I Am Not a Corpse

I love what this poem says, Bill. Hits right to the center of things I believe:

"I'd be in a suit. If I were, I'd be
the main event, the center of attention.
All the vultures would be my friends."

"a haughtiness that sets in"...

Love how you never pull your punches. *

Not a poem remotely connected to my own style - not that that point should ever be considered by any reader … because I certainly don’t think it should - but I comment this point because I‘m drawn to this form and sound even though I never seem to write this way. And this piece, Bill, is well done. I like the calibrated play with sound and image in this piece.
"I'd be in touch with dirt, the slime divine,
the slutty mud, the lovely muck."
Good work.

*

I like Sam's comment because as a writer and a reader I am drawn to many disparate styles that for whatever reason I just can't make my own. I would love to be able to write like Ann Bogel, for instance, but her style and voice is so uniquely her own and perhaps inimitable.

Bill,you are genius of the first water !
You must muck the English poetry field by your lovely poems and irrigate it by your tears as long as your
tear ducts are not bankrupt:)

when you cross over, you may be up there, in heaven. no tears there.?

You push us out and then pull us back in. I agree with Sam.

Bill -- Yet another masterful piece. You have an amazing eye in that head of yours.

So many great lines and phrases here. Too many to mention.

bankrupt tear ducts and slutty mud. *

/muck=enrich/

Word by word, this is just amazing, Bill. I found the rhythm in this impressive. Nothing beautiful about the subject matter but you nonetheless produce something beautiful!

Bill - this is awesome. I really love this part especially...it just is like music to me:

"I'd be in touch with dirt, the slime divine,
the slutty mud, the lovely muck."

Slutty mud!

Bill, your work always instructs and inspires.

especially the last two lines.

"Slime divine." I'll remember that line, Bill. Thanks for posting. Great stuff.

A wonderful piece. All the imagery, the word choices are so succinct and yet enormous, but I especially loved the one single truth revealed by the narrator about himself that, for me, evoked the huge range of human emotion and experience, "I am not a corpse, alas." *

to Cherise's point, the title line tolling in the piece and how it unseats the odd logic, the "truths" of the 1st 2 lines..a negation. Love the rhythmic lines that follow, culminating in: a mite more vital, robust, fume inducing.!!
A literal thirst to be steeped/redeemed, poignant to covet a corpse's condition ;)
Can't resist posting the Housman couplet -- And down in lovely muck I've lain, / Happy till I woke again
*

Strange, compelling poem, unsettling to read, good work Bill

Word choices amazing, subject threatening instead of ordinary in your hands; the poem seems to be about death, yes, and about "men" as they're supposed to be, suits who don't emote. The word "slut" has the power to offend; here you have reclaimed it for poetry: "slutty mud." (Kathy! your note! thanks ... )*

Ann, I spelled your name wrong earlier and I KNEW it the second I hit "post comment." Sorry about that and you're welcome to everything else. ;)

Well, this ain't stupid stuff. Fav lines: "All the grubs would love me" and "Back to my thesis." *

Bill, you wield language like a weapon. This poem sits on the page, one eye cocked like the hammer of a .44 Magnum, whispering, "Go ahead. Make my day."

Powerful stuff.

"Bill,you are genius of the first water!
You must muck the English poetry field by your lovely poems and irrigate it as long as your ducts are not bankrupt"
...because true poet has not only tears ducks:)

Though in style it's nothing like, this poem puts me in mind of the great( to me at least) Alan Dugan; maybe its the cynically insouciant attitude. "the lovely muck." Gotta love this.

The narrator cries by his own implacable logic, yet holds those tears at bay with linguistic wit (and I'm a sucker for this kind of wordplay). The last two lines are especially disturbing, as he seems to want to see from the corpse's point of view, and in this way to kill his raw emotion. It's like a mind at war with its own emotional being.

Enjoyed the opening lines especially.

Unsettling and compelling. Proof of life is not-death and tears. *

Excellent in tone and mood. It shows an original mind setting out for new territory with assurance and wit. Grand.

Makes me wanna cry.

not a lot left to say, but I add my admiration to the mix. *

The opening line lodged a Stones tune in my head but no,

Slutty mud!

And then -

There's a haughtiness that sets in, that
sees in raw emotion its sour avatar.

Amazing piece, Bill.

*

My favorite line - "The tear ducts are bankrupt in death." Oh all the whys this ellicits.

I had to go read "Terence" (one of my favorites) to find the phrase. Is there a prize?

I especially like the way you make muck lovely.

Oh, God, how tisilating!

This seems to be the product of a voice teetering on the brink of a breakdown. The power of the declarative sentences, here, for me, and their odd, almost desperate insistence on the obvious, sets up a kind of suspense that is wonderfully broken with the phrase, "slime divine" and the verse gushes for a bit until order is restored.

very sharp. all the vultures would be my friends. nice.

I cannot say more than the others, so I will agree with them. Wish I had been first to comment.

Terrific. Literally and figuratively.

Fuck. Yes.

I love that as I read this piece, I was already looking forward to reading it again to experience the meanings rather than just the sounds. Some of the other comments here reflect ones I was going to make myself, the lines that were pointed out. Just fantastic.

I like it, but I don't believe it.

Good work.

Great stuff. Muck is one of my favourite words. Fave.

This is fabulous. *

Wonderfully written ~ beautiful use of language and images ~ rhythm and form rally work together on this piece. Big Like! *

I meant to say "really"! But they do rally to work together to! ;-)

A hautiness that sets in in death. Wonderful.

This is fantastic! *
(and, as an aside, I just read "The Separation' -and that is beyond belief)! *

Here, I like the metre – the way the lines tend to scan. I love the assonance: vultures, grubs, love, touch, mud, muck in the original hypothesis. All this is in the stagnant atmosphere of business in a suit, but then a playfulness sets in and new possibilities of catching fire emerge in a variety of different vowel sounds.

‘The tear ducts are bankrupt in death’ really hits the man below the belt on more than one level. First, cerebrally, it clearly tells him he has sold his soul to business. Second, it subtly reintroduces the ugly assonance of ducts bankrupt in their alliterative death.

It is only in the final couplet that the reader is given any opportunity to exercise
their own imagination , and this is appropriate. The stiffness of the last two lines emphasizes the distance that death imparts with its own hierarchy of terror.

Sour is a fascinating word, here. It almost looks as though soul is misspelt; but the distaste and bitterness of earlier lines leaves heart-wrenching questions with which to really challenge the tear ducts again.

Since this is a sonnet, it would be possible to strengthen the rhyme without disrupting the meaning significantly – but it is a great poem.

An excellent poem. Every line, rich, every word functioning with meaning and sound. The most powerful line in this poem for me is, "The tear ducts are bankrupt in death." *

Bill, this is a beautiful poem - so tight, and takes control so well, moving me about, especially whipping me around at the end. I liked it a lot.

hot damn. This is a great poem about it ALL. *

It's really good, this. Those last two lines are excellent...'sees in raw emotion its sour avatar'.

Thanks, Ian!

On the basis of these criteria, I'm not a corpse either. That's good to know.

Thanks, Roz!

Morbid, yes, but in the best way. Love it. *