If cut then I should surely bleed
were I not drained, face cold and white,
and curled beneath your naked branches
fade for lack of love and light.
Roots of dismay my heart entangle
moss grows thick upon my chest
and to the earth I am returned
at last, in peace, to sleep, to rest
Afterwards 
Beautiful ❤
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Gorgeous
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Cheers P hope you’re well
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gah! that last line. I should know it but I can’t remember. It’s like almost familiar, a little changed but not much, not in intent. Bet if I were straight out of high school, I’d remember. Hamlet and Peter Wimsey are not helping me.
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And now I lay me down to sleep?
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nope, that’s not it. I remember that prayer once you said it. That’s the way I am with most things. The memory is on the tip of my mind and then when someone says it, it’s “Yes! that’s it.” or “Nope, that’s not it.” But get it on my own? nope. It’s like the damn file drawers are stuck in my memory.
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In the Gaudy Night poem (a mystery book set in Oxford), Harriet writes a stanza which ends “Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.” Her stanza is peaceful starting with “Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,” and then Peter writes the finishing stanza which flips it, makes it a restless death. You made me go look it up to see why that last line made me think of that book (my favorite in the Peter Wimsey series). Now I have to figure out why it reminds me of Shakespeare. It isn’t that I’ve seen those exact sequence of words before–it’s that they remind me of something.
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How cool.i.must look that up.
To sleep perchance to dream maybe? From hamlet?
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yeah, I think it was Hamlet. morbid bloke. Shakespeare often used sleep as a metaphor for death and that’s the feeling I got with your last line. I loved the poem. Should have said that first. got sidetracked by the tip of the mind feeling. Love the imagery. You don’t do straight poems often but when you do, you have a talent for them.
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Thanks 🙂
I’ve been getting into.them lately. I do love feeling the rhythm.and exercising parts of me i didn’t know i had
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They are pretty cool. It’s particularly impressive to me because while I like the form, I’m not good at rhyming and meter.
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I end up reading them out loud a lot .
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I never liked Shakespeare until I read him out loud. Then I thought, “Now I get it. This is why people love him.” It’s not the same reading silently. So what you said makes sense.
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Oh god that’s soooo true
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