Like the portrait by John Singer Sargent,
of two helplessly hopelessly wedded souls.
The portrait was dim, even in 1897.
The couple grimly seeking searching reaching towards heaven,
timeless romantic.
Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Newton Phelps, who are you?
Starring through a century of fading oils, all my emotions become,
revoked. I sit and stare in repose.
What's left but to stoke the flame; the burning desire, love, and addiction.
Mr. Sargent did you understand my affliction?
Lest I travel back to the Rocky Mountains, those billowing rocks so beautifully captured by your contemporaries, by Albert Bierstadt.
I am a lost wandering critic, traveling through time using paint as my medium, to form these rhymes.
Ridding myself of a life that has become full of all things labeled tedium.
From the French to the Austrian to the English to the American, a new world unfurls.
All cultures aiming to capture the intrinsically fleeting moments of life, nature, and the beautiful, as they curl.
In and out, a dance of colors, a pageantry of light yet again is unfurled.
Only then does my soul feel full and bright.
The fog clears as my headlights part the mist, and I realize, as these masters before me, I do have something to offer...
Love!
Forgiveness!
Hope!
                               ...for a new tomorrow...
A new heaven.
A new Earth.
Today

Lady Macbeth washed her hands
cleaner than Pontius Pilate
with a new improved, bio-enzyme
oxy-bursting, 99.9% germ-scouring
recommended by dermato-logists
scented with rose attar
oils from Arabia
and spermaceti soothing
unguents from long dead whales.

She’s going to the nail bar
for a manicure and application
of semi-permanent, diamond-
tipped, acrylic base-coated
in red blood enamel.

She’ll scratch
and etch rich tattoos
on her husband’s back
with every ******, he will shudder
with pain and delight
He’ll soon forget long, dark nights
bewitched by ghosts and ambition.

© M.L. Emmett

The river runs it runs with greed
The fast cash of the lucky
Makes it's way to sea

And poison floats with this poison greed
The will of millions, cry out silently

Because they have no idea
about this poison greed
Nurotoxicity
Poisoning our cities

The doctor tells the single mother
To eat an apple everyday
Which only supplement her daily
Methlyphenidate
Neurotoxicity

And baby was born just few pounds light
The tired mother relieved
Baby swaddled in a sheet
Of polybrominate
Neurotoxicty

But all ends were it began
The conspirers of greed
Don't have to loose a thing
The toxic poisonous sludge doesn't run through their garden greens
Somethings
Fish-y
Or is it all the mercury?

East of the railroad tracks
The man smoking crack
Behind a tree
Now breathing PCB's
From car exhaust and factory
Poor ****** breathes
Neuroxicity

And the lucky on lookers equipped to
Notice such a thing or anything
Watch in disbelief
They should all find relief, the poison is fair
It flows through everybody, everywhere

For nothing makes the people sing
Like a mix ethanol and manganese
Neurotoxicty

Spin round and round and sing
This is called brainwashing
Drink your mix of ethanol and manganese
Watch your team throw the polyethylene
Trickle down, trickle
Your loosing the cells right from your brain
While a doctor writes you a prescription to go insane

After years of manganese and PCB's
Jimmy B is lost in the sea of toxins
But mom knows best
He's a hyper brat
Takes him to the doctor to get him
Correct
Doctor gives Jimmy a prescription
The devil's speed
Dextroamphetamine

Jimmy was focused
Jimmy didn't bother
Jimmys brain a couple grams lighter

The doctor intrigued gets a free meal
To switch Jimmy's speed
Four more Jimmies
Doctor can vacation expenses paid
By the sea

Jimmy keeps on taking his pills
Then over night
Jimmy hits his first pipe
Now that's some ******* good speed

And the story goes
Without relief
The government we know
Deligates neurological slavery

Shakespeare would have failed Naplan,
That was not in his cunning plan,
Yes, his folks would have him tutored,
To ensure Billy became learned,
He would have lost his homework,
Billy did so not want extra work,
Shakespeare, that teen scallywag,
It was total fun, such a lad.
Now Shakespeare is a wraith,
Why, Billy, why? Teens sayeth,
As they serially fail literacy tests,
Why not abolish that Billy pest?
Tragic heroes and drama queens,
That's the teens writing essays on such scenes,
While Billy failed in literacy,
Teens do sense such hypocrisy.