Inevitable

[Jerrybaldy]

I was there in prehistory
and in the missing link.
There all along.
In warfare, in every body
in every corpse filled trench.
In every butterfly, wings ripped off
every slug, burning in salt
in every pet, put down.
I am in black holes
spinning to the speed of light.
In your uncle John's cardiac arrest
on the toilet mid-crap.
In the blackness of growths
and the red spots in phlegm,
the sickness in blood,
the blockage in clots.
I am in the sudden shock
and the long awaited.
The unborn, the stillborn
the never should have been born.
Unwelcome and inevitable
I am in you.
I have always been in you.
I have to be.



School report June 1977
' I feel Jeremy resigns himself far too much to the inevitablity of it all' Miss Stoates.

Jerrybaldy Litnet October 2010.
' You may well be right, Miss Stoates.'

[Delta40]

You're resigned to the invetability of what?

Hope you liked Miss Stoates.

I think you have too many there's in the first few lines before it starts to flow better. This is rather elusive to me other than thinking about the certainty of death. It has a death is nigh quality, which you have shown in other poems

[Jerrybaldy]

Have removed some of the there's . Is not so much death is nigh as in it's day to day denial which keeps us all so chirpy :D
thanks Delta
Jerry
oh and yes I liked her, she had insight.

[Delta40]

and taxes?

[Jerrybaldy]

death and taxes?
and it was the inevitabilty of it all. :D

[Delta40]

you can't die after you die but you can keep paying taxes....

[hillwalker]

Miss Stoates has a lot to answer for (and I'm surprised you were still at school long after your 25th birthday).

It's not so much about death I felt as about those clues of its existence; clues we instinctively turn a blind eye to - until a poem like this slaps us in the face and says 'take a closer look'.

This is a very poignant reality check.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Oh do please get rid of that Ms Stoates business at the end. It's rather as if you'd got scared at what a bloody good poem you'd written and had to undercut yourself! Face up to it, guv: you've written a damn fine poem here! Step up to the nearest no-doubt slightly smudged mirror in your home and looking straight into your own eyes (less your cross- or wall- eyed) and say


I, Jerry, have just written a damn good poem!

[Scheherazade]

I find this poem more "matter-of-fact" than "dark" and I am afraid, it does not live up to the standard you set for yourself with "Nightswimming" but it is still a good poem.

Leaving punctuation out (:p), I think it holds itself together nicely until the end. The ending feels a little rushed to me. Might be because it is shorter and makes me think something more should have been said.

Something like (and keeping in mind that I am no poet):

I am in you, where
I have always been
And will be,
where I have to be.

[Haunted]

What a concept, the personification of the ugly inevitability of life. This is just one of the things I admire, you are so original in your thinking. Not just the subject matter but also the samples you gave. Salting slugs, ahh, I'm guilty of that, I do empathize with them though, not as fatalistically inevitable but possible as a human condition. This is a great poem.