Keepsakes of Grief : Poetry Noir 2004 - 2011

I heard the call, the tone of it teasing, a broadcast chorus of incessant singing amid devilish choirs of insidious patter, the dry rasping of scales and portentous matter to cast shadows of sounds among us that must listen, beyond maddened distraction, inaudible vision. For I heard the call, the lies of it pleasing, then I followed it blindly where it would lead me. Beyond death and disaster through ranges of never, I learned listening is ruin and blindness is error. I cursed blackness of bruises, I despised the tender of capital expenditures and I as the lender. I heard the call, and I hated its message, for pipedream pursuits earn the wickedest of blessings, and the laziest among us are perhaps the smartest. The happiest of our number is the unhappy artist; they too quickly learned how nothing is of matter - not the singers, not the choir, not the subject of the patter.Often, the most popular modern poetry demonstrates a determined morbidity, and many of our most beloved poets perished by their own hands. Doing so, they left behind countless keepsakes of grief, but I will not label their passage as 'tragic'. I believe a martyr's suffering demands happy witness. Otherwise, why hang upon a cross?