Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

The Smell of Life

The smell of life
is drowning into a pool of void.
Closer, death comes, everyday to say "hello you".
The body changes, the taste, the smell, sour and mingeled-
I can taste your decay, swallow my fears with a hard, ragged choke.
For you, I cannot pave a path of spirit, god knows I tried.
I cannot help you with your fears, when you give them no voice.
I do not live in denial, I cannot hold your hand down that road, my friend.
I just stand and watch you struggle to breathe, wondering, hoping, is this the last one?
I get angry. I get sick. Yes, I get angry. Be strong. Die with dignity. Allow those who you love, help. I feel so sorry for you, as you trust not one.
Your world shrinks day by day, breath by breath.
There will come a time, soon, your last gasp, your last exhalation.....then, you will finally be free.

Style / type: 
Free verse
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Review Request (Direction): 
How was my language use?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Last few words: 
I am the caregiver for my father-in-law who is in his final stages of copd. I have been doing this for almost three years. He is very difficult.
Editing stage: 

Comments

I really liked your poem the only suggestion I could make was to shorten the lines and break it up into stanzas, at the moment its leaning towards prose

I think you have a winner with this poem it just needs a few tweaks

sincerely Jayne-Chloe

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” — W.B. Yeats

thanx, i thought so too. it has been years since Ihave written anything, other than my journal. I did find my old poems, before neopoet crashed.

author comment

I like where you are going. Look forward to the edit

8

Scott

The struggle in defiance of that last journey is hard, that you have been there is beyond words.
Try not to listen with the ear, but listen with the mind, in there is a glow that is protected yet can give out all anyone needs..
I will ask one of my helpers to be there with you, and in asking they are there..
That you have all the emotions floating around you is natural as it is a hard part of the journey to help with and he knows how much you do.
Take care of you, later we can advise on an edit to help the poem but with this one there is plenty of time yet..
I look forward to your other wrires, Yours Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

I am "post" crash, so my PM reflected that ignorance. Therefore, Welcome back.
I agree with Seren's suggestion to clip the lines. Not the content per se, but they read too easily as prose with their length. A few judicious "line breaks" can solve that.

My family has Huntington's Chorea (I am 53 and symptom free, but my sister is beginning that long road). I held my mother for twenty years of worsening condition until she left me. I know from whence you speak... anger, hope for an end, hope the end doesn't come...
I do not pity you, but pity is what I feel. I cannot be helped.
I know where you are.
Talk to me if it will aid in any way.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.