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For Allie

Beauty queen at seventeen, daddy's BMW, she meant that
night to be over it all.

Seventy feet down a cliff,
she found God
was a poplar, stoic
and positioned,

the only thing between
her and the lake.

Hospital for a year,
she could only speak
Spanish after she came to,
insurance paid for an interpreter.


Parts of her skull
were frozen until
the requisite donor
parts accumulated.

She loves tattoos
as if by branding
she can reclaim the body they say she
left for two plus minutes.

A rose, a tea pot, and
on the left calf; a tree.

She knows every stop
light in town and admonishes you to
accelerate or slow down.

Being motionless in traffic
brings panic attacks:

Traumatic brain injury,
siezures, pressure of
speech and a poverty
of emotion,

it is difficult when she smiles, not to look away from that part of her face which fails to react


Once in trying to comfort her,
she froze like a Greek
upon seeing Medusa.

I went back to my coffee thinking all
the King's horses
and all the King's men

This is close... some cutting and tightening perhaps needed...
Love these lines:
Seventy feet down a cliff,
she found God
was a poplar, stoic
and positioned,

the only thing between
her and the lake.

I would trim the stanza starting with “Traumatic”.

I like Ken the last stanza

Thanks Bob. I'm gonna keep working on it.I always have trouble translating real events into poetry. Frank is one of the best I've seen at it

Ken
Interesting, very real indeed.
It smack so true of life
I suspect personal.
Maybe drop the last Strophe.

Or use as a epitaph in italics.

All my stories are inventions.

Thank you

Kenneth

This is how one should write about mental fever. But I will have to read it a few more times.

S