Poetry Arena

TYPE: lyric
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: otherwordly ambience, Halloween ditty, etc


October Portents

I may have seen the Grim Wife once
In a tall grass glade where the grey cat hunts.
Why she grieves so long after loss
Spans beyond my ken, too cryptic to cross.

Some hedge a boding widow's task
With warming solace from a drinking flask.
Trust they have in such spirits known,
But not those exhumed, oh not those wind blown.

I may have heard the Grim Wife thrice
At a late hour when the owl spots mice.
She's not hopeful like scrying seers;
Folk bury their eyes, they smother their ears.

If only wailing could relate
Whatever she gleans from the throes of fate.
Is it yours or is it mine or
A far tragedy, on another shore?

I may have felt the Grim Wife's hand
In early shivers from the autumn land.
Distant clouds were gravid with rain
When old rites took two, both man and son slain.

Fostered by a lingering dread,
It's the wool local storytellers spread.
None dear lost at an ancient well?
Just a faded woe, no legend to quell.

I may have breathed the Grim Wife's prayer
In the scented speech of the eldritch air.
Wafting to where the moonlight played
On dark lake ripples, as a red dog bayed.
_
 
TYPE: lyric
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: cognitive dissonance, interpretative dependence on hermeneutical standards chosen, etc


Where the hell is Davidson?

Mama looked deeper in the cellar.
Daddy came back from the field.
There just wasn't much we could tell her
Of what a wider search might yield.
We all know he's her favorite one:
Where the hell is Davidson?

He mingled with the maverick crowd,
The poor, the maimed, the outlaws.
Shaming good folk that were only proud,
Reminding them of their flaws.
When a hood rides in and waves his gun,
Where the hell is Davidson?

Time scrapes away at the flaking paint,
Some day a ceiling will drop.
Trumpet booms grow increasingly faint,
Our flock meets on the hilltop.
When your chances correlate to none,
Where the hell is Davidson?

Counting the days since the tin stars fell;
Along roads, a thick stench reigns.
Waiting for news in a trashed hotel,
Watching rats chew old remains.
Sick of signs, the final stage is done,
Where the hell is Davidson?

Church menders climb down from the steeple,
Bewildered by what they've missed.
A thief has stolen seven people,
Those accepted on a list.
We're left here cause of his roguish fun:
Damn to hell that Davidson!
_
 
There is no love
(Not nearly, not enough)
We live unaided,
We die abandoned.

The appeal for pity
Resonates in the void
Our bodies are crippled,
But our flesh is eager.

Gone are the promises
Of a teenage body,
We enter an old age
Where nothing awaits us

Except the vain memory
Of our last days,
A convulsion of hate
And naked despair.

—Michel Houellebecq
 
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Reactions: C C
Apologies to Richard Saunders [1]

Finity, delaying its end, did say:
Like a flea attached to its beast I stay!
I vow, quoth Infinity, so you do.
And feeding from my very ichor, too!

- - - - - - - -

TYPE: poem
ALLEGORY: Epistemologically, how endlessness is indistinguishable from a ludicrously large, bounded magnitude. The former can never be empirically verified because "more" can alternatively and repeatedly be interpreted as a finite quantity just being larger than expected (proposing that a termination is real, but yet to be encountered). As well, an endless process of addition or division is just that: It can never be completed without contradicting itself, and thus would always exist at any moment as a measurable degree/amount (at least in theory, if not act).

- - - footnote - - -

[1] Jack and Roger (Ben Franklin): https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0066
_
 
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TYPE: lyric
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: holiday noir


Decamp Blues

Winter sinks down, the snow builds up.
Don't drink the slumber in old Odin's cup.
Stay awake, catch a midnight muse.
Slap the poor thing with your holiday blues.

A lonesome sight, rowdy with clouds.
The season is arching its heathen brows.
Pay mobsters, clean the Norse lord's sleigh,
And you might live to count to New Year's Day.

Streets aglitter, houses adorned.
Carolers sing like a snitch to be scorned.
Roll your doubts, chance the game of fools.
Point is to vanish playing Midgard rules.

Sermon runs long, much to atone.
Huginn and Muninn have already flown.
Rappel cliffs, make your getaway,
And you might live to count to New Year's Day.

When Skadi stalks, her prey is doomed.
The other godlings seem quaintly costumed.
Dodge arrows, and Ullr's bribed Feds.
Everybody here is missing their meds.

An icy waste, it stretches far.
Reaching the end erases who you are.
Take soiled gold, go where palm fronds sway,
And you might live to count to New Year's Day.

Cece
 
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: eschatological


Impending

It seems to be an odd silhouette.
The kind that perversely has a face.
But still drab as a snubbed cigarette,
Or ashes from a fireplace.

The way the deaf girl hears her heart beat,
How the blind man sees a timely trend,
Like the tongueless champ tasting defeat,
Maybe I can sense the end.

An outlaw cure? A rogue ambulance?
I scan the stream of passing drivers
That roam the same road his Damned Crew hunts
For journey worn survivors.

The way a bold cancer is appeased,
How dark romance is tortured and penned,
Like a torqued gurgling from the diseased,
Many fetishize the end.

New patients huddle at Hope's last glow,
Harried there by the howling unknown.
Each ferried across the briny flow...
The boatman returns alone.

The way a church greeter hugs a guest,
How a damaged shirt receives a mend,
Like a spent target doing its best,
Maybe I welcome the end.

A shy thief propagates through the ward,
Startling the pre-mourners from their roost.
Even doubt feels a dissonant chord
As the body's ache is loosed.

The way a trauma hides in the gloom,
How a vintage spirit tries to blend,
Like painted sunsets frozen at doom,
Marks linger after the end.

Cece
 
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: A consequence of stripping this second version of its political vitriol is that it's now too short to fill out an animated avatar. Will have to be combined with another one.
- - - - - - -

Masque

Quickly, questioner, quick,
If you wage through their fear.
Do not coddle the sick,
Nor falter for the dear.

Will the old gods intervene
When the bone pyres are lit?
Will the meadows yet be green
When the imp assassins quit?

Hasten, mortal, hasten,
Reach towering retreats.
A mad throng will chasten
Stragglers lost in the streets.

Eschew fabled jubilees;
And be deaf to frantic howls
Of wretches crawling on knees,
After Pestis drains his bowels.
_
 
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ALLEGORY: elderly dementia, clinical depression in youth slash suicide, mental illness, etc


The Trumpet Vine

My twilight is unpleasant.
Rising for a steeper decline.
You must be the next to last present
From the creeping Trumpet Vine.

It's love's enduring figment
Standing akimbo on the lawn.
Imagination lacks commitment
To keep a long-lost daughter gone.

Nine months of tribulation.
Several years that were benign.
But then you were abruptly taken
By the creeping Trumpet Vine.

Glad that you came to visit.
What's it like in the other town?
Here I'm reviled as a worn pivot,
Due to clinging above the ground.

Come sit on the veranda.
I'll get my tall cocktail of pills.
Then we'll listen to propaganda
From those paid expatriate shills.

Appears the lows have lifted,
Your hinterland left well behind.
Always knew that it had been gifted
By the creeping trumpet vine.

They still broadcast fetching praise
Of our sweet, sweet enemy's ways.
Even through the gardening of spring:
What a happy, enriching thing.

So much sadness to relive.
And I really should not malign.
But there's always a finger to give
To the creeping Trumpet Vine.

Come again, we'll stay in touch.
You haven't aged since twenty-three.
Sorry if I quizzed, inquired too much
About your irreality.

Tell daddy and your dead friends
That I'm the blot on this design.
Forever frustrating those chessmen
From the creeping Trumpet Vine.

---Cece (C C)
 
Divorce, of course.
- - - - - - - - -

The Spiraling Fall

It's picked clean,
this field of war.
Yet dirtier than a floor unswept.
Robbed of green,
sown with gore.
Wry missiles too fast to intercept.
Vows revoked, flags unfurled.
Noisy geese winging above our world.
Dormancy at the step.
Exodus underway.
Nothing sleepless or guilty can stay.

Fond times lurk
beyond the flames.
Wraiths so faint they've forgotten their names.
You feel hurt;
I'm confused.
One half betrayed, the other accused.
Gauntlet run, old wounds hit:
"Scratch your eyes out if you play that shit."
Tribunal is excused.
Take the bodies away.
Yesterday's misgivings on display.

Brooding in
a failed temple.
No conscience to burn on its altar.
Wins are thin,
losses simple,
walking down the aisle to a slaughter.
Peering past broke stained-glass,
following the night's narcotic call.
Leave or lead strife in tow:
our plaint for letting go,
over the roaring, spiraling fall.

--Cece (C C)
 
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