I will never be dirt free | Teen Ink

I will never be dirt free

January 5, 2023
By i-am-a-ghost13 BRONZE, Franklin, Wisconsin
i-am-a-ghost13 BRONZE, Franklin, Wisconsin
3 articles 0 photos 1 comment

The boy in the back garden 

the garden, the garden 


If I may continue to call it a garden

the boy, the boy, the boy 

the boy and his rattling, clattering bones. 

His bones, they shake

and his skeleton dances

Oh, how he dances

he dances! 

He dances and he dances and he dances 

Oh, how he mocks me

he mocks me, he does

             he does because he hates me 

he hates me, and I hate him, him and his rattling, clattering bones

His heart is wasted and mine is blackened and cold in my chest. 

I drove my hands into his heart, my fingers deft and nimble, sharp nails as I tore out that blasted pocketwatch that ticked and tocked. 

Tick tock it went 

Tick tock

Tick tock

Tick tock goes to the hand that spurs the rot. The rot, the rotting flesh of his body falls in drips. 

drip

drip 

drip 

The blood in my sink 

It drips, it drops. 

Drip. Drop. 

Tick. Tock 

A song, a song!

The rotting flesh and the rattling bones and the splattering blood

This is the song to which he dances. 

He dances! 

he dances 

he dances!

he dances

him, and his rattling, clattering bones

In the back garden

the garden, the withered, decrepit, decaying back garden. 


The author's comments:

This piece was written with much inspiration from the song "Dirty Night Clowns" by Chris Garneau, and "For the Departed" by Shayfer James, along with very obvious alludes to "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe.

The Poem is loosely about a woman who lives in a very old house who has committed a murder and has buried the body in their old back garden. She is losing her mind and is convinced that the person she murdered isn't really dead and is contented to dance in her back garden, taunting her for her failed murder attempt. The atmosphere is very much based on Chris Garneau's song, as the aesthetic and the tone is very dependent on understanding the poem in terms of visuals. 

the repetitiveness of the poem is intentional, both a choice of words to help convey insanity and an allude to the way that the poem is supposed to be read, with rhythm and movement, particular emphasis on certain words and phrases, and emotions such as guilt, regret, anger, and of course, hatred. The poem is bitter but melancholy and emotional, as she so believes the things she's saying and is trying so hard to explain herself, only to be reduced into quickly repeating words and hysterical desperation. 


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