a hybrid prose poem
Clarity and smokescreens
Things to write about, try to get published, or share with one or two,
or keep in dark, hidden; finally the things you never write at all.
Child says “look at my boo-boo!”
Adolescent says “Look at my scars!”
Adult tries to hide all with clothing.
In death we’re all naked to stars.
Not only boo-boos, scars, clothing, stars, but things we are vain of, things we are shamed of…wounds we inflict upon innocent others or on our own skin. Marks no one decent would ever leave upon human beings as though they were paper receiving words of rage.
Don’t forget this: stars, billions of suns, trees, creatures, landscapes of beauty that sometimes turn ugly…Red in tooth and claw is our sweet Mother, purple mountains’ majesty are Her breasts. Lullaby, tango, funeral dirge, silence, listen to it all, try to fill in the blank’s verse of the gods’ awful universe. Or multi-versed.
Listen to it all,
the music of the fears,
the sounds of celebrations,
with panicked screams of deer,
strained efforts of a poet
to make everything rhyme,
no matter fancy footwork,
falls on his ass each time.
Some among us write of corpses, maggots; others, eschewing such things, write of kittens, bunnies, Sunday funnies…on to orgy parties, holocausts, truths noble, falsehood, hypocrisy…
Makes a wannabe poet chill the shill, wonder what could be writ that’s not already…yet DNA always has its deviations, unpredictable mutations, surprises, little kids’ whyses…
Sooner or later there’s lines we won’t cross.
We scream of beauty,
sing of great sin,
inside us, outside us,
without and within.
What horrifies us so, fills us with shame, evil, holy visions? Life, death, order, chaos, all within our purview. Sooner or later it comes down to the mortal wielding the pen.
It gets down, way down,
a bloody wedding gown,
dagger slipping in between
ribs to lungs, or into spleen.
We are so beautiful we hide ourselves lest someone see beneath the glamour…in amour’s armor, indifference, hatred, something waits with breath bated,
Something we can’t look at
lest it strike us blind,
paragon of beauty,
obscenity we find.
Sooner or later we are all naked, dissected, collected beneath stars.
That’s when we cross lines we wouldn’t, couldn’t cross.
Sooner or later.
~ Wry Welwood
5th of February 2022
Written in response to Scrittura’s Saturday prompt: internal/external tension.
Attention J.D. Harms, Melissa Coffey, and other editors.