3: 16.6.09
oh my brother
my younger brother
where are you now
and what are you doing
since you ran away from home
at the age of sixteen
well you didn't run
you drove away in father's car
that's doing it with style
we used to go to the creek
where we piled rocks
to try to stop the flow
and our parents argued in the wind
as water moved onto the rocks
and our clothes got wet and muddy
wet and muddy
down below the clay cliffs
we leapt over bushes
and played hide and seek
amongst boulders on the hill
and you jumped
onto the back of a cow
and rode it
until you fell off
onto a prickle bush
where you laughed at your pain
we walked to that dead white tree
that tree where ravens sat
and I couldn't go near it
but you climbed up the smooth silver
trunk and sat at the very top
of the highest fragile branch
sticking up into the sky
and you shouted at the ghosts
surrounding us and then you talked to them
you whispered to those ghosts
twenty years later paramedics
tried to revive you in a toilet
but you escaped from them
you escaped from everyone
and embraced death as a friend
having grown tired of all the punishment
for your rebellion and you climbed
until you could not go any further
and you went as high and low as you could go
Myron Lysenko
Author notes
For my brother.
what can be impoved?
Comments
1 - 82 of 82
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poignantly driven
I am touched by this piece…reading word by word, line by line, my mind went walkabouts and revisit many memories with all my siblings and especially one brother who went missing and still missing. I don’t want the ending of your poem to be his but after all these years not knowing, (22 years to be exact), there’s a slim chance of a positive outcome. Some similarities to add…you wrote, “you drove away in father's car…that's doing it with style”. My brother stole my cousin’s prized boat and disappeared into the horizon. He was 13.
Great piece. Powerfully weaved! I love it!
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So sad this emotionally bonded tribute to your brother. So makes me want to give you a big
well written..
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my friend
this is so moving, it is so hard when someone takes their life, I have lost a few very close frieds this way and lost my siser. The pain that drives someone to this end is so hard to understand, bit do not think we are supposed to understand.
the memories in the first stanza strenghten the last few lines, my eyes started to sting and I had a lump in my throat,
almostbut you escaped from them
you escaped from everyone
and embraced death as a friend
well my rin on sentance is over run the page, I am sorry for your loss and your tribute was stunning
Annie -
omg, I found my eyes watering halfway through for this poem really makes the reader feel that pain that comes when you remember happy times with someone you've lost. I'm so sorry you had to go through this. You ask what can be improved, but quite honestly I like this poem how it is. A heart-breaking read. Thank you for sharing. shya
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Hi Myron,
Now I am able to understand the 'hard times' you were going through a while back. You have written a beautiful tribute to your brother. I especially liked the way you inserted a tiny bit of lightness in an other wise very sad poem with the last three lines of the first stanza..
"well you didn't run
you drove away in father's car
that's doing it with style"
Glad I found this...
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I'm sorry but...
...my mouse clicked on this by mistake.
You know from past altercations that I cannot comment on free verse because I hate it.
Have 3 bananas in part recompense, with apologies, for my wasting your points.
Regards,
Robn.
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Myron, this is beautifully written. The contrast between your memories of your brother and the harsh reality of his death is very vivid and very moving. The word choice and attention to detail are also admirable. But the last stanza is the most memorable, as indeed it should be! Bravo!
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Wow that last stanza was majorly powerful. The whole thing just told such an amazing story.
you escaped from everyone
and embraced death as a friend
your wording here is so incredibly beautiful.
i loved it!!! -
Such a powerful ending, tender. I loved the reference to the tree being the climb to end his life. Touching. Wonderful.
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references
Thank you very much!
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So divine
Looking for the words, but cannot find them. Deep in my heart you have made an impression. For the love.
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poignant & impactful
This is an awesomely well-writ piece of poetry, in my opinion. I was moved, as I read it, both through time and the gamut of emotions - from smiles to sorrow. I watched a brave and heroicly doomed child move toward his fate - his demands that life be more undaunted by the world's rebuffs.
My favorite lines were:
"but you escaped from them
you escaped from everyone
and embraced death as a friend
having grown tired of all the punishment
for your rebellion" and
"where we piled rocks in the water
to try to stop the flow
and our parents argued
as their marriage moved
onto the rocks
and our clothes got wet and muddy
wet and muddy
down below the clay cliffs"
On a personal note (as if any critique of a person's poetry is not always intimate), your loss and sense of both anquish and acceptance of the inevitability of it really moved me. Thank you for sharing this.
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I feel for you my friend.Family is all we are.But love is the essence of who we all are.And that was what I read in your poem.Good write Jim
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a very sad write to read today. thank you for sharing this part of your heart with me today. i pray the healing comes. viyanna rosemarie
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crushing
I admire your ability to write so clearly about something which you must feel so deeply. I can write about things I love which have no part of me... nature, animals... but my personal losses, the death of my mum, the infertility I battled for 10 years until we finally had our children, the health issues which blighted my life until only recently... they will lie forever unwritten!
Your poem is sad... but I think if your brother could know what you understand he's be pleased.
Lovely to hear from you by the way. Wish I could visit your shop!
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A poem that tugs at the heart..I like how you
started off with childhood and taking the reader
through the stages of life. Its like a lifetime been
narrated in a poem..touching write.
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THat's a perfect example of "lossing memory" I wforgot the term for that.I was interested at how the purity the imagery seem yet my mentality compared that to a movie or show that I watched with someone falling across the river into some branch. It seemed a lil used. Perhaps it just me. THe addition of vocabulary woud be helpful yet after reading this as an english teacher I would say this was actuall something mesmirizing style introduced.
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excellent
oh my brother
my younger brother
where are you now
and what are you doing
since you ran away from home
at the age of sixteen
well you didn't run
you drove away in father's car
that's doing it with style
we used to go to the creek
where we piled rocks in the water
to try to stop the flow
and our parents argued
as their marriage moved
onto the rocks
and our clothes got wet and muddy
wet and muddy
nostalgia...and missing as tender a soul as a young brother was too good.thnaks for sharing. -
Wonderfully heart-wrenching.
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Magnificant
A beautiful, heartfelt and heart-wrenching poem. I love how it seems to go from the time your brother ran away to memories of childhood and then the resolution of the story of his life. A non-linear flow in a way, but our minds and memories can be quite non-linear when they want to be. The only thing I would really change is taking out the extra wet and muddy in the second stanza. It won't lose any of its meaning if you do that. Other than that... wonderful. -
This piece brought tears to my eyes. Poignant, painful and yet beauty is wrought in every word here. This reminded of a song that I have not heard in a very long time and I want to thank you for that wonderful memory.
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Wow. This is such an emotional poem. It's a wonderful tribute to your brother, no one else could have wrote him a better poem
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sad and beautiful...
a fine tribute...well-done.
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tribute
Thanks...
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That's so very sad. Nicely written and great flow. If this is a personal experience, then I wonder if you ever saw him again... So sad. Keep it up!
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died
I saw him in his coffin all dressed up and neatly presented. Thanks for your comments.
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How absolutely beautiful and utterly heartbreaking.
Write on.
~*~SP~*~ -
Excellent
A fine write and tribute. You expressed yourself quite well. Thanks for sharing this one with us. Again, well done.
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Brilliant
Wow, what a write, such imagery and feeling flowing through this. It was like I was almost there. It is just long enough too. All round an exellent write!
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Abosolutely incredible! I loved every word, I could see every scene, I must say, a poem this amazing doesn't come around often. Great job, Myron, keep the pen flowing.
-Raven
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powerful poem!
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The only improvement to this poem would be the return of the brother! How sad, how well written, how moving. The imagery and language used to describe childhood days is so piercingly real, I felt I was there with you. Wonderful write. Thank you for sharing.
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Excellent
A nice write, and tribute, methinks. I liked the way you expressed your ideas. Thanks for sharing this one with us. -
Sound write, Myron. It's rich with voice and tone.... and directional, but not in a careless way. Well done friend.
Don
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I read your article concerning Haiku after you commented on "New Mexico Mornings." You make some excellent points. Being an old country boy Haiku is a new experience but I'm a quick study and I'll get the drift. Your poem is a nice lament clear and easy to read, no hidden meanings which usually give me heartburn. Being an Australian you might click on rbruce a fellow countryman and pretty good poet. Happy trails
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*applauds u*
beautiful write... i wonder if this is out of ur imagination or this really happened to u, either way, its really holds on to the reader's attention and not for a moment does it let go.
Its filled with honesty, simplicity and over all the skill to look effortless n yet be full of such emotion that just makes the reader think.. Wow! how beautiful...
Thanks for sharing
lotsa love, LR!
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happened
Thanks lyrical - for your nice words. Yes, this poem is about my dead brother.
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Such sweet memories of what so clearly appears to be, true brotherly love. A simple, yet very well written image filled piece. Precious memories such as this create the perfect canvas for penning. Nicely done! Sorry that I have no clappy guys, for some reason I don't get them all the time. So I will give you an A+ instead!
POETDONTKNOWIT
WRITING IT HER OWN WAY -
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A+
Thanks Poet - I appreciate your words.
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Beautiful write! I really love the way you have incorporated the simple and sometimes cheeky, acts of living into a few incredibly emotive words, sentence after sentence! Love and acceptance for this person shows strongly throughout. There is so much I could say! I love the openness of relating fears along with such incredible acceptance and love. I can't see anything to be improved upon. Incredibly well written - so evocative.
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cheeky
Hi Rose - Thank you for your thoughtful and complimentary review. That's very nice of you.
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Holy S*** you sent chills down my spine, brother. How nostalgic it seems in the begining and then when it changed in the end to such an evocative description of loss, it just consumed me. There is so much feeling in this poem, I just had to read over it a second time. I felt so much of it, and I'm sure there's more I didn't even pick up on yet. This is what true poetry is meant to be! It is meant to saturate us with pure unadulterated emotion, and right now I am sopping wet with the sadness and grief on this piece, but there's something else too in there, an emotion I can't put my finger on, but it's like a twinge of joy perhaps at the life alongside the lamentations for death.
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joy & grief
Thanks IJ - I liked your thoughtful and intelligent perceptions and thoughts about this poem. You are obviously a good reader of poetry - I wish there were more like you.
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This is spuperb! It is both emotive and descriptive, filling the Reader with the true love you had for him, doing so with a ton of emotional - and pithy - description. I could go on and on. Great job!!!
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emotive and pithy
Thanks ocerus - I appreciate the fact that this poem moved you. Nice of you to stop by.
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Lovely job with imagery, and incredibly touching emotion throughout this poem. I'm very sorry for the loss of your brother; I know I'd go mad with grief if I lost my sister. You make this so much more poignant and powerful by including the nostalgic and happy memories. I think the opening stanza is a little weak, but the poem definitely picks up in the rest of the lines. Overall, very nice job.
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weak
Thank you very much AS - I'll work on the opening stanza and try to make it better. I love constructive crits like yours because they help me to improve. -
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Not a problem; I'm happy if anything I say can be helpful.
Sometimes I worry that I offend or annoy--sorry if I ever do--but I'd rather be annoying and occasionally a little bit helpful. Your poetry is always amazing and there's never anything wrong with it, that I've seen. Anything I point out is just when part of it seems a little less amazing.
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excellent
twenty years later paramedics
tried to revive you in a toilet
but you escaped from them
you escaped from everyone
and embraced death as a friend
having grown tired of all the punishment
for your rebellion and you climbed
until you could not go any further
and you went as high as you could go
ell donreI am on the look out for family members for my AP family.Would you like to joing.Please go through my portfolio to get to know me more.
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thanks
Thanks sgking. Good luck with your AP family.
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Nice. The beginning seemed a little trite, but justified it's existence towards the end. I think you could have some thorny random insight here...sorry..hard to explain...but something almost random outside of the buildup and foreshadowing. I don't know why...just a suggestion. Overall, nice write. Sorry for your loss if you're the narrarator.
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trite
Oh neuro - I think you may be right about this poem. I would like to try to improve it some more, so any suggestions would be much appreciated. I've revised it a bit since your original comment, but I feel I need to put more work into it still. -
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Condense: e.g.
oh my brother
my younger brother
where are you now
and what are you doing
since you ran away from home
at the age of sixteen
well you didn't run
you drove away in father's car
that's doing it with style
Young brother are you now
whispering in the city?
Curled up in the Cadillac
you stole from dad when you were 16?
Break down your first thoughts and give the reader more to digest in every sentence. (this is just an example, not meant to replace your own writing, which will probably come out differently.)
take care,
-Neurosine -
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condense
Excellent suggestions. Thanks heaps! I'll get to work on this troublesome first stanza and see what I can do.
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WOW
Such a sad write...very well done with great flow and imagery. You are very talented.
Nevadapoet -
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imagery
Thanks nevada.
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Superb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm sure I've left a similar comment on one of your writes before, but it's true of this one too,played like a movie in my head,adore the style, it's just so matter of fact, with splashes of glorious imagery
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movie
Thanks Quill!!! Glad to know the imagery works for you.
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I am sorry hat I cannot give you much of a 'critical' review of this piece, but all I can say is that had the flow of a poem, but read like a great novel or memoir. I loved it. Second time I teared up tonight...and I am NOT a cryer!
I really loved-
"well you didn't run
you drove away in father's car
that's doing it with style."
and...
"you escaped from everyone
and embraced death as a friend"
ThAnks! Great read!
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novel
Thank you very much Strange Angel - sorry to make you cry.
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This moved me very much. I was a teen runaway. It's not an easy life for a kid. You worked a lot of symbolism in with your imagery, and your images are so timeless. I can picture my own children doing the things you mention here. I am sure that there is something here that will touch everyone who reads it, and help them to feel the grief that you feel, for the brother you have lost. My own brother hasn't spoken to me for 9 years, except at our grandfather's funeral. Sometimes we lose people long before they die.
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long before they die
Thank Danna - your supportive words have touched me. Thanks for your thoughtful response to this poem. Best wishes to you and your family.
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I liked the reflective tone you immediately establish along with the relationship between the siblings. This also captures memorable moments in life very effectively with appropriate language and technical devices. A very poignant write, particularly the ending and I can only echo what's already been stated about embracing death as a friend - seems like that was the only option. Effective contrast between the happy memories and the final tragedy. Thanks for sharing a mature and well crafted write.
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reflecticve
Thank you very much for your positive and perceptive response to this poem about my brother. I'm trying to improve it as the first stanza seems a little weak.
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Gay and dark as well. It would be a great thing if he could know that you pay such a tribute to him. Very good write, I like the way you repeat phrases and keep going toward the end. Pen on...~Poo~
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gay & dark
Thanks Poo.
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Good Poem
I like this poem. Sort of dark but I like the last part about embracing death as a friend because of getting tired of being punished for rebellion. I also liked the part about climbing higher and higher until he couldn't go anymore. That the section that moved me. -
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dark
Thanks Plan - good to know what works for you - that's always important for me to know as a poet.
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Outstanding
This poem is very moving and it brought a tear to my eye. I loved the way you remembered your childhood together and liked all the little details you included. Those times you never forget. I think this poem is fine as it is and doesn't need improving. An excellent poem that is a mixture of sadness and happiness.
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details
Thanks Room - yes, I believe it is the details in our poems which help to make them sing. I will try to improve this poem, because all poetry can always be improved - creativity is flawed.
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Ok, the edits are really great
. One tiny thing 
"and you shouted at the ghosts
surrounding us & then you talked to them"
>>> I think the last line should read:
"and you shouted at the ghosts
surrounding us"
"...I think you should eliminate the rest.... I feel its has more ...hmm power/punch, without [& then you talked to them]
but, it's merely a suggestion.
I like this, because it's so descriptive... you have a haiku-esque style, that I really like
~Meg
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talked to them
Thanks Meg - that's an interesting point. I feel it needs him to talk to the ghosts, because i'm hoping it will give a clue to his spiritual side. But I may be wrong. -
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I see
. No worries; merely a thought. I would definitely keep it then, according to the way you want it to be read .
-meg
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The "you" words in the last and second stanza could be trimmed back some, but I also think some of the "so" words at the beginning don't work either. The fourth and fifth stanza were very well penned. This all feels ominous and somewhat prophetic, especially with the speaking to the ghosts part. I also am not sure about the "36"...I think it also would be better as "thirty-six". Your message though is one of knowledge and for that reason, you have a really thoughtful piece here.
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edited
Thanks a lot James. I revised the poem. Thanks for the hints.
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You are most welcome. I just read it again and yes
I think you have something really solid here. Very nice.
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I like it.
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Oh, Myron, I do love this poem so much, for it is dearly written is tender poignancy and truth.
A beautiful poem you can treasure.
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poignant
Thanks so much!
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Very good,
I really like it!
Good work!!! -
I liked this myron. The only real qualm I had was the way you wrote the 36 in numerical form. I think it will look better as 'thirty-six' . But, that's more of a personal preference than anything.
And stanza 2 has a lot of 'you' s. They're effective, but I wonder if you need them all.....
Anyways, the last 2 stanzas were extremely succinct, I thought.
I enjoyed it.
~Meg
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qualms
Thanks Meg! I've taken note of your excellent suggestions and have revised the poem quite a bit.
Cheers,
myron.
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