If I were a poisonous snake
I would get the last laugh
Giving my slayer a surprisingly venomous bite
Hours after he lopped off my head with a machete.
Only snakes are able to do this you know.
The Coming of Summer The Fear of Fall
David J Walker
Half-past every euphemism defining
The truthfulness of youthful youth
or
The youthfulness of truthful truth
Crumbling behind the chime of clocks
And locks of hair lopped off along the way
Today is
Today is
Today
Listen for the pitter-patter of
Little feet
Catching up
Spinning calendars
Faster
Faster
Summer is calling
A fearful Fall
Is all
one can count on
Life on Earth is but a brief interlude,
watercolors fading, becoming air.
Yet, loving once surely we could conclude
love is the purpose of our being there.
Night upon night, it's my dreams you intrude.
You thought this was all there was to one's life:
one chance to know beauty and life's wonder.
Sorrow and happiness mingled with strife,
much to be carelessly cast asunder,
as if lopped off by a marauder's knife.
I believe there is more, for I can feel
the touch of your skin brushing against mine.
A different moment on Time's great wheel;
a unique story written line by line,
another life's mysteries become real.
I see us together in boundless space,
your voice whispering love words in my ear.
I'll kiss your lips, caress your whiskered face,
we'll murmur words only spirits can hear.
centuries will pass during our embrace.
I will search for you behind every cloud,
upon every star you might catch a ride.
I'll hear every voice that beckons aloud
until I hear your's and I'm by your side;
we two alone in the afterlife crowd.
October 5, 2021
Quintain (Sicilian)
Emile Pinet, Sponsor
8th Place
I like to stick my head up.
Sometimes it gets lopped off.
While the angry one glares at me.
I like to give them my views.
Especially when they are unpopular.
Even when they surround me and mob me
Yelling and screaming in a threatening way.
I like to be counted.
Even when they take swords and hatchets
And lop my head off at the neck.
Even when they do it jaggedly.
That’s on them, right?
I like to stick my head up.
Sometimes it gets lopped off.
By the angry ones.
Served to me on a Santa Claus platter.
And it laughs.
Some weird stranger came up behind me
with a machete and lopped off my head
It rolled away,
down an embankment,
landing in a ditch of wet soggy leaves.
It was cackling that crazy laugh I have when I am nervous,
not realizing it was dead.
I ran after it, and plopped it back into place,
but it had lost some neck muscles, and it fell off again.
I chased it as it tumbled across the highway,
missing a black truck by inches. The weird stranger
was running in the other direction now.
I could not see him go. My eyes were gone.
My soggy angry head was yelling at me now.
“You are dead stupid!”
This made me mad, so
I kicked it into the back forty.
Then I stomped back up the
hill, determined to catch and
kick the weird stranger.
I will teach him for making
me dead.
For truth, his head got lopped off
John the Baptist, prophet of God
He wore raiment that was not soft,
his voice was as an iron rod
It gave the wicked beat down blues
For truth, his head got lopped off
Preaching to the people good news,
but the unbelievers did scoff
He did not suffer on the cross,
but his voice cries out from the grave
For truth, his head got lopped off:
he said the Messiah would save
Woe to the wicked, he declared
in leather girdle and sackcloth
Baptism of faith was shared
For truth, his head got lopped off
She was a high born whore,
who lived luxuriously
Didn't have one ounce of compassion for the poor
She licked the seethed bones
with a viper's tongue
Guillotine parlor games fed her bloodlust for doing wrong
Marie Antoinette
was as stone cold-hearted
as they get
When told there was a famine in the land,
and the people had no bread to make
She boorishly replied: Well, let them eat cake
Life under her evil reign was pure living hell,
thus the people rose up and violently rebelled
So she suffered a most indelicate fate,
got her head lopped off ...
sweet justice served on a pie plate
On the edge of our garden stands a lonesome Pine,
Gnarled and twisted, an ugly beauty, hard to define.
Older than the age or so I am led to believe,
Planted generations ago, why, I cannot conceive.
It has branches long dead with pine cones long died,
Huge branches, green with life,where birds flit and fly.
At an impossible angle, it stands out of the cliff face,
A huge prop of steel is needed to keep it in place.
I had some huge lower branches lopped off to ensure,
That it stands there majestic for many years more.
© Dave Timperley 1st May 2016
I’ve seen them: humungous stumps of once gigantic trees
that made a forest sacred-
knowing it was men that lopped off such magnificence
Stealers of beauty and promise:
these amputations leave their scars
on the convolutions of mankind’s
collective brain
Where, if I could
I would venture back in dreams to stay the axe
Let nature take her time with this living, biggest, hugest.
Into forever let these branches spread their prettiness
Let generations stand in awe at their continuance.
Suzanne Delaney
The Yellow Head of the Hummingbird
Yellow hummingbird head,
Lopped off by feline fangs,
And left as a gift
On the welcome mat.
Short sharp black beak
Arches downward hopelessly
Like the collective heartbreak
Of a million lost souls.
Misbegotten and forgotten.
Lacerated and left for dead.
This continuous marathon dance.
This never-ending lunge.
This eternal stroll in the park.
This incessant spasm in the dark.
I close my eyes and reach for something ahead of me.
I don't want to see it.
Because I am afraid,
Afraid of what it might see.
Afraid of what it might say.
Past my eyes
Past my soul
Past the lost days and nights
Of an entire lifetime.
Look.
I hold in my hand an empty bottle.
It once held the liquid refreshment of my youth.
Now I see the scum marks
The black residue of a thousand forgotten thoughts.
I throw the empty bottle down
Down into the darkening maelstrom
Of rippling voices, screaming and crying,
Like gulls in the afternoon
When the sun compels the vulnerable to the surface,
And the feeding frenzy begins.
The yellow head of the hummingbird
Is swept up with the shattered glass.
Now, there’s no more emptiness.
carved cruicifixes,
slashed n’ sliced stars of david,
chiseled taijitus,
hacked stars n’ crescents
cleaved christs
dissected n’ shaped buddhas,
engraved menorahs
chipped n’ etched away Confucius
trimmed dharmachakras
whittled & molded muhammad
severed n’ separated astrological zodiac signs
snipped aum
chopped n’ cracked pentagrams
lopped off lotus flowers
shaved n’ grated ichthys &
pierced pentacles---
all wash away in the sink
after running warm water over them
for a little while.
Let's cut our hair
locks lopped off in hopes of
style and convenience
only because everything in the media
had announced it so
to look one of two ways
stupid or not
the dichotomy of breathing
intermixed with thinking
a miscreant's
entreaty
based upon the logarithm of dog drool
of other's crisis mind fux=
a cute bob with fringe
perhaps, a beehive to capture errant thoughts
in clouds of hairspray
like ricky lake eating more cake
like the earthy done shaky
like prickly pear sports shake
like trickling ear sweat bakes
like a crepe
just spend the time
emulsifying the generations
tell stories, freak out the other one
basically, have fun
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