Rubicon – dVerse Open Link Week 122

Here’s my latest entry into the dVerse Open Link – why not take a look at all of the other wonderful responses?

Please don’t panic – despite the tone of the poem, it isn’t a reflection of how I feel. Offline, I am writing dystopian fiction, so I was pondering how a particular set of characters might feel in this world that I have created for them. This piece came from there, nowhere else.

Let me know what you think…

*****

– Rubicon –

Render me empty,
Sackclothed and dull
Darker than ditchwater
Coated in oil, rainbow-hued surface
Hidden depths that boil,
As I blunder, lamed, from crisis to fall
Render me empty
Sackclothed and dull

Render me hollow,
Empty my skull
Vacuous, ransacked
Littered with spoil, nutrients stolen
My still waters roil
As I falter, blinded, beleaguered, I fall
Render me hollow,
Empty my skull

Render me soulless,
Eviscerated, null
Grey, empty, mourning
Exhausted with toil, eyes bloodshot red
From life, I recoil
As I stumble, burdened and buried, I fall
Render me soulless
Eviscerated, null

Stand – dVerse Meeting the Bar

This week’s dVerse prompt was too good to miss – beat poetry fascinates me, although I’ve never tried to write any, until now!

I hope you enjoy this – it was written on the fly!

– Stand –

To the best of my ability
Is not the same as theirs or yours
We are not measuring sticks
By which to compare each other’s achievements
Or to shame another into thinking –
“I’m no good”.
Who has given you, him, her or me
The right to decide, to sit as
judge, jury and executioner of
another’s soul?
On what pedestal do the rest of us
have the right to sit, point a finger and proclaim –
“You’re no good”?

Undertow – dVerse Meeting the Bar

– Undertow –

I stand and stare at you
in the moments after you stop living;
there are no more words to say to you,
under my breath.
I can no longer pretend or hope or believe or pray
that you can hear me,
that you can smile somewhere deep inside
at the sound of my voice,
and be glad that I’m with you
at the end.
I resent you for it;
for not saying goodbye,
for cutting free so unilaterally.

*****

So, for me, an unsurprising choice this week, when we are invited to write about the difficult or spicy subjects that we tend to swerve, given half the chance. Death yet again is my theme. The death of my dad. Today in particular has been pretty bad. There’s no rhyme, no reason for it. That’s grief, I guess. Tomorrow will be different, I know.

You can read and discover many more slices of life right here.