"rhetoric" poems
Leg off the table
you red face recruit!
put on the offensive
and break down
the bolted door!
you are the soul saver
the peddle maker
the calibrator
with colored handbills
and front line
rhetoric
join the masquerade
in ivy league style!
politicking with
cunning guile
invisalign smile
blackened vile
bleeding the funnel
with gold plate omega
and crocodile shoes
get on stage
and dance you fool!
you are the headline maker
the pantomime juggler
the compromised closer
pull out that 5 page review
(bullet points only please)
and polish those weathered lines!
did you give it your all?
the door tags
and pleasantries
the tidings
and clippings
the irrevocable claims
and postured blames
all those impressionable basics
put to the test?
you know the call
(straight from
those cold academics)
the pie chart gurus
and contract killers
(complete with bone in finger)
whipping their
frenzied crew
in an all night
charade
old yellar
and the gatekeeper
sure seem amused
(sharpening their inquest
behind closed doors)
firing up the shiit storm
with those hostile priicks
and a slew
of insatiable
cures
there’s laughter from the back room
the dripping nose
and wavering hand
the cut white lines
and checkpoint tales
the pipeline romance
and lacking form
(of a basic essential
character!)
soundboard
and narratives
for logging time
slouching on the
steel case
over moot points
ready to play
the 3 weight
butter card
(if need be)
might I remind you
it’s only an inquiry
(with a slight hint of concern!)
surely no
malfeasance
or deception intended
so step back from
the melt down
and cut to the chase!
headlines to breadlines
penthouse to outhouse
those immoral pursuits
have taken their toll
(haven’t they?)
madman or rogue
(you take your pick)
for the scores
and tabulations
are final
shame on you
for the foul play
the bold hypocrisy
and order desk games
the back stabbing blames
and spurious names
just sign on the dotted line ~
this banter
is killing me
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 1:12 PM UTC
No no no, this isn’t one of those commendable confessional rants of redounded reality.
We all know where that goes and what it leads to.
This rhetoric comprises solely of the faulty intuitive comprehension and the ******** behaviour people have while under the influence of the poor man’s ****
That could be mistaken for a typo.
Xeno-meph, would be what aliens are called if they did this too.
Extended warranty of your sinus cavity is a must.
And a mouth guard so you don’t churn away at the capricious calcium that are your teeth.
Smoke and dance till lungs and legs collapse.
Talk like you’re the spokesperson for an oil company that’s pillaging life and land.
Change your personality in a minute and become the ****** you always wanted to be.
That smart talking, **** wagging, ***** licking, *** ******* back stabbing, self serving, worthless piece of **** is now you, but it doesn’t feel like that to you.
Rational ******** your only reprieve.
Keep doing the same things over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again hoping the outcome will change.
But you’re cool.
You’ve done this before, it’s solvable.
A break. That’s all there’s to it.
The itch in your nose has stopped. Your jaw doesn’t hurt.
You don’t feel like **** but you know somehow that something is amiss.
Things are not what they seem. Sense doesn’t make itself.
The dark is your sanctum. Fast is your peace.
That’s not a typo.
The world cannot slow down for you.
You have to speed up. Another gram, another line, another lie.
Control is what you say it is.
Handles are what your stomach has.
Fast forward a few months and you don’t have a handle on anything.
You don’t feel down, you feel fine. Nothing’s wrong
But just another fall, and you’re straight out of line.
Justify! Justify! Justify!
Listen, keep listening… Talk! keep talking!
Everything makes sense. Everything is a sense.
The difference is that I’m faster, quicker, sharper.
I’m handicapped.
Leverage is my mind, broken and blind.
I wish that was a typo.
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 5:12 AM UTC
I put so much effort into random places,
so much effort into random faces
face it
im faceless
placeless
drifting
shifting
thoughts towards destiny
feeling empty,
wondering whats left in me...?
messages esoteric terrorize my rhetoric
pedestrians staring glaring gazin gotta get a second look
shook
layers shed, fall from those ancient snakes
left for dead
suffocated, stranded
damaged
god ******
this sunless planet is madness
immobilized
try to find sense in a broke world
what are hands without manipulation?
and in life? death is a stipulation
a fools gold is never within grasp
so
clasp delusions Grandiose
with a toast
to sham pain and champagne
emptied grails course through mans veins
oh to see what mirrors saw
would reflections appear at all?
peer into the endless ego
see nothing but self libido
we are all weary travelers,
existences' eternal passengers
remove masks, flasks, end the charade
let serpents slither, and sun bath
away from the shade
embrace the end of nights
push away the start of days
just keep in mind
which way
the pendulum sways
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 10:29 PM UTC
related to childhood emotional abuse or neglect...
not to be confused with derealization or 'fantasy prone personality'
maladaptive daydreaming is seeing your face when I fall asleep at night
or hearing your voice in a children's store
"Come look! Look at these shoes!", and seeing you scramble at a pair of sandals
Big brown eyes begging me to buy them as "an early birthday present, just this once."
Maladaptive daydreaming
is blinking and not even having time to register the fact that you'd disappeared
and I was standing alone in the children's shoe aisle,
on my knees holding a pair of sandals
and feeling that same twist in my gut that I did on the day
the papers were signed and my passport was stamped,
to get on a plane to another country
without so much as waving goodbye
Maladaptive daydreaming is crying through anti-abortion rhetoric
and sympathising with teenage mothers
it's seeing you smile behind a nikon camera, calling
"Look at this pretty picture I took! See, see?"
and then realising that I was only smiling at a fallen camera in the sand
Maladaptive daydreaming
is regretting a choice I didn't make
it's steeling my jaw at immature jokes
and relating to all those children raising children
Maladaptive daydreaming
is regretting giving up a daughter
I never had
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 1:17 AM UTC
i see the words floating on
message boards or perched
upon the lips of jocular hypocrites
double-standards that demand
sensual chastity and virginal sexuality
in endless iterations of irony
the concussive
monosyllabic words
slung like stones
cast like arrows
****
*****
*****
all labels for
women possessed of
the courage to pursue
their own passion
once upon a time a
Nazarene insisted a ********** had
more integrity than a rich
statesman throwing self-serving parties
so tell me why so
many Christian politicians
propagate patriarchal notions of depravity
in blanket attempts to regulate
the bodies of women
if being anti-choice was really
about preventing abortions
why do rich right-wing conservative
Republicans spend all their time
and money picketing free clinics
when the solution lies in comprehensive
****** education universal healthcare
complimentary birth control
and comprehensive child support
don't dare use the reprehensible
rhetoric of pro-life unless you're
at once anti-war
and anti-death penalty
riddle me this
what pray tell is the
difference between a jealous
religious misogynist
and a secular sexist
it's rather simple actually
while the former bases his
slut-shaming on the edicts of
a two thousand year old letter to
the Corinthians inconspicuously
sandwiched between a celebration of
love and a section on speaking in tongues
the latter’s learned behavior is
birthed by a hyper-masculine culture
grounded in dominance
either way we await the day
when wild women raze
these ideologies
with torches before
rising like phoenixes
from the ashes of
decimated passages
dismissed by intellectuals
as archaic and outmoded
deaf blind and dumb to
the vestiges of modernity
that sap unscientific
philosophies of their potency
and render them utterly obsolete
in their wake
these proud women
erase the hate
from words like
****
*****
*****
and reclaim equality
with a far more
comprehensive term
feminist
Sep 27, 2015
Sep 27, 2015 at 11:50 PM UTC
Give him a skinhead, insignia, boots
Less scruples, a swagger-stick, crowds, money.
No black shirts visible. Just business suits,
and pride is restored: tragic but funny.
Proud like a skyscraper, godless as sin
Babylonian promises, towering lies
Reality shows when plutocrats win,
Their rhetoric raining from empty skies.
She-wolves, elected by uninformed sheep
behave predictably, eyeing the flock
Their wool (and the lamb-chops) are hers to keep
Grazing voter—this should come as no shock.
It’s a bitter pill (more like pilloried)
So shall we now be ******* or Hillary-ed?
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 8:59 PM UTC
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
6.8k
The world's on fire, peace is extinct
Look how fragile peaceful minds can get
All hostile minds are having a ball right now.
It's like peace got embellished in chaos.
Where's peace at, what happened to her?
Regional, global local, peace is in short supply.
This is the renaissance of a new world order
Where partial peace coexists with total chaos
People only search Google for mostly facts
Not for solutions to some distorted peace
What is peace then, how can it be?
Just a routine rhetorical question
Coming from the disturbed mind in me
Listen, One-minute partial peace
Bang, another minute total chaos!
Nowadays, Instability everywhere is commonplace
As unscripted hate rhetoric freely echos,
From jihadic podiums to confused minds.
The conspicuous birthplace of premeditated evil.
The mind, soft spots of those totally confused
Call it the hotspots and playground for the devil.
I, the skeptic, to say the very least,
See this quiet storm as a distorted peace!
twitter @ivaclappers
Jan 15, 2018
Jan 15, 2018 at 12:44 PM UTC
psychologism, i.e. neo-racism, neo- due to it being without any collective ethnic collectivisation, best insinuated by marijuana users, grouping alcoholics with ****** sharp shooters; they think they have the moral high ground, but they talk jack sh-: medicinal marijuana is synthetic marijuana / ore without casual-use effects, it's not the sh- you put in your **** have a *** change and tell me about children suffering from cancer while you're at it: because those starving children of africa adverts... are really really working... knowing that the man in control of such charities earns over half a million a year - post-colonialism only really works while you have former colonial indigenous peoples nearby, then you can milk that ***** cow from the locals... make sure you think the nairobi international airport has a dirt runway and you'll feel all ******* fuzzy giving money to these companies... post-colonialism only works like that... import some former colonials to milk the former colonial whites into coughing up money & guilt... then watch the irish get leery with sarcasm at almost anything... and the scots gear up pride and become politically malignant... the good friday agreement? tony blair did as much as / avoiding-tax cigarettes smuggled from eastern europe west of the ural mountains exchanged in belfast... but geographic borders were never used in rhetoric in politics... because ireland was always further west than iceland: as oaths go... it was a neighbour of liberty iseland... with the true statue of liberty in a moulin rouge cancan attire, skirt up, flame extinguished - although ***** as hell: and in koranic reality, requiring a harem for her three holes.
Dec 25, 2015
Dec 25, 2015 at 10:22 PM UTC
Sadly, there are many intellectual postulations
that are well meaning, but fatally flawed.
One can only end up with an unholy mixture from…
combining Man’s religious views with God’s Law.
Beyond the constraints of the mental realm,
the human template of thought cannot contain God.
Yet after more than two thousand years of Church,
lessons are still not learned; so it’s not odd…
to see a skeptical world, groaning and grasping
for rays of hope and light and salvation.
God’s truth can stand on its own, not needing
to be couched within feeble human traditions.
The multitude of meaningless rhetoric
will ultimately reveal the heart of a fool;
this idea demonstrates that the Church really needs…
Christ in its heart to reign and to rule.
It’s shameful to see an inability to ‘walk in love’;
unfortunately, it seems to appear everywhere today;
stop ignoring the basic, Biblical truths, for…
Christ declared Himself to be the Life, Truth and Way.
Author Notes:
Loosely based on:
Prov 10:19; Eccl 5:1-7; Prov 20:15
Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ
By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2011, All rights reserved.
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 7:40 AM UTC
My sympathy depleted
My friendships deleted
I have been defeated
By truths that hit so hard
I was decleated
By intense hatred deep-seeded
My history was repeated
I guess a three-armed mutant
Has no need for a right hand man
Until his leprosy riddled hands rot off
When he needs them the most
But his ***** limbs had been pretty useless for a while
Since he had lost feeling in them
He had to do a biopsy on his life
After the inaccurate results of the smear test
He took antibiotics to rid himself of the bacteria
But that didn't heal the nerve damage
He yearned for the rhetoric to be less inflammatory
So he took steroids
Transforming the ***** into an ogre
With no semblance of humanity
...Except for the people he devours
Their patience is delicious
He eats that first
Their pity is a delicacy
A rare treat
Their disgust tastes sour
But it's a feast
His cannibalism may seem callous
But the non-mutant lepers take Thalidomide
And get pregnant
Their kids come out defected
With an intense, deep-seeded hatred for three-armed mutants
And lepers and ogres look exactly the same
To those of another species
Jun 29, 2017
Jun 29, 2017 at 5:51 PM UTC
We have heard the words they preach
The Gospel carpetbaggers teach
That some of us can make their own rules.
Any white people that don’t are fools.
They redefine the meaning of equality
The gladly withhold my rights from me.
They choose what part of good is good
And happily red-lined my neighborhood.
Don’t wave your seditionist flag at me/
I believe in liberty, equality ad fraternity.
Your rhetoric is a disguise of old John Birch.
If I want to hear your hateful sermon
I prefer to have to go to your church.
They think us blind and cannot see
That they openly abhor equality.
They say one thing in the South
Up north they use another mouth,
And speak with a totally forked tongue
And push half the race down a rung.
They cry like they have all been hurt
But it is they who treat the rest like dirt.
Don’t wave your seditionist flag at me/
I believe in liberty, equality ad fraternity.
Your rhetoric is a disguise of old John Birch.
If I want to hear your hateful sermon
I prefer to have to go to your church.
There is no difference from your chant
And the Inquisition’s deadly cant.
These punishing words out of you
Are ages old, they are not new.
If Jesus were here to hear you start
This ugly talk, it would break his heart.
Don’t wave your seditionist flag at me/
I believe in liberty, equality ad fraternity.
Your rhetoric is a disguise of old John Birch.
If I want to hear your hateful sermon
I prefer to have to go to your church.
Nov 15, 2016
Nov 15, 2016 at 4:31 PM UTC
I am common.
seemingly feminine
but shoulders strong
as barbed-wire.
like a chicken I am
underdeveloped—my wings
weak and unable to
lift me into the air.
I am preoccupied
in self-identified war
with the 875 square foot
apartment and the pasta
that refuses to boil.
on my knees, I
crawl
reconciling rhyme
and reason for
suffering.
the world has gone awry,
I say to myself on an
afternoon bike ride
through wooded
pain, my face
a perfect plane for
scathing branches.
quick and easy blood
am I.
wretched and astonishing
is the rhetoric I
find in the hollow of
my rib.
I am common
but not so when
written by hand.
Aug 4, 2017
Aug 4, 2017 at 4:14 PM UTC
For me, the naked and the ****
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.
Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.
The **** are bold, the **** are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.
The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the **** may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime ****
4.2k
By: Cedric McClester
***** **** ***
Terms that we all know
Which only goes to show
The depths to which men go
To shame women although
They have mothers who
Get categorized that way too
But they act like who knew
***** **** ***
It has a certain flow
On and on we go
Tryin’ to bring ‘em low
But it’s not fair and yo
We need to take it slow
Before those labels stick
Let’s change our rhetoric
***** **** ***
People that we know
Use it frequently although
It shouldn’t be that way but yo
Guess that’s just how it go
We use it for ammo
When we refuse to grow
Change sometimes is slow
***** **** ***
Are terms that havta go
Why hold ‘em in escrow
For the sake of puttin’ on a show
Of put downs that’s below
The ladies we bestow
Those names on even though
They’ve become status quo
Cedric McClester. Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved.
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 11:38 PM UTC
Brothers,
let us stand together.
Sisters,
you can stay sitting.
Let us stand
united
by our inability
to stay out in the sun
too long.
In fact,
would someone mind
erecting a gazebo
for us to stand united
underneath?
Thank you.
Brothers,
having proven
that we cannot demonstrate
our superiority
through sport,
rhetoric,
mathematics,
music,
drama,
art,
science,
business acumen
or military might
Let us instead
prove it beyond all doubt
by gathering in groups
and chanting slogans.
Flags are good, too.
Dagnab it,
just look at the way
we can wave those flags.
If that
doesn't qualify us
as the Master Race,
then I don't know what will.
And thus anointed,
let us expunge the world
of miscegenation.
Let us cleanse public radio
of anything other
than Bavarian folk music.
Let us revel
in boiled beef
and wheat-based foods.
Let us return
the mineral wealth of the world
to the tarnished, coloured nations
from whence it came.
Let us reject
foreign mythologies
apart from that one
about Jesus
obviously.
Let us all return
to the country, town,
street
and house
of our birth.
History is with us, brothers.
If there's one thing
it teaches us
it's that nothing should ever change
and empires
never fall.
Sieg heil!
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 8:22 AM UTC
Sometimes feel like screaming out Loud.
Well if a child can shurly I can too.
I don't need the stress you put me through.
Rhetoric digs to other folk, you hurt people, to you a joke.
You have no heart the devil took your soul and your brain isnt there at all.
You must sit at night and try to think of ways to hurt those you meet the next day
Well karma comes to all one day and to you it's dose will come what may.
I hope I'm there to see that day and see your soul fade away
Oct 2, 2012
Oct 2, 2012 at 10:28 AM UTC
If there was another way to say it;
An easy way for you to understand...
I would not be pouring out these words
In an attempt to paint a picture.
I wouldn't be desperate to bottle
My emotions and thoughts
Into these stained glass letters,
With the tin syntax lid.
Poking holes through the top
Of my head,
So you could see.
Firefly ideas.
I am a photographer of hearts and minds.
The blood red room holds
My negatives.
How can I make them easier for you to see?
The composition so sweet,
The lighting so contrasted with
The shadows hiding the everyday.
What I really want you to do is stop reading.
Go look into the eyes of a lover.
Go hold a child's hand while they sing.
Listen to the wind change.
Feel the pulse of a city.
Cry with old wrinkled skin
For youth and life, and hope.
That is what my poem means.
It is a pulsing picture
Held captive in rhetoric.
May 18, 2010
May 18, 2010 at 6:42 AM UTC
Who can tell?
Whether malice has its own purity?
If odor has its own fragrant smell?
Does right wrong right
Or wrong right wrong?
Could darkness have its own light?
What do you know?
Guilt might have its own innocence
For all you know
Humility and modesty
Could just be a show
This is how life is
You either laugh hard
Or you cry in pain
You love too much
Or you die in vain
If you don’t make someone smile
You end up being a bore
If you dress up too guile
You are tagged a *****
You may be very pretty
but deceitful in act
You may be called ugly
but are beautiful in fact
In sadness
you’re creative
In happiness
well that is tentative
and yet sans it too
you may appear narrative
If you know too much
you realize how less you knew
If you are too ignorant
you realize that all lies are just few
Humor shames trivialities
Irony is the truth about absurdities
We scorn at all harsh realities
So we smile at its mockeries
Could love really be true?
And hatred absolutely false?
Is sadness a gloom
Covered in joy so sparse
like a dull audience
forced in its applause?
Without a doubt
A truth has a lie hidden
Simply because
The mirror isn’t clear
It hides many flaws
and your aesthetic sin
deep within
If you counted the seconds
and minutes and the hours
Will you still be wasting time?
Or would you still
have to make an orange juice
out of a dainty lime?
What’s rhetoric
if a question has an answer
if silence it’s own message
and guns and bullets
its own power?
What’s the point
If you’re devising a plan
for your future
to become a big man
And you still say
that you don’t know
what might happen tomorrow
That it all looks bleak and dark
And you sit there
not working hard
you crib and worry
and fake a smile
to everyone
you appear
as blithe as a lark
We dwell with glee
In a world where
two extremes meet
Order deals with its chaos
And chaos struggles for order
Everyone fights
for the latter
And to straighten
an imbalanced balance
and dispel a dulcet clatter.
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 6:26 AM UTC
i’ve long dreamt
of black flags in the streets
tonight i marched beneath
the shadow of their wings
shoulder-to-shoulder
in hope and solidarity
an anarchist professor
with a climate change activist
an independent journalist
and one of my students
as mid-November winds tugged
at her pink-and-brunette hair
she lifted a hand-drawn sign
of a gigantic sneaker
smashing a ****
and i felt
for not the first time
an enormous sense of pride
how humbling to at once
inspire and be inspired by
an eighteen-year-old
punk and artist
who asked to borrow
The Moral Imperative of Revolt
two scant months ago
then took to the streets
to oppose and depose
a twisted fascist virtuoso
for two whole hours
we hundreds owned the streets
we marched down Rosalind
Central and Orange Avenue
as protest slogans rang angelic
we raised hell and found heaven
in liberty equality and solidarity
but then the pigs closed in
cordoned to Lake Eola
to scream acquiescent rhetoric
at the fish sleeping
blissful in their innocence
beneath the jet black surface
a half-dozen cops in riot gear
astride horses loomed
ominous before us
backlit by the headlights
of the aggravated motorists
our march had forestalled
as the people abandoned the streets
we’d won so easily
i felt my chest wilt beneath
the weight of forsaken opportunity
my eyes scanned the remaining crowd
four stood strong
rooted to the concrete
by the world's weight
anchored by conviction
an anarchist professor
an independent journalist
a climate change activist
and a freshman college student
i heard the professor whisper to his student
i heard him say she'd put herself in harm’s way
that they'd lost the day when the marchers
turned their backs and walked away
but she didn’t flinch or move an inch
she stood silent and vigilant
shoulder-to-shoulder
chin held almost as high
as her Nazi-smashing protest sign
and her matching middle finger
and in that moment
i could’ve died
smiling
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 12:07 AM UTC
Could you ever pretend to understand
living in a world that gave you no shelter
from the coarse wind of history
and the coarser rain of rhetoric?
The shambles of those walls offer no protection.
But, after all, they say
why do you need walls in the jungle?
No one has to tell you
out loud
that you were born
to be thrown away.
The ache of rotting teeth,
the feeble acquiescence
to raw sewage,
and the 400 dollar offer
to silence the poison in your veins.
They were loud enough.
I imagine there is a moment
between doorless stalls
and postless football fields,
where children, who grow like
wild daffodils,
see the other side of the bridge.
And then they know
until the end,
that it has always been
someone’s choice.
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 3:03 PM UTC
Click “Lowes, you can do it we can help”
Click “Dolly comes with everything you see here including stroller, bottle, and bib”
Click “Destroy your enemy with NERF guns”
Click “Play kitchen with real opening oven and microwave, learn to become a mommy just like you’ve always wanted”
Click
We live in a free society, one where we are independent and free to make our own choices....right
We live in a country where anyone can become anything.....don’t we?
Then every time I turn on the TV why am I flooded with heteronormative racist propaganda?
Why is my future daughter forced to work in a kitchen and take care of the baby from age 5 and up?
Why is my future sun told to fight against the evil invaders with nerf guns?
Why are my future neighbors portrayed as white people with picket fences and perfect lawns
I sit down click after click white after white, heterosexual after heterosexual, gender role after gender role.
Pounded into our heads, indoctrinated by elegantly crafted hate speech.
Rhetoric that has become so naturalized it fails to be seriously questioned
Well I will question it!
I will look for answers
I will not sit by and watch our youth be molded into perfect Americans by the “free market”
I WILL STAND UP, AND I WILL MAKE CHANGE!
Apr 6, 2012
Apr 6, 2012 at 12:01 PM UTC
1
The chards rising. Am I the praying bird?
In the gleaming sun my bones are negative,
My flesh a cypher walking through the plains
As ghost I move, my dark lord, above me
Flocks swirl and spike. I stand accused,
Your pointed face divining oblivion,
And no redemption in the rains of my
Cliff walk days.
2
I see my shroud pinning on the wires
His legs are razored forks spinning my
Compass from True North. Your dark brush-
Fire wings, the swept wind, wheels and strings
My fate. Such black rhetoric in a burn,
Your caws, loosed perches, on the stakes, picks
My crowning grave. Black dove, your feathers finger
As they slice.
3
Smoke, the cardinal blood caries my teething
Bone, spades my hand without a flight.
Taut, the pulled noose my hooded one
I see my scarecrow’s reflexion, the scar,
Let blood, the seeded droppings end trailed
To my door. Feathers, ferry to carry on
Dowsing downward, black knight of down, to sticks
On extended wings.
Jun 11, 2012
Jun 11, 2012 at 8:38 PM UTC