Bumbled

Ibkek sits idly by
the meadow's green and varied blooms,

paid only inattention.
He, not minutes passing nigh,

envies but this bumble
who black-and-gold buzzes onward

with purposeful zags. "She fits
so nicely here," he mumbles.

"Why, even duller drones,
though weak and puny, have a place."

The worker, she might envy
Ibkek this, his freedom's moan

to fritter life drinking,
but busy harvests push instead

her bee-bound thoughts, set upon
a queen's idyllic kinking.

Golden Rule

She finds the golden rule
makes a lousy ruler,
not measuring the hurt
when others refuse to
do unto a willing you.

Muck

Lugubrious muck
lures dubiously soled boots
down to black suckling

Marginal

The virginal white
feels marginal, hemmed in by
smutty brown and gray

The Robot Overlords Lurk in Our Shadows

Clockwork melon

Clockwork melon gummed,
synapses suffer a lapse,
sparking un-tocked tics

Two Colors (BWI)

The current threat level is
an abstractly arranged orange,
according to this not-so-human

voice squawking on behalf of
my all-too-human government.
It's for everyone's protection.

Outside the airport windows,
greater Baltimore squats against
Tuesday's sky, suspiciously solid

in its concrete pour of gray.
She's coy on when things might brighten
again. I'll have to wait with my bags,

unattended and unsure
whether old homes can ever feel
as homey. I make do pretending

someone has swapped those two colors.

Bone-meal hands

Bone-meal hands scour pale
drips of soured hours, clearing spots
where would-be flowers

Man, a rag

Lucifer's Cardinals are blowing pink smoke
again. They've picked their ping-pong pontiff,
to the joy of throngs watching patient brick stacks
remotely on brightly monitored feeds.

The Chosen One, festooned in a make-shift,
milk-carton miter plastered with photos
of never-lost souls, climbs atop His Coke-can
throne to declare, "I'm likable law made flesh!"

Then, this dystopic pope, turning to His scroll
wailer, sotto voce warns, "I am a weakish
speller, but read it as best you can,"
and hands her a paper-clipped parchment.

Catty smile petting her with purrs of "nice
smug me," the tonsil-crowned crier takes it
and leaps to heroes glide down where His nonsense
cannon of ten misrules is to be revealed.

Meanwhile, back up on Earth, Man — a rag
doll in hand and aching from the expert prick
of voodoo-dabbling God's exactingly pinned
scraps, all wincing "Who do you think you are?" —

Approaches the coaxial saint who sits in
a simulated wood-grain box and beams
beacons of haloed pixels phishing for fools
in search of non-queasy forgiveness.

Man fits to a T-S-A that anesthetic
profile. He pulls from his pocket prescriptions
slipped to him by back-alley preachers
with promises of a tidier healing.

For a few coins, he gets his video-dispensed
penance: the rosary of disposable beads
he'll rub once, toss, then return to that life
perpetually stuck on truancy.

Rent

His rent spent feeding
other needs, he frets to find
a cold, troll-fit home

Bent ends

His stubborn tongue twists
the words it twirls, retelling
stories with bent ends

Temporal Winds

Temporal winds blow
slippery answers
while stalwart stones weigh
us down with questioning

Crisply Orange

Here construction paper hopes,
crisply orange at first cutting,
fade yellow and fold under
the dull wait of open endings

Elsewhere

His here is elsewhere,
getting reacquainted with
long-lost tomorrows

Lullabies

Sweet coos he tries, the lullabies
to coddle dreams of balance,
but night still comes, tonsils athrob
in its throat of gaping lacks

Tonic

Slatted warmth splashes.
Tatter-ray tonic, she drinks,
quelling winter's aches.

A Fractured Froggy Tale

Hectored by the pit-a-patter
of frozen pellets, you might hear
these dented eaves wheeze and sneeze
lubricious comparisons, but
it's a thickly frosted fiction
that their bulbous white noses
look anything like eggshells.

In springtime's crick-cracking they will
however birth a frog with not
so princely disposition:
Hacksaw in hand, he'll eye
your roommate and that footlocker
where she keeps invaluables
of an oddly personal nature.

His plan is to hip-hoppity leave
you red-faced, trying to calm
this panicked friend with un-fairy
tales of a burglar amphibian
who muttered of moral decay,
mis-fabled crowns, and the strangeness
of saved fingernail clippings.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #114: All over the map at Read Write Poem. It is a "wordle" prompt with 14 bits of vocabulary neatly hidden here. Click the link to see what they are.

Amulet

"Vade retro satana," warns
the bronze amulet she clasps too-
close in venally perspiring palms.

It marks her with a devilish bruise.

Halfway

Gray days of halfway
seep one into another,
smearing light with dark

Measures

He measures present
pleasure 'gainst her gifted smile.
All is found, wanting.

Querulous

Her querulous cackling cascades
down to a sudden quietus
prompting quiver-prone neighbors
to make ambivalent inquiries

Relishes

Once-free relishes
rigorously jarred, stew in
acid bitterness

Smoke

sinuous signals
mobilize motley minions
otherwise occupied
keeping kamikaze kestrels
expertly ensnared

(This is an acrostic written for the Poetwist Twitter word prompt "Smoke")

Convoluted elocutions

Executing convoluted elocutions,
he lays down a labial labyrinth,
to entangle over-eager eavesdroppers.

Entreating

Sulfurous flash draws
tang from seared flesh, entreating
answers... any kind

Listing

A life gone listing,
he requires reassessment
to make the dire straight

Amber

This misbegotten spoke of
rueful light, having been
kicked from his unclean-too
sheltering by the bully-
bruised sky, exhausts himself
repeating ungallant falls
into winter-wronging crowds.

Thick disapproval oozes
out an aural complaint
punctuated with amber
clots, ensnaring the flippant
and the shifty but to fix
their toady meanings inside
polished globules of today.

Punctuated envy

Pushy Period backed up
against strict black boundaries,
envies Colon's domain;
the broader stretches it could take
as a dearly dotted colony.

Trickster

A laundered trickster
he sticks her pocket with lint
lent at no int'rest

Profit

She's yet to realize
a netted profit
from these oceans
of tearful deposits

Cottony love

Sky, birthed by deep sighs,
smothers Mother with kisses
of cottony love

Man spits

Man spits stormy swears.
Jade sky stares back, bares its knack
for threatening dares.

Flash fiction: Disorder

She keeps her pretty laminated
recipe cards pristinely stacked upright
and ordered inside boxes that are
in turn organized by ethnicity.
Some do try to defy her too
categorical mind. These end up
alphabetized without a grin and put
within an apologetic little
catchall that, collections completed,
she'll not visit willingly again.

Each ensuing night, fingers spiral
down dimples stamped on a cardboard-cutout
globe she leaves standing on her marbled
granite slab of a counter. One place
chosen from among those she's never been,
she lifts the hunter-green translucent
lid of its corresponding container
and pulls out a single card that her eyes
feast on, ticking off precise measures
in the savory worded list.

Sated so, she pours big bowls of cold
cereal thickly coated. She doesn't like
to cook.

Premature pyres

The Phoenix envied,
he heaps his lifetime's keepings
on premature pyres

Imperfect Pitch

Torn earth's lament hits
an imperfect pitch, cracking
heaven's glassy heart

Walls

Rubbery pink walls
contain the wails of his soul's
impending release

Residence

Sun-bleached bones for bricks,
blood as glue, he builds his god
fitting residence

Molten

Hooked

This wriggling gray — hooked,
blind and little feeling — makes
me an ideal god

There are these spots

There are these spots on my ceiling.

Plainly speaking, they are
off-white patches where
the heads of nails were
mudded over, but not well sanded.

I opt to see them as
push-pins squashed when spat
on monochrome maps
to point me dippered ways outre-ward.

Their gap-tooth patterns micro-mimicking
constellations hap
my eyes to hazard
hopping through new belt hoops.

Then passed by barely habited worlds,
I wheel round orbits
molecularly
chained to collide, next time.

My neighbor's heavy steps fade out.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #112: Narrative wallpaper at Read Write Poem. Rather than being inspired by what I found on my walls, I looked up to the ceiling.

Deft hands

Deft hands forage through
secret lairs, released from
their bidden prayers

Center

The center can't hold
these middling cares, frayed edges
refuse to release

Sparkle

Waning sun anoints
this air weighted with crystal
to sparkle his stead

Silence (with proper formatting)

One day I heard joyful
shouting. The next there was
a deafening


silence.

(Thanks to TenTenTen for the suggestion of the creative retitling of this poem)

Puddle of Cryonics

I'd rather be a puddle
than a Popsicle.
Can I tell you why?

Better yet, I'll start
by asking, What should
immortality cost?

It could be mine for the low-
low price of twenty-nine,
nine-ninety-nine.

Yes, in US dollars,
no cents. I've got the latter,
not the former,

at least not in this lifetime.
I might also mention
the ugly how

to get there: First flushed,
then re-pumped blue for blood,
I'd be bagged and hung

upside down in a sparing
accommodation.
If plans hatch as laid,

science'll shell me out
from gamy non-life
to patch and catch me up.

But why would it bother,
'less to pick my pickled brain
about times ago

when men couldn't see much
beyond their vanity.
And that takes me back

where I started at:
I'd rather be a puddle,
and evaporate.

Dime-store Messiah

Dime-store messiah,
Arise! Adorned with baubles
Of oblivion

Pebble

A simple pebble, he sits
not marked or moved
by any glitter or tint,
absorbing the dull being
that ever flows past him.

Dots

Dots small and large squat
All tiresomely unwilling
to connect and dance

Scrub

My polluting words
can't fill god's eye, but they can
scar it with caring.
Better to scrub them unread
in silent indifference.

Decode

Static-tongue whispers
his ears can't decode, recast
as doomed prophecies