Tag Archives: endings

The plague

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Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor improved, could discover no divine purpose in the pain they had suffered. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Everything falls, the old banners
Flung to pieces,
God reveals himself a jester,
Indifferent or cruel,

It makes little difference.
Popes and paupers rot
In the same slag heap,
All the rules, shattered.

Such a holy tantrum!
Such abandonment
Not seen since the days
Of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Do you pray, beseeching
God for pity,
If justice cannot be found?
Take care you don’t disturb his temper!

No pretense any longer
Of value, of one thing
Over another, your doom
Is made by a foul divine whim.

Friday haiku 21

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March
wringing warmth
from the sky

Piston

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From the poet’s dictionary

noun \ˈpis-tən\
a sound like a fist, like rain,
like fat drops on hardpan,
like a screen door flapping,
like gasoiline on skin,
like burning sand,
like the smell of coal ash
at ten below zero,
like a stain in the heart
that cannot be removed,
like every slamming, crushing,
fierce and mortal thing
that cannot be undone,
except by love.

See also grief.

Beneath the vultured sky

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Beneath the vultured sky
bully boys tend their weapons,
teeth bared,
lives unsheathed.

All others, they think,
are prey, doomed to
all-hallowed twilight,

but one or two,
unshrinking,
stir and turn.

Vultures circle lower.
Which side?

Out of the wild

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That time was dark
A world of silhouettes, cigarette smoke,
A place where light faltered,
Intimidated, burdened
With the smell of whiskey,

The taste of luxurious defeat
Swilled like fine wine gone sour.
The wind blows tough at night
When only fear lights the hollows
Of something like despair.

So here we are, the last of us,
Swizzle-eyed and weary,
Surviving escapees from
What can only be recalled dimly.

I look in the mirror and ask,
Was that really you?