PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[inspired by Wallace Stevens' poem, "The Man On The Dump]

I saw a local man taking a dump

apart.  He hauled it out with his old truck.

He loaded it, by pile, and piece, and clump;

some of it easily moved, and some stuck

to something that, with effort, he pulled off.

He spent some hours, then days; more than one trip

required; and nasty things befouled his grip.

He grew impatient with the slow clock's tick

(or so it seemed), and worked with too much hurry:

until he had dislodged something toxic.

In just a few hours, he began to cough.

In less than one week, his words sounded slurry.

And then his whole great girth started to glow;

and, through his skin, the bones began to show,

as prospects for recovery grew dim.

And, at its end, he started to mutate,

into a mass too horrible to state

in ordinary sentences that must,

by their own nature, cause a sharp disgust.

(The memory of it still stuns and shocks.
And the whole process was locally feared.

They quickly buried what was left of him,

nor had they seen such a contorted face),

within the empty dump that he had cleared,

beneath a plethora of tons of rocks;

in that windswept, eerie, and well-fenced place.

Starward