Instead
by verve (Member) - published: August 26, 2009
Word Count: 117 Word Bytes: 873 Viewed: 280 times
Category - Poetry
© Copyright by verve

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Sawr a toad on the sidewalk last night,
bathing in the amber lamplight,
looking at nothing and seeing everything:
both paused, considering each other,
but just continued on instead;
toad indifferent and rooted in place,
eyes fixed upon some distant point in space.

The evening hums with cars and buses,
all the neon signs of modern life;
but would instead that I were he,
no one and nothing to be except
a predator of flies, no right or wrong,
just trying to survive.

Instead,
exhausted from nightmares of traversing
series of cramped, labyrinthine tunnels
beneath derelict buildings
in the dilapidated meatpacking district,
wherein a leprous sewer crone sells
biscuits made of charred human bones
and cancer.

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Comments

The following comments are for "Instead"
by verve

Instead
I had to read this a couple times before I could connect. The toad meeting was appealing for me. That a toad can't see anything until it moves adds meaning to your poem. There is certainly something compelling about being made to be a thing and not have to ponder the value of what you were made to be. The last stanza jarred me but its connection to other verses though tenuous is real. The toad does as it was designed to do and we in dysfunctional squalor do the same. An existential shock this. I may have obtusely missed the point but I enjoyed it. Thanks

( Posted by: jonpenny [Member] On: August 26, 2009 )

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