Ebony eyes eclipse ripping away sun
Moon blooms of golden gloom
Lips lacking limerick’s lift
Onyx mood swings back and forth
Like grey grandfather clock
Time ticking as a blues bomb
Raining purple passionate pain
clouded by lemon lyrical labyrinth
Of love lacking it’s sweet liquor
The bittersweet longing embraced
Tastes like red regrets sifted through time
Straining to be reinvented not lamented
In black bird’s somber death song
Sacred and solemn in honor of loss
Mourning is important inked in green
Like poison ivy uncomfortable
But never worthless as it is digested
And creates cranberry calling to
Remember the fallen angels
With soft tears laid like roses
On the cold creamy colored casket
Melancholy smashes veins,
like a huge hammer over the head,
and pushes the heart,
like a strong man pushes a big rock.
It turns the memories
into a dark and silent graveyard
on a moonless night.
It makes us see shadows in the light,
even when the sun rises
in a blue sky.
It can touch the furthest memory
that was about to disappear.
The feeling of agony
amidst great melancholy
smells like a rotten corpse
abandoned in the woods.
That sad thought makes us hear
the voices of those loved ones
who had gone away
a long time ago.
The jumble of thoughts
of melancholy sparks
a bitter taste
that cannot be digested.
It burns the stomach
from its interior walls,
and squeeze the liver,
making the blood black
turning it into liquid steel.
A salutory observation, to billionaire deletes, and devourers . ? Er leaders
Of their Nations.? Who are black in sin
Now satans kin..Awaiting destruction
Awaiting is it pain.? The rending of the
Souls in the lightless hell hole.' No measure of depth.' No rights there no-thing, ahead or
Left.! Or way to turn..As denied desires
White hot burn, yet you will not see that
Intensitiy isolation is in the cosmic reach
The ultimate lessons there ( you will teach ) you will apply the torture to what
Was once a soul..You will exist in regret
And be digested whole.' The scenes of joy
You might have known sealed off from
Where' will be your home, if you think the
Twisting of desire is a pain while here? then i
Have some news..Its bad no fear.! As you
Try to deliver your self your desires on
earth and find no real satisfaction..
Once there its well?? In un-measure infernally worse.'
The More Digestible Anything
Becomes, The More That Thing
Resembles What's Been
Already Digested.
-Gray Squirrel
04-21-2026
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The neon hums like a dying wasp~
flickers Roy Orbison in wounded pink,
while the gulf wind tongues
the screen door’s loose hinge.
A quarter rolls from my palm,
kisses the chrome throat
of a machine that remembers
Patsy Cline, but not my name.
Some nights, the bartender lets it play
the same cracked track~
Crazy—on loop till dawn,
while shrimp boats cough diesel
into the salt-thick dark.
I press B-17. The gears grind,
spit out a melody warped
by hurricane sweat,
by the weight of all the songs
it swallowed and never digested.
When the power fails,
the jukebox still glows~
a ghost lit by its own stubborn heat,
singing to the empty stools,
to the tide’s slow retreat.
Stars illuminate day’s memories.
Tangerine thoughts are consumed
by the midnight moon.
Loves, losses, pain, exuberance.
All is digested.
Nourishing memories billow
heart’s pocket
as turquoise toxins are spit out
at sunrise
…and birds resume singing.
What if they all just shut up
Stopped regurgitating half-digested tripe
Arguing over such complex matters as
Is the Zebra white with black stripes
Or black with white stripes
Does the rain in Spain
Fall mainly on the plain
How much is too much
Does a little really go a long way
Can two really live as cheaply as one
How many angels can sit on the head of a pin
Will a stitch in time really save nine
Why don’t wet birds fly at night
But I digress…
What I meant to say was….
A journey rendered, framed, and set
as plaster comic book panels.
Flip through the Way of Sorrows.
Peruse condemnation to sepulchre.
No matter the church, I found and compared
each episode through ten-year-old eyes
that scrutinized every detail.
Digested the mechanics of suffering.
These fourteen were my first gallery.
A restated traffic jam of nudity and frozen
sadism that floated above me as priests spoke
of love, faith and doing unto others.
I recognized violence when I saw it, the cruel
slapstick in the mortification of the flesh.
Thorn in brow, nail in palm, scourge on back.
Gladiatorial voyeurism. Masked in reflection.
Trump chews up the wages we earn
But money digested can turn!
The cash kale he’ll mange
Leaves him too orange
And builds a great wall of heartburn
This thug's tint much like lady bug
Won’t last from the green funds he’ll chug
Don's mug becomes brown
When what he scarfs down
Reveals a chameleon-like slug
Could we not at least exchange some crummy
anecdotes about our recent pasts
some poorly recalled bus stop or shop incidents
semi memories of there was this time when
I'll take any half digested subvocal passing thoughts
and an inappropriate and unvoiced yet sincerely held
opinion which you know is safe with me
Throw me a crumb here and I'll toss you
the whole hog utilising my award-winning
(and vigorous) masculine muscles
Instead of flinging it angry apelike
into the webvoid in the form of
incoherent cackhanded freeposts
begging for any minor engagement
It's no surprise
that I'm back here
looking out over the river,
painting thoughts, dripping
memories, smearing streaks
of the here and now
across the canvas of a dull,
overcast day.
There was a time
when I had ambitions to be
an artist, high school dreams
of a life in smoke filled studios,
tee shirts and paint splattered
Levi jeans. ( A la Jackson Pollock )
Fate though had me
nine to five dressed in a suit,
white cotton shirt and a tie.
Over a long career I digested
libraries of corporate jargon,
studied the intricacies of office drill,
the dark secrets of management
all with consummate skill.
To survive, I mastered the art
of disguise and deflection
as an undercover poet
learns to do.
In light industrial units, sheet-metal roofs
ping under the rising heat of the sun.
Sounds of tin stretched into rhythm.
He tumbles out of a fuzzy dream
tramples over himself, sucks in
half-digested thoughts.
Morning on the edge
of a medium-sized mid-west city,
Mourning doves throttle a coo or two.
This late chiming morn,
he shares a first-rate breakfast tea
with the chug and chur
of a de-frosting fridge
wallows awhile in flabby abstractions.
Minor keys ding aluminum sidings,
gradually low-grade whispers
stutter into words, a kind of poem
he can almost hear.
Betrayal,the ignition of feelings unknown,
Driven,yet at equilibrium.
Surrounded by thought's
Dejected,Vile,and Bile
Yet beautiful when digested.
Shattered, and crucified on the inside
yet admirable on the outside.
How sour I ask
Shall the medicine of bitterness be.
As I find myself drowning in the pit
Of one's spit.
If apple ate a pear?
And digested it, would excrementbe wine?
2/25/25
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2025©
If you’re older and somehow not dying,
Yet live with dementia or worse,
Prepare to be hit with some lying
Before your last ride in a hearse.
This strategy’s gaining approval
As nursing homes struggle to cope
With patients whose memory removal
Deprives them of reasons to hope.
So little white lies are suggested
Like, “Your husband will visit real soon”
Since the truth often can’t be digested
And no time will be quite opportune.
Or, “Let’s visit the nursery; maybe
You’ll help rock your child to sleep,”
Where a doll substitutes for the baby
Which remains where the memories keep.
If deception brings comfort, I wonder
Why, to me, it just doesn’t feel right
Reaching into one’s psyche to plunder
What the mind has kept tucked out of sight.
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