It is the only time we get to laugh at black
So de rigeur at funerals and stogy old photography.
Take Dixie Land at home in New Orleans
Parading back of happy brass from marble sculpted sepulchers.
A mansion in mirage, a wavy misty rambling of rooms.
Their mirrors: windows to another, conjured world.
An agitated specter's greasy lipstick pleads.
How silly in its backward gibberish.
Flies frozen in some floes of ice cube trays
Or eyeballs docked adrift along a punch bowl rim.
In morgues, contracting muscles practice sitting up.
Fingers twitch impatient to be dressed in Sunday's best.
Around grave yards are cemetery stones
Jauntily askew, a sporty take on plumb
Due to a lack of rebar steel or poured cement.
More foundational than wood and bone alone.
Masks flash from unknown alley ways.
Our innards struggle up inside our throats
Suffocated quiet, still, we ache to catch so thin
A claustrophobic breath to be made so easily afraid.
Categories:
stogy, anxiety, celebration, death, fear,
Form: Free verse
Its course is set by tended wheel
A man of salt stands at the helm
Not led by maps, but stars reveal
The far off island, called King’s Realm
The spray of mist falls fast upon
The rough exterior of this man
With squinted eyes, to see the dawn
The island shows up just as planned
A smile he forms with stogy stuck
This one man crew now sees his gold
He’ll gain fortune, which is his luck
He knew his destiny, it was foretold
But, had he forgotten stories, well
The rocks enslaving the islands wealth
For not many men had lived to tell
Of the pierced ships and stolen health
Alas, an inlet that’s sure to guide
He’ll then cast anchor to make shore
For truth, the riches cannot hide
He’ll take them all, then take more
But, at very last, a wave broke course
A bed of rocks became his berth
When more had come with sounding force
That assured him then of island’s curse
Now, splinters of his ship do drift
As he so watches from the shore
The destruction came ever swift
For lot of gold, he wants no more
A ship is what he wants for sure
Categories:
stogy, life, sad, sea
Form: Quatrain