Grief Tattoos

[Reilley]

This is the title piece from my chapbook.
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There are moments that leave footprints on your soul,
Abrasions upon your dignity,
When harbingers of the negative
impart with a lasting kiss
a grief tattoo
lest you forget that you ever hurt.

Breathing of a wounded wind
is enough to remind you how badly it hurt,
enough to sear the memory into scar.

I own no more of the sky than you,
yet that which surrounds me
is mine, and mine alone.
The question that remains,
the one that no answer will still,
is what do we do with the phantoms,
the ones who whip and play
within my hair,
the ones who cry out
with the voices of hemispheres
and speak directly to my blood?

Attachments:

[shannow]

Powerful and speaks volumes, love it

[heatherwordbender]

Wow. Hmm...

[diannet]

I like!

[SweetSilverBird]

This is a fine, moody and powerful piece. On reading, I got a little tripped up on the line 'the one that no answer will still'. For some reason I read 'still' as a modifier at first, rather than a verb. Once I read it again, though, I was ok with it. Probably it was just me, though.

Exquisitely dark. Nicely done!

[eiken]

Reilley, this is a wow for me too. The footprints on your soul just hooked me in, I identify but could never verse it as beautifully as this. I love so many lines in this poem...."A grief tattoo lest you forget that you ever hurt", 'enough to sear the memory into scar.
The idea of ownership of the sky or not and what is mine and mine alone is wonderful. I am so protective about what is mine! The question, what do we do with the phantoms? We exorcise them, we speak about them, we write about them we give them light to come out because they live in a place of darkness and are kept there to fester because of secrecy. Wonderful poem Reilley

[heatherwordbender]

((poking my nose in...but in my own personal theosophy...regarding those phantoms...we NAME them))

[Reilley]

Thank you all so much!

This poem was written at the request of the book's editor, after we had labored for hours about what to call the book, and I happened to blurt out Grief Tattoos, then had to write a piece to encompass the idea.

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Reilley,

What an interesting story about this, that you came up with the title and then wrote a poem to go with it. It's a strong statement about pain, the kind that keeps you up at night---I can identify.

Since this is already published, you undoubtedly won't be making changes, however I noticed one inconsistency and one grammatical error, which I'll point out anyway.

The inconsistency is that you're talking about things that are "yours"---like the sky that that surrounds you and the phantoms that play in "your" hair and voices speaking to "your" blood. Yet you say "what are we to do with the phantoms?" While I suppose it's possible that you're trying to enlist the help of someone else to rid you of these phenomena, to me it seems much more logical that you would say "what am I to do..."

The grammatical error is the use of "badly" instead of "bad". The first would be used to modify an action verb, such as "she sings badly" and the second is used when describing a state of being, which is, in this case "hurt", so the correct phrase would be "how bad it hurt". This is a tricky distinction, but "badly" does stand out here as being incorrect. Here is a link which goes into this in some detail about the use of bad/badly: www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/010101BadBadly.htm

I think "Grief Tattoo" is an awesome title and I do like the depth of pain expressed here---overall a great write.



Brigid

[Reilley]

Brigid, thank you very much for your astute corrections, I really do appreciate them, and it is obvious I ned them.

The first stanza refers to you, the collective audience, then when it switches to me and my personal iobservations of grief, I saw the we as a transition to that frame of reference, and the question is a universal one, isn't it?

The problem occurs, I think, when I continue the sentence with my personal phantoms, whipping my hair etc. Hmmm.

Granted, it has already been published as is, and the editor did not catch that or the misuse of badly.

But I do appreciate the insight, and will request the change in future printings.