Tag: watercolor

AR15, ARIS

Aris, the god of war,
proclaims that our “Freedom”
requires blood, and much more—
the lives of those to come
that will never know how
it feels to drive a car
or dance at prom, to wow
the crowd with their bright star;
no, that star now sinks deep
into crimson waters,
a senseless sunset sleep
for our sons and daughters
because guns have become
the fetish of our faith,
the maxim of “Freedom”,
so says the ardent naif
who writes laws and defends
the instruments of War
at all costs as he sends
more children to Death’s shore
by protecting their god,
by protecting the gun,
lawmakers overawed
by a Constitution
writ in times so backwards
that the writers owned slaves,
the glib-loaded black words
like splintered, rotten staves
for the gunpowder kegs,
for the barrels of blood
that drain down to the dregs
in a rabies-froth flood.

Sanctimonious fools
whose brains keep forgetting
the cost of frontier rules
and the keen bloodletting,
bow to your bloody Lord
and forsake the piled dead—
kids may die by the sword,
but it butters your bread.

The Witch Jar

Glass jar, your belly clattering
with rusty nails, urine, and hair;
glass jar, cease the crone’s chattering
in the witching hours, cease her ere
she drives me mad with her flights,
riding me beneath the moon
like a steed through dark nights
all whilst laughing like a loon;
trap her soul in your glass pit
and keep her, warden, while I
recover from this Fae fit;
lift it from me ere I die.
Through hearth she sought me betime,
yet ’twas my heat she desired,
clinging like gooey birdlime
as I struggled ‘fore I tired
and was confined to my bed,
growing ill with chills and sweats,
soaken, clammy in the head,
my forehead wrinkled with frets.
Dreams oft come astride fever,
staying in wakeful daylight
like thoughts from the Deceiver
which tempt and torture and bite
until we surrender, thus,
and He claims a bit of soul
from evils compelled in us
and, bit by bit, takes us whole.
So was she set in her toil
like a raven in the eye
of a dead man half in soil,
her chattering ever nigh
her raspy song of old trees
during Autumn, when the wind
twirls the leaves, before the freeze
that brings Summer to its end.
So, please jar, capture this witch—
Bellarmine, confine her now!
By St. Andrew’s cross, the bitch
must be imprisoned somehow!

The Unicorn Curse

O friend, have you yet to meet
the unicorns in their froth-maned flock?
Hooves of onyx, fierce and fleet
and their hides pale white like marble block.
Fear them, O friend, and their gaze,
their eyes like pure-polished porcelain
that flinch not from brightest rays
or from any malign course of sin.
They look like frolicking steeds
galloping across the Springtime plains
alike to many horse breeds,
but they will suffer no mount or reins.
Suffer! To suffer, indeed!
For they bridle a man’s life instead,
as they did me, and mislead,
like a mug of witch brew to the head.
Their aspect is not equine,
but headed like babes but a year old,
and their hearts are not divine,
but unfeeling, cruel, deathly cold.
But what favor they show oft
to virgins who dare to travel far
to touch such a mane…pure…soft…
following Virgo, from star to star!
But what of virgins oft said
to be honored among these pure things?
Come, if you dare; lay your head
in their laps and see how their touch brings
a curse such as no man wants,
such a curse of loveless wanderlust
until ones memory haunts
the lonely years, one’s youth gone to rust.