When he thought of death
(if he thought of it at all),
his mind took it to be
a burden of life,
for everyone knows
that this earthly shore
is terribly infected
with the miseries
of numberless mortals
who slowly died,
exhaling away hours
with each breathy
rise and fall
of those fragile lungs.
Young miss is bad,
very bad.
She wants blood.
She wants crimson floods
overflowing the gutters
down on main street.
She wants children
wielding wet scythes
deep in the corn fields.
She wants the church doors
painted red
long after Passover
has passed us by.
How do you respond to “mean” or seemingly insulting comments that you receive on your blog or social media? Sometimes I’m not even sure if a reply is meant to be insulting, so I try to give the person posting it the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes there is no doubt. Here are a few specific comments I remember getting over the years:
About my art:
“Go back to playing with your crayons.”
“How is that even art?”
About my writing/poetry:
“Every human being has something valuable to share. However, not every human being was meant to do so through poetic means.”
“Cliched and unconvincing. Boring.”
About me personally:
Various accusations of being immature/childish, overly sensitive, “stupid”, ugly, unattractive, etc.
The problem is that I never really know how to respond to these kind of comments. Should I ignore them? Delete the comment? Block the person? Write a snappy comeback? Try to reason with them? At different times I’ve tried all these tactics, and I’m still not sure what the best course really is. What has worked best for you?
Her last three footsteps
raised the devil.
At the sight of her,
hell surrendered –
besieged by the spirits
of plunder and
confiscation.
(Another blackout poem inspired by A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)
Stuck
not sure where to go
so many roads
limited time
stalled
pick foot up
put back down
repeat.
Am I moving forward
or standing still?
The shadows move
but my footprints
stay right here.
Grow up, they all say
But when I try to plant roots
they poison the soil
(Written for a #haikudaily tag on Twitter, theme was “grow”)
(I created the following blackout poem from a random excerpt of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)
Sick or Dead
What to do if a body
is sick or dead:
black crayons
black dress
black shovel
black veil
black tape
black slippers
black bird
black sealing wax
black hole
If Edgar had a muse
to hassle and abuse,
why not I?
Enter those raven’s wings
and all terrible things
from finer days gone by.
For my own poor health
the truth must be told –
my mother, I remember,
was heaviest, the faintest –
sinking the small pulse
of life within me.
I later roused myself –
dreaming over the cool
night air in the suburbs.
I turned again to
my mother, my sister –
but I was the sole
survivor
of the family.
(Poetry by Maranda Russell)
