Calamity Rising

Stage right, the devil waltzes to the angel’s lute on the left,

While the mortal balls up center stage, pestered through the day.

The degenerate’s but a parcel of the playwright’s teeming cast,

But every scapegoat shares the fear that this day will bring his end.

The director choreographs the audience, when to applaud and when to wail,

Unaware a storm is pending and the puppets will invade at dusk.

A hairbreadth from sundown, the watchman heeds the threat,

And until his tower falls, his dismal siren pervades the night.

The moon receives the call as the wolves coax it with their howls;

The sun neglects to interject, for it lost its mind that afternoon.

Forsaken lovers embrace as the clouds engulf the sky,

And as the terrain succumbs to shadow, their hearts quench the earth.

The fisherman awaits his catch several hours before the morn,

But his hook is caught six feet under and will never see the day.

And so the weeping willow casts its ferns upon the ground,

An homage for those who meet their fate before the sun can rise.

Hindsight

This poem was inspired by the line “After he lost his sight, he could discriminate colors by their…” from C.D. Wright’s Deepstep Come Shining.  Poetry has never been my strong suit, so I had some difficulty getting it to turn out the way I would have liked it to.  

Dawn’s light cannot pass through his eyes,

For still at noon he walks through midnight fog.

The haze will remain until he breathes his last

And the afterlife dissolves the screen.

In the midst of the atmosphere,

He stares directly at the sun above,

But his occipital lobe neglects

To acknowledge its crimson glow.

Though a black tarp hangs before his brow,

He paints murals on the iridescent canvass

With the immortal pallet that occupies

The confines of his aging memory.

Though sight has eradicated itself

From the coalition of the senses,

Recollection, aided by the other four,

Helps to renew his tarnished vision.

The warmth of the sun on his flesh

Generates shades of red and orange,

While the taste of fresh lemonade

Compliments Apollo with a yellow crown.

The scent of mountain pine and oak

Infuse his nostrils with every hue of green.

The color wheel almost complete,

He awaits the arrival of his most beloved tone.

From the door of the cottage

Emerges the voice of his wife,

An overwhelming collage of blue and violet,

So soothing it retains the sights of his youth.

During morning drives through the meadow

He would exhale upon the icy glass,

Forming sheets that eventually dissipated

And revealed the colors of the world.

Nutmeg

The sun’s vigilance had long since come to an end when the eager three commenced their revelry.  The party favor was consumed an hour preceding the climax of the night and they had spent the time leading up to that moment drowning in fermented decadence.  Empty bottles clad the antique table around which they congregated like a fluorescent flame attracting spellbound gnats. 

Despite their giddy drunkenness, the trio was not present in the spirits before them, but in the notion at the forefront of their minds that this was only a precursor to what would come.  The table’s centerpiece, a mere ceramic jar, occupied the focal point of their vision, for its contents would induce the pending occurrences they so fervently awaited.  At the onset of their gathering, the acquaintances had each removed and ingested two teaspoons of powdered spice from that jar.  Now, chemicals began to escape from their digestive tracts and swam through inebriated capillaries to the very source of cognition, mutating their perception with a gradual vengeance.   

First, the ceramic jar began to pulsate until it expanded to twice its girth.  As it remained stationary, all other household objects converged with the walls as the architectural borders closed in on their captives.  The metal vines of the chandelier above them morphed into lanky arms that ignited at the fingertips where small candles once existed and were engulfed by flame.  As though summoned from hell, the burning limbs extended towards the compacting ramparts, peeling characters from the artwork to form the cast of their demonic ball.  The fiery silhouettes danced around them with flailing appendages, enticing them with hissing aggravation.  At this moment the puppeteers appointed their first prey. 

The sweltering heat ensued by the hellish masquerade caused the imbibed liquor within his stomach to rapidly project from the only exit it recalled.  His acquaintances watched in horror as he spewed out his bones into the empty glasses and collapsed.  In desperation, they reached for the bodily fragments, split them in two, and wished for relief from this experience they instantly regretted.  They hastily clawed a passage through the riot of sprites towards the exit of the home and fled down the unavoidable paths their fates held in store.  They left their friend behind on his wooden pedestal for the observant demons to gawk at, so as not to equally fall victim to the hands that claimed him.