[Newspoetry] An Athemic Anthology As Abbreviated

[Donald L Emerick]

An Athemic Anthology As Abbreviated
(Or, that's all the rote she wrote.)

Dark fear and green envy,
hang their seasonal shames --
Red jealousy and violet denial,
violating transparent peace;

Violence, bubbling, doubling,
troubling us in burnt oranges 
while below it all, browned out,
the royal waters roil purple
in red blood from blue veins.

Washing in gray baptismal founts
colorless fundamentalist ignorance,
coloring fully, all uncolorfully,
as if any color scheme would do,
as long as it distracted attention,
untracked intentions to good will.

Below this bottomless ignorance,
hollowed out below long ago,
hallowed as original foundation,
always obscure, sunken below site,
buried like basements, buried alive,
deep in the ground we dare not walk
for fear of cave-ins, collapses
and elliptical endings unknown.

There was silent word then spoken,
sent out and away from its maker --
Such word was good and made glad;
those who felt it beat their ear drums,
put away their pounding warrior hums,
swallow their savage spiteful music,
spit out the tunes of gnawing teeth,
ripping canines, grinding molars.

A soft undulating velvet tongue
flickers vibrantly, seductively,
enticing all to enter its mystery,
to penetrate it orifices fully,
to taste what causes taste to be;
to pass portals, pass over lintels,
entranced at the entrance itself
to a grotto, a qrotesque station,
a cavity where thoughts form echoes,
for reforming itself by speaking
its identity in its seeking quest.

A word is most magic and no mystery
when its magic hides from its history,
below the surface, where rivers form,
running to and from the whirling pool,
what waters above, waters below mix;
an elixir always already poured out,
precisely drunken, intoxicating,
poisoning, liberating, conserving.

Slopping over the welling tops,
a flapping tongue flops its froth
in foaming-at-the-mouth word drops,
a gentle dewing from oral heaven,
or a damning don'ting anal hell --
excreting into symbiotic waste.

Parasites occupy open systems,
close no doors to garbage pours
that ever flow beneath the city,
flow from out the eternal city,
the shining shimmering golden city,
hiding like a candle on top its hill,
waxen is its flowing, melt-down pool --
enriching, polluting lands around,
an ecology of pilings, piled ever higher
raise ever high a roofing barricade,
baring kids for a barracuda feeding.

All magic is magnetic word,
poetic strips near enough to iron,
seize the field and have their say,
have their field day, filled with fun,
filings pressed against a wall,
closely pressed together, ironed,
stiffly laundered, collar and sleave,
starched into an unseeing obedience
that it must caress, wrinkle to use,
soften to make tough touch habitable.

Magic transforms straight highways,
makes them be winding country roads,
not bending ox-bowed rivers to unwind --
commercial channels will take no pause;
never refreshing, they only discharge,
bombastic bumble-bees bombard barges,
drop their bombs on targets below
any level of caring who may be hurt
as long as a target is hit, des-Troy-ed.

No hurry ever hastened a good word,
but bad words gallop across prairies,
like sage brush cut-loose to tumble,
raising dusts that never settle down,
all in a rush, to string up a cow,
to string it along, cowpoking buckaroo
croons, sings it to slaughter-house,
to stock a yard made as its grave:
the destiny of the herds is spoken,
to be heard, and trampled underfoot
by all who too madly rush to die.

It's all magic when a word happens:
only a magician may cast its spell,
and everyone else is just a reader,
faithfully repeating a magic sound,
without once stirring its messy pot,
stirring no magic, wooden, frozen,
and cursing because no magic happens,
as cursing never has such a spelling
as can be written down, nor recalled,
withering as its malevolence touches,
wilting, searing, en-deafening roars.

They'd call it magic, this cursing,
this bringer of their gift of death,
as if there's no difference at all
between any gift in utter imposition,
no difference between good and bad,
nor between magic and its imitation:
an oleo has no yodel, just a butter yoke
to choke a local yokel in a bitter joke;
a batter is no better for a byte's hair.