Author Of Choice!

So after a few ideas and some reading, I've decided that a poem would give me the most creative freedom to suit my chosen style aesthetic. I remember reading poems by Wilfred Owen in High School and remember the vivid nature of his writing. A lot of imagery was used to describe horrific scenes of war and this could give a good start point.

Dulce Et Decorum Est was the best example. The imagery is quite dark and could give good direction. The only worry is that the colour palette I'm seeing initially in my head is a bit dark for what I want to create.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

I was also talking with a friend who described some William Shakespeare poems as trippy and weird. He apparently wrote them while on drugs and they were very experimental for the time. This means that the work could be open to various interpretations.