blankslatejoe

Quick poem I wrote last night... haven't written for over a week, so it was nice to crank something out. C&C welcome, like always




THE STINK.

You get used to the smell in the end,
He told me as we waited.

You’re sick of it for years,
And then you wake up, and realize
That the stink is you,
That you are the smell,
that you never can escape.
And, in the end…you get used to it.

And then the doctors they tell you it’s over,
You already know this though, you do,
You can smell death in the bathroom,
Pulling at you from the toilet water.
You flush away your life to him.
And even through all the shit and vomit,
He always smells worse.

But it’s ok, it is, really.
You can’t smell when you’re gone.
And no one gets out alive anyway.

Pawn

For a poem so odorous (forgive me), I felt this could've done with more references to smells themselves. Sensory descriptions in poems have a tremendous ability to almost instantly generate abstract feeling beyond words. Were I you, I would strip out much of the explanatory language here, most notably in your second stanza, and work more on bringing the work to life at a physical level.

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Penelope

This is a great topic to write a poem about. Some people reek of death as they linger on the edge of oblivion while others have no stench at all. I found the 'him' a bit confusing and finally decided 'him' was death and not the toilet.

Doctors have smells too which might have made an interesting comparison. I think Pawn made a valid point about describing the smell more. I believe it's a worldly aroma.

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"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." Ronald Reagan ~ 1981

Poetry Editor @ Sacred Twilight