Poetry / Death Be Not Proud
I once read two books
Both were of two boys
Each living a life
Separate in their voice
Both knew that death
He would eventually come
But they said
Death, be not proud
Now, one survived
And has a boy of his own
The other, he died
And his legacy lives on
To each their own
A rite of life
To face a fist
Or go under the knife
Each child a precious light
That we must fight for
Every day and night
Never give up
Though they know
Not what you do
For each light it would
Burn out, or it could
Burn inside of you
Let it be your fire
The passion to get you
To never give up on life
And remember always,
Death comes for us all
But it need not be now
And he need not be proud
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When I looked at this piece, I thought I might spy a bit of John Donne, as the title, and there is a bit of it there. I wonder if you could stretch your theme further – focusing on what profundity there is in death’s pride. For in Donne, the challenge is to death, for Man shall overcome even death in eternal life. A very Christian idea. You could reverse it through an inversion to challenge the Christian mythos. The challenge is not death, but Death’s pride. The idea in Donne is that Death loses in the end. Why pride? Why not Death’s fact? Why not Death’s humour? Does that make sense?
I always question run-on prosody. While the enjamb can act as puncutation, there’s no substitute for breaks to end sentences or a thought. This can be achieved through stanzas as well, but punctuation is exact. It leads to clutter for the reader because “we” don’t know when a thought begins and ends, and this causes a reader to often have to re-read passages to define those divisions of thought.
Somewhere in the middle you start an alternating line rhyme scheme starting with “survived/died” mostly, although “would/could” is a rhyming couplet. By the end you give up on it again. Be careful of mixing the two. Given the short length of your line meter, heptameter mostly, I would suggest avoiding a rhyme scheme altogether. There are other tools you can use to give it colour.
One such device is stronger imagery as this is lacking. The overall poem does its job but we never get to know who these boys are as “people” or what they faced, except in vague, general terms. Make it specific and concrete.
You’ll definitely want to break out the stanza when you get to the pseudo-volta near the end. This is the summary and conclusion. Emphasize it.
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