Remembrance
They come and go,
Time and time again,
No matter what I do, I always lose a friend.
Through deserts and tundras,
Snow and rain,
I feel the blood throughout my heart leak from out my veins.
They look at me so, so suspiciously still,
At my world filled with violence and the people who kill.
They then walk on along, with a strut of some kind,
It wasn’t us, It was you who did this crime!
No! Come back here, for I can not ever leave this grief,
Grief in fact not caused by me,
But the influence you had on my brothers,
Six feet deep.
Johann, your poem moved me. It had such harrowing imagery, especially "...the blood throughout my heart leak from out my veins." I felt a mix of the grim imagery of Dulce et Decorum Est and Harlem Renaissance poets/poems Hughes' Mother to Son (a beautiful, powerful reading by Viola Davis can be found on YouTube) and somewhat reminiscent of McKay's If We Must Die. Your choice of words to keep the audience engaged was smart. I was led by the simplicity of your precise language rather than ostentatious vocabulary.
How devastating the ending!
You're moving onto college. May things be better for the high school senior writing poetry for Afrocentric in four years.