Poetry Post

[ninanevermore]

It's been a long time since I've posted a weekend poem. Heck, there are new people here who have no idea that I do this. Since poetry is such a public nuisance, I try to limit it to the weekends when fewer people are likely to step it it. My mother taught me to be considerate like that.

I found a poem from 2005 in my old notebook, about Patty's housemate Amanda and her funeral. I tend to write several pieces about a subject, and I must have written this one about the times I wrote The Funeral, the other poem I posted about her. I almost left it to rot in that notebook because I already had a poem about that day. Then, I found I kind of like it, on second glance. It refers to some of the same things that The Funeral does, but has a very different tone. The Funeral was a little angrier and focused more on the socio-economic class of the subjects. This one is more sadly sweet; it's about Amanda's youth and the youth of the people who mourned her.




Fair-well Party

She would have liked
seeing her friends dressed for a night in the clubs,
decked out in their very best threads,
with glittery tops and short black skirts
that skimmed the tops of their legs.

She would have liked
her boyfriend's heartfelt eulogy
about how she'd traded in her earthly things
and now hovered high above us
on gossamer angel wings.

She would have liked
the way her friends clung together
telling stories about her few short years,
their slender arms interlocked,
their smooth cheeks streaked with tears.

She would have liked
the rolled joint that one of her friends
dropped into her opened grave;
like it, but at the same time,
she would have though it kind of a waste.

She would have liked
that the two solemn men at the end
who covered her coffin with dirt
were good looking and about her age,
though a little cleancut for her.

She would have liked
that the day was beautiful and bright
and more than a little hot,
that it reminded us all of her in those ways,
she would have liked that a lot.



-Nina Erickson
July 2005
© 2006

Comments

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I figure poetry is surreal enough that it can go in this journal, but I give a warning that this is a smoking area, in case people want to sit elsewhere on their friends page so they don't cough. My other journal is memes and baby pictures, pretty much, with an occasional rant that has nothing to do with my drive into work.