Rage Wearing Brass Knuckles
 |
| National Portrait Gallery |
Rage Wearing Brass Knuckles
Death lurks beside the bed pretending to be professional.
Only undertakers and critics enjoy a captive audience this much.
Nurses glide through the room like exhausted angels on union break.
Of all my organs, the liver resigned first, citing hostile conditions.
Tonight my heartbeat sounds like a pub closing in the rain.
Good whiskey ruined me with the patience of a loyal friend.
Oh, America poured bourbon into me like investors funding bad decisions.
Gentle is not a Welsh word; we gargle our lullabies with thunder.
Even as a boy I distrusted silence; it always sounded employed.
No man writes poems unless reality has already insulted him personally.
Thomas the drunk, they’ll say, because history loves reducing cathedrals to coasters.
Language was the only religion that never asked me to kneel quietly.
Every vowel I ever wrote arrived half-dressed and singing in the rain.
I wrote villanelles because ordinary screaming lacked architecture.
Nothing terrifies death more than a poet still editing the final sentence.
There’s a priest outside rehearsing condolences like an understudy for God.
Oblivion wears polished shoes and smells faintly of disinfectant.
The doctors whisper around me as though dying were contagious gossip.
Hell, I’ve survived critics — mortality feels almost flattering by comparison.
All poets are magicians performing card tricks for the abyss.
The abyss applauds exactly once.
Graveyards are merely libraries where the patrons refuse to leave.
Once I believed genius would protect me from consequence; whiskey applauded the theory.
Oh, the body quits early, but vanity insists on an encore.
Dying is embarrassing — the soul exits while the flesh argues over the check.
Not one person here understands that rage is simply love wearing brass knuckles.
I refuse to fade politely like a forgotten hotel painting.
God gave me a voice like a church bell dropped down a staircase.
How could He expect me to leave quietly after that?
Then let death come deafened, bruised, and thoroughly heckled.
-----
This Acrostic poem, based on one of Dylan Thomas' most famous lines, send me down a rabbit hole of research about the guy. Very interesting. Thanks a lot, DVerse Poets Pub for the nudge.
-----
I would love to know what you thought about this piece.
Please consider leaving a comment.
This is darkly funny Chris. Excellent 👏
ReplyDeleteI like this version even if it was not exactly according to the prompt... the rage of Dylan is something else... strong words like knuckles and bruised works so well
ReplyDeleteNot quite what was required by the prompt, Chris, but you captured Dylan Thomas’ voice in this poem. I especially love the personification of Death ‘pretending to be professional’ and ‘Gentle is not a Welsh word; we gargle our lullabies with thunder’. And yes:
ReplyDelete‘Language was the only religion that never asked me to kneel quietly.
Every vowel I ever wrote arrived half-dressed and singing in the rain.’