Poem For The Last Day In April

Poem For The Last Day In April

April grates her last

most bitter notes

from quickened buds

flashfrozen in their green.

Mute prisoners doze

gone blind in empty rooms

while gilded trains

freight ghosts to plastic ruins.

The mad things 

dance together nights and noons,

cannibals mouthing drool

as stolen jewels.

For they've caught the hunger here

and now's the time

when hearts are meat,

when mothers' blood is wine,

when gold is god

when little deaths are fine,

when human good is bad

and bad divine.

The gentle break

as hate and fear align;

so here we are--

devoured under April's fallen star.

~April 2020

posted for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

Bang,Whimper, Hiss 

and Kerry's Skylover Word List for April, 

Deaths

Process note: My state lifts most coronavirus restrictions tomorrow, regardless of the fact that we have not had a drop in cases for 14 days as per CDC guidelines, and little testing and no contact tracing is being done, all so the serfs can go back to work for their corporate overlords. Insert Poe quote from Mask of the Red Death here.

Images: April Freeze, ©joyannjones 2019

The Plague Hospital, 1900 by Francisco Goya    Public Domain

Giant's Blood

Giant's Blood

"In my medicine cabinet

the winter fly

Has died of old age" ~Jack Kerouac

Alone

the tired giant sat

looking at America;

no light but Edison's stars,

no song but subways' caterwaul

in the emptiness of time

that made him small.

Bored

he decided America

was constipated. He invented

a purgative of darkness and fireworks, 

administered every night, 

and in his ennui

took most of it himself.

Restless

he rolled, up and down

the endless ribbon that was

 two thirds the mark of the beast,

til the road ran him down

and went on, its

 pockets full.

Dying

he covered the

spliced paper continuum

til  the page flapped out. He saw

the medicine he'd swallowed

was his own black blood,

while America 

was just exactly

what it seemed.

April 2020

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

hosted by the inimitable Fireblossom

Process Notes: Kerouac's great novel On The Road was written in one continuous burst. "Before beginning, Kerouac cut sheets of tracing paper into long strips, wide enough for a typewriter, and taped them together into a 120-foot-long roll which he then fed into the machine. This allowed him to type continuously without the interruption of reloading pages. The resulting manuscript contained no chapter or paragraph breaks...

..On the morning of October 20, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida, Kerouac was working on a book about his father's print shop. He suddenly felt nauseated and ..began to vomit blood. Kerouac was taken to St. Anthony's Hospital, suffering from an esophageal hemorrhage...He..died at the hospital at 5:15 the following morning, at the age of 47. His cause of death was listed as an internal hemorrhage..caused by cirrhosis, the result of longtime alcohol abuse." ~ wikipedia

Images via internet, authors unknown.  Fair Use

Friday Flash Fiction 55 for February, 2020

Welcome to this month's edition of the Friday 55, where the only rule is to write a poem, piece of prose, prose-poetry, or flash fiction on any subject, in 55 words, no more no less. This is a writer's challenge that begins at midnight on Thursday and is live through 4:00 PM Sunday, CST. No Mr. Linky here, so just copy and paste your link in the comments, and I will be by to read what you have written.

Comment moderation is off but the blog author reserves the right to delete entries or comments at her discretion.

~*~

Here is my own offering:

Pain

Pain

is the coyote

that follows the wolf.

Bones are enough

from another dog's kill.

While the brain locks in shock,

pain eats its fill.

When

the gash has

been made, the organ 

worked loose, then there 

comes the howling hour,

the pull and crunch of coyote's jaws;
pain's tongue-lolling grin
outside death's den-door.

February 2020

Disclaimer: Coyotes are a misunderstood animal, and no animus is meant against them here. They have an important place in the myths and lore of many cultures, as well as the ecosystem, and a right to their lives and habitats. I ask coyote's spirit to excuse the poetic license I have exercised in choosing him for my metaphor.

Image of coyote howling with full moon,  2011, ©hardcoreturkhunter, via internet   Fair Use

Spirit Apocolypse

Spirit Apocalypse

Entropy dreams of its Creator

under the burning blanket

of wild horses slaughtered

of eucalyptus torches slow

roasting marsupials,

of its enemies hogtied helpless

if not as yet quite mastered,

all things of beauty bent

to the wheel of avarice

as the spotted pony runs

as the devil drowns

in sympathy

in sycophants

in syncopated strategies

of the smallest minds now

suddenly somehow successful.

We wait for the tide

to rise, the Earth to speak, 

for the wild appaloosa 

with our handprint

on its flank to find us, 

for the ash

to heave up the white buffalo,

the soul we weep for

to race oblivion

of wave and fire, drought and famine

to bear us

where we may buck and strain

to cut the cords that

crack the bone

of this ravaged

rock on fire

calling to the spirits

for the spotted pony

the white buffalo

the avenging angel

as if we know them,

with only the death's head grin

of the four bleached horsemen in sight.

~November, 2019

Images: War Pony II, by Sarah Lyn Richards. All Rights Reserved to Artist
White Buffalo, by Cuzco. All Rights Reserved to Artist

Truth Of The Mouse

Truth of the Mouse

What they do to you

I dream they do to me.

The knives come out

the tubes go in

to the piece of meat

nameless, once sweet,

test tube tissue

over-scanned and analyzed

and the bugs are in

the bandages again.

The nurse can't come; 

 she's

double parked at the casino

where the chips come down

like needle rain

where the dealer's a junkie

because the rules broke again

and the mouse

that chews the truth

knows 

it's not safe to come out.

~January 2018

 

Images: Illustration from The Tale of Two Bad Mice, andThe Mice at Work Threading The Needle, by Beatrix Potter   Public Domain