Melancholy Roses (A poem for: Elise Cowen)

Melancholy Roses
(A Poem for: Elise Cowen)

She wrote of death, and its desire
Never quite knowing if she was
Coming out or going in—
And committed suicide, like a coward
At twenty-nine (in 1962), much like
Her contemporaries: Hemingway,
Sterling, Plath and Sexton…!
Sounds in her ears, ringing,
She jumped out of the living room
Window, falling seven floors.
Gone now, like her and her lovers,
Ginsberg, and Sheila, gone forever more…
But her poems on death and doom
Surpass most poets of gloom—.
She was direct and honest:
She dragged death, like two-dogs
Pulling on the same meat—
Her dream somewhere tucked away
inside her poems—left for us to decipher.
She became part of the beat generation,
In San Francisco…and I guess that
Will have to do…! The Poet of Death,
Doom, and melancholy roses.

Note: Life long friend to Allen Ginsberg, and lover (she was bisexual), another poet who committed suicide, and from the beat generation, in her late 20s. She was in an asylum, for her mental breakdowns. After her suicide her family destroyed most of her poetry, yet 83-poems have been found of hers. I have read some of her poetry, they are, and sound as she lived, depressive, and psychotic, with intelligence. She could be considered the equal to Anne Sexton, had she lived longer. She wrote: “Gone to Mexico—gone home –Gone to –death. Death ‘Death’” And “…Blind dreams in a green room, No love, No compassion, No intelligence, No beauty, No humility, Twenty-seven is enough…” And two years later it was, she killed herself.

#2350 4-14-2008