It’s Bad Poetry Friday again! …I’m sorry.

This is a high school creative writing class effort at, I think, iambic pentameter. It’s very uneven, because, well, high school, and because, well, me. But it’s kind of fun to look back. (I did edit one particularly bad line… probably should do the whole thing, but I’m lazy.) Warning—it’s kinda long; it was probably an assignment for an “epic” poem.

If reading bad poetry is your idea of a good time, click on the link! If it’s fodder for your nightmares, then please do not feel obligated to torture yourself.

The Justice of the Night by J. Sevick

 

The graying stone is cloaked in fog,

The chilling night arrives;

The grass is wet with evening rain

And tears for ended lives.

 

A woman parts the fog and dark

To see her husband’s grave.

She wraps her shawl around her back,

And tells herself she’s brave.

 

The owls speak of her approach;

The spiders spin their tales.

The crunching grass beneath her feet

Makes sounds like coffin nails.

 

The wind sends whispers past her ear—

It stops her in her place.

Her fingers tremble in their gloves,

And tears slide down her face.

 

The graveyard taunts her as she walks

To lay her flowers there—

Beneath his looming graveyard stone,

Which until now was bare.

 

The guilt has finally come for her,

As she does pay her due.

It’s been too long since he passed on,

Back when the sky was blue.

 

And if the man she now is with

Is any indication…

She wasn’t crushed by his demise—

Instead she felt elation.

 

It may be true he was not kind,

And maybe he did cheat—

But rumors flew around the town

That his death was her feat.

 

As someone proper would expect,

She fervently denied

That any action on her part

Did cause him to have died.

 

The graveyard knows her darkest thoughts,

Beyond her weak denial.

The fog will prosecute her now,

Without a proper trial.

 

The darkness closes over her—

She breaks into a run.

The thin black gate closes shut.

She knows her life is done.

 

The ground beneath her feet awakes;

The dead begin to rise;

And in the thick and rolling fog

No one will hear her cries.

 

And then her husband rises up,

His face marred by her blow.

She can no more deny her deed,

While he looks at her so.

 

“My love,” he moans into the wind,

“You killed me for that man.”

He moves to stand in front of her,

“Was this part of your plan?”

 

She screams into the endless night,

While all her dues are paid.

The justice of the night is fierce

But when all has been weighed…

 

The night knows all our secrets

There’s nothing we can hide—

Beware when you are with the dead

If you are why they died.