There is a silent smoke-bodied bird
in a stone nest
on a broken branch
overseen by a gape-eyed imbecile.
"All hail," say purple asters.
Hollyhocks drip with faked tears.
Sunflowers babble.
In evening,
all blooms combust to ash.
A silent smoke-bodied bird
lays dead eggs
in a broken bell
with a millstone tongue.
Multi-mothered monsters calve.
______
A dystopian plethora of plenty, Shay. These images in the Boschian distemper say more than the words used for them, (which is why they're the essence of poetry, of course, and fill in blanks of rhetoric with chiseled hieroglyphs of what we really wish we didn't have to decipher. Smoke has been an image on my mind today, too, how when it is used for substance it always misleads. The last line is so packed it's almost spilling, and I couldn't be more in love with the final full stanza. Thank you for this eloquent chirp of a 55, and try to have a kickass weekend amidst the imbecile firework exploders.
ReplyDeletePretty sure I should not enjoy this as much as I do. That bird is both enchanting and delicate enough that I'm lost before I notice the monsters...
ReplyDeleteWow this is eerie, magnificent, and beautiful all rolled into one Shay!
ReplyDeleteThis is delightfully dark, a poem of the times we waddle through hoping light will be at the end of the mess we find ourselves in. How callous and foolish we humans have become. Brilliant as always!
ReplyDeleteThis is so spectacular, I am rendered wordless. Wow.
ReplyDeletePowerful images, Fireblossom. Like most really good poetry I can read more than one meaning into this. But with November in your last line I think I'll go with the political one.
ReplyDeletethe monsters are brooding, and growing, yes? esp. those in November. ~
ReplyDelete