Horses galloping
in the barren country
long scorched
by conflagrations.
Carbonised bracken
and naked trees cry
gnarled in bewitchment
of incantations concocted
around smoky cauldrons
broiling with the fury
of serpent fangs
and necrotic poisons
that consume
the golden hour
Heaven's artistry in motion.
Black butterflies flutter through the courtyard carelessly,
their folly flitting through variegated foliage, creating
worlds so breathtaking so as to not be real, just as
imperial belladonna bows in reverence to Mother,
thankful for the necrotic nectar that will soon
be on their dying breath
Black butterflies drink turtle's tears to race streetlights
past yellow tape, the words that read "Do Not Cross"
a foreign language for anthromorphs with velvet eyes
on their back, giving insider views, behind the lines
declining the advances of bluebonnets, fixated
on Iris's crescent wings
Black butterflies are sticklers about their traditions,
many may even call them creatures of habit, but
they progressed their ideas about chrysalises
after watching their cousins crawling out of
cocoons, knowing there's no better way to
live than in spun silk
Written: September 29, 2025, for contest sponsored by Tom Wood
***********
I) Sojourn of the Alabaster Mind
I careen through a world of chatoyant light,
Each step is a mirror of halcyon lore.
The pavonine sky and a chimera flight,
Projects sage shadows on an Elysian shore.
A clamor of atlas, a ductile tickle
Elixir of wonder, still need to fickle—
To pursue the penumbra, to not be blind,
And a sojourn for the alabaster mind.
II) The Necrotic Hour
I maunder across the clangor of despair,
A stertorous breath in the stygian gloom.
No nepenthe soothes within egregious snare,
Each cough is a pyrrhic echo in my room.
The airhead mocks my once-mellifluous breath
My Oculus dims in sudden fever death.
No eloquence lives in this loathsome abyss—
My nemesis: the sickness can't be sheer bliss.
Written: September 15, 2025, for a contest sponsored by John Lawless
*********
Perhaps it was never love—
just a fipple of breath in velvet dusk,
a suction of names unspoken,
burnished by the stygian hush
between your glance and mine.
Perhaps the ossuary sang first—
an aria of alabaster bones,
each note a necrotic lullaby.
We writhed in the molten ache,
palliating truth with ephemera,
inveigled by the aureate hush
of what we dared not name.
Perhaps this is the Desideratum—
a triptych of sacred forgetting,
Lethe in a chalice of dedication,
The hex of hope is still undulating
beneath our slack-jawed silence.
7/14/2025
Oh, how could this have ever happened here?
A free naton with baseball, movies and beer?
Those days when other nations cry against the USA…….DIE?
I think on tha, when we turned far left… America’s very soul died.
Those who so loathe and hate our free nation.
Created conspiracy theories,like…boll weevils.
They would do anything to destroy this nation and make America evil?
None of us realizing, how this would divide all of us.
A necrotic snake filled some, like decaying green pus.
And the proof is in the yowling streets of PA is heard .
Of misled shouts of hate, like some insane, hysterical, mysteriuos birds.
Many people died but many unaware, people could care less!
They much prefer riotinh and lies and walk in a state of mental undress.
Our streets full of both USA and Israeli shrill haters.
In masks and flags,green flafs~ such insane, victim baiters.
That “religious” mantra shouted aboard the 9/11 plaines,
Rings in my tender ears, like an exploding, crashing train.
And you didn’t make me
I formed myself
From the periodic table
with a little help
You added slurs and
blackened my milk
Turned me into a scapegoat
and my flesh to filth
And you never broke me
I smashed up myself
Unseen fractures
healed wrong by themselves
Broke the mold early
was looking too good
Patriarchally cast
as the whore of love
And you cannot destroy me
I’ll do it by myself
Sick of covering up
what never turned out
The unseen twists
and labyrinth of lies
I’ve no f*cking soul
a doubt, or denial
And you’ll never fix me
It’s down to myself
I look in the mirror
pondering why else
All this potential
rotting away inside
Necrotic failure
unrepairable child
And I cannot be forgiven
I’ll find a way myself
For being too perfect
lacking self respect
On freak show earth
a man made planet
falling to bits
You pious can have it
greatest story ever written ~ will not be penned with a kids mitten
apples perhaps said she to Adam ~ my fruits were never forbidden
a fig leaf rose one more fell ~ as the whore of man Lilith got bitten
grief
within
cultivates
necrotic seeds
beneath harrowing wastelands battling faith
whispering whimsical tunes of mourning
midst healing rays
of natures
shining
hope
soar
above
star-studded
illusions of
deceiving minds adorned in gilded lies
veiled in halcyon sunsets drizzling tears
free flowing as
ill fated
remnants
burnt
Eh, Bebe ...
clueless you with the wide eyes open,
which can’t see
So apoplectic of heart,
paralyzed by the cobra sway
of changeling channel charmer words
Gen Z baby gloomer
remote diaphragm controlled,
go back to analog sleep
Oh oh ... video comatose —
Nightmares begat by daydreams
of reel digital silver screams
Lost Vegas patch-eye vision
of one arm pulled down
And the coins keep trickling
into your open palms
Baby Bebe gon umbilical vault cray cray
Cut the cord of the eyelid dark violet curtains ...
bling-bling blind birth
shut the womb of twin retinal glow dearth
So aorta slow,
slug cranial coma critical ...
lobotomy comatose
Virtual voices say:
eh, Bebe —
Pull the plug ... let the dying vapors go,
expired from a necrotic nasal
Above, the shrill of neon lights portend
a promise of new love in garish hues,
but for a broken life yet on the mend
the darkness of the scape brings only views
of solitude when memory accrues
as strangers unimpassioned eyes peruse.
The music wafts from grottoes down below,
blue jazz and candles in a shadowed room,
while up here floodlights cast necrotic glow
as wind gusts and the drops of rain resume.
Cold luminance is all that they exhume
just as my mind expects a rose to bloom.
Your recent death keeps looping in my mind,
no passing faces in the crowd are yours.
I walk the night, imagine you in kind
emerging through the uninviting doors
like Cathy to go dancing on the moors.
I rush beneath an eave as now it pours,
your white reflection standing in the rain,
come back to haunt the neon night again.
1/23/18
Blood
drips
cold
through
breathless
necrotic
lips,
au revoir.
11/09/2017
The Brown Recluse, its pathway goes
Past radiator’s stanchion rows
On to the corner, up the wall
Across the ceiling then to fall
Upon my bed. But no one knows.
This silent killer never slows
When seeking prey, seeing all,
No soul sparing, and few recall
The Brown Recluse!
On some its horrid bite bestows
Necrotic death that ever grows,
Consuming flesh, a spreading gall,
Oh hear and heed my urgent call!
Hunt down this pest, then fast depose
The Brown Recluse.
July 5, 2017
Rondeau form
For “Form R” contest
Sponsored by Broken Wings
Nomadic memories
nurtured in mind's eye as
necrotic curtains part.
Naive sanguine beliefs
nourish scrutiny 'til
novelty rendered moot.
Nirvana was falsehood.
----------------------
(C) John C Michaels, 30th April 2017
For the "Pleiades N" contest sponsored by Kim Merryman.
(3rd Place)
Cool throngs of stars formed one vast arm to sweep
the coal-black clockface of the sky. To watch it
was to reel beneath the slow, imperious creep
of the never-ending circle. One could reach out,
it seemed, and almost touch the tart cicada song
which throbbed in soft insistent insect waves
with formlessness of drizzle, mass of stone.
But more than these, the patient ancients blazed
blackness from their gnarled necrotic trunks,
more ominously sensed than seen, and bled
into the dark those summer suns they'd drunk,
as tired as immortality, as dense as death.
We hope on heartbeats, count on slivers of light,
but hear within our blood the rhythm of night.
A PART OF HISTORY
Our failures in cities burn-forget-
Our failures haunt us-biting heels
We choked rictus stun their neon
We are awaiting instructions-but-
His masked beings see us but do not touch us
They can not protect us day by day our failures
Frenzied adjusting the struggles to not overdoing
I see no valid interlocutors in our failures
unsustainable and necrotic inside
dolls and stumps but only weak
Crawling and scratching kevlar window separating us from living
Sweet Jesus Christ came to me in a dream, He crept up through the carpet. Ripping through the seams. Offering me that warm tranquil salvation within his flesh, a promise of cleansing of all my transgressions. To feed deep the nectar of Lord and to deny the Serpent and sword. I repent brothers and sisters I do. I have seen the necrotic face of my father. I have been bathed in the cold, viscosity that is blood of lamb. The ghost of a zombie is my savior!! Thanks for all your prayers my dear dear friends.
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