For today’s prompt, write a dead poem. The poem, of course, could be about a dead person, animal, or other formerly living creature. It could be about the undead, I suppose, or facing death. But then, there are things that die too: computers, relationships, feelings. And some folks feel “dead to the world” or just “dead,” though they are alive (it’s an expression). I hope this prompt doesn’t create a series of dead ends.
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Here’s my attempt at a Dead Poem:
“finition”
j’ai termine
my time has come
the world will end
& i’ll be done
the games are played
& now i’m through
j’ai termine
here without you
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community, which means he maintains this blog, edits a couple Market Books (Poet’s Market and Writer’s Market), writes a poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine, leads online education, speaks around the country on publishing and poetry, and a lot of other fun writing-related stuff.
Since he’s on vacation, Robert actually feels alive this week. And he’s the author of Solving the World’s Problems.
Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.
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Master Thespians
And so this is life,
An epic drama.
We are the actors performing our characters.
Now the drama unfolds before us.
One scene makes us lovers,
Another slaves to industry.
Life’s drama creates so many roles.
Too many for us to play.
We scream out in desperation, begging to be set free.
Free to live our lives
By our choice.
Not by some director’s decision.
We seek immunity from this overplayed drama,
Only to find no way out,
Waiting for the grand finale…
Death.
The ending to life’s epic drama.
OPENING DEAD LETTERS
for Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith
Almost 200 years since you crammed
your head with languages, Elihu.
You’re as dead now as Old Norse, Celto-Breton,
Chaldee… fifty tongues you taught yourself,
penniless blacksmith hammering words
into memory as you hammered red-hot iron
into hoe-heads, S-hooks, ploughshares.
An obsession my computer doesn’t grasp.
It won’t give me alphabets for Hebrew,
Cyrillic, or Greek. So I type thalassa, sea,
and imagine you sailing Homer’s waves
as they lapped against the walls of Yale.
Was it poverty or pride that kept you afloat
that winter, as you mastered the Iliad?
And then you gave it all up to study Peace.
So many letters you delivered, Britain
to France, epistles of brotherhood across
the bloody Channel. So many centuries of war,
so many sons of farmers and tradesmen
conscripted for soldiers, dying speechless
on foreign soil. Where does it all end?
Learning to speak the enemy’s
language – its breath-pauses, the drum-
beat meter of its pulse; the halting,
haunting music of its humanity?
altared state
who knew
til death do us part
meant that of
my heart?
.
Building Ties
Chicago.
Family gathers.
Those who passed
are with them.
The dead celebrate with joy.
The ties the living strengthened.
DYING ORCHID
She is not
like a plant you own.
She is wife
and mother.
Like orchids in a hot room,
She will wilt and die.
Because you
can’t see.
Won’t see.
What is before you.
You need help.
I.
fallen leaves
stare up
at spring buds
II.
stilled wings
lie in the grass
breathless butterfly
Beautiful even in death.
How beautiful this is.
Death of Sadness
I learned a certain ache within the soul
Pour red wine on it wonder at the numb
Try singing think about this great big whole
Unholy hole song strikes me deaf blind dumb
Don’t want to hear how bad this life could be
Don’t want to see the lyrics on the page
Don’t want to sing it but I am not free
To voice my choice belonging to the sage
And left alone for dead she deigns to wake
Me up and down I quake I get new glee
Know ecstasy for once and all mistak-
en flaky fears get shaken off like fleas
Not dead I cry embrace her ample sweet
Stroll satisfied on down Forever Street
by gpr crane
on a birthday i catch myself
eating a lemon drop and pounding my chest
in monastic celebration: finally a good and tangy
reason to hate myself. all virtue now lost
and myself too, in the makeup i left caked
in the bench press at the gym.
can’t seem run far enough in the same place
my core desperately engaged
to a straightening out of things,
the belly button pinching breathing
towards my back in an effort to fold the shortbread
and feel nothing
Something compelled me
To contemplate death
To contend with ramifications
Conventionally forgotten.
Coexistence with our souls
Convinced we’re on our own
Yet always owning up to our conscience
On some complex level.
Collaborating with products
Promising controlled aging
Privy to contentment and comfort
Prisms creating contortions
Conveniently provided.
Until death contravenes
With our concept of self
Carried away by convictions
Of continuous youth.
But death greedily converges
Conquering all eventually
Confounding idiots and sages
Confessing nothing of its conquests.
–ShennonDoah
It wasn’t from her
Lack of enthusiasm to see me.
It wasn’t due to her
Neglecting to return my texts.
It wasn’t because she
Didn’t answer my phone calls.
It wasn’t even clear when she
Deleted me from Facebook.
I only realized
she was serious
about breaking up
when she glared
at me and said
in a voice
colder than the slab of granite
beneath which most people
eventually lie,
“You’re dead to me.”
–ShennonDoah
there’s a horizon
under the strands of my hair
far from your deadline
~ Charise Hoge
http://www.mixandmosspoetry.com/
REFLECTIONS ON THE DEAD
AND THE UNDEAD
We rise as one to sing “How Great Thou Art”
I can’t help thinking you’re having us on
I know you planned your funeral down
to the last flower placed, the bows tied
on the pews reserved for family
And the hymns have double-meanings,
of that I’m certain
You, the master punster who named you
child’s bunny, “Rabbit Redford”
and dictated your eulogy to your baby
brother as you lay dying
Telling him it was to be all about laughter
with no weepy bits – you were not about
crying while you breathed;
you’d not have your funeral
about sadness either.
I remember the last time we talked—
it wasn’t that long ago—
You were, after all, less than three months,
diagnosis to death.
After hearing our sad, untenable situation,
I can still hear your disbelieving shriek and
your words, “I’d just die if I couldn’t see my
boys – I don’t know what I’d do. They’re
my world!”
You and your now widowed husband saw
your grandsons almost every day.
Watching your elderly mother having to
say goodbye to yet another one of her
children—she had to bury your second
youngest brother several years ago,
I couldn’t help thinking how convoluted
the world is…
You no longer breathe and your grandsons
will never understand your absence.
Our grandsons probably have no idea
who we are by now; it’s been almost a
year since our banishment from their lives.
We cannot imagine what their parents
told them to explain our sudden
departure from them
but we’re certain they laid the blame
at our feet,
telling them it was our choice to either
go away forever, or that we died.
I grow less angry and bitter all the time
but still struggle with the bewilderment.
It’s hard to grieve the living as I’ve said
numerous times
when you’ve no idea why they choose
to remain dead to you.
I knew I was dead
The movie started
promptly at eight,
in the basement of that
ancient community hall,
a dozen children seated
on folding chairs, eyes
focused on the home movie screen
that too often featured flickering
rivers of black across the picture,
watched as the cougar
silently trailed the footsteps
of the young boy walking
through the deep dark woods,
a shortcut to a home
he would never reach.
Outside, after the movie,
I was met by the blackest
night of the summer ever,
my home and safety being
nearly two blocks away,
the streetlight, normally
too bright for playing
kick the can, was now so dim
I could barely see the ground.
I ran as fast as I could
on the old cracked sidewalk,
along the side of the store building,
past the vacant lot with the old
machinery and weeds grown up,
past four houses with big trees in front.
Out of breath, but safe
on my porch, I looked
back to see if I had been
trailed, like in the movie,
no sign of a cougar anywhere
but the street light
now shone brightly again.
WIMBLEDON WEEK
Frazzled we sweltered,
dazzled we sheltered
as the storm raged
in the sky overhead.
First days of July
were extraordinarily hot.
Dog didn’t like it a lot
and neither did I.
Tennis playing Brits
were cooked to bits
in the deadly heat
and most died in defeat.
Noon of Thought
“The dead of midnight is the noon of thought.” ~Anna Letitia Barbould
The house is quiet except for what I am drawn
to in my unquiet mind.
In that bewitching hour, I find
strange characters, oddly drawn
and loosely defined. I don’t mind.
In fact, I think it’s kind of riveting.
Why? My imagination is pivoting
all around, even though it’s confined solely in my mind.
I can’t put a name to this blivet*-thing that is so riveting
but it’s honestly not in the ‘10-pounds in a 5-pound sack’ annoying sense.
Given the hour, I may be a bit dense
but I must state it once again: it’s really riveting.
And then I sense,
in the next moment, that all the strange characters have withdrawn.
I can’t recapture the feeling, but I won’t dwell on
those make-believe things…Does that make any sense?
Somewhere between two twelves a dawn is drawn
and finally my mind
becomes quiet, sleepy and even resigned.
The house is quiet except that from which I am drawn.
*something indecipherable and often annoying.
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i read this several times and do not quite understand… but it was still a good read… well-captured, the feeling of dread/dead of midnight… enjoyed the rhyming! rusty
Call the hospital
Back from Philadelphia
Just minutes too late
i’m dead on my feet
too many hours standing
and too little sleep
Chipmunk dead for days
Now it is crawling again
With help from maggots
_Sarah
Dead windowsill fly
Takes the spider’s web and flies
Into the trash can
_Sarah
“The dead. But grieve they not.”
by Arash
The dead. But grieve they not.
And tears would drown their rot.
Us that breathe we must grieve.
Us that grieve we should breathe.
Inside I’m dead, shall never weep.
Fearing dreams I never sleep.
In fluid pain, I can’t there float.
Arid land inside would need no boat.
Alone here, dead, my island dry.
The stars are looking blurry bright.
Tonight the stars they cry.
I dipped my toes in their tears from skies
that poured like rain in my own eyes,
into my buried spirit, drowning my rot.
This is quite beautiful…wonderful sounds, rhythms, images, rhyme, repetition!
Thank you Sarah, appreciate it.
Dead Air
It was when the world went dark,
silent, but not still,
like the holding of a breath
during a home invasion,
seven something years ago,
that I was on my way to work,
listening to Dave talk about debt.
It was a day like any other,
but aren’t they always?
I listened to dead air
for thousands of seconds
before I turned it off,
so used to the voices was I–
the voices that made me feel
like I was a part of something more
than just my own life.
I was sharing in the joy of another young couple
paying off more debt than I could make in ten years.
It was August in Florida,
and when I got out of the car,
I felt like I was walking through a steam bath.
I used my cell phone to call my husband,
but there was no signal.
I picked up our landline,
but there was no dial tone.
I turned on the television.
Nothing.
I turned on my computer,
but again,
nothing.
No connection.
Communication was lost.
It was like “The Birds”,
this absence of technology–
like some kind of fog had flown over our town,
creating this quiet chaos.
Without constant communication,
it was like we were asleep,
like in “The Village of the Damned”.
The world as I knew it,
died that day,
but I wouldn’t know it for hours.
I suddenly felt very afraid,
for always before, anyone I loved
was just a phone call away.
When you came home,
you told me there would be no more
electronic communication for a long time,
if ever.
I thought of all my friends on Facebook–
some I couldn’t even remember where they lived,
and I felt they were lost to me forever.
It had been a long time since I’d ever really had to remember anything–
an address,
a phone number,
the meaning of a word.
The newspapers still managed to run,
but gone were the talking heads,
telling me how to think about what I heard.
I think I saw things as they really were for the first time.
Like the veil that we pass through when we’re born,
so that we forget from whence we came,
the veil of instant communication was parted that day,
and then disappeared like the mist.
Neighbors began to meet for coffee,
and there was a resurgence of books and poetry.
I saw teenagers playing outside,
and I rushed inside to grab my camera
to capture that perfect moment.
We began to relearn things we thought we had forgotten:
counting back change, cursive writing,
reaching out first in person without the screen-to-screen icebreaker.
The information superhighway was a pile of virtual rubble.
The news sites were replaced with newspapers,
the e-mail, with a handwritten letter,
for it seemed pointless to sit at a computer,
talking to no one.
I had to ask my husband where to put the addresses,
where to find the stamps.
I spent time looking across to the neighbor’s yard,
and saw children playing—
teenagers, no less.
Suddenly, the world which had seemed so small,
seemed so very large.
The other side of the world was like a dream
I could no longer imagine.
My children have never known a world like the one I had,
and I’m not sure they ever will.
Communication with a text,
a tweet,
is gone.
We speak now with our eyes,
our words,
our gestures;
not in memes,
or in 140 characters or less.
Characters.
It means what it used to mean.
I write a letter now,
the imprint of third-grade cursive
still engraved in my memory;
then I go to dust off the dictionary
to look up a word,
and I see not just the word I searched,
but the next word,
and the next,
until I have gone through all the C’s.
Somehow, a friend of mine found me,
and we managed to locate some of the rest.
Not all of us exchanged letters,
and even those that did began to feel so very far away.
The world I once knew is gone,
but this other world,
where the old has become new again,
is otherworldly.
I try to think when it was I stopped waiting,
hoping for the old way of life to return,
but I can’t remember;
I only know that it isn’t as bad as I would have thought,
for we humans are resilient.
We adjust,
we adapt,
we persevere.
Nicely done, I enjoyed reading your poem.
What was left behind
Your green thumb could coax dead dry husks
To sprout from stale ground – verdant, alive
Our garden was layer upon layer all flowers, vegetables, and green
A passerby would hardly notice the herbs,
The tradeable kind, you dried in the microwave
Most impressive were the long leggy Cosmos and Phlox
Bright explosions – pink purple yellow orange fireworks
Across a backdrop of scarlet runners
Our private hideaway from the always peering
Eyes of looming neighbouring trailers.
We feasted on chard stalks, red purple and clean
Green bean strings, summer ripe tomato bites and
Baby white potatoes. We ate like kings, like queens
So full of these memories, I search for you
Amongst the stalls at the farmer’s market
Certain to see your face between the rows
Like you never left, were never gone.
But no – it is just my mind playing tricks –
Coaxing life from the dead dry remnants of a time
I was left with instead.
-Krina Ulmer
No Outlet
Three years of constant vigilance and considerable funding
finally convinced them to change the signage on his road
from Dead End to No Outlet. He explained,
“I have to think of the future. My three
little daughters will soon read
and date and marry. They
need to grow up with
better words.”
Nice!
I like this.
Just Say No
Opting out of the inevitable
is the especial province
of the young who tinker
with time, impatient to grow up
but blind to the tomb at the end
of life’s shady moldering path.
Even when grandmothers explain
nature’s cycles, the beauty of each
phase from seed to fallen leaf,
the usefulness of rest and rot,
the slow progress of a grand plan,
a natural order and logical outcome—
how old cats lose their spring
and hunker closer to the ground,
white-muzzled and thin, darkness
invading their eyes, old organs
shutting down, the last of nine lives
leaking away with purrs of acceptance,
even as old people—pigment and muscle
fleeing, wearied of constant activity—
age toward momentary or eternal rest,
embraced with joyful acceptance,
life is defined aslant, involving
memory and silent acquiescence.
Transitions are difficult.
After many questions, nods, and frowns,
my small granddaughter shakes her head
rejecting the very concept of death,
of aging, of pain and sickness, of cycles.
“It’s nothing to fear,” I say, barely convinced.
“Everything dies sooner or later; everything
has seasons of rest, sooner or later
to prepare for the next part of its cycle.”
That’s as good as I’ve got, still bitten as I am
with doubts as to the sense of any plan
that requires suffering and discontinuation.
She stares me down, considering.
“No!” she says resolutely.
“That’s crazy! I’m not doing it!”
Perfect, Jane! We can say no.
When you were my heart
I lived, I breathed air.
Now the sun
has forgotten light.
Who traded air for this
cheap imitation?
Bring back daffodils
and crickets
and frogs.
Make weeds grow again
Give snakes their hiss.
Grow webs where they belong.
I would take all bad things
and the rest restored,
if I only had you again.
Revelation
This morning in the bathroom mirror
I saw
this slightly familiar woman
standing where I should
have been
wearing a short pink robe, are they still called
dusters (I’m so easily distracted) I wonder
as I take inventory of all that’s wrong
with this woman staring at me in my own bathroom
what poor clothing choices she has made
with that green nightgown collar showing
and the nightgown arms longer than the robe’s
and the colors clashing
such an outfit my mother would wear hurrying out
with the trash when she heard the truck turn the corner
while I said, Mama, you just need a bunch of cats to
make that outfit complete, and she’d smile like she
knew a secret
smile like the woman in the mirror when she realized
her middle age was dead.
Ooh, I know what you mean! Wonderful poem, Reatha.
Thank you, Sara.
This is great, poignant, on point.
Necrophilia
When I move, or set your hand on places where
my skin aches to be touched,
like a petulant child, you turn to face the wall—
muttering how you can’t do anything right.
Your organ immediately soft, unwilling,
and nothing I can do to revive your desire
as you roughly push my mouth away—
angry, yet not allowing me to provide a solution.
I thought it was an ego thing,
and so over time I stopped moving
while you copulated with me;
stopped asking for what I wanted,
to let you feel manly in your conquest of me.
I’ve come to realize it was not your ego,
but your love of death,
that disrupted our love-making.
To feel alive, you needed me to feel dead.
You needed me unresponsive, incapable of rejecting you.
My words of affection and love — never enough;
my silence in bed more arousing.
You wanted to fuck a corpse… but I’m not dead.
Although, my God, how close it came to that.
Burnt to ash
scattered by the wind
no stone tribute
to mar the land
nature accepts
her dead.
Very nice!
The Death of Civility
Remember when manners
were King & Queen of the prom
and they danced to polite applause
all night long?
Remember when Thank You
was the standard of the day,
and you never tired of hearing it
no matter how many times it played?
Remember when Smile
ruled over Scorn
and we never shied away
from tooting someone else’s horn?
Society has changed.
I feel sad for newborns.
“Manners not included”
their operating manual warns.
So true, Joseph.
🙂
The Yellow Flowerpot
i lie on my back curled into the bottom of the yellow flower pot
how long have i been lying here i cannot say as my brain quit
the minute i died and left the scene my body dried
i lie upside down in a yellow flower pot when living
i led a secret life stealth was my trade so good at my job
no one noticed when I dropped into the pot
without a sound lying on my back curled in the bottom
of the yellow flower pot
Don’t Mess With Me
I’m not somebody you can crush like a bug
Don’t get any funny ideas
Don’t try and sweep me under the rug
That’s not a panacea
When you least expect it, I’ll take a stand
and show you precisely what I’m made of
If you’ve lost all faith, then place your bet
You may have written me off, but I ain’t dead yet
I enjoyed your poem. Such interesting and driving rhythm throughout that punctuates each thought and line. I hope you don’t mind my saying this…and I could be terribly wrong …but I was thinking you could keep your rhyming pattern in the last two couplets by exchanging “what I’m made of” with “the cards in my hands.” Again, please ignore this if you find it rude or ignorant…it’s just that I really liked your poem and wanted to share this idea with you.
Oh, I appreciate your comments vey much, Sarah. Your suggestion is a better fit. Sometimes I rush things too much and wish I’d take a breath and spend more time on them. Thank you very much for taking the time comment. I get inspiration from you & all the poets here, and every comment helps.
Lights Out
Abandoned dreams
lay buried
in unmarked graves
Nobody wants them displayed
Well done, Joseph!
Love the image and feel your poem evokes.
I agree.
This is wonderful, Joseph!
Thank you so much!
This is great!