My Creative Response to “To My Brother Miguel (in memoriam)”

Of all the texts in the book of readings, this particular poem remained in my thoughts for a long time.
It’s an emotional piece; the writer clearly delivered a lot of heavy feelings within it. Whether or not the poem is based on real life experience by the poet is irrelevant to my comprehension of the piece’s emotional message and eulogy to a long since dead family member. Throughout the piece he contrasts himself by both writing in the voice of a child and an ironic, slightly world-weary adult. The innocence of his childhood voice and memories, countered with the lingering sadness of his adult one gave me pause to think about the range of voice being brought to the table. The piece lacks a distinct sense of rage at the narrator’s loss of his brother. This made me highly intrigued as to what the poem would feel like if it was filled with rage or even regret. And while the narrator lingers on past memories, he certainly doesn’t regret the time he spends dwelling over them.
The largest voice missing from the poem was that of the dead brother himself.
I entertained the thought of writing an opposing poem from the point of view of the dead brother, in the same style as the original piece, while he laments over the fact that his brother won’t let his memories pass on.
But I thought that that piece would lack the anger and regret that I felt was missing from the original piece. So I instead made the brother a slightly murderous monster, who regrets only how he couldn’t kill his brother before he himself was murdered. And is now stuck in his brother’s thoughts being remembered lovingly, much to his chagrin, and yet he still wants a release that only his hated brother can provide.
The tone of the original piece casts the dead brother in a rather positive light. The tone of my response piece creates a much darker tone, and I believe allows a more piercing focus on the dead brother’s motivation and thoughts of his alive brother. Again, because the perspective of the poem has changed, I think this again offers a different angle from which to judge the relationship between the two brothers.
I wrote it differently the original. Instead of a five line, seven lines, seven lines, two line stanza, I chose a methodical three line, fourteen stanza poem, which I think more accurately represents the dead brother methodical killer like mindset, as opposed to his brother’s thoughtful expression of thought.
My narrator doesn’t experience a change in voice, locking into the idea of his agelessness in death a possibly how even though he died as a child; he never truly had the outlook of one.
During the editing stages of my piece, I came across the piece that a peer was writing; a response to “A Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. While the piece’s narrator is rather more manic than I would have liked my dead brother to be, my peer’s version and response created a much more calm and methodical killer. This I found rather useful when designing my own character. Appearances can be deceiving after all, and what one person remembers might not be the truth of the matter at all.

To My Brother, With Love
Brother, why do you not allow me to go
Allow me to be free from your snivelling cries
And your pathetic mourning

Staying stuck in the past, conveniently forgetting
I wish, I had taken you with me when I died
Relieving again and again memories which you have made false

Mother pulling at my hair to drag me away from your half dead body
Strangle marks around your neck
“Now Children” was the worried phrase spoken with a quiver of fear

And you won’t let me go from your memory will you?
As if I care to stay within the corner of your eye
And the haunting of your dreams

You didn’t hide in play, but in fear
As I stalked you through the house
And so easily you were caught

Punished for your continuing existence in my life
Yet, even after you balled your eyes out from the pain
The brain you have still couldn’t comprehend that it was not a game

And then you tried to chase me
While I pretended to let you catch me for appearances sake
As if I, could ever really be caught

We may have twin in appearance, my dear brother, but our hearts did not beat together
Yet you were still lucky, for you escaped my plot
While I was caught in another

Our father, who also craved for blood like I
Slit my throat
All my attention on the imaginary blood spurting out of your neck, not mine

But you my foolhardy brethren, choose to live in a delusion
That I was kind to you and that I cared
And mostly, that I loved you as you mistakenly loved me

And yet, despite my loathing
I envy you, brother dear
For the life I would have gladly denied you

I cannot bear to watch it Brother
To have you drag me through it
Never living or touching it again

It seems my ultimate punishment
Will be never experiencing life for all that it is
From my pale shadow, in the fringes of your mind

Please brother, let me go
Allow me this gift, which I could never give
Love me enough, to release me brother