PHOTOGRAPH AS MONUMENT

John O'Dal
Author: John O'Dal
Word Count: 209
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PHOTOGRAPH AS MONUMENT

PHOTOGRAPH AS MONUMENT belongs to the following groups:

All Things Poetic, Artistic, Philosophical and Melbourne & Victoria

Leaving out the ignominy
We all hope to become a memory

An innocuous remnant of the past
A sometime viewed photograph
As elegy to self
Perhaps to be displayed upon a shelf
Something which to aspire
A bauble for your unlit pyre

So I have created my own monument
Made of pride without lament
And facts that make no sense

A self-venerating shrine
Which others will refine

Which extols a life well lived
Flesh and blood as ideal image

Showing…………..

How I was there when they unleashed
The dogs of war
And how I supped with the village whore
Who died young without regrets
Bar the drink the drugs and cigarettes
(Lest this be removed from my eulogy
I was helping her with her poetry)

And how I suffered the philosophy
Of bar-room bores
And Socrates
As they tried to analyse the dance
Of life and death as happenstance

While I flew kites with holes

And contemplated from my easy-chair
The whore, the wars and Voltaire
And the ice-cream clown as predator

And the other beasts
The father son and holy priests

And wrote poetry that hardly rhymes
Over the hill and past my prime
About love and pain
And loss

And truth in paradox

  • mmargot

    mmargot

    there is a comment brewing…

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