Thread: Perfect at Last

May those who picked my scabs and lapped
my blood join the pack of desperate dogs
that run in hell's eternal fires.
For I scrubbed my warts intestine deep
held a burning rod against my cancers.
I licked my lesions closed in vain attempts
to hide their horrors. I fled the Sun's
unwelcome rays that cast my gruesome shadow.
But now in death above my grave,
behold
my bust displayed in flawless marble.

Heh, I really like this. There's so much sad truth in this short little piece. The irony at the end really hits a home run. My one suggestion would be to break up 'grave' and 'behold'. I think that 'behold' deserves a little emphesis. Maybe a line for itself or just some commas.

Great piece!

Squalid Glass, thanks for your suggestion and encouragement. Punctuation is a weakness I've had trouble strengthening.

Jed;

A very effective and symbolic poem. The line breaks are rife with the "pause pregnant" in that each line presents a complete image which continues and leads smoothly into the following line. The only issue I came up on was in line five with the word "cancer". The imagery you developed previous to this line was of external wounds, and cancer doesn't readily give an image of external wounds, generally speaking. I could suggest a word, but I won't. A rhyme of the word deep in the preceding line would be *funtastic*. I see you followed SG's sugess. Good call, it provided a nice separation of the two lines and produced an emphatic resonance which reverberated with mythological proportions. All apologies to M. Twain, RIP good sir.

jeffrey