The Deed

The iciness of his smile 
seeped like osmosis through the crevices 
left on my face by the squint rooted 
on fires of a loud and angry sun. 

A tempest stormed across the dusty, red sky 
following the wake of his Packard of no color. 

His eyes with their misted askant look 
found us like the rain 
and the dark clouds took cover. 

Unowned feathers fled the frightened fields 
like tumbleweeds amid superior dusts of sleep 
wielding easily the pale club of the wind 
and swirling the soul of a flower strike. 

- an utter-able chill - 

Where lurched the deeds of green thrilling light 
with thinned new fragile yellows? 
Spoiled and stale like the scant and stunted ears of corn 
not able to sprinkle the acres 
that had fallen into battlefields. 

Picket's Charge in woods that stuttered and clapper-clawed 
songs that stirred the few scrawny birds that stayed on. 

Sharecroppers in the Dust Bowl 
walked on loose strands of primitive tightropes. 

One could hear the blast across the Great Plains 
all the way to Boise City. 
Blood oozed from the side of my palate, 
decadal fertilizer at long last leaching the dry ground. 

As I lay dying - 
he reached toward the heavens – swanking the deed 
and cackling like a hexed slime eel.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2011

Poem

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