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Memorial Along the Beach

I walk along Sullivan's Isle a lonely beachcomber,
my flask in my pocket,
With each heavy step I kick inadvertently against driftwood;
odd wretched pieces lying like the misplaced skeletons of New Orleans,
stretching bleached whory wasted tubercular arms toward me in the dark and I even believe, in my meandering state,
that I smell the stench of rot among them.

Raising my kerchief to my nose and mouth to cover the mournful olfactory delusion, I am met with another, yet more perverse...
Ah.... my beloved, how she once used to scent my kerchiefs with lavendar along with her own dainty laces
to cover the sickroom humours that finally invaded her last days.
I am lost in the dusk and the drink.

Night will fall again completely
and I remember the pit of chill deep within me
my stomach tying itself already in familiar knots
like fisherman's sheep shank.
But I catch no prize to take back, I resist hearth and home now.
I will sit upon the rocks outside the fort again
till I have drunk all that my flask holds
and cold comfort of day comes slower yet than yesterday
as the gulls cry her eulogy in the wind.

Author notes

I tried to combine what I know of Poe's biography along with the sombre claustrophobic and somewhat paranoid feel of his poems, the dark windy oceanside, the birds, the lost love, that fact that I saw a bar named "Poe's" on Sullivan's Island South Carolina.

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Comments

  • piccola silver member
    August 8, 2008

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    this is beautiful even if one does not apply it somehow to Poe. If it were mine (of course it is not) I would make the line breaks a bit differently to give it more power. As an example:

    I walk along Sullivan's Isle a lonely beachcomber,
    my flask in my pocket.
    With each heavy step
    I kick inadvertently against driftwood.

    Odd wretched pieces lying like the misplaced skeletons
    of New Orleans.
    Stretching bleached whory wasted tubercular arms toward me in the dark and I even believe,
    in my meandering state,
    that I smell the stench of rot among them.

    just an idea. thank you for entering

  • Virgoan
    October 4, 2007

    Edit | Reply
    I like the brilliance of the flow and the narration. Well done fellow poet.

    Thanks for sharing and best of luck. Keep writing

    VIRGOAN