"Pen elusively accepted the story behind this one;
it meanders on telling stories, written within the shrapnel
with the precision force behind a scalpel."
Rat a tat tat!
On the door by my bed,
whispering in closets
seething with temper.
Scratching fingernails
underneath the vellum coating;
the parchment burning with words.
Quill, a sparrow whose beak
Tap, tap, taps away
fire of ink, indigo buried within bloodroot.
Within a spent shell casing whose
fire-retardant closure still smolders
through the expended shot.
Empty of its resin, powder
primed at the ready
though not too fall at the heel
though the screaming sound had fallen.
A bride who gains not a drop of apathy
from her thirst-
coddles,
and then the stepping stone creaking under foot,
whose pads and souls have unwound the ties
that bound her ankles.
Twine and pieces of string, heavy as the lead spokes
like the wheel of a unicycle
wrapping and distorting her flesh.
There is no joy found in that it seems,
just a sad little smile and shadowy paints-
watercolor eyes, nose, and mouth among the blending shadows.
Pen elusively accepted the story behind this one;
it meanders on telling stories, written within the shrapnel
with the precision force behind a scalpel.
And the bow that bends the natural form
of a tree outside constantly rattling the windowsill
coiling through the quiver bound with arrows,
unable to draw back and shoot
broken, like a piano string.
The whispers continue its tale, inspiring old wood
and sodden horsehair filaments,
plucked from the rim of life before eddying down into
an abyss of something that would
ultimately be intent.
To chase down the condemning feet upon pavement,
edging and circumventing,
tumbling down on bottom to every shallow recess.
Upon cracked old concrete
like the leathered face of Yellow Woman
whose dreams led to adultery.
Scavengers they are, their soft coo at the innocence
as it ravages in wild ignorance.
The bride though, stands within water;
tattered feasting eyes
with feigned triviality of the slaughter
hand in hand with subservient bygones.
She gathers sword-paintbrush in hand,
slips,
clatters to the ground,
blemishing the granite monotone cocoon
from which the pharaohs of their time had engulfed.
The double-crossing sounds of whispers
biding time in closets
but one
gathers the shadows within mouth
taste and bite,
standing unafraid;
beating drums of leaves falling from air onto ground
surrounding the plague of humanities’ risen.
Though, once the chime of the rat-a-tat tat
fades into the jazz
and spirituous sound
of clarinet and ball-basing bugle
it will fall into a synchronized gale of laughter.
Misfortune had struck again
in these parts.
Shelves upon shelves of parts lining walls
locked away in basements and cellars
never to be used after the dust settles.
The rust chips away and splinters
from their misguided use.
Greasy fingertips claw at the walls
like a beast lurking within the shadows
with intent to escape;
risen from the ashes like a pipe snake slithering
through excrement and fecal commonality
bringing with it, tethered to its rattling tale
a fine stream of hope it keeps locked hidden,
slithering about.
Sometimes you can hear its call, the shake
of an infant toy,
lulling the world to sleep with false promises.
False to flower, the petals fall an hour
rejuvenate with more promises
and then fall again.
Their soft tendrils weeping
browning at the edges,
collapse into a heap,
and then suddenly blow away
by whispers and a rat-a tat tat.
A beat of a cane, so gentle as punishment;
a reminder to those who misbehave
and wander…
And like a flame to a candle
I’m breathed out, last breath in taking
one last chance.
Though time is reckoning, wielding
grains of sands in glass upheaving.
To collect the leaves and build a pyre;
create a woman and name her mother,
singing those last horrid songs
while the pen-brush drops smoothly into hand,
Allowing the teardrops, my ink
and those lovely grains of sand to run through them.
© 2013 J.V. Stanley