Poetry

Smeared Black Ink

I read your poem to myself -

My eyes dragging, my mouth dry,

My mind uncaptivated by the words.

Uncultivated, snagging, lines sagging

Under the dense, uncontrolled garble.

Despite your well placed anadiplosis,

I find it only fitting to deliver this diagnosis:

You are not an artist, of that there is no question.

You are certainly no wordsmith,

Not a master of tricky little phrases.

There’s no subtlety in your sibilance.

Symbolism skulks from your pen

And slumps into place,

Sitting uncomfortably between simile after simile.

Waiting.

Not to be spoken out loud to a captivated audience.

Not to whisper from lips of a lover to a lover.

Not to be understood or discovered.

No. As all those preceding have done,

This child will falter, fall at the first.

One more casualty of your inexorable curse.

That hand. That left hand.

That left hand schleps over your wordage.

That left hand muddies your waters,

Tears down your dreams and bursts your bubbles.

That left hand makes ugly your children,

Stretching out boundless black Oblivion in its wake.

Ashley Doherty