'On Death' - Expressing feelings through poetry, art, writing, may not always be pretty - but vital to self soothe and hopefully help others ....

As a poet and spoken word artist - words provide the vein through which I help others (hopefully) and help myself too.
The following poem is an expression from my perspective as someone facing grief, so exposing myself from the other side of my funeral work.
Writing poetry is not just for poets, it is for everyone and anyway, who defines a poet from a non poet!
There is only one rule - write from the heart.
Pick up a pen/pencil / keyboard and just 'speak' through your fingers, worry about what you are 'saying' once the words start to fall from your fingertips, write anything, curse, shout, laugh, cry, howl onto the page, let every word squeeze out and be gathered from every corner, then look at it again later and re-frame it if you want, don't if you don't.. kiss it, burn it, share it, hide it, print it and do it again!
It feels GOOD and there are no RIGHTS OR WRONGS!
OK, go!
Here is one of mine- and yes its un-pretty and a reaction at the time to an unexpected death of a friend.
'On Death'
by Colleen Allen
Dedicated to my good friend P.S.
There is a taste, acrid
A tingle, a touch
That fingers dirty..
your soft palate
Extends each digit length to
Cradle throat
Tight to choke
As life flickers - adrenalin
Licks salaciously
Down jelloid spine
To hip
Grip
My heart in time with
Tremble lip
Upon that note of death
I wish to plug my ears and eyes
And mouth
So not one morsel of this vile
Meal information
Can enter my skin
And make it real.
I feel its dark note plummet
Offensive drip, drip
Loaded viral substance
To throat back
Spit or swallow
Neither
Repairs or endears
Poison news unwanted
UNWANTED
But fact
Repairs not
The dead.
Or those
With every torn nerve
Bleating beak open to life
Screaming out so loud its binds the silence
My head space staccato
Hysterical blind - I see with touch
Your skin is like parchment
Open wound
Bleeds nothing but empty spaces
Nothing
Nothing
psychic pain so deep it weeps
through parallel lines-blotting on numb
with each gasp I try to
lasso you back
humming pain ebbs out from inside this throb
Gap weeps from hollow orbs.
Salty track to map the line of change
Over bone of cheek to philtral dimple
A thousand drops to you
To you my friend
But a timeless fluid landscape
for the grieving
Colleen Allen