The inimitable Fireblossom has provided a crackling challenge over at Real Toads, and supplied us with a list of words from which we may assemble the title of a poem, which of course, we then have to write--details!. I felt a deep affinity for some of the words, but was also confoundedly attracted to others--the result is a pair of efforts--does this make me a Terrifying Prodigy, or just an Obsessive Docent of the various circles of Hell? Not sure, but here they are, and please don't anyone feel they have to read them both:
The Unexpected Ecclesiastic
(or: Escape from Bugtown)
I thought it odd you
blessed the home
where even a lost dog wouldn’t stay,
where the manger was lined with such nettled hay
no ox could eat, no saviour lay.
I didn't see the wrinkle
of robe beneath
your shell
in the worm holes
we crawled
to find the Big Haul
when I was your doll.
I still didn't guess
when tunnel turned catacomb
the clicking wheeze of your true occupation,
the insectile calculation of my twice-damned station
in your holy equation.
When I found my familiar,
you fought me, of course,
with the bell and the book
the withering look, the Fisherman's hook
the sinkhole, the black hole, the brass cross that shook
till I ran from the grinding
hallelu, from the sermon of you,
your
structural integrity beltlessly down
wrapped in noise, blood and crowned
a bug on its back, the Bishop of Bugtown.
~September 2013
This is the poem I feel I was intended to write, so I did:
The Minuscule Incubus
Here inside the lacquered box
of scar and pretend,
only the smallest of devils still fits,
the one with the key,
adroit as a nosetwitch rat
every bit as strong
as a lion till dawn,
tiny as the tip of
a red hot wire
passed with a hiss
through the gray matter
laid over mountains of char.
His muzzle is a mask,
his tail bobbed like a Rott,
his torment an ashen tickle
no longer sweet
not even forbidden,
oblivious
compulsion missing the point.
Somewhere
past this place
where the worst has already happened
and is waiting to happen again,
there's a hole made in a dream
through which I may wiggle,
a worm waiting wings,
if only it were possible
to make myself
smaller than he.
~September 2013
(The other poems in my incubus series are here )
Challenge: Fireblossom Friday
Build A Title
Thanks to all who read either or both, and apologies for completely giving in to the dark side of my verbose tendencies.
Images: The Reprimand, circa 1890, by Jehan Georges Vibert,
Detail from Death and The Miser, 1490, by Heironymous Bosch
Public Domain via wikipaintings.org
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