My Most Hated Poem

A/N:

Have you ever had a piece of work you absolutely hated, but can't seem to get rid of? This unfinished poem is that, for me. Something about it feels like I was trying to WRING artwork out of myself during last years Vocal summer poetry challenge. Forced rhyming couplets, strained prose.

But there is SOMETHING beautiful here. I don't know if I'll ever finish it...Why don't you? Finish it how you would! I would love to hear your voice. Let it rip!

--Woe unto me—
the sharpest devils
are like rocks with jagged edge,
and my feet catch on the pebbles.

Deaf and blind,
I surely tread.

We are a people on a beachhead,
at a party we're invited,
but the rocks beneath the surf
are like the reefs the foam benighted.

As sailors in their ignorance
were dashed upon the bay—
a feast for ravens,
and a spectacle
for the demons of the cay.

Scarlet clouds dance on the sand,
calling up Atlantic verse:
a breeding ground of atrophy,
melancholy and perverse.

The seabirds,

cawing and uniting,
with their shadows coalescing,
circle high above the heat,
and with their wings
the heat arresting.

Ochre shadow falls
upon the stretch
of Michael’s hands.

When he argued with the devil,
he made the angels understand:

the matters smaller
than the least
of all the shells upon the coast

are greater than the hottest star
that burns all who dare approach.--