2012 Sunday #1

Atomic Sister


In the final moments of a cacophonous world,
the sister spreads her billowing wings
and smothers the panicked rumbling,

until the only sound is a prerecorded calm,
that voice of safety and authority repeating
its steady mantra of vigilance.

Who couldn't see the sister stumble down
the rickety stairs, her fear hidden
beneath a mask of rubber and glass?

The world saw and melted beneath
the hem of her flowing, leaden dress,
and crumpled into little piles

of bones and dust, a serene ghost
still upon those abstract faces,
and the voice of safety rumbled on unheard.

Sunday #30: The Last Part

part 1: "Love Song for the End of Summer"(rbannal)
 part 2: "Morning in Late September"(fragondruit)

part 3: "A New Sunset" (rbannal)
part 4: "Crash on M-131" (fragondruit)

part 5: "on being a raindrop" (rbannal)

part 6: "And We All Fall Down" (fragondruit)

 a colder wind


winter surprise
and the cars
skitter and slide
like beetles
across hot sand,

every raindrop
that falls
meets the new
breath of frost
and turn
into frozen
copies,

the umbrellas
that scuttle
into the corner
watch the snow
boots walk
out the door
with their untested
rubber
which reflects
the ground
as it approaches.

Sunday #29

corruption, hip


say dance,
    and they danced and swayed,
a permanent fixture
of the bar slime scene,

a hedgerow of faces
    cut to animalistic features.
say dance,
    and they danced and swayed,
wind exaggerated and the arms
    swing, intoxication

on an acceptable scale,
    a dance of hips
and arrow eyes, sharp points
with a sight for flesh,

a parade of possibilities,
circus of freak show rejects
playing the same game--
    say dance,

and they'll dance and sway,
    slip corruption until
the dance is a farce
    and the whole show's exposed.

Sunday #28

A quick one on a dreary Wednesday morning.



Mourning


the sky awakens
to a new death
and sobs,

the grey storm
briefly pulling back
the veil

covering the eyes
of a world
that does not realize
its loss.

Sunday #27

 Euthanasia


death was born on a slab
of cold metal, swirled streaks
from years of hard scrubbing,

the angel of mercy with twig
fingers, bony and brown,
delicate upon the matted fur.

his assistants were gentle, too,
with practiced looks of pain
and commiseration.  perhaps

it never got easier with time.
we spread the ashes in the woods,
adding to the ghosts that roamed

through the decaying leaves
and fragile trillium flowers,
past the spot where I built

my first fort out of sticks,
and the rusting cans left
after the farmer's target practice.

Sunday #26

a morning bus ride when the world was cold


morning breaks and reveals
that the great spider
had stolen into the night
only to leave
the waking world a delicate
web of ice and glass.

some kids left hand prints
on the frosty windows.
others wrote messages
to the passing commuters.

I wiped away the haze
to reveal my own view
of the fragile scene
and savored the moments
before the sun melted
away the last mysteries
of the world.

Sunday #25

Here's part 5 of the ongoing series of poems that me and fragondruit are doing.  This time, I borrowed two lines from her most recent poem (which, in turn, borrowed two from my last poem).  Those two lines are in italics.

part 1: "Love Song for the End of Summer" (rbannal)

part 2: "Morning in Late September" (fragondruit)

part 3: "A New Sunset" (rbannal)
part 4: "Crash on M-131" (fragondruit)

on being a raindrop


some fall upon overpasses
deep into the autumn, when the winds
tell of the wintery future
and freeze before they all turn
to snow.

others are blessed with an embrace
at the end of their journey,
acceptance into the community--
a pool, lake, stream,
others like them, until they
no longer remember being
falling raindrops.

one raindrop protests--
    gravity lurks in the darkness
    of a never-ending elevator shaft,
    and slips his firm grip
    up from the depths and clutches
    my jellied knees
    and tugs until my eyes
    spin, searching for focus
    as the light pulses
    into a steady dimness,
    obscuring the line
    between safety
    and the rushing fall.

    I leave my vocal chords along
    the side of the road.  I am naked.
    thunder announced my descent,
    but I am diminished and impure,
    unworthy of a booming legacy,
    destined only to seep beneath
    the oily pavement, the gravel
    strewn upon the lingering grass.

    with time, I may rise again,
    only to fall, but the earth
    chains me beneath its skin,
    and I am lost, no longer
    a raindrop.