And There were Three

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Originally conceived for a writing challenge inspired by the artwork of artist Morgan Reed. His piece is called Paradigm Shift. Feel free to look for it online. The themes in the poem are derived from my impressions of his work. Ultimately, I was not the challenge winner, but it was great fun to write and rewrite and rewrite.

https://morganreed553.com/artwork/3463649-Paradigm%20Shifts.html

Three faceless Misses
amble amidst vagarious March rains
under parasols / veiled in the anonymity of death/burial 

Three / shifting between tangible lives
breathless bellies barely acclimated to first-life
Brown girls who were shadows before second death

Voiceless / ambassadors of disordered paradigms moved 
past dangerous minds weaponizing skin/genitals/unlikeness 
criminalizing the Creator who made all things well

Unnoticed whispers/ persistently noiseless as in their lifetime
holding umbrellas humbly against the falling judgments 
of the colour-blinded masses - Why rains of sticks/stones/saliva

nooses to delete tar bodies
Yet hapless muses stumbled onto canvas
into dance/parlance

where they will become unabandoned
Savage Chronos buries memories in forgetting / turning them disremembered erased

Still / Three impossible princesses forge through moss
gray haze / dark puddles
swallowing uneasily their backbreaking grief over race relations
 
Daily / silently pissing peppers / hoisting parapluies
raiment raking wet roads 
so saturated hems won't slap ankles

Three from carnal cages flew
haunting effigies rambling
seeking their paradise visions
 
Above Earth’s murky ways / umbrellas rise as masted ships  
sailing the slender triumvirate to Elsewhere's ardent sun
cyan skies / immaculate time  

when fretful flesh is shed / purified souls will travel in light
Three ancestral sisters became memory/myth/justice
bursting through Chronos’ forgetful fog

Lifeless / yet enduring / Three whispers:  
“Justice will rain where it had condemned
the God of Creation is vengeful / He alone who’d seen us in a sightless world
humanity’s cheap lenses / unprofitable paradigms beg amends.”

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CayCay Jennings

Date: 4/4/2025 11:14:00 AM

I'm impressed for many reasons. Are you familiar with the poetry form called Ekphrasis? Pls read about it because that's exactly what you successfully did in this write. If you were to paste the paintings above your write, each line would come to life for the reader. Unfortunately, Soup poems become old before their time and they're shifted to the dead zone, pretty much. But you can bring them back via contests that don't require new, or by revising them, reposting and deleting the old. CayCay

Tom Woody

Date: 12/24/2024 11:02:00 AM

It's quite obvious you know your stuff and have an excellent command of language. Welcome to PS!

Trina Layne
Date: 1/3/2025 5:15:00 PM

Your comments and welcome are appreciated. Happy 2025!