Who To Blame - On The Ocassion Of The Deaths Of Robin Williams And Michael Brown Poem by Warren Falcon

Who To Blame - On The Ocassion Of The Deaths Of Robin Williams And Michael Brown

Rating: 4.0


Who To Blame - On The Ocassion Of The Deaths Of Robin Williams And Michael Brown

'My head is full of fire and grief and my tongue
runs wild, pierced with shards of glass.'
― Federico García Lorca

I'm blaming the fullest moon for Williams death,
and for Michael Brown's by moon disguised as cop,

I'm calling out high tide beside an ocean town
named for a shark*,

I'm forbidding any mention of
a town called Ferguson where a young man in

a street lies uncovered but for flies for hours
fenced in by strips of yellow plastic onryu**

...Police Line Do Not Cross Police Line Do Not...

where one clenched fist stiffens and flies feast
indecent as any moon, I'm cursing a rope in knots,

plastic wrap, duct tape (silver as a moon) , a chair
too easily kicked away, that moment when swaying

slows to dead calm, one bedroom slipper on the
floor, I'm compulsively imagining the last moment

when decision becomes deed done, I'm praising and
cursing all at once that a great mind in greater

pain is finally stilled, and a young mind, college
bound, too soon is unconfined beyond thought and

vision, that his last cigar was sweet, was not
enough to pardon neither cop nor moon, I'm wondering

how a moon so large becomes pathetically entangled
in once gentle willows, suddenly splinters beside

a river, explains breaking glass, cars aflame,
mayors counting bullets in locked rooms all over

the world, spinning press releases in cotton
candy machines -

'All answers are pending investigation.'


**
*'shark' in Spanish is 'Tiburon' which is the name of
the sea town in California that Robin Williams lived in

**onryu: a single line poem with a title. It falls into
the category of micro-poetry.

Monday, August 25, 2014
Topic(s) of this poem: death,suicide
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
I frankly hate onryu. Rarely is there a poetic bone in its frail pretentious body begging for life in the form of at least some cleverness but cleverness does not art make unless it is used with authentic and practiced craft. Anyone can write a so-called oneryu but one line of words strung together does not a poem make. The police tape with its repeated pattern, Police Line -Do Not Cross, is a concrete object and I use oneryu to describe it as it is ironic in the actual image of the dead youth in the street, his head exploded, and in the clarity of the cop crossing the line with excessive and deadly force.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Winter Wyte 05 February 2016

Its inspiring and its amazing how you used facts in the poem and it still sounded great

1 0 Reply
Chinedu Dike 02 September 2014

A good write-up on current affairs. Thanks for sharing. I love it.

1 0 Reply
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Warren Falcon

Warren Falcon

Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA
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