When Poets Die by Paula G. Akinwole

We search their words for some clue

In their poems, last Facebook status, lack of Facebook statuses

Immediately wonder if it was suicide

If they had writers block

If they finished that poem they’d been scratching their minds for looking for one word that means “to contemplate so much you become a thesaurus rather than a dictionary”

Alwaya poets life cut too short

Even death by old age is not enough life time for the poet

Whose every day might reveal something we’ve never seen before or thought of before or wrote about before

Maybe that’s it

Death tries to find poets who don’t have anything left to say

Which is more comforting than “they had so much more left to say”

Gone too soon, the poet and my favorite poem, that never got written

By a poet, who maybe forgot to write so those of us left behind could know how they were feeling

We search their words for some clue

Mystical magical people like poets should feel it coming, right?

Plan death well enough to write one last great poem

Whose pressure is so great it keeps the poet alive a day or two longer

Unless, it was that last poem that did them in

The one in which they admit the sound of boiling water sends chills down their spine, sounds like it’s whispering their step father’s name

Or they realize that the last poem was better than this one or the one before that and the decline is inevitable

I encourage you to write a story instead, poet

Maybe your story even

Noone in the audience will know it’s not a poem

Record an album 

Read your diary enteries as outtros and submit your late night ramblings for publication

If they reject you, let them know you had already rejected yourself and that this the act of writing despite hands that would rather be hanging yourself is an act of mother fucking defiance to a mind that’s aching to be

liberated and a body that wonders what murder feels like. This is an attempt at liberation of the self.

Because let’s face it, it the poet has died, we are all thinking it must have been suicide. People that mystical and magical don’t deserve to die in car accidents, or from diabetes, or by domestic violence. Everybody knows a God can only die by the hand of a God.

And poets might be the closest thing to god on earth 

When poets die, we search their words for some clue

Think back to that last interaction with them to see if they had been signing a language in their blinks or sending Morse code warnings with their pen taps

Only to find that poets never can

Die

Not us

Not me 

Cause maybe

There is always someone thinking about those last words.

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September Poetry Starts today! https://lackofbetter.com/september-poetry/

September be that month of newness. The ninth month can’t help it’s own metaphor, new life and shit. Giving birth and starting new. All that. So in the spirit of newness or doing-shit-ness, I’ll be posting poetry written by myself and others every day of September.

If you’d like your work considered for publication on this page, email submit@lackofbetter.com