In Death, I Found Life Was Only A Beginning
 

This lyric is based on the book "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" by Mitch Albom.

Ben Stivers
4/18/06

In Death, I Found Life Was Only A Beginning

If "all endings are also beginnings",
Then I was meant to save Her.

Newborn calm,
Born again,
A funeral for no one.
But from under the blue came a resounding,
The blood in the trench.

But there I saw him, "Captain", my captain...

I was changed by those months,
With the escape also came my withering.
His shattered skeleton, in the name of sacrifice,
Gave way to a lifetime of regrets.

It felt as though years since I'd seen the pier,
Since my father's fist drowned him in the tide.
A hospital bed, lined with satin, like a coffin,
Was an open window and a scream in the night.

Forgiveness, like death,
Was quick and painless.

As though I'd stepped into the past,
Slept through years of weddings,
Found her. Though I was
Blessed to save the time left
With my wife, my cancer stricken wife,
She left my arms. They, still wrapped around her shape,
Dropped, and I fell into the fire.

Yet when a child's shadow tore through the flames,
And left with the stones to wash away the burns,
To strip and save the girl,
I, ascending to my perch, suspended in the sky,
Slept, waiting till passing for Her arrival.

Bumpt.

Well having read this book, and then this peice I'll have to ask what your going for.

I've expressed my problem with the forum before in that if these are songs, we need the music before we can judge.

If this was intended to be a poem then I have the following commentry:

1. its a little prose-y. Which is fine, just not for a poem, again im stabbing in the dark here not knowing what your intentions were.

2. Its almost like a retelling of the story in many respects, and i won't say its akin to a book report, but in a revision maybe get some of the feelings the book conveyed to you. You have this 'pitchfork" element to your writing here where you're more focused on showing us your read the book than how it moved you (which probably wasn't too much, if you're like me). Just refocus it, im not saying you ought to scrap it.

3. More show rather than tell, there are some vibrant images in the book like the diner on the snow covered mountain or the pier itself, channel some of those.

Hope this helped.

I like this one a lot (missed it when it was originally posted). The first two lines are pretty good, although they aren't attention grabbers, they are vague in just the right way that they could be speaking about any of the girls/women featured in the book - this part probably isn't as effective for those who haven't read the book. Most of the other lines are really well phrased and get the ideas across very nicely, and there are some absolutely beautiful phrases dotted around the piece.

This line
is my personal favourite.

I do, however, have one significant gripe with it. These three lines.
do what Big3 has already mentioned. They just report on what happened at this point in the story. They don't really convey any of the emotions that you felt when reading the story, they don't give us any new thoughts on that sections of the story, and to those who didn't read the story this section is probably pointless as they have no idea who the child is, what the burns are from or anything else that gives the child any importance.

So yes, really good, apart from those 3 lines.