Grinning Death

    The following poem is my only attempt in the Edgar Allen Poe style, at least to my mind. It is dark and morbid, but so was my mind at the time. It was composed during breaks deep in the bowels of a factory in a locker room. Two brothers had recently died an early death due to disease, and endless hours in the heat and roaring, mind numbing hum of the machines did little to placate my inner turmoil. I took the following picture to accompany the poem, entitled: GRINNING DEATH.

Grinning Death, you assassin, honing your blade, contemplating
     the grisly tools at your disposal,
Whether it be in loud and smashing violence, or rather silent and slow,
     the flesh to mull.

Grinning Death, from what shadowy place do you come,
     and what manner of beast?
To hide in the murky dimensions with bloody talons at the ready,
     to slash, when expected least.

Grinning Death, our constant companion down through time forgotten,
     lurking in that other place;
When out of the wind-laden snow, or floating on the balmy summer breeze,
     where suddenly appearing, your hideous face.

Grinning Death, your rules unable to discern, your chilling touch on the good,
     the evil, or young and old, clutched within your grip.
You smash our hulls and rip our sails to sink our mortal ship, then whisk away
     the mournful souls on some ghastly trip?

Over the freshly covered grave the red-breasted thrush
     may sing his song of spring;
There, as well, over the newly plowed field bursting with seed
     he would sing.

For the thrush would not know, nor would he care that under one soil
     a corpse, and the other a seed;
Even as one lay silent and still in the nether world...the other,
     to the surface the warm sun would lead.

Silence lay like a blanket over the graves this night, as if to wait
     for the dead to regain their sight,
But Grinning Death shall embrace them tight, and the dead
     still dead come the morning light.