Thursday, March 24, 2011

Friday Flash 55 ~ Cult

Militarygrader


Cult

The cult bought the old Rickert place
and moved in down the road.

They cut down the scrub oak and all
the snowghost sandplums,
brought crawling earth movers with crocodile feet
smashed things flat and built three religion boxes.

Then they planted
baby trees. 

They died last summer.


I doubt they’re doing any better
inside.



March 2011





Posted for Friday Flash 55 at the G-man's


Image: US Navy Military Grader, courtesy wikimedia commons


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30 comments:

  1. G-ManMarch 24, 2011 at 8:48 PM

    Geez Hedgewitch....
    A real 'Feel-Good Fifty-Five' this week eh?
    Hahahahaha Thats OK, I Like em ALL!!
    Yours was Fantastic and dark!
    Thanks for playing, and have a Kick Ass Week-End!

    ReplyDelete
  2. G-ManMarch 24, 2011 at 8:50 PM

    Hi it's me again, it seems that I forgot my....

    YAHTZEE!!!!!

    Thank you very much......G

    ReplyDelete
  3. hedgewitchMarch 24, 2011 at 9:00 PM

    Any time. Just enact your strange rituals here whenever....and dark? hey, try living next door to them, then we'll talk.

    ReplyDelete
  4. FireblossomMarch 24, 2011 at 9:21 PM

    Religion is so strange. I don't trust it at all.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Brian MillerMarch 24, 2011 at 9:21 PM

    i hear the koolaid is good...and by now they are in the wake of the comet...smiles...

    ReplyDelete
  6. KBMarch 24, 2011 at 9:22 PM

    I doubt it either.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Linda Bob Grifins Korbetis HallMarch 24, 2011 at 9:44 PM

    loved your message.
    Well Done 55.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jannie FunsterMarch 24, 2011 at 9:45 PM

    I never understand the cutting trees down.

    Nor religion boxes that keep people inside.

    Yikes.

    I bet you'll have more tales to tell on this.

    xo

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousMarch 24, 2011 at 10:18 PM

    baby don't fear the earth mover.

    er, reaper.

    blue oyster cult.

    nebber mind!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Pheromone GirlMarch 24, 2011 at 11:39 PM

    Hmmm. I firmly believe that TOO much of ANYTHING is too much. But maybe that's just me...

    ReplyDelete
  11. moondustwriterMarch 25, 2011 at 12:15 AM

    Beauty is removed, new life flattened
    And people put in a box
    Nice 55

    ReplyDelete
  12. BrikoleurMarch 25, 2011 at 1:31 AM

    That was a punch to the gut. There are at least a half-dozen poems in it; so many ways to read it. A cult can be so many things...

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ami MattisonMarch 25, 2011 at 3:07 AM

    Ha! Sounds like the church-goin' family with 2.5 kids and beemers who built the McMansion and moved-in down the road. I don't trust 'em.

    ReplyDelete
  14. knot eyeMarch 25, 2011 at 3:52 AM

    We
    Ain't
    Comin'
    Out

    wacko's

    Peace, hp

    ReplyDelete
  15. AparnaMarch 25, 2011 at 4:33 AM

    well said.

    ReplyDelete
  16. BelindaMarch 25, 2011 at 5:23 AM

    It is such a fascinating thing how a cult leader can "recruit" people, control them, take advantage of them and somehow make them feel as though they're part of a family. And now I'm wondering how else it's similar to the corporate culture...

    ReplyDelete
  17. BrendanMarch 25, 2011 at 7:25 AM

    As you know, I disparage tiny verse corsets -- what can you say in so little space -- but you show here how much power can pump into one fist. The big news was the razoring of a landscape to build "three religion boxes." The bigger news, somehow, is "I doubt they're doing any better/inside," which suggests that religion -- these cultists, anyway -- builds little coffins for eternity and then shuts the real world out (after cutting it down). Little claustrophobic insides of Heaven to prophylactic against fallen Gaia. You feel sorry for 'em. -- Brendan

    ReplyDelete
  18. izzyMarch 25, 2011 at 7:47 AM

    Nothing can grow where it ain't truly loved!
    just sayin'...

    ReplyDelete
  19. the walking manMarch 25, 2011 at 8:01 AM

    Send 'em here. We have slums enough for any and all to do what they want, knock down what they want, plant what won't grow and worship whatever god they got on their soul staining it.

    ReplyDelete
  20. hedgewitchMarch 25, 2011 at 9:08 AM

    Thanks all. This is an internet cult, massively rich, and they do intimidate and frighten me with the scope of their enterprise, out here in the sticks where few in RL actually see them.

    And yes, there are so many kinds of cults, many of them having nothing to do with what we normally think of as religion, that it's easy to use this as a metaphor.

    ReplyDelete
  21. TALONMarch 25, 2011 at 9:24 AM

    Creepy...and has the ring of truth, hedgewitch...

    ReplyDelete
  22. limeMarch 25, 2011 at 9:51 AM

    do they all have their nike sneakers?

    ReplyDelete
  23. erinMarch 25, 2011 at 10:02 AM

    oh shit! i had such hope for the cult. truly. i'm saddened. perhaps they shouldn't have started with boxes. they should barely have gotten to the planting.

    wonderfully succinct. it walloped me.

    (hi you. i've been learning of you through brendan's)

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
  24. hedgewitchMarch 25, 2011 at 10:08 AM

    @erin-- thank you and glad you liked. Love your work--read it every day and it seldom fails to amaze me, (also via Brendan's.)

    @lime I think it's Florsheim's, actually.

    ReplyDelete
  25. hedgewitchMarch 25, 2011 at 10:26 AM

    @Brendan Forgot to slide in that you perfectly got exactly what I was driving at. (And verse corsets fit some better than others, especially those that are trying to keep from over-jiggling.)

    ReplyDelete
  26. AnonymousMarch 25, 2011 at 10:46 AM

    Not the kind of place I would want to be.

    - Alice

    ReplyDelete
  27. Steve IsaakMarch 25, 2011 at 12:14 PM

    My second favorite 55 offering in this set - the other is from Stranger, Just Like Heaven.

    Wish I'd written this, one of the highest/sincerest praises I can offer.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Maude LynnMarch 25, 2011 at 1:14 PM

    "Religion boxes." Oh, yeah.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Monkey ManMarch 25, 2011 at 3:46 PM

    Powerful stuff. I like it.

    ReplyDelete
  30. gautami tripathyMarch 26, 2011 at 12:15 PM

    I like it too!


    Here is mine:
    homing

    ReplyDelete

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry." ~William Butler Yeats

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