The safety net dangles
blows, twists, and turns
in the increasing winds
cut from its moorings,
and the people fall
grasping for
the shredded and useless
remains
evisceration of social programs
Medicaid, food stamps
consumer protection
job security
cuts to vital research
alienation of long-faithful allies
emulating dictators instead
flouting of the courts
rescinding environmental laws
erasing history and
all vestiges of non-white
accomplishments
making America white again
issuing edicts to silence
all who do not bend
the media universities
judges Congress
art and social institutions
theater and concerts
forcing religion in schools
Constitution be damned!
and the torn safety nef
flaps in the wind
Categories:
evisceration, america, anti bullying, conflict,
Form: Free verse
Black on Black… you say,
A madness...yes…a brutal truth it is.
The evisceration of pain turned inward,
The observer recoils, head shaking in condescension,
While sucking back an exhale of quiet relief.
But contemplate this—
Would you truly prefer it the other way?
Suffocated anger unleashed with fury.
Our pain, unchained, directed at its true source.
If ever unleashed,
Would you dare brave the cataclysmic storm?
To confront the tempest raging within our souls?
Could you endure centuries of seething rage,
Spreading like wildfire, unstoppable?
No matter the bullet, the rope, the law,
This outcry could not be arrested.
For we know how to fashion a noose as well.
Understand this—
Our silence was never submission,
Nor a display of weakness or fear.
It’s a barricade against chaos,
A protection for us both.
If only you could grasp the tightrope we walk,
The restraint we must bear each day—
If only you knew...
Categories:
evisceration, discrimination, racism,
Form: Free verse
In the images of falling statues, witness the arrival of a new era.
In history books we learn, unlike other tribes resisting their removal,
the Cherokee waged a nonviolent struggle.
Natives were ill-prepared to deal with the colonial settlers,
and there was no League of Nations!
A then a radical solution for the contagious crisis:
No-fly zone over the holy land, call it Operation Rescue Humanity's Conscience.
That ought to block the delivery of their evisceration narratives to the wrong minds, like bombs missing their targets and dropped in ocean.
Categories:
evisceration, allusion,
Form: Free verse
A photograph of us: we are blushing
in your bathroom mirror, your body wrapped
around mine. A blanket. A tattoo
needled in. Your beaming chin in my hair.
You, promising marital bliss.
How could you be so lovely?
A photograph of us: 106 miles apart.
Me, wrapped in fading amaranth sheets that now
call to mind evisceration.
You, ripping up wilting notes I wrote to you
til their worthlessness disgusts you.
How could you?
Categories:
evisceration, i miss you, image,
Form: Free verse
Catastrophe, songbird!
How could you sing?
Why hasn’t your voice joined firefly screams?
Or the mutter of villains, who killed heartbeats’ spring?
You ignore the eviction of incubus red,
and as his knife cuts your skin you hum
the melodic ballad that haunts souls at night.
Remember, remember, I told you forget.
The rusted blood gashes
that cover your chest and your face,
drip in violet gemstone sap.
Has the white of old calendars always looked so black?
How you cantillate a sweet succubus serenade
at your evisceration, canary girl,
you’ve peeled off your face,
still your hymn stays the same.
Malfunction! Malfunction!
Scream, phantom brain!
Tell me, the ghost,
who has stolen your name?
The freedom that follows
in free falls, the jump.
Remember, remember, I know you forgot.
What now, lullaby girl?
The robotic, the wolves,
they’ve ripped out your throat.
Categories:
evisceration, words, , Lullaby,
Form: Free verse
antidepressants
slow the evisceration
dulling guilt's knife edge
Jim was from Tuscaloosa
His remains flew home last year
professors applaud
sneering ripped knee pants coeds
stomp on old Glory
old vet asks for respect, no
deep breath, count to ten, unclench
Homicide bomber
seventy-two virgin quest
paradise, no doubt
Jim shielded a boy
Bomber in my AR’s sights
too slow, all sorts of fragments
We have done our job
And perhaps a bit too well
Our price tag hidden
The wolves half a world away
Panting in my ears, not yours
5/30/16
© Thomas W. Quigley
Categories:
evisceration, america, thank you, veterans
Form: Tanka
Alone again, alone in time,
and so i sink into my mind.
I chase my dreams to the unknown,
where the blind eye sees
and the souls are grown.
I walk through a white door
that leads to my heart
its shattered, broken,
and all torn apart.
The past is an evisceration picture book
written in braille,
only those who wish to truly see
could understand its tale.
Inside the guilt of innocence
the seeds of future life are sewn,
and within the sins of unity
the first die is cast and stone is thrown
Categories:
evisceration, imagination
Form: Rhyme
Unleashed upon the enemy
We tear through their lines
Showing no mercy
In the midst of battle
Feeding the Flesh Grinder
Severed off limbs
We resupply our food stocks
The more we kill
The more we eat
Human flesh
Sustenance of our society
Blood washed fields
Littered with skulls of the dead
Decapitation before evisceration
Labotamized
Their brains pulls out
The skulls are left out to rot
Blood sprays upwards
from the roof of the Flesh Grinder
It rains down on to the warzone
Exciting the warriors even more
Roars of rage and hatred
Can be heard clearly for miles and miles
They feed off the terror their enemies feel
Leaving not a single soul alive to stand against them
Categories:
evisceration, adventure, death, fantasy, music,
Form: Lyric
Razed garden hung
Icicle vines crept mortar
Fingers of the dead
And the sun died
Cataract eyed sinking
This limitless implosion
Craven mustard then spread
Barbed
Waspish sting and evisceration
Slinking down the brick
I felt incorrigible
Violence
The lone oranges dangle
The only fruit
Are clockwork
My black heart suppurated
Necrosis
Nerve gas sought
Release to silence
The screaming
Myelin
Categories:
evisceration, introspection, life, loss, sad,
Form: I do not know?