Forcing myself to write poetry actually worked for once (I also wrote this on a caffeine high.)
Our Day was Murder
, old boy, he said. It was
my sunny pal Wordsworth
with tortured lines on the muted bark
of a hemlock tree, each daffodil
pulled up through his throat like nails
hammered backwards in a dead wood coffin.
It was murder
, sighs Keats with a faraway eye and the sap
from his lungs trickling through his mouth. With
one last convulsion he spits it out: Our day our day
was Murder.
Outside the trees are wheezing their leaves
and nodding at the days of dawn:
the early rise of black smog. Then
, murder was sooner a dream,
yore nightmare than mundanity.
Each wilting torn-down trampled life
had not then needed to coddle
itself in the swathe of wish-wash laws
and the modern imitations of
Romanticism.
Now they find voice again
in Percy, Byron and Poe.
And sorrowful do we read
in our childhood education, in
our hypocrisy and study:
Our day was Murder, my friend,
my muzzled drowning reader,
But at least, they say, at least
We never saw your end.
And so weeping, the trees are turning,
and rustling, with their mourn:
"Their day was Murder, and Accursedly
it only carries on!
--
Our Day was Murder
, old boy, he said. It was
my sunny pal Wordsworth
with tortured lines on muted bark,
each daffodil hammered up through his throat
like backward nails in a dead wood coffin.
It was murder
, sighs Keats with a faraway eye and the sap
from his lungs trickling. With one last convulsion
he spits it out: Our day our day was Murder.
Outside the trees were wheezing their leaves
and nodding at the days of dawn:
the early rise of black smog.
And sorrowful do we read
in our childhood education,
Percy, Byron and Poe:
"Our day was Murder, oh Reader dear Reader,"
a warning e'er scorned!
And so weeping, the trees are turning,
and rustling, with their mourn:
"Their day was Murder, and Accursedly
it only carries on!