OctPoWriMo Day 10 prompt: Poetry collage

Today's prompt is to create a "poetry collage." To pick a favorite poem--can be ours or someone else's--and use that for a prompt. Wowza, this seems really intimidating! Which is kind of odd, because in theory some of the work is already done, right? 

My poem below is in response to the enchanting poem  "The Story Of a Leaf" by Philomel Chowdury. While  Philomel's leaf accepts its place in the cycle of life and death, my poem tells the story of someone who succeeded in defying death, only to wander endlessly as a spirit.

~~~

Wraith

by Christine

Part of me was rotten,

and I knew it was time

to go...

I knew, and I refused.

In a rage, I thrust my fist in the face

of death. I would not go, 

I would not let go!

And so, instead of death's 

release, I remained upon the earth. 

I walked among people, seeing and hearing

and smelling them. Watching as people

were born, lived, and died. 

Watching.

For that is all I could do.

The sweetness of human closeness,

of laughter and love, the warmth

of an embrace. These things

were as dead to me as I was to the

living. 

Part of me was rotten... and the rottenness

spread until I was all rotten.

Sometimes,

I watched an unsuspecting passerby,

sitting under a tree

or on a park bench, or

at the counter of a rundown diner.

Or observed them among themselves

as they spoke of love, life and beyond.

And I became very, very bitter. 

I raged against the life I'd 

once loved, and vowed

to get revenge from those who

had what I could never have

again.

I watched, as I ceaselessly walked the earth,

taunted by life and the living.

I hated the brightness of flowers 

and the joy of new lovers.

I wanted to crush them, and 

scatter their remains at the feet of those

who would care.

Sometimes, someone would sense my presence.

They'd feel a chill, a niggling sense of dread.

Birds would suddenly take flight, or a cat

might raise its back, its fur on end. 

A child, fleeing some nameless, grasping darkness, would

seek comfort in her parents' bed.

These became my pleasures, my

weapon. Fear. My only way of participating in

human affairs. It was like eating ashes

and drinking dirt. 

I watch and I walk, the many names

of fear and the unknown trailing after me.

I exist eternally in the corners

of closed-off rooms 

and the closed-off places in 

the hearts and minds of people. 

People, who I once loved,

who I now hate and envy. 

I am a sentinel standing invisible in plain sight,

yearning for life, banished to immortality.

~~~

Sincerest apologies to Philomel Chowdhury for taking her beautiful, uplifting poem and writing something kind of dark! And it's not even Halloween.