Thursday, April 1, 2010

2/30 William - From an old prompt, but a new poem

Execute. Command.

During the bloody sunset, my still-born twin told me I come from a sickle blade of executioners. Our hands, large and terminal. Two sets, one visible except to victims. We live in torsos, the hollowed out spines of men born of gallows and mischief. In the throats of liars, the railroad track wrists of thieves, their fingers sprawl out like fleshy firecrackers when bone is kissed by cleaver. The light we see in strangulation cannot be simulated, the growth of a knotted rope from the back of a husband slayer’s neck is a progress few can speak. My heart is a hornets’ nest of moans. A wild dog with a filthy coat, that has learned to forgo the carrot for the swing of the stick. When I speak, you can hear the scythe scraping the back of my teeth, the hardened glaciers in my gums, pinning spirits back onto my tongue. My apologies are always post-mortem, falling upon the ears of those that no longer need them.

NaPoWrMo Challenge: William 1/30

Cannon

The first time a man is shot out of a cannon, he will not remember the heat
the searing of his elbows against iron walls
He won’t recall the flash of daylight sprinting to his origin
He may not even remember the low end conversation
Of the bang itself. What will stay with him
Is the silence
The absence of anything before his explosion
The way the white sucked at his skin
Like his 9 year old forearms by the vacuum attachment

I never took you for cannon
your mouth a flash of opportunity and reconstruction. I pray the monuments of lesser
are never flattered by your explanations. At your best you are collapsed towers
and brick dust. A concert of open fire hydrants responding to your outburst
I hope to be the white between your words. My name an explosion when it leaves
your iron clad lips. Sing. Please sing me. I have never been chord or wrecking ball