The Day Before Gone

 

The Day Before Gone

 

It was the day before gone.
The strophe began on

 a sun weak with fever,

a sky of grey primer 

because plague hit the painters

 before they managed the blue. 

 

The tepid air was fragrant with 

malfeasance, but the dumbshow

never paused.

It was noon on the sea of shadows.

All through the potential zeros

bug-scudding over the whine-

dark waves ran a shiver, a dread,

the sodden fog of the sailor

at the rocks too busy with rum

 and scrimshaw to have bothered

with learning to swim.

 

The sirens and the kraken laughed

in antiphons, tatting the antistrophe

 from the rust-wire wreckage.

It was the hour before the reckoning

but the only text on the wall read

"It can't happen here."

Pulpits burned, preachers prowled

like panthers

among the singed dollar bills.

 

Locusts

ate the hedge funds. Vultures ate

the venture capitalists, and

politicians ate the vultures

til the darkness seethed 

with undigested bones.

Then finally

over the feeble,

failure-fumed pandemonium

Dawn came with her

exterminator's smile.

December 2021

posted for 

Shay's Word List

Images: Both Untitled, by Zdizlaw Beksinski, copyright held by The Histoical Musem in Sanok Poland

Fair Use

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 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

 

Gone Away Monday

Gone Away Monday

Does Easter Monday have a name;

of the rolled stone, the fleshless breath of bone, the

hollow's voiceless void; the comfort of a sobriquet, 

a calendar law of foreign Palms or dreadful Goods,

to mark the thing it's not?

The steam, the mayfly dew, the hope, the striking snake

that rises only shimmers happy cataracts 

to disappear; a lie preserved in

language of dead seeds, amber silo filled with

miracles' weeds,

of a cloud we

would become and cannot be, a flame burnt out

we barely know we see.

 

 April 2020

 for Kerry's April wordlist #13: lie

and Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

Play it Again Day 13 Thirteen is Poetry

(the 13 words: disappear flesh bones voice dreadful

away dead law happy comfort amber miracle flies)

Images: Cave Dwellings near Sperlingua, Sicily, 1933 © M.C. Escher  Fair Use

The Cave, 1901, by Clarence White   Public Domain

Flash Fiction 55 Special April Edition #1

Welcome all 

to a special poetry month edition of the 55. To give a platform to those writing a poem a day in April, or to anyone who wants to engage in the form, I will be hosting this meme of G-Man's every Friday in April, and I am sure he would approve. So have at it, and share with us a poem, piece of prose-poetry or flash fiction on any subject, so long as it consists of 55 words, no more no less.

The prompt will be live from midnight Friday April 3 to 4 pm Sunday April 5th.

No Mr. Linky here, so just copy and paste the url of your 55 in the comments below, and I will be by to see what you have for us.

~ * ~

Here is my own 55:

Rationing

For today,

only one chapter

two slices bread

three acid tears

four-times-washed hands

to wipe them.

For tonight,

one half-moon

foggy with spring

two hours sleep

three cups chamomile tea

four owl-calls

playing the night music.

For that day

 unknown,

only one page

two ravens

three stubbed candles

four men in masks

to carry infinity.

April 2020

Images: Photo: via internet author unknown Fair Use

Photo: © Sergio Agazzi/Fotogramma via Reuters manipulated Fair Use
[Italian military trucks and soldiers by Bergamo's cemetery after the army was deployed to move coffins from the cemetery to neighbouring provinces.]