Tag Archives: celebration

Honor Bound

It all comes to a head,
sloped in confident stability,
glistening polearm in the sun;
trembling with each primal rhythm,
an apocalypse in hoof beats.

Echoed close like slow dance,
a warrior’s heart.
A tiny muscle fortified by steel,
beneath so much flimsy flesh,
in a hot dark space – cramped,
with fear, excitement, intimidation.
Awkward, boisterous things,
louder than the quiet duty beneath.

The motley pair gallop towards their mirrored end,
while the crowd pours forth celebration,
enough to drown in if murder were not their intent.

Carnival

The trumpets blared a jovial tune,
deep from the recesses of nowhere,
fanfare mixed with a shower of ribbons,
drifting to the barren lands below.

Far off and away
a dried-well village awakens,
slowly rising to life,
like a mirage, unbelieving.

From there,
the distant sounds are ominous terror.

To avoid the cannons fire or the bombs that drop,
what life remained –
              beyond the drought,
                          the famine,
                          the plague;
hurries to flee the parade,
thieve its chance to trample what years they’ve saved.

They scavenge for food, water, and memories,
place them in bindles made of shirts and table cloth;
                          cast     themselves       out            into       the        sand…

               Before the great machine can raise their dying town
                                  with its terrible jubilation.

               Before the sun can cut them down,
                                    burning white like bleached bone.

               Before the scavengers can consume what’s left,
                                  to live their days bereft.

               While those awful trumpets play,
                                  ravaging the landscape with sound and fury.

Good Grief

The day they shot our boy farrow
I did not submit myself before them
a disaster of the loss consumed by tears
nor did I sense any cause to implore them
about what his death might cost.

I was told the weight of his life
surpassed by far the weight of his death
and the space he left in his place
would leave us all bereft
only of the success we lost in his theft.

We could not in good conscience
succumb to the threat implied of his end,
silence ourselves in the loudness of his death,
and in doing, ignore the fortune of finality
to give way to the future and end the past.

Thus, when at last,  our boy farrow died
I, as well as anyone else that day
did celebrate all the rewards that
were said to be coming our way
while the executioner looked
for a new soul to blame for our dismay.

A Gathering

The sound the shovel makes against the earth
feels like a baseball caught in a glove,
it feels like green lights or a found quarter.

The dirt looks like moist brownies
fresh and rich with delicious darkness
a curated destination for well off worms

The broken grass looks no worse
a verdant shag of carpet deep and vibrant
a parade of party poppers exploding green.

A good place to bury a friend
though they’ll never know it.