09-11-2013, 04:20 AM
I stumbled along those streets,
the ones I had known all my life,
a powdered ghost
deafened by silence.
I think deafened by silence is good here, because it seems wholly accurate despite the words being obvious.
No longer safe, alive, happy,
my world was reduced to panic, fear, dread,
mouth, filled with gritty burnt flesh,
eyes, unable to not see what was before them.
My heart, racing to escape my chest,
And my legs, unable to support, much less carry
The first line seems the weakest. It seems pointless to say, and not like something someone would think in such a situation. The rest of it illustrates the almost out of body fumbling shock. Maybe the images could be stronger, or more gritty, but the lines are constructed in a nice stumbling and fitting way as they break off into the next part.
I dropped the bag I had, never to reclaim it,
I lost the life I had, gone forever within a few short minutes.
No matter how hard I look,
I cannot find the me that I was before.
Not being alive or having lost your life seems kind of redundant.
A uniform tried to comfort me, took me aside,
sat me on the curb, a child at a parade.
I recall the feel of the Red Cross blanket, its weight
both comfort and burden.
Tears scaled down my face
leaving trails in the kabuki death mask.
My eyes drew skyward, looking for the next plane.
The one that would drop a bomb,
the one that would kill us all.
Unsure of how I felt when it never came;
numb agony,
raging fear,
glad to be in one piece,
sick at the burnt bologna smell in the air.
Those last two stanzas are o.k., but you could still go over them a few more times. If you want.
The phone on my hip chirped -
a panicked bird in a leather cage.
On the ninth,
or ninetieth time,
I answered,
to hear that voice
of the one I loved.
I was alive.
I guess it comes out all right. It gets kind of flat at the end, for me.
the ones I had known all my life,
a powdered ghost
deafened by silence.
I think deafened by silence is good here, because it seems wholly accurate despite the words being obvious.
No longer safe, alive, happy,
my world was reduced to panic, fear, dread,
mouth, filled with gritty burnt flesh,
eyes, unable to not see what was before them.
My heart, racing to escape my chest,
And my legs, unable to support, much less carry
The first line seems the weakest. It seems pointless to say, and not like something someone would think in such a situation. The rest of it illustrates the almost out of body fumbling shock. Maybe the images could be stronger, or more gritty, but the lines are constructed in a nice stumbling and fitting way as they break off into the next part.
I dropped the bag I had, never to reclaim it,
I lost the life I had, gone forever within a few short minutes.
No matter how hard I look,
I cannot find the me that I was before.
Not being alive or having lost your life seems kind of redundant.
A uniform tried to comfort me, took me aside,
sat me on the curb, a child at a parade.
I recall the feel of the Red Cross blanket, its weight
both comfort and burden.
Tears scaled down my face
leaving trails in the kabuki death mask.
My eyes drew skyward, looking for the next plane.
The one that would drop a bomb,
the one that would kill us all.
Unsure of how I felt when it never came;
numb agony,
raging fear,
glad to be in one piece,
sick at the burnt bologna smell in the air.
Those last two stanzas are o.k., but you could still go over them a few more times. If you want.
The phone on my hip chirped -
a panicked bird in a leather cage.
On the ninth,
or ninetieth time,
I answered,
to hear that voice
of the one I loved.
I was alive.
I guess it comes out all right. It gets kind of flat at the end, for me.