Melancholy Roses

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.