Rendering fat unto Ceasar

it may or may not be fading the glory but the gory red white and blue meat of it was charred to a cinder while you neglected to handle the griddle and its blackening pool of fatty answers that spits and pops greasy drops wanting to fly to a wheel any wheel left that’s not attached to axles attached to chassis attached to roofs attached to sirens hurtling bodies bloodied by joyless sticks their attacking thumbs with no prints just a serial number and a pension that causes them to intentionally twitch these deaths a world away throw that world away and turn your eyes to see reach your arms to hold and probe their discarded limbs feel their loss a loss repeated to a scream you couldn’t hear what good is your akimbo pose posing as if you had questions or doubts even when the questions ran out so long ago so long in fact that the meat you’re cooking was no longer fresh when you tossed it in that pan of foul smelling fat you thought was clear but it’s flecked with bits of sour alibis and singed hairs that float and lie to you they’re licorice coated floss

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At the suggestion of a friend, I tried writing a poem with "no structure." I combined this exercise with the wordle prompt over at The Sunday Whirl. What emerged is much freer and, probably because of my current state of mind, much more overtly political than what I usually write. I'm sure not everyone will appreciate it, but that comes with the territory of experimentation and speaking one's mind.

Bold doesn't suit me

my story isn’t

your story
with a foreign accent.

it can’t speak. devious

it signs an inspired sleep.
between us,

strange kinship slips. it’s not

freudian,
but wishful. thinking its

enchanted thoughts, i won’t

lure you. a venus, all
torso, no alluring

sins, it won’t

feed the lotus readers
who’ve left off caring if

my story is.

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Bold is not one of my favorite words, and it may require extensive psychoanalysis to uncover why. Clever fellow that I am, I worked it into the title, so all wordle words have yet again been vanquished. Brenda's moved the prompt site over to WordPress, so here's the new address where you can find the other poets' contibutions: The Sunday Whirl

Pretty things preach pretty thoughts

This blissful abyss we share glows,
gaudy-full if unfulfilling. … It spins in
purple prose. … It tastes of bon-bon
mots. … It won’t suppose the inky
murmurs squirming below it,
or those secret scents that rise in goodbye-
giving waves ... or those
undulate and aqua misunderstandings
misgiving further underneath.

Ours is a blank-space world. ... It’s always
facing West, its face made-up
with gunpowder daubs. … Its head
is traced on one side by Queen Anne’s
lace, the other bullet baubles. … Its mind
is stripped of all naked-mole
rat thoughts. ... They’re the ones who might
burrow blind but unafraid
to love a common, unadorned heart.

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Another week, another Wordle. Check out the other participants' pieces at A Wordling Whirl of Sundays.

This calm is brutality

Farther, farther, where you have forsaken glee
take to knee, and have that good cry.

The wind’s stopped ... caring
how the twilight comes,
if it comes … it can come
with pigtails and a little-girl skip
or baldness and an old man’s stride.

Our bruise of sky has turned from
a heartless purple-black
to a gassy planet’s sickly yellow.

The leaves are out
again, exhaling greens.

Against their backdrop
who can be afraid … of sparks to fire,
for we future fallen?

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This weeks prompt from A Wordling Whirl of Sundays uses a dozen words taken from the Wallace Stevens poem Domination of Black. Check out the poem, and the prompt site to see how other's have responded to it.

In this time of rapture, moonbeams scatter

When you weaned me from the waning moon,
its milky cusps, winking welcome
moods of starry surrender, I was lost
to my reflection rearranged
roughly on the window’s pane.

Don’t take flight yet, you said,
first take the light’s left hand
and keep it from the misbehaving oak,
its frightening reach.

There are beehive-capped angels
swinging there beneath, and they’re angling
to gather moony souls
together in false hope.
Their absent promise is absolute,
and absolution.

They’ll utter their nothings,
utterly sweet, if you let them,
and lull you with their yellow tongues.
Fly away with this light you now hold
and risk the falling.

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What better way is there to celebrate surviving the rapture than with a wordle? You can check out this week's prompt and all of the wonderful responses to it, by visiting A Wordling Whirl of Sundays.

Fast-food notions

There’s no need for me to start
in, when a stop’s been
abridged to little more than
a pause and a wink at
the romantic thought
pleasant but stony bridges
once came between
coming and going.

They’ve substituted it –
the dirty and rutted
road leading up –
to a smooth black surface,
with a broad white stripe
and a textured mat
of margarine yellow,
hard rubber bumps, that
will teach us, what
shakes us doesn’t have to slow
radials slurping us in through
the drive-through.

Some things are worth the wait,
like the wind-up voice
behind sliding-glass,
and its brandishing hands
eking us our infusion
of copper coins back
and flimsy paper sacks
filled with a rural life
filtered out through industrial
chimneys, then patted
down to a few
salty, groundbeef patties.

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This is in response to the most recent prompt at A wordling whirl of Sundays. Check out the site to see what others have contributed.

What the hills get over is, you're far away

What the hillsides want,
you can’t know. They scribble
dark matters on the stream below,
and they train their animated whispers
to piggyback the summer wind’s
fiery bellows. Moments later
it reaches you, their angry murmur,
but they won’t teach you its meaning,
only the sustaining double-
vision of a revenge that will come
first, with a thrumming ache
and then their resilient thirst.

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Another week, another wordle. Check out what others have contributed at A Wordling Whirl of Sundays, the site Brenda Warren created to keep us wordle junkies properly fixed.

He'll waste away with its wanting

He feels the blue-black
chattering of his cheap tattoos.

They pinwheel around
and they tumble down
to greet a broken-track braille
and join its scabby trailing off,
stammering dead-end tempts
to the diminished lots
of unmarked tissue.

You can t-taste it too,
first that rubbery sharp squeeze,
then a streamlined steel’s b-bite
with its c-creeping warmth,
its p-piquant glee
and its promises to quench
those g-glimpses of eternity.

Each promise gets
reneged as soon as it’s replenished.

There’s an art to this steal;
its con is his meat and bone.

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This is in response to the weekly Wordle prompt provided by Brenda Warren. She's set up a new site for prompts called A Wordling Whirl of Sundays. I did slightly change a couple of the words.

No catchy slogan can compete with her blossoms

Chip-bag phrases,
clipped and cornered,
ripped and unstrung,
make a sad sense
out of their silvery
linings.

Jagged, inept scars are
overlooked and forever
forgetting the spring,
the way
her perfumed messages
sneak off to the sun
and his golden-tongued
flattery returns
to sprout more magenta-blue
crescendos.

The swelling
colors cover-up
the drone of crudely picked,
plastic plantings.

Beauty is all.
It discounts
as it recounts
the bags’ ticked-off failings.

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Here's another Wordle prompt as provided by Brenda Warren. I enjoy doing these because they're like a game of connect the dots, making stories out of a clutch of (not quite) random words.