Brutal Editor
kill your darlings
Ego, Iago: give it a fucking rest.
Will you
kill your darlings?
I put the heads of mine
on pikes, dead faces on display:
a bloody smile here, the glare
of incompetent hatred there,
a dead-clever sly wink
permanently poised
in mockery. I’ll freeze
them all in time, put Chaucer’s
portrait gallery to shame,
channel Michelangelo,
show the world the worst
I’ve seen, put it in
a poem
a story
a play
then viciously biopsy the bitches,
(kill your darlings)
cut their damn heads off
with a rusty sword that’s forgotten
what a whetstone sounds like,
scraping . . .
remove the feigned innocence
for all time,
keep corruption
out of my work:
isolate them.
Impale empty heads.
Mount them
like flags upon my
parapet,
a warning:
the queen of hearts
resides behind this wall.
Off with their trespassing heads,
one and all.
Charge forth
storm the drawbridge
(careful you don’t lose
a few soldiers in the moat)
with unearned judgement,
decorate my wall
after I
kill your darlings.
About the Creator
Harper Lewis
Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing!
Intrusive rhyme bothers me, except as a weapon.
Intertextuality is my passion.
Formalist/ New Critical are my guiding theories.
My words are mine, not a robot’s.
MA English literature, CofC
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