Saturday, October 19, 2013

charcoal mockingjay

i.
ignition is simple, any spark would do,
but you doused her feathers in petrol
and lit a match, thinking for fireworks
and perhaps a bit of roast bird to sate
the appetites of your people, so long used
to dinner and a show while sitting luxury's lap.

built as a norse general set to sea, she was
laden with pearls for oysters to reclaim,
silk extracted from the butterfly's tomb --
she was beautiful, so beautiful, too beautiful;
goddess sent to kneel at the guillotine
for dubious crimes; you always loved
a little bit of mystery and a whole lot of lies.

you struck matches and poured more gasoline --
there is something innately beautiful
in the hues of something unfamiliar burning,
chemical pockets creating colors
that the old rainbow didn't know.

but fire is catching, flames and light devour
inequity and reveal the best-kept lies.
fire is catching --
beware the work of your own hands.


ii.
just a pile of ashes remain;
this girl is no phoenix, to die
ensconced in flames to rise again.

there is no magic, the pile of corpses
and the river of blood are real, too real
for any human heart to handle, this girl
is just a girl; seventeen years
and her head bears cain's mark, a necessity
to keep her lungs moving and her terse eyes open.

what have you done? j'accuse, j'accuse.
she hews her crucifix from the smoldering rubble
that is her life; her conscience overwhelmed
with dead weight dropped by raging warlords.

compressed, compacted, elongated, painted, and burnt,
photographed and digitized; soul manipulated
by many hands; carved up, claimed, and devoured,
but still the raging gods are unsatisfied --
what more, exactly, can they demand from skin, bones
and an an exhausted soul -- don't worry,
we can cover the cracks with paint and plaster,
we can smooth away all the humanity.

it isn't beautiful what remains, the tired husk
and consumed bones of beauty and talent, of fire
and ice and rage; they couldn't be quelled, she wasn't
stopped, she wasn't extinguished. point your fingers
and tell your stories; you're only human,
you wouldn't even think to blame yourselves.


iii.
time heals all things, waves lap away
the dried blood; a decade of sleep
erases the fatigue, though the demons camp
forever in the tiny, backwoods corners of the brain.

time heals all things, the cruelty becomes
history, his story, her story, passed on
to children; mother, son, father, daughter,
nature resumes and repairs what men destroy.

Debbie's Sonnet

for D.M.P.
on her birthday

I pray the joy of age has come to thee,
a coronet upon thy lovely brow;
so gifted with God's wisdom, clear to see
the method of the world, wherefore and how
the stars in their rotation sing a hymn
and in their burning bring a sacrifice
unfettered by their whirling worlds' whims
unbound by any 'logical' device.

In love we give our lives: the open hand
is never truly empty, treasure breeds
where treasure truly lasts; by His command
in giving of ourselves we spread love's seed.

You are, among the Earth, a burning star,
a guiding light of love seen well afar.
 

Ignis. © 2008. Chaotic Soul :: Converted by Randomness