By: Rob Walker
State: South Australia
Country:
Clearview.
The earth's circumnavigated the sun
once
Since your heart stopped
Beating.
Aimlessly I wander the circular paths.
Lost.
The kind lady proffers directions and a colourful
Brochure.
You'd have approved of the sharp repro.
"All burial memorials are set flush with the
lawns."
No heaven-pointing verticality
here.
The lawn has grown back over the worst of my
Griefscars.
I miss your sense of humour
mostly.
Like a man in a cemetery
Two black ants wander aimlessly across
Your black marble
Desert
It looks like four.
The biggest reconnoitres the
terrain
of your blockletter-chiselled
name
His feet touching the inverted
feet
of his reflection in the alternate
cosmos.
The blackmirrored barrier between parallel
Universes
Like you and me, infinitely close,
unable to connect.
They mow on Tuesdays.
The smaller ant scavenging
pollen from a withering daisy which escaped the
scythe.
You'd approve of the recycling.
Elsewhere, Life and Death go on
Bored gravediggers use a Kubota backhoe in Fischer-Price colours
Spades are anachronistic-
dig?
We could wordplay all day here,
Linds.
A cemetery is such fertile ground
for humour..
The last grieving party of the day has left.
The astro-turf has been rolled up..
You must be pissing yourself looking up at these poor bastards who have
to mow your resting place
for Eternity.
Copyright © Rob Walker, 2000
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Comments: I really liked it up until the final stanza, which put me off a bit.
I think that one word detracted terribly from the power of the poem.
There's a time and a place for everything, and I think this wasn't the time or the place.
The last stanza reminded me more of a little boy saying dirty words in church, just for the shock value.
Name: RhymeMaster
EMail: rhymer01@thewritersnook.com
Comments: Classic and elegant, in it`s portrayal of grief.
Name: phattkat
Comments: RhymeMaster- Thanks for your comments. Perhaps Americans have more religious sensibilities than Aussies..
"Poor bastards" is almost a term of endearment & "pissing yourself laughing" would offend few here.
It's the kind of thing my brother would have said in life, so I doubt if he would be offended in death.
I speak from the heart- if it offends others I don't care much.
Rob
Name: Rob Walker
EMail: walker5@one.net.au
Comments: Now, Rob, I didn't say it offended me, I said it "put me off". I have heard about everything one could possibly hear in a lifetime,
and very little offends me in that way. What I said was that, to me, it detracted from the rest.
I always say what I think and many don't like it. I did not, however, say that I didn't like the writing here,
only that I was "put off" by the language at the end which seemed to me to detract from an otherwise nearly perfect poem.
I don't feel that that was a slam at all, only a statement of fact as I see it.
Name: RhymeMaster
EMail: rhymer01@thewritersnook.c
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