An Ode to People

[billy]

very clever

really good read. i thought the beginning could be strengthened by swapping the 1st two stanza round, and that you had an abundance of 'because" are they all needed? some excellent images though near the end i wonder if a couple of stanza are too much of a sameness. i doubt i'll ever write this well but all the praise aside i think you can improve upon it.

thanks for the read.

It's 3 AM, which means another day, another poem.

I'd like to post another one of my submissions, something I'm turning in for a class today. Whatever feedback you have is appreciated.

Anyway, an Ode to People:

I know there are possibilities
beneath the trees
and under the brimming seas
that satellites haven’t seen, are the two 'the's' necessary?

thoughts never processed and assimilated,
ideas never registered, i think this couplet would have made a great opener, i also think the next stanza would be better suited to follow the first

not because my brain dreams them –
mine is weary and growing lackluster,

because I must believe humanity
is not near stagnating,
decomposing

with the onset of nuclear war not sure this ties in well with the stanza above, being nuked is a bit more than stagnating etc
or the coming of some dreary tide,

because at every time,
we sat where we do now, with a thought are the tenses at odds, i get it and it works but it jars me. would sit work better?
on our tongues,
lacking language to effect itself,
because a notion of beauty and progress as transitory, the because's are taking over
disposable in a larger scheme,
is well and good in a hypothetical setting,
but not in my world, not for the wonderful people

who make this land shine everywhere,
in our extolling and in our hubris,
in the ravages and banishments
which tear our cores asunder.

I’ll choose to believe against the statistics –
single, married, male, female, black, white –
poor, wealthy, son, daughter, damned –
which daily limit us,

because I won’t be a cynic on my porch,
elderly with frail and rotting bones,
rocking, condemning the passing youth 4 ing's in two lines, is it a couple two many?
with green faces like buried saplings,

because we’ve transcended the skies
and lifted the lid of Heaven,
where God itself sat as a general pacing, sat as a general pacing?
gone to war with the certainties

we daily propagate,
the forces which move particles
and ruin nations,

accomplishments, some terrifying,
grisly, macabre, but some flourishing,
synthetically picturesque,
like sculptures of long-dead guardians,

who thought and educated the masses,
who fought and remained steadfast against battalions,
who sought and motivated withering husks.

I deny that we will decline and expire,
that we are predictable,
our fates inescapable,
because I am human,

and I don’t believe
we should die forgotten,
consumed by the oblivions
which elicited our existences
among the constellations.