Queasy fear
January 12, 2013
A queasy fear I sometimes feel
arising in my gullet
from auditory memory
of some demonic trumpet
And sometimes I have had
to sit awhile and catch my breath
when sounds recall the leaden chord
of the angel of death
It’s not so often that I hear
these inward echoings
but when I do, they help me to
remember the last things
Death, and judgment, heaven and hell
(to cite the ancient number)
when seven seals send thunderous peals
and souls awake from slumber
January 12, 2013 at 4:26 pm
You wrote that whole thing just so you could get to the last quatrain, didn’t you. They are four beautiful lines!!…if you re-write consider death’s angel and give up the rhyme scheme there.
January 12, 2013 at 4:33 pm
No, I actually wrote the first two stanzas some time ago, and wrote the last two today, because I thought the poem needed to be longer.
January 12, 2013 at 4:41 pm
I agree; the last stanza feels the most potent to me. Cool.
January 12, 2013 at 7:18 pm
That’s interesting…In the two stanza version the rhyme scheme of the second stanza works for me but in the longer version it hitches rather than flowing as I read it aloud, moving through the entire poem as an extended thought. I like it in any event and I love the final quatrain.
January 13, 2013 at 12:16 am
I like the first verse not only for the half-rhyme of “trumpet/gullet”, but for the suggestion that you have heard the demonic trumpet before