
the reapers sigh
pause

descend
 

Reviews

[Emily Rose]

This is amazingly well written, but I assume you already know that. You use just enough imagery to make it convincing, and not quite enough to tell the whole story. I really love the ambiguity, too. Normally I'd make a chiding comment about using only minimal punctuation (usually it really bothers me when an author throws in two or three periods and a comma but has no good reason for leaving out all the rest of the punctuation) but your markings fit very well, and I especially like the absence of the period at the end - it forbids closure. I would critique this work, but I cannot - anything I say would be too trivial to mention. You've done an excellent job.

[CLUTZ]

i like the rhythm. you probably already know this but you're a great writer.

[Orlando Murcia]

I like this poem a lot bro , it has a lot of feeling to it. Keep up the good work

[Raef C. Boylan]

"preparing
again
for decent�" [descent?]

There's fondness, concern and caring here; if you'd read this at the funeral, you might have been washed away in a tsunami of tears. I think there's some self-blame here too, for not taking enough notice or not letting her know that you/you all cared -

"It's a shame�
we watched her die a little every day
and never lit the funeral pyre".

If there's a message to be taken from this, it's to show appreciation for people when they're alive, to let them know...instead of waiting until they've died, because the narrator of this piece seems full of regret and remorse. I wish I could read a poem like that to my family at Friday's funeral, without getting lynched, because they turned against my uncle for several years, and only came back to 'make peace' when they knew he was dying. I don't understand how people can claim hate, yet forgive and grant love in death.
WTF sums it up pretty well.

Good poem JR. You allow us a glimpse of her as she was then, and how you felt then.
It's bleak and emotionally affecting.