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

Flash Friday Fiction 55 Special April Edition #4

It's time to reprise the 55 for the final Friday in April. This time, perhaps because of the current situation globally, I have really been thinking about Galen and his platform and how lighthearted it all was, and yet how it managed to bring many different kinds of people together in all the best ways, and inspire some truly funny and/or amazing poetry and flash fiction, along with all that camaraderie and kickassery on the way. 

So I ask all who were around at the time to remember him today as we play with Galen's meme.

The rules are the same, 55 words of prose or poetry no more no less, and link the url of your effort in the comment section.

The prompt will be live from

Friday at 12:00 AM to Sunday at 4:00 PM

Below you will find a link to a 55 of mine from 2013, including comments, to bring on some nostalgia for the G-Man and illustrate, perhaps, that time. I encourage all who have one

 to share an old 55 with comments as well if they wish. We do need to remember the good times in the midst of the bad.

~ * ~

My 55 from the Wayback Machine:

 

Fleck

~ * ~

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

Flash Fiction 55 Special April Edition #3

"Another Friday, another 55 words to chronicle the long march, the wild hunt, the dance of the living and dead. We come to remember a man who had more to give than take from the world of blogging, Galen Hayes, and to explore the meme he brought us as the world turns around us in its ceaseless change.

There are no rules, except to write 55 words of prose or poetry--no more, no less, and link them in the comments below between Friday and Sunday morning for myself and others to read."

I wrote this intro over two years ago but it seems even more apt today, plus I wanted to include Galen, as I always remember him on these days.

Same rules, as above. The prompt will be live from Friday midnight to Sunday at 4:00 PM 

~ * ~

Here is my 55:

 Caviar At Two In The Morning

The moon

fogs the spectacles of night,

fuzzes the stampeding stars;

kinder than morning's hot tongue, who

flicks them inside her like shad-roe.

Tear-soak

wets fever's stiff face,

mines gold from the cold-plated light

gone dead in the eyes of old players

drowned in the wellspring of midnight

who sleep but can only dream nightmares.

April 2020

Images: Moonrise, Beaumarais  © Clarice Becket   Fair Use

Author and title unknown via internet tagged Coven of Ceridwen   Fair Use

 

The Great Grey

The Great Grey

I galloped my mare

on the ceiling all night;

summer stirred in her sleep,

stretched and raised warm wide arms

of red roses. Eyes unopened she died

when the wind turned corpse-cold.

I took down the remains

 with food and blankets to the child

 in his cell. I fought when the keepers

ate it all while he cried, mouths full of

carrot, April and wool. My key cracked

 in the lock. They beat me with laughter.

I watched two moons scrubbed out

by steelwool clouds, scratching paled

 porcelain sky as they streamed by,

chained in a train of tarnished

silver cars rattling out their freight

of snow-melt on my face.

No jumping that train, no escape

on the rails, no escape on

my mare, no summer, no saving,

only this waving grey

where colors are graving.

April 2020

 posted for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

Play it Again Day 16 Remains

and for earthweal's
Open Link

Images: Horsewoman On A Red Horse, © Marc Chagall   Fair Use

November First © Andrew Wyeth   Fair Use