All right, leader of the sand. All right, he who eats his followers.
All right, Catherine of the wooden raft with wheels and, all right,
Cleo of the heavy carpet and its intrigue in court. Darkness is not
night falling over us, mid day clouds roiling in, electricity,
unease. All right, the misuse of power, blood lusts and scars,
the cutting away of limbs. All right everyone
who cannot contain the promise of their years, all right
all of you with no memory of money and all right
those of you who do. All right avengers of blood, soothsayers
basking in its texture, its taste, the way it feels between fingers,
phlegm and sticky. All right, you who are jealous of shadows,
you who have jealous breath. When the sky wakens to the color
of leaf, the ground littered with autumn, when the sky wakens
to the lines in clouds, the wind calm, the water calm,
when the sky wakens to a pause in the noise of the living, the predators
asleep, when the sky wakens and everything has ended,
a brake in men, a disturbance of depth and fiction, the collapse
of what is allowed (and what is not). All right, enough
has been said—and we continue—one bloody festival, then another,
a feast for the grand birds, another for the grand maggot.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Michael, could this be the bleakest, most apocalyptic poem of yours that Moristotle & Co. has published? And just in time for Halloween!
ReplyDeleteSo you want a Halloween story or poem?
ReplyDeleteNO, I definitely do NOT want a Halloween story or poem! Way, way, too much is made of the holiday. It’s obscene.
DeleteAmen, I feel you, brother. But--and there is only one but--how 'bout when I was teaching sixth grade and every classroom had a Halloween party with candy and cake and even homemade stuff mothers brought from home, but not me. We had a literary time. Everyone got a book and we read to each other instead of stuffing our faces with a tradition that should never have begun.
ReplyDeleteI should add, that Halloween if any child came to me trick or treating, I handed them a book.
Hey, I like THAT kind of Halloween story!
DeleteHow about this for Halloween? “Owl-oween Drawing Classes with John Muir Laws- Class #1.”
ReplyDelete