Overreact


O! My wailing heart! My quaking soul!
My wailing, quaking heart-soul!
Now the void of empty voidness opens before me
and is empty
like
my
soul.

O blackness! O darkness! O despair!
The sorrow of fifty billion apocalypses
rises like an army of seventy trillion skeletons,
each carrying a dying child
and weeping.
My soul screams – why?
Why? Why? Why? Why?
It howls despairingly like the despairing ghost of a despairing banshee.
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
Why did I forget
to charge my phone?

27 comments:

  1. You have captured perfectly the sense of distress we feel when we are parted from the modern technology on which we are so reliant. The images of skeletons carrying dying children was masterful. As one poet to another, I salute you.

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  2. This is how my 8yo reacts to things all the time. My life is full of overreactions. Very funny as always.

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  3. Oh, my embarrassment! My soul is in anguish!

    Could there ever be forgiveness
    from myself,
    to

    myself,

    for the mortifying loudness of my laughter
    while sitting at my desk at work?

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  4. One word. Four Syllables. Phe--nom-en-al.

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  5. I thought this was good:
    O! My wailing heart! My quaking soul!
    My wailing, quaking heart-soul!

    Then I read this:
    It howls despairingly like the despairing ghost of a despairing banshee.

    Brilliant.

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  6. Like the chorus of a Greek tragedy. Lovely.

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  7. My friend use to write poetry like this, without the cell phone part. He would give it to girls he liked in an attempt to win their love. It never worked.

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  8. I've always loved bathos.

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  9. Have you ever read any Orczy (The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Elusive Pimpernel, etc.)? It's like this.

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  10. Matt, I had a friend like that, too! Woo hoo! I wrote a joke poem for him, once. "O! the ship of my thought sets sail in the harbor of my dreams..." and ended with the ship sinking. He loved it. Eventually he became kind of well known. But man, that poetry was rough.

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  11. Methinks thou-est protest-eth too much-eth..

    :-)

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  12. Sounds like one of my former best friends.

    Former for a reason. ;)

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  13. WOW, thanks, I just plugged in my phone. Actually, I feel worse than that when my camera battery isn't charged.

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  14. I. love. this. blog. You, sir, are a treasure.

    Knew a girl in college who wrote poetry like this for thesis class. "The bells of agony ring in the abyss of despair," and such. That one was about a puppy.

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  15. Does anyone else hear Bill Shatner's voice in their head when they read this one? :D

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  16. The lovechild of William Shatner and Sarah Palin would've written something just like that :)

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  17. You have been sneaking peeks at my super-secret diary! Who told you that I hide it under my bed?!

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  18. I was so guilty of this around middle school. I was goth and whatnot and found a website specifically for this type of "poetry." Man, those were terrible. This, however, is hilarious! :D

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  19. This poem is quite possibly the best thing on the entire Internet. I died when I read it—repeatedly.

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  20. The first two lines remind me of Walt Whitman.

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