Murder

[ChristopherSea]

I think the edit makes things lot clearer. I think I like the last stanza very much, but the set up for it is still kind of awkward. "Inviting death into our home", while clearer leaves more questions. Did he trick you?


"Death encouraged by our slow decay
Tapped on our door soliciting
autonomy, a nascent leaf in life,
an algal bloom of possibilities."

Perhaps


I'm fine with dilating night...

I see what you mean QDS and your alternative lines are enticing. I will consider them or something along those lines for my next edit. Thanks so much for the return visit. /Chris

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I have to say that I was all in with the poem. Of course, I usually don't give a flying f if a poem makes sense or not, just look at my poetry. When I read a poem, I assume that the author is going to take me somewhere and I don't usually care if that place is magical where things aren't always spelled out for me--I can make that leap as long as you give me a ledge to jump to, and you did.

The ONLY thing that annoyed me a tiny bit was the line "with the nights busy dilating" ---not because of the phrase itself but the way you chose to drop dilating to next line. Not sure what that choice was about, but because I couldn't see the gerund upcoming the first (and second) time I read it I saw
"night's" (thinking you'd forgotten your apostrophe) then it clicks but when it did had to go back...it took me out of the poem for a few seconds trying to diagram the line.

I love it, even if it is a bit cheesy---it's a campy work that balances the actual morbidity of the poem with the fact that we knew where it was going long before it got there. The journey itself was well worth it.

Thanks Melanie, I dropped the dilating to the next line to allow the nights to be busy (working on their demise) before the list of how is revealed. I will re-examine the line for that bump you encountered. Much obliged for the read and reaction./Chris