bare-bones / wed to abandoning in-utero
fingers; the apple bursts
like an appendix / and the sea
breast to breast / is a mistress
to the Kalahari sun
/ mouthing /
to my moon
“death goes to the worms” / alien touch / my love has gone /
threnody and dream,
as if the Earth is glass /
stranded / to the ghosts /
of ourselves / this is the body
of sand / my love
is soon gone to / plasma
/ in the lights /
threnody and dying
the sea is an insomniac
maniac / to the glassy
violets / and stargazer flowers
spawning on an inch of Autumn
death; stroke the worms’ gut
death feeds them well when we’re
eventually gone /
I tire to grief / alien touch / I withdraw from / the moon’s fingertips /
for my love has gone.
© 2020 lucysworks.com All Rights Reserved.
Written for the August Prompt #2 for Free Verse Revolution.
Reposted for the dVerse open link night.
60 responses to “to grief.”
Mystically fantastic, and mythically dramatic, with an exquisitely powerful finale….superb…
“I tire to grief / alien touch / I withdraw from / the moon’s fingertips /
for my love has gone”
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thank you. 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is fabulous. Love the weaving of words.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Aww, thank you so much. 💗
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Pleasure is mine 🙂
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❤️❤️
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Oh Lucy! Such beauty in grief.
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Thank you! ❤️
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I loved it in the first read as comment to the Prompt..
Strong lines and expressions and metaphors Luci 🙂
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Aww, thank you Nima! 😃
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Poignant and sombre
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Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love how you’ve weaved it into such a nice poem. Keep writing! Sending you, my best ❤
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Aww, thank you so much.
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the melancholy and the powerful imagery is breathtaking!
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Thank you!
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I fell in love, once. I cannot do it, again. Why? It’s because I would rather die, without her. On my blog, 1,000+ poems are in dedication to her, and only her. Grief is a factor for my own death, were I to eclipse her from my heart.
I understand grief. I am so cruel as to say I’d be happy losing anyone else, over her. I fell in love, not to live, though to remind myself I am sunken, if she is, too. I would rather die, if I cannot swim to her, in whatever ocean we both dwell in. I would rather sink, if she sinks, rather than call myself the failure by living in that disgrace.
She is everything. My all. My wholeness. My completion.
❤
LikeLiked by 2 people
Threnody and dying the sea is an insomniac maniac / to the glassy violets / and stargazer flowers
Really loved this stanza. Wonderful flow and imagery! spawning on an inch of Autumn
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Ah! Sorry, I accidentally cut off the ending portion!!!
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Aww, thank you! ☺️
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That’s wonderful!
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Thank you so much! ❤
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🙏🏻😘🙏🏻😘 🙏
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❤️❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love it!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you. ❤
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❤️
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I have heard it said, “grief is just love…with nowhere to go.”
I really enjoyed your treatment of the subject..
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Thank you!
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Wow, exquisite choice of words!
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Thank you so much. ❤
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I do love the way you weave the sea into the threnody.
the sea is an insomniac maniac
I can really see a wild painting of a moonlit sea and sailors lost to the waves
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Thank you so much.
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The poem is inspired, but I’m blown-away by the formatting. Clever.
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Aww, thanks. ❤
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The grief is palpable; the sorrow too deep. I marvel on your range of emotions to capture this. The ending lines for me are perfect.
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Thank you so much, Grace. I feel truly honored. Thank you again for reading my poem. ❤ ❤
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This is heartwrenchingly beautiful, Lucy!
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Thank you! 🙂
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Amazing layout and use of punctuation, Lucy, and I too love the way you wove the sea into the threnody. I was blown away by the surprising simile: ‘the apple bursts like an appendix’ and the lines:
‘as if the Earth is glass /
stranded / to the ghosts /
of ourselves / this is the body
of sand’
and
‘the sea is an insomniac
maniac’.
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Oh, I thank you so much Kim. ❤ ❤ ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
How stunning:
“threnody and dying
the sea is an insomniac
maniac / to the glassy
violets”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you!
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a visceral thread is the connection for some beautiful broken images – not least
“to the glassy
violets / and stargazer flowers
spawning on an inch of Autumn “
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you so much. I’m glad you enjoyed this piece. ❤
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You’ve got some great images here, and I like that you bring it back to the worms and the moon again at the end.
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Thanks! I always associate worms with the darker themes throughout life especially in the concept of death.
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the sea is an insomniac
maniac
You poem shares the sadness in loss and the weariness of grief! Am I right that the apple bursting is the heart?
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Thank you, and yes, you would be correct! 😀
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:>)
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This is so powerful with the contrasting images of the sea, of birth and death: and that final line stabbed me right in the heart.
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Thank you so, so much.
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Grief is a deity here, and the poem is a prayer — humbled and in awe of grief’s immense breadth and depth in the heart. It is breathless and near-silent and jagged (those line breaks leaping and mashing in their own lines!) and fulsome — a wildness which is exhausting to the broken heart. A ghosting. A dirge. It might be holy too, but not now, not yet. Amen.
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Aww, thank you so much. I truly do not know what to say. I feel flattered! Thank you once more. ❤️
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Palpable and beautifully penned.
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Thank you! ☺️
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This makes me think of an ancient Greek play–I can imagine the words spoken on a bare stage.
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Thank you so much. ❤ ❤ ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
Poignant, powerful and exquisite in the capturing of grief.
I tire to grief / alien touch / I withdraw from / the moon’s fingertips /
for my love has gone.
Every word speaks from the depths of the grieving soul.
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Thank you. 🥰
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