Angel Wings
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I am the sole survivor
of the red heat that swarmed into our town
seventy years ago, before the bugles
cracked in stunned abandonment,
before the streets collapsed from the insanity
of kinsmen running like yahoos with liquid skin
pooling around their knees, eyeballs bulging from
the simple physics of expansion.
My business is words, yet there is none
left to explain the vast
penumbra of white amber black.
I am the sole survivor,
I am alone with the dead.
Scraping congealed veins and muscles
in strips, off cobble stones on streets where
I had my first kiss, my second, my third --
then rinsing them in a soup of lye and thyme.
I hurl sated buckets over the bridge like
showers of red roses trailing a bride's veil.
From our withered hearts, perhaps
a mass murderer lurks, waiting to strike,
waiting to dig his bloody chipped claws
into an artery, sever with a flick of his --
I am the sole survivor,
trapped in a deconstructed armoire,
devious splinters reaching into hell
to raise fire and brimstone to my knee.
The sea is a boiling crimson,
while vultures watch the skies hungrily
with their putrid beaks. They mourn for what
is denied to them: the scent of decay
steeping in rot. They stuff promises
in my mouth and cackle as I vomit
them out onto my feet.
I am the sole survivor,
but penance will come in time:
I fasten crude leather straps
on blistered, mangled limbs,
draw bloody curlicues on waxened feather sheaths.
On my angel wings -
protruding in stark relief - I rub
salve dangerously, with simmering intent.
As I stood tightly at the precipice,
throwing my hair back as my last act of defiance:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew
before his fall. It is the same when love fails,
and breaks Atlas's courageous back.
I may have come to the end of my triumph,
but this will not be my failing:
In falling, I savour flight's sweet delight.
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Something I wrote half a year ago. -
Nice
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peebrain, you painted a very stark picture of a post-apocalyptic world.
good images, and the tone of the poem, dark and angry.
It reminds me of a poem by Lenore Kendall on how the dark forces kill the angels. Not pretty, but engrossing reading.
correct me if i'm off tangent.
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I love the images... so vivid that I almost believed you have witnessed the napalm scorching of Vietnamese villages or the bombing of Hiroshima....
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delightfully sad poem
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Hmm....
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I thought this piece has a rather prideful tone to it. I find it hard to interprete exactly what each stanza is trying to say. But I'm pretty sure the subject matter is love.
I'll try.
Narrator is sole survivor because N has not lost control like the kinsmen. Thus begins the journey. In the second, N is left to pick up the pieces. I really can't make out what the mass murderer reference means. In the third stanza, N's despiration manifest themselves as vultures. In the fourth and fifth, N stands proud and unfazed, although seemingly wounded, and now N proclaims to be unafraid and is determined enjoy the falling.
Of course I could be way off, and sounding very foolish.
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Sorry I wasn't able to reply earlier. Deadlines have a knack of putting non-work stuff by the wayside.Originally posted by Bluesky_Liz:I thought this piece has a rather prideful tone to it. I find it hard to interprete exactly what each stanza is trying to say. But I'm pretty sure the subject matter is love.
I'll try.
Narrator is sole survivor because N has not lost control like the kinsmen. Thus begins the journey. In the second, N is left to pick up the pieces. I really can't make out what the mass murderer reference means. In the third stanza, N's despiration manifest themselves as vultures. In the fourth and fifth, N stands proud and unfazed, although seemingly wounded, and now N proclaims to be unafraid and is determined enjoy the falling.
Of course I could be way off, and sounding very foolish.
I wrote this poem with a specific image in mind: Angel wings -- the shoulder blades of one's back. From there, the piece evolved to a post-apocalyptic exposition where I imagined a world so steeped in chaos, the only thing that makes sense any more is one's individuality, defiance and strength of spirit.
That said, all of your interpretations make sense -- that's the beauty of poetry, innit?
Love, like Liz said, represents the ultimate loss of control. It wields the potential to destroy as profoundly as it fills a person with immense courage to face the unknown.
This poem alludes to that, for sure. But it is my aim (when I wrote this) to paint a picture that has its beginnings in abject desolution and bleakness, and ends with a salient triumph and optimism -- however small it is -- to remind us that there is light at the end of the tunnel.