Recalcitrant

From a Different Perspective...

Midnight shadows
Black on black
In the gathering darkness
We plan our attack

In the alley
Sounds grating metal on flint
A lighter's gleam lighting
A desperate eye's glint

A mutter of voices
Flick of switchblade
They're coming to get us
How soon our hopes fade

Hot blood on cold pavement
Brick walls feel skulls crack
A boot's kicking my face in
But I'm not going back

I take one cop's body
To use as a shield
And requisition his billy club
To clear a way to the field

Shots ring out loud
And voices cut short
But my gun has an answer
And it's one sharp retort

By morning 8 bodies
Decorate a deserted street
3 cops and 5 escapees
But at least I'm on my feet

And I'll keep on running
Long as I've got a plan
'Cuz a man without cunning
Ain't got no claim on being a man

And I'm steppin' outta darkness
And I'm steppin' into light
'Cuz the one thing I ever learned
Is freedom's worth the fight!

Author's Note

Please help me with scansion. If anything stands out as not fitting to the line, let me know. I have an easy flow with no real meter, but I want help making it flow.

Reviews

[Jack...]

This is a fine epic tale here my friend. It follows its own path very nicely, bring us to an open ended but satisfying conclusion. Very cool.

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

Thanks so much, Jack! I like that you responded to the opened ended nature of it. At times I think we all have poems we don't know how to finish and I think I started and stopped a few times with this one. At the end I finally felt like I got the character down and I just decided I would take a different direction than I do when I regularly am trying to finish a poem. I look at it much like how a popular song might end. If you listen to the Beatles then you hear that they would sometimes fade out, sometimes end on a strange seventh chord or something like that, or other times they would just do something harmonic and satisfying. It wasn't the same thing every time for sure. I am attempting to apply that same idea to my poetry endings. A way to diffuse the tension of not knowing the "perfect" ending is just to think of it like the Beatles did and just choose one of a variety of endings and see which one works. I have heard many takes of songs the Beatles did on their Anthology, and seeing how they altered the whole feeling of songs (changing key, tempo, and all other aspects) with great fluidity was inspiring to me. It made me think that poetry, like lyrics and music, can be just as malleable. I have tried not to let my feelings on a certain poem be set in stone. So I guess this is all my long way of saying that I thank you for enjoying this "epic tale," and noticing the ending I felt was most right was opened. I didn't want something bad to happen to the main character, and I kind of got a kick out of this anti-hero lecturing us at the end about what it means to be a good man!

[Tina Louise UK]

You draw the reader into another world, very well crafted and most enjoyable :) x

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

Thank you so much, and I really am glad this was the first review of yours about a poem of mine I have read because I feel this is a very divergent piece and I am proud of it!! Thanks!!

[A. Amos]

Deep, intelligent and very courageously crafted and the last line is a killer. Nice job done bro.

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

Thank you! I was surprised no one seemed to have read this one and then I noticed it had gotten pushed way down my catalog. I really appreciate your review. I always try as hard as I can to take unique perspectives and this is one I was really proud of. I don't know that my "character" is consistent throughout, but I felt that by the end I kind of got it. It was a first for me...Like a kind of acting gig. I wanted to portray a different sort of highly stylized part in an imaginary play...Kind of like Bogart in Dark Passage, but I had not seen that movie at the time I wrote this. It is a 1930s gangster pic character. Yeah, see? Yeah! Props to Edward G. Robinson!