October 2016 – This Jolly Beggar

In a Dark Hour

ezekiels-vision-of-the-valley-of-dry-bones-what-does-it-mean_0

3 A.M.

Awakened to an eerie self-examination of the soul
on the steel-cold surface under surgically precise lights
unentombing cancers, contagion-carrying arteries, dismembered
corruption to the dispassionate gaze of an Enemy brooding,
brooding.

3:20 A.M.

Still sweating under the administered fumes seeping
through pores, guilt-driven language of parents driven
from home to carnage of children preying on children, warfare
of wretched depravity in the eyes of a man, a woman seething,
seething.

3:40 A.M.

Cannot speak, cannot hear, cannot see, cannot feel anything
but the weight of irreversible fate, the darts of the Enemy
injections of delirious oblivion only to awaken to endless night
where no refuge lies from grief and fear and the hate pursuing,
pursuing.

4:00 A.M.

Helpless, my tongue dry, the light dims, darkness closes in,
but a voice is heard, a minister to prophesy over the bitter
collocation of bones, unholy, “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!”-
prophesy!- in the body and the blood a Life that is not mine breathes,
breathes.

DailyPostPrompt: eerie

It Can’t Be Smoke: A Haunting

It can’t be smoke that drives you here like a leaf
Caught in a funeral pyre or a sinner fleeing in shame!
What fell blast of Hell’s eternal fire brings you, cruel shade
Upon my porch, and feeds the tendrils of your fiery flame?
Begone, you ghost of the foul-mouthed past that stalks
The children of men, to warn of never-ending death
And griefs that ne’er can mend! Begone upon your walks
Of doom and leave me to life’s revelry and vice
Until its trinkets be a dream and I a shadow like you.

DailyPostPrompt: Smoke

The Marsh Fiend

The four friends sat in the pale moonlight beside a flickering fire. The youngest of them was just short of thirty, the others led by four or five. They had long met in this clearing by the marshes, surrounded on all sides by woods. As the darkness grew heavier, their thoughts turned inward to the Marsh Fiend of Vetiver and Thyme. She travelled alone like a ghost far from home luring travelers to her side. And once they had seen her and gazed quietly at her while she smiled her forlorn smile.

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The Goblet of Cardis

“Clumsy, you are,” the old Tutor said, looking at the woman before him.
She bowed down her head like a wounded deer, the shame creeping up her neck
Like a phantom of heat engulfing her head until she sank down before him.
There before them lay the shattered remains of the crystal goblet of Cardis.

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The Promises, the Giver

crepuscular-panorama — Jacob’s Ladder Crepuscular Panorama/Wikipedia

If in all the world I could trust just you
To forever keep a promise or two
I’d give my soul to you, my dear,
With many a kiss and nary a fear
Believing your promises were safe and true
And I had nothing to fear from you.

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Edge of Original

I’ve been on the edge of “original” all my life,
she said, reaching for the top shelf in the grocer’s aisle,
and teetering on her toes, tips of her fingers on the jam
she hoped to coax forward but pushed further back;
still probing, she continued to ruminate long-
windedly while His gaze receded farther from her
who held her origin in His heart which alone knew
who she was apart from the jam, the cart, the grocer’s
aisle while she strained in pursuit of a receding jar
leaving behind uniqueness in the receding Light.