A Pyre for the Gods
Mortality slides down her throat...
a shattered glass cocktail
that leaves her lips the flavor of defeat.
Even through eyelids painted opaque,
she can still see her childhood gods
in the blood that pulses behind them.
They are the falling- the fallen
soldiers of the war we have all been fighting against
from the time the bullet of our first breath ripped through us.
Figures once majestic, strong, tangible
are now lying at her feet
as sallow, weak, ungraspable shadows,
waiting for the winds to carry them away.
How does one ease the suffering
of her heroes, her saviors?
How does she pick up the pieces of the infallible?
Where does a broken little girl bury her creators?
Perhaps she will not give them to the Earth after all...
maybe she'll build them a funeral pyre out of her own bones,
allowing a part of her soul to be freed,
danced away from the world by their crematory smoke.
What does she do with the crushing weight that lays on her chest?
She dreams that she is pushing it down...
squeezing it past her sternum, through her rib cage,
past her belly, and between her hips.
She lets her thick iron prison of grief and confusion
crawl down her legs, into her feet,
and waits for it to sink below the ashes of those arms
that held her so tightly as a child.
The weight, the wait-
(always returns as she fights against
the morning- the mourning)
to remind her that reality is real,
that dreams are really only dreams,
and death is the only promise
that can never be broken.
©Copyright 1992-2008 by SLT 80. All Rights Reserved.
This poem was written by Sita Strangling on Mar 13, 2006.
Responses
2 comments so far.
Free verse with gravitas, and creative.
Interesting topic requiring some interpretation.
With professional guidance you should be able to publish quite easily.
Oh, wow!
What an image this poem painted in my head. The diction and imagery in this poem is flawless- extremely descriptive but not cliche at all. You really should try to get your works published!