Suicide Note: A Loving Pastiche of John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"
- joybragi84
- 13 minutes ago
- 3 min read
When I think about it, I probably have done imitations of John Keats more than any other poet by 200-300%. I love to copy his style. It feels natural to me. I do not struggle to find his rhythms or his rhymes. I do wrestle with his negativity, which seems natural, and his positivity, when exhibited, because it always seems overwrought. He does sadness and sorrow well. Happiness seems foreign to him as I am sure it was given his circumstances.
Anyway, I am home from vacation and not teaching second summer term, so I plan to get a lot of revising done...AND<That's a big "and!".... I hope to get a lot done on the latest Dewey Lynn book. I think that I will start writing on the next chapter today. I think I am about four or five chapters from being done, but who knows? The book keeps growing and growing.
Here is Suicide Notes for you. As always, ENJOY!
Suicide Notes
My claws ache, and a lousy numbness pains
My legs as if Sol were still mid-winter dim.
The freezing March mists turned icy rains
Have frozen me fast to this coated limb.
I am fixed here in a hardened sorrow
That seals my eyes in the early dawn light
And fractures Hope into glistening shards
Of a broken tomorrow
Where nothing present in the world is right
Except the marked grief of long-dead bards.
Oh, for a novel notion not taken
By some self-appointed bird of morning
So all dull lyrics might re-awaken
With a boisterous, euphonic warning!
I’m a songster of melancholy note
With despondent tears blearing his eye
And misery muting his gloomy hymn.
Oh, for a full-throttled chirruping throat,
A bold, unburdened cry,
That I may fill each new verse to the brim!
Fill it with light and love and quite forget
The devil-boy with his wrist sling shot
And assorted steel ball-bearing kit.
He always misses, but not by a lot!
Damn, that sly snake that gobbles peeping chicks,
Slipping soundless and unseen through trees
That veil it in their devious green leaves!
I wish I could ignore their wicked tricks
And the cold malicious ease
With which our gods create killers and thieves:
Thieves, whistling wildly to amorous hens,
Their trifling tunes tempting prospective mates,
Burglars who pilfer with papers and pens
The attention of our loves and our hates,
Each one rending a transient delight
From the poet’s unresponsive soul,
Filching the muse for whom he writes or sings.
Ah, well! Try and do whatever they might,
They cannot rend the whole
Nor can they bring an end to all good things.
I, though…I can force an end to it all.
Get away! I really will! I will jump!
Down, down where the ants look, well, very small,
I will crash an unyielding, muddled lump.
Taciturn on Mother Earth’s cold, taut breast,
I will spread what once was me all around
So that you cannot turn your callous eye
From my final statement, my very best
Expression without sound.
But why should I die? By gods, I can fly!
Fly away! Fly away! Oh, silly bird!
The old woman’s scruffy cat is aprowl
And who knows whose warbles it may have heard
Or whose feathers will fleece its throaty growl?
An egg-deserter sits on the birdbath
Listening to a lark announcing spring.
The cat has slowed into a noiseless stalk
And taps its padded paws on the stone path.
Should I warn? Should I sing?
Or has the tempting of Death been but brave talk?
Talk, I think, only talk and nothing more.
Perhaps, I might learn a way to love life,
To listen to the modern birds who bore
Me with their egotistic inner strife,
And to adopt the broad atheist’s view
That no gods control this boorish chaos,
The snake’s raw hunger, or the savage cat.
I can come to terms with my sorrow too.
What soul has not known great loss?
Even base villains suffer tit-for-tat.
Ah, yes, I suppose that I will jump now
That I have reasoned with my inner fears.
Leap and fly to light on a higher bough
Above the churning flood of selfish tears.
Listen! The hummingbirds buzz the bee balm,
The mourning doves’ coos fill hazy green hills,
Tree to tree the tweeting titmouse races.
The chorus quickens all Nature’s deep calm,
Cheeping, peeping, piping trills,
Echoing Life in Time’s empty spaces.
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