Poetry Thursday - a day late - The Murder of a Poem

My most rejected poem

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Hello Red Cabbage Head readers,

I have spent a lot of the past month sending off poems rather than writing them. Not sure why I put myself through this. Just did another for the Only Poems Bob Hicok Fellowship. I haven’t got a hope in hell. Only Poems is the where my poems get rejected the quickest and with the least comeback, because if you want feed back you have to pay for it and as a person basically living off benefits and my husbands pension I don’t have that type of cash to splash. I did sell a frog so have paid for this entry. This month I have submitted 38 poems and one chapbook. 4 were rejected almost immediately, one from Only Poems, so I don’t think my stuff is of their liking, but a chance to be mentored and have access to courses was too good to pass up.

So today I give you my most rejected poem. I, personally think it’s rather cracking!

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

The Murder of a Poem

It is a mellow day in September when the police are summoned,
not yet cool, the air clinging grumpily to the last warmth of summer,
with the turn to colder times felt waiting, resting on the mild breeze. 
Screams had been heard in the residence of a known writer.
Screams of both rage and terror, screams both human and other, 
screams of destruction and, scarily, with a complete lack of grammar. 

Easing the door, the detective tensed with slow anticipation,
knowing what he will find, and purveyed the view beyond. 
The scene revealed, beyond the entrance the spectacle horrific.
The crime is heinous. Words are scattered in disheveled piles,
torn and ripped apart, letters spilt like droplets of blood, 
punctuation littering the worn Wilton carpet, all propriety rejected. 
The patterned walls splattered in an arterial literary spray;
an ‘h’ hangs off a handle on the mahogany chest of drawers,
an ‘s’ stains a silver framed photograph of the perpetrator,
vowels pool together in rivers to lakes of scholarly sadness.

The violence wrought on them rends some unrecognisable.
A pen’s upstroke here by the oak night stand next to a cut-crystal glass 
harbouring a single malt sitting un-drunk on the well waxed wood.
A diagonal over there on the old and faded eiderdown, nestled 
amongst the cat hairs and a discarded silken dressing gown.
By the part open window, painted sashes with stained glass detail,
a half curve (from possibly a ‘c’ maybe a ‘b’, could be a ‘p’)
clings haltingly, sliding down the deep curtains, both caught in the nap
and hastened by billowing velvet caused by that late summer breeze.
The drapes are still drawn on what started as a pleasant day.

The detective shuddered, contemplating the enormous damage.
A word here, a phrase there, sentences disembodied, 
deceased, de-worded, de-lettered, fragmented,
mangled words, tangled letters. The letters. Oh the letters!

A poem was murdered here today, 
				   and the violence was terrible.                      

Let me know what you think.

That’s all folks, til next time. Tx

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