cathy mccormick
May 13, 2021

The Collector

i am not matter - i feed on flesh
a bird ever frozen in flight
i am eternal infinite night
you can't escape the breathless cage
whose bars will never stretch that far
stars dead a million years ago
send only echoes of their light

i am the ice berg ever melting
each leaf in autumn turning brown
a stone in water sinking down
you're stitching on my shroud
the second hand the minute hand plucked
i'm the last tear on your cheek
still you ignore that i am there
you close your eyes to me everywhere

i'm the dark in daytime shouting loud
the bone hand in the cloud
handing out peppermints
collecting past and future debts
blackmailer
take-down shaker
i scoop up hours due and yet
you bet your fortunes on me

the unicorn will lose its horn
the jack-in-the-box will jump
on the cosmic grid
you're just a bump

the furnace burns
the fingers clench
the hurricanes run
life's building blocks scattered
and what has it mattered

inhaling the past
exhaling the future
i breathe

About This Poem

Style/Type: Free verse

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Editing - draft

About the Author

Country/Region: WA

More from this author

Comments

Candlewitch

from start to finish...I love this poem and its darkness! the title is perfect. each line is like a building block that spirals down. each footstep taken until there is no turning back! then folding into the velvet arms of oblivion!

*hugs, Cat
ever, eddy styx

Geezer

Geezer

3 years 11 months ago

of how I missed this. Thanks to Candlewitch, for alerting me to it! She knows how much I like the dark stuff and I like this! You label this as free verse, but it has many elements of rhyme and I think that you have mislabeled it! ~ Geez.
.

Ray Whitaker

grieving, and the like. Your piece put me anew in that space, however it doesn’t take much to push me there these days.

The loss of a loved one drove me to think that, certainly in S 2, L 1-6; and in S3 all thru-out.

I was pretty light this morning ‘till I read your work here. Well written, to place and feeling. IF... my derivative is what you were intending. I never know really what the reader’s interpretations will be from my work. so am giving space to that I might have missed your intention.

Is that what you meant?

C

did not have time to finish my comment back. it sounds like you are sad. have you just recently lost a loved one? i was not thinking of that in this poem. i have written about a dying spouse, not from my own experience, for a competition, which i won. if you lost someone my condolences. i am a very happy person. i have had my share of sadness but right now and for a long time things have been pretty good, other than poor health which does not stop me at least from writing lol. i have always preferred the night, the dark, the melancholy. you will not find poems by me where people end up finding the gold at the end of the rainbow. i don't just do sad though. i like protest, abnormal behavior, religion (my take on what god is and who jesus was and is i think are not shared by anyone else on earth and i follow no organized religion. i pick subjects that interest me. the latest poem i am working on came from a true tv story about one kid who killed another. at the end the mother of the murdered kid, in court, forgave the killer, true grace. so maybe that one has if not a happy ending an uplifting one.

C

the collector is death. i wrote a poem over 50 years ago about time. reread it about a year ago. rewrote it except kept last two lines to refer to death. i suppose it could also refer to time. i am going to change the last two lines even as they are cliche