I had a mother who berated me. It was her own insecurities. Someone probably did the same to her. This is one of my very early poems and I hadn’t forgiven her yet.
Calling My Mother
When I call her,
it is the last day,
the last hour.
Nothing has changed.
Her voice curls
around my spine,
twisted there, unheard,
but squeezing
ever tighter
until I think my brain
will explode.
Most of the time
the words that I expect,
that can
pierce my days
of resolve,
rarely come.
I feel them breathing
down the back
of my neck,
marching goose step
across my heart.
Contagious words
repeated in the dark,
memorized, drilled
into me.
Perhaps, words
are a cancer,
especially those meant
to control,
silently killing,
replicating cell
by cell
until the pain
can no longer
be ignored.
I’m in remission,
not cured,
haunted by these
malignant words
like dead
who can find no
resting place.
Calling My Mother
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CalebMurdock
- Posts: 197
- Joined: 10 Dec 2023, 14:59
Re: Calling My Mother
I don't know how young you were when you wrote this, but it appears you were a very good poet right from the beginning. Most of the poetry I wrote in my twenties was pretty dreadful (and some might say it still is).
This is a powerful personal statement. I don't usually go for poems with such short lines, as I can't find justification for them, but in this case the short lines keep the reader (me) moving through the poem quickly, which increases its impact. In a few cases, however, I do think increasing the line length might improve it. For example:
that can
pierce my days
of resolve,
... could become ...
that can pierce
my days of resolve,
... without harming the poem in any way.
An emotional/intuitive poem like this is a good lesson for a poet like me, who writes in a mostly literal style which can sometimes sound didactic.
One suggestion:
Instead of this:
Contagious words
repeated in the dark,
memorized, drilled
into me.
... how about this? ...
Contagious words
repeated in the dark,
memorized, drilled
into my subconscience.
(Subconscience isn't in the dictionary I use, but its meaning is clear.)
I also suggest you change "like dead" (the third-to-last line) to "like the dead".
Well done, Billy.
This is a powerful personal statement. I don't usually go for poems with such short lines, as I can't find justification for them, but in this case the short lines keep the reader (me) moving through the poem quickly, which increases its impact. In a few cases, however, I do think increasing the line length might improve it. For example:
that can
pierce my days
of resolve,
... could become ...
that can pierce
my days of resolve,
... without harming the poem in any way.
An emotional/intuitive poem like this is a good lesson for a poet like me, who writes in a mostly literal style which can sometimes sound didactic.
One suggestion:
Instead of this:
Contagious words
repeated in the dark,
memorized, drilled
into me.
... how about this? ...
Contagious words
repeated in the dark,
memorized, drilled
into my subconscience.
(Subconscience isn't in the dictionary I use, but its meaning is clear.)
I also suggest you change "like dead" (the third-to-last line) to "like the dead".
Well done, Billy.