A cut-throat razor is being stropped.
A chin lifted, neck extended,
a soaped throat exposed.
There will be blood,
not in the close shave,
but on the keening blade
of that singing steel
we all must feel.
A shank unseen
where a thin-lipped death
trembles
with expectation.
Categories:
stropped, poetry,
Form: Free verse
My Dad as Blue Winged Teal
Life support had made him
fetal, feeding on O2
hissed through tangled tubes.
I signed my name
and click, he gasped, folding
like a shotgunned duck.
Then I passed out
and watched him
in the wind stropped rain,
thin hair plastered drip
drip slick, green split-
back gown untied,
slosh and lift,
gown-wings flapping.
Edison Jennings
Categories:
stropped, bereavement,
Form: Lyric
Oceanward sail the yachts and liners,
a match stick flotilla in a green whirlpool bath
seen from the dizzying height of the cliff top.
Beside the lighthouse, ghostly echoes
of crashing waves and wheeling gulls
reverberate upwards from sand and rock.
Scents of seaweed, bottle green surf,
bracing, intoxicating, sailing on the stropped edge
of a rainy needlepoint breeze.
All the while black storm heads gather
far and away on the distant horizon,
whilst here stands I, sensory overload
sparking in the fissures and cracks of my brain.
The drop to the glassy black rocks beneath
where white booming breakers smash and erode,
little by little the coastline is eaten
an inch or so each passing year.
Fixed gazing at the raging cauldron
as if answers to the unanswerable will rise to greet me,
I lean and sway in magnetic salt winds
held there in suspense...
Categories:
stropped, nature, places, sea, green,
Form: Blank verse