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Genna Peterson  May 2013
Makeup
Genna Peterson May 2013
beauticians say
that we shouldn't sleep in our make up
but one day we'll be sleeping forever
and then
morticians will say
makeup is what we need
for our eternal sleep
Terry O'Leary Feb 2017
Awaking blithe each morning,
with eyes upon the World,
I wonder, are we mourning
with ebon flags unfurled –
or are they but a warning,
some draped like snakes and curled,
stray stars and stripes adorning,
sent from the netherworld.

I wander through the garden
with nothing on my mind
and say 'I beg your pardon'
alarmed at what I find
as winds begin to harden
and fate begins to grind.

Confused, I watch my neighbours,
they're wide-eyed, unafraid
to halt all useful labours
and join the death brigade;
the ritters rattle sabres,
the frail and fragile fade,
morticians tap on tabors,
the potentates parade.

The military blesses
(in tunics somewhat browned)
its crimson-stained successes,
hell bent and heaven bound.
Such scenes no more distress us:
a ****** battleground,
dissevered heads with tresses
and arms and legs abound;
the fourth estate suppresses
the heaps of bodies  found
(collateral excesses
discarded in a mound).

Society regresses,
now living by the sword,
with torture and its stresses
upon a waterboard;
a captive kid confesses,
his innocence ignored -
fallacious facts and guesses,
the guts of justice gored!

With canting vindication
a big brass bully brags
(with pearls of perspiration
and swollen tongue that gags)
of third world  subjugation
for gelt and oily swags,
of human rights' castration,
and on and on it drags.

The manifold migration
of refugees in rags
while searching for salvation
soon finds compassion lags;
uprooted populations
are fleeing from their flags
else dying of starvation
as naked hunger nags.

With trump cards politicking,
two little hands (all thumbs)
may send the Mad Dog siccing.
Insane! All sense succumbs.

Atomic timepiece ticking
until the Reaper comes
as Geiger counters clicking
drown out the droning drums.

Cast out for not conforming,
I wander day by day
to find the earth deforming
as nature wastes away,
with bees no longer swarming
(expunged with garden spray)
and ocean depths transforming
(neath plastic overlay).

With CO2 performing
the climate's led astray,
the atmosphere's been warming,
the grasses ashen gray,
eternal tempest storming
while permafrosts decay,
and ozone holes are forming
in deadly disarray.

The people profiteering
descend a slip'ry *****
destroying, never fearing        
of running out of rope;
instead they sit back sneering
“our wealth’s your only hope”.

Yes, Armageddon's nearing,
it's doubtful that we'll cope,
for Evolution's jeering,
she's scanned our horoscope:
we'll soon be disappearing
with whale and antelope.


           Epitaph

The multitudes were jumbled,
some milling ’round the mall,
while politicians bumbled
when bracing for the brawl.

The World around us rumbled,
our backs against the wall,
as bombs were tossed and tumbled
across our broken ball.

My kneecaps creaked and crumbled
but I, too proud to crawl,
took but a step and stumbled  
yet found no place to fall.

And no one heard me grumble
although I tried to call,
or maybe I just mumbled,
as strength began to pall.

Well now the World’s been humbled
I seek an urban sprawl,
but since the feuds were fumbled
there’s nothing left at all.
MY FROG MASTERS

How thoughtful were the rainfalls
To water our gardens and flowers
The flowers spread wide garments
To celebrate their terminal beauty

The joyful frogs occupied my pond
To orchestrate their vocal prowess
They taught me to take blind leaps
Like lightning bouncing in the skies

Squatted, stretched, beeped down
I was a millstone on the pond floor
My slippery pond mates wondered
How soft I was in the maritime arts

Mortally rescued in a muddy mood
The clouds sent in rescuing showers
To confirm my firm loss to the frogs
Like a grain of salt cast into the seas


673. MONEY BAGS IN THEIR BODY BAGS

The money bags shopping for their body bags
Waggled through the makeshift supermarkets

Their ancestral homes they plotted modernity
Like the general gathering fine forces together

To the villages they made to return with pride
Like pregnant elephants caught up in the mud

Their desolate villages are deep and sickening
Glowing flamingly in the crucibles of local gins

The dusty and gravy pathways are like furnace
Burning the leather off from their frozen souls

Traditional birth attendants cut off their cords
And zipped the money bags in their body bags

674. A GLORIOUS DAY

The new day spoke powerfully
Like a war making superpower
And his voice roared forcefully
Like the skies forced to shower

The sunrays came dynamically
Like love responding to silence
Beauty crawled in submissively
Like the mixed arts and science

One eagle soared energetically
Like lions feuding in the colony
Far clouds relocated peacefully
Like souls betrayed to harmony

The breeze sighed thoughtfully
Like horses galloping on the lea
Inspiration unfolded thankfully
Crowns monuments with a pea

675.  THE FOG BANK

The sun had gone to pay our bill in the fog bank
The world foggily crawled into the strong rooms
Darkness demonstrated her strong mindfulness
Provided for the strong gale with lurking shrieks

The black paint billers snowballed to our dreams
With the bill of exchange for wild sunny excesses
Ghostly bats emerged with the bill of indictment
In demonstration of our acrophobic dispositions

We packaged the sunrays for our folk memories
To reassure the day of our eternal followerships
We cherish our follow-throughs in our dark beat
To usher the sunlight out of the hollow fog bank

676. THE PROTRACTED INTERNECINE FEUD

These things had happened before we were born
Like sulphur deep into our fresh hearts they burn
Now we stumble on the bumpy terrains in horror
Like one frightened by ghosts in a standing mirror

The internecine feud has razed our men of valour
With their carcasses dumped in their cold parlour
Our community cattle graze in the barren pasture
Like the unrepentant sinners awaiting the rapture

For our plight the once glorious sky is grown pale
Like the ***** fetching territorial waters with pail
The storms have rolled off the catalogues for rain
All our efforts to mop up the mess end up in vain



677. THE AREA LEADERS

They cracked coconuts on the heads for the crown
And embraced our days with their castaway pollen
Sadness and sorrow have dyed our garment brown
With the strongest song sung when night has fallen

These are the blinding dusts from our barn’s grains
They breed cunning serpents in the soft pasturages
They are failed cargoes on our broad societal trains
They dedicate our common committee to outrages

Now our days seek deliverance from their tentacles
Like the colourful fields immersed in gloomy beauty
They play our eyeballs with the stenciled spectacles
With our consciences to sight and found us off duty

To rescue us the colossal clouds were born gadarene
Our communal life was willed to pageants of gaieties
Then moonlight stories held us for a larger gathering
Now all the objects we sight dress up like cold deities

678. THE LAST DESCENDANTS

The rapacious thunderstorms ***** the skies for their tears
The hot embers were born to glow mourning the late forest
The moon crawled out of the blue like a great grandmother
Cuddling her descendants wrapped up in her ancient shawls

The wild waves were weird weavers weaving withering wails
The captioned wigs gyrated on stunning shoes upon auctions
The little creatures crouched in primeval baskets of the night
To gnaw at the generational tubers in the creative farmlands

The dazzling specimens of dentitions relaxed in water basins
Like bright red artistic architectures on potent ocean boards
Golden hearts glow in the threatening prisms of the furnace
As beautiful sunset defines her beauties in her nightly corset

It had been a sweet pill for the past descendants to swallow
Depending on the colonial masters for loaves, lore and lures
Our creativity had been packaged in their mortal depravities
Like the tranquil days resting sorrowfully upon the dark oars

The centenarian thunders downgraded our minute whispers
We had been kept upon our toes by the eternally sworn foes
At last our worthy artworks have worn their wormy catwalks
The refreshed dawns greet our easting days in their greenery



679. VICTIMS IN THE VALLEY

The victims in the dark rally
Caged, dried and browning
Therein their meanings tally
With waves born drowning

In the depth of a cold valley
Horrible nobles are cultures
Like pilgrims in the dark alley
Willed to ravenous vultures

The victims all robed in tears
With hearts like potter’s clay
For pains they have no fears
Only mimed games they play

For victory awaits the victims
Alien to a blind mimed game
Glorious are eternal rhythms
For death Christ died to tame

680. THE GIANT SCARS

These are our giant threatening scars
Engraved on our demonstrative heads
Our sympathies crawled on superstars
Weeping for us on their moonlit beds

They threatened us with nasal sounds
Like thunderclouds seasoned to burst
For us their galleries are out of bounds
Behind the iron bars plagued with rust

Our patience passed their wildest tests
Like the lions roaring in the thick jungle
On the heart of the Lord our faith rests
Like numbers posted on the right angle

681.  A LADY

In a lady’s handbag
Is her hidden hunchback
Stuffed with her heart ache
For the pains relieving groom

In a lady’s tender smile
Is hidden miles of similitude
Marked with the zebra crossings
For the ever winning marathoner

In a tender lady’s heart
Is hidden her cowboy’s hat
Soaring within the white clouds
To soothe the earth with the latter rains

682. BRING BACK OUR GIRLS

Bring back our homesick girls
Their vacant cradles are bleeding
Bring back our innocent girls
On the chariots of fire descending

Bring back our suckling girls
Their feeding bottles are weeping
Bring back our infant girls
Their mothers’ ******* are heavy

Bring back our harmless girls
The united universe is thundering
Bring back our dewy girls
In the sharp sun rising in the skies

Bring back our beautiful girls
Like light plucked from darkness
Bring back our glorious girls
Aboard the shore-bound waves

Bring back our worthy girls
On their fresh faces our lights seek to glow
Bring back our living girls
Our fountains of joy are bubbling to burst

For our returned girls the skies shall bear
Roaring rivers, singing seas, chiming clouds
With gongs and songs, pianos and praises
Dulcet dulcimers and documentable dances
With healthy hymns and eloquent embraces
All nations shall into a common cathedral flow

683. ****** GENEOLOGIES

They electrify their demonic high tables with old fears
Only their ****** genealogies are bookmarked to reign
The sight of their portables whetted our eyes to tears
We are reinforced by the clouds born to the later rain

Our skins have renovated the sickening cattle wagons
With our dreams flying upon huge smokes in the skies
Beneath their tables we abridge their creaking jargons
Upon their floors with our generational landmark tiles

The dew drops dropped like old crops upon our brows
To soften the veils falling to the flaming edged swords
The flaming hearted sword of the penetrating sunrays
Born to pluck us alive from our hotly bandaged bruises

684. LET US SPEAK UP

The light is climbing downstairs
And danger is sprouting abroad
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light is melted on the glades
And terror grazing our eyelashes
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light is late and lately buried
The mourners are on danger list
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light has divorced the grave
Her grave clothes are dew dyed
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

Silence is a forgotten tombstone
Lost in the din of cold morticians
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

685.  THE SUN

The sun smiles on all prescriptively
Like the waves spreading on shores
The green grass glows descriptively
Like the full moon upon dark sores

The sun is a tailor fixing the buttons
Preparing the sky for incoming stars
Like the weaverbird weaving cottons
To conceal the day’s damnable scars

The sun is a marker on diurnal pages
Tall grace he bestows on the flowers
The sun retains his graces for all ages
Bees and butterflies are his followers

Our common laughter is endangered
When sun bows down in big setbacks
All mortals have the starlets fingered
When the night comes on drawbacks

686. UNTIL HERE

(For Lou Lenart and his team)

Their floods came seeking Jewish bloods
Like streams they roared for our dreams
They emerged as columns of soldier ants
Like whirlwinds they zoomed towards us

Until here we were crumbs for the reptiles
Until here we were like airborne cloudlets
But here the sudden change unveiled to us
From here the elusive victory embraced us

With skeletal jets we fought like bold lions
Soared like eagles and spoke like thunders
We conquered columns of invading armies
The bleeding armies turned back and blank

From here we turned from victims to victors
From here enemies’ defeat our greatest feat
Upon this memorable bridge it all happened
Victories leapt upon our pool like joyful frogs

687.  JOY UNLIMITED

The fledging sun offers its rays
And the rays offer golden trays
For our joy a platform to spray
Rowdy paratroops like thunder
To scoop roses from pure oasis

Our joy is ripe upon celebrations
Our celebrations with decorations
Decorations with documentations
Documentations for all generations
Generations in our joyful habitations

688. ANOTER RAINING DAY

The dark clouds are wandering river basins
Spiral bounded by breakable outer casings
The rivers and the seas display empty cups
For the swift blessings descending the tops

The rains come as defense troops’ missiles
And the drowning lands look like imbeciles
Now we are groaning in the watered claws
With the liberated scales marking our flaws

The retreating clouds crawl away in a belch
Dumping the missing cargoes on the beach
The winds bow in a state of shock in a cord
Praying and fasting for a visit from the Lord

689. GRANDMOTHER

Grandmother, please wake and get up
The sky is quarreling with her husband
Soon they will spill their freezing sweat
On our bodies for us to catch dead cold

Grandmother, please sneeze not louder
The sky and her husband are quarreling
Soon they will send old floods like gales
To sweep mankind away from the world

Grandmother, you are everything I have
My moon, my sun and my morning stars
Provoke not the couples with your cough
Lest they refill their greasily wraths again

Grandmother, the big reptiles have come
With their lethal grandchildren following
They are laced with secret burial shrouds
With sympathetic tears tearing their eyes

Grandmother, I kiss you a shaky goodbye
With broken pains roaring within my soul
Grandmother, where are your groundnuts
To conduct my solo heart as you sing away

690.  A NIGHT WALK THROUGH THE FOREST

Lured away on an alluring dream by fables
I trudged along the grassy paths with fears
Upon my steps spilling the prevailing dews
The shadows bowed their heads in silence
Like the soul issued with a death sentence

The night crawlers emerged above boards
Throwing light upon contrary communities
In their hearts and eyes were painful tears
Crawling down their exaggerated eye *****
Like a handbag filled with rotten cosmetics

The shadows were bold animators’ shelves
Stage managing the horror motion pictures
In the ghostly commodities I met wild hosts
Lifeworks evaporated from my fresh breath
Like foreign tragedies in common comedies

The sorrowful shadows cast away their veils
Like the candles letting go of the weird wax
Sadly I sat in the sack for conflicting fetuses
Another sun appeared like a serial divorcee
Counting the testicles of another naked day

691.  SUBJECTIVE SUBJECTS

The sad sun descended upon her haunting melodies
Reeling from mysterious layers for electoral riggings
To harden the flowerbed for flower girls born tender
Disenfranchised voters came weeping in barren polls
Dressing the blank nest for the fat electoral parodies
With the mourners the faulty bells they came ringing
Like the angry water castigating a ****** port fender
And the smokes climbed upon their wide aerial poles
Arching over the emptied shelves with liberal singing
They subjected their subjective subjects to all objects
David N Juboor Dec 2015
My mom
Tells me I'm a gift.

She says love
Is what keeps the atoms
In you and I
Is the moment
She caught my
Father's eye
Is the day
My grandfather died
With a candy kiss on his cheek
She had never tasted something so sweet.

When we were little
We played kickball,
The ground is lava
And hide-and-go-seek.
As I grew I knew most days,
It was harder to find myself;
Let alone somebody else.

And I have been around
Enough center city playgrounds
To see the rich
Pump every bit of spare change
In their veins fighting
A cancer that they
Never learned to put in their past.
To see the poor
Wage wars with themselves
Trying to pick up
Way too much,
Way too fast;

Nobody really knows how to make love last.

So put your prism your heart
Beneath the moonlight.
Refract the wavelengths
Of your wonders
Into ROYGB-eautiful like the sea,
It took a lot of jellyfish to let
people see through me.

And even more mirrors
To find a place I was comfortable
Praying in.

Fraying in doorways
Where I learned hope,
Is looking both ways
On a one way street
Cause it can be so easy to thank God
While you still have bread to eat.

I have never prayed
So hard for a healthy meal
Than the days I remember
The heart is a muscle;
And sometimes the only
Thing we need
Is to "work it out."

And I know that some days,
My doubt hangs my
Smile like Jesus Christ
I never quite learned
How to bleed right.

But if there's one thing
I found from cleaning
The crosses out of the
Empty hallway of my character
Is that you haven't experienced loss
Until you've held two outstretched arms
For years waiting for your innocence to come back.
Nothing, weighs more than the guilt of your past
And nothing throws punches
Faster than the ghost of who you used to be.

And I know it's hard
To stop looking for yourself
Under every bed you
Left nightmares in
And I know it's hard
To be comfortable
In your own skin

But sometimes bars
Aren’t the only thing
That builds a cage
And sometimes
The only way to live
With yourself
Is to stop digging
Your own grave.

You can spend years
Listening to morticians
And never get grounded.
Surrounded by the
Square roots we all share,
By the same air,
We've all got to learn to let go.

To learn that
Holding your breath
Has never been how
Living things
Learn to
Grow
"We're all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die, each of us secretly believing we won't"
Forever Yours Feb 2015
If you sit in a hospital room long enough it looks a lot like a funeral home
If you hear a doctor say they don't know what to do anymore enough times it sounds a lot like a mortician asking about the funeral arrangements
When you watch the lines on a heart monitor flutter out of rhythm enough times it feels a lot like your own has stopped beating
When you sit in an ambulance reciting someone's medical history enough times you almost want to beg them to drive slower
As you're standing in the middle of the funeral home you'll realize it's more calming than a hospital room ever could have been
When you hear the sirens and it registers in your mind they can't possibly be coming for her you'll look down and finally see what you've done
Glenn McCrary  Aug 2011
2 A.M.
Glenn McCrary Aug 2011
Along a narrow, vacant street at 2 a.m.



Underneath the threatening lights of peril



An act of ******* was taking place between



A beautiful cigarette and the orifice of my lips





Halloween had not yet dawned upon us



Yet as I walk Jack-O-Lanterns smile at me



Displaying minor quakes of bloodthirsty evil



While a serum of scorn soaks my tongue





With a heartless trick of ice, cold malice



Summoning the entire town to its kneecaps



Devils regurgitate lullabies resembling the sound



Of nails ****** a chalkboard sparing no mercy





Arousing the hopeless romantics



To awaken a graveyard



And **** the corpses until they're



Resurrected from their comas





As the nymphomaniacs ice



Their frozen flesh with *****



Painting an ocean of abstract thoughts



Across the edges of their frames of mind





Do morticians make up the majority



Of necrophilia related crimes?



Maybe so but, I bet they had never felt



A ****** so dry and so cold





Yet still the thrill of chills tickle these criminal's spines



While they measure their screams careful not to awaken



The beautifully disgusting corpses that lie before them



They turn their heads only to find a pair of scarlet eyes





Gawking at them from within a cowardly shield of fear



Darkness was it's home, Mother to all its desires



In my opinion it was just a phase; A massacre encaged
Sacrelicious Jul 2012
Running North,
aura lights
are taking me home.

Six feet underground.
Pine box mannequins,
all done up dead and pretty.

Morticians's pride,
a job well done.

Such a shame,
it was a closed-casket
viewing.
Noandy  Oct 2014
Mandragona
Noandy Oct 2014
For tragic is just a trapped magic
Let's try harder to break the cage
Where it dwells in
Just like the hopes packed
In a coffin

So come all jolly lads
and whimsical princesses

take out your torches under the streetlights
for the lamps have withered out
and nothing can save you
except what you believe in the unseen

so come all jolly ladies
and whimsical princes

dance with the revenant before they vanish
for nothing can be done unless
you succumb to the delusion
and the foul mess you created
for the purpose of self-destruction

So join in morticians and
Men of desolated sorority

Grab out your shovels to dig up the magic
Stolen by the faeries of the day that reside
In the caverns of gloom and doom
Where trickery binds our wrists
And lead us to the dead-end

Painted with magic

And will be painted again for ever more
With our tragic fate of trapped magic

So I say,
“Come, come, jolly lads
And whimsical princesses
Join in, morticians and
Men of desolated sorority
For nothing can be done unless
You have something to hold on in life
In darkness or in light
Visions of hell or heaven
Deluded or disillusioned”
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum
school for proper girls. The next April the plane
bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned
and fear blew down my throat, that last profane
gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned
to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor,
sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.
Maybe Rose, there is always another story,
better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.
Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities
turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy's
story, the April night of the civilian air crash
and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper,
the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash
ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.
This was the rude **** of her; two planes cracking
in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds.
And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking
bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards
to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature
photograph left, too long now for fear to remember.
Special tonight because I made her into a story
that I grew to know and savor.
A reason to worry,
Rose, when you fix an old death like that,
and outliving the impact, to find you've pretended.
We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat.
I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.
Taylor St Onge May 2021
The color of death is not black, is not white.  
                                                        ­                        Not red, not gold.  
Think: ashen skin.  
                               Think: where did the blood go?  
                                                          ­                       Think: pale, so ******* pale.
Bruise again.  He’s going to bruise again.  
     Mottled red   and      purple   and      blue   and      green   and      yellow.
That’s what the body does after death.  Blood runs down
to the lowest bend of the body and bruises the skin.  

The rust of cerebrospinal fluid as it sloshes
                      back and forth
       in the bag hanging above the bed.  
                                                      My mother’s hands:
white knuckled and gripping down on washcloths
to prevent her from breaking the skin of her palms.
The constant hum of telemetry,
                                the soft whoosh of the ventilator.

The human body has roughly 7% of its weight in blood.
The human body has no ******* idea what to do when
there is too much or too little of really anything.
Think: blood vessel bursting.
                            Think: cells mutating.
                                                  Think: proned patient coding after intubation.

Bruised.  His hands were bruised from all the needle-sticks,
from his lack of platelets.  And a single transfusion only goes so long.
                                                           ­   Goes three weeks long.  
The hands on the belly, laid so gently, so carefully are
covered in makeup.  The hair is parted wrong with a cowlick.
I know how they created that soft smile on his closed mouth.
                                                                         I’ve read the books.
                                            I’ve heard the talks from morticians.  
They’ve made my grandfather tan, but
I know what’s underneath the foundation:
                                                                                  grey.
writing your grief prompt nine: choose any color. let your mind follow that color to a memory, or a scene, or a story of any kind
mannley collins Jun 2014
that's how callously compassionate and vainly godly
humanity has become under the Oligarchy.
nice men and women of all five colours,
sitting around comfortably in alcoholic stupidity,
with their thumbs up their bums,
trying so hard to keep shtum,
about the undeniable fact that
they cant drum up a drop of ***
between them.
Seriously babbling religiously godly nonsense,
wreathed in smelly Tobacco smoke mimicking incense,
abandoning pretense at conscience,
hating empowering commonsense,
lacking all  but nonsense.
with the mien of morticians
and the mendacious psychobabble of politicians
and the inspired madness of medical technicians
making badly placed cerebral incisions
and worst of all supporting
oligarchy inspired decisions.
About the "end  of  days and nights"
being put up for offers on the  "free market".
Dedicated to Democratic and Non-Democratic Govts everywhere
and their frothing at-the-mouth supporters.

— The End —