Exquisite Wake

Morticians: the corpse is ripe and ready. For those checking in from other planets, Ms Alister put in a plea a while back for a tribal corpse and, just in case I resisted on purely logistical and/or ornery scorpionic grounds, deftly laid out the 1, 2, 3s of dissemination. Who could resist? I was merely the clearinghouse, sending on the cue lines to the next person in the largely unintentional rotation. My only consideration in the latter matter was not to send cues to folks that were closely clustered, so familial or filial rhythms did not segue too closely. I’m happy to identify the poets by couplets later (only via established blog identities), but I thought it might be interesting to toss the poem out first, without direct attribution. For now, suffice it to say that our poets were (alphabetically, not in order of the lines): miss alister, alt, anb, anno, chrysalis, devil mood, jsd, pmb, present, san, tammie, tsk, and wonder woman.

Nothing significant about the title: stolen from the kitchen wall…

[The Scent of Blue Smoke]

After the marriage of time and candy
The spring portraits of the descent of man
Unpegged from curled rose paper walls
Claw dust and shards in bleeding scrawls
All to say what you should already know
My offering to you, my sacrifice etched upon my body
No vanity in vain, this,
but a fair trade exchange: my fading life
my life, dumbed down:
to peas, cues, minding it, the store
but she was so sassy, the tale had to be told
of the night when she saw them outside in the cold
she couldn't stop thinking about their frosty whiskers
and how she'd like to give them a good home
however, she as she surveyed her own
what was lacking screamed for care—
She acquainted with the tear that caressed her face
In due time she loitered the sidelines of life with memories weighing down her eyelids
a slish-slosh of soul-searching trine—
ever emergent, ever cast
It is an unexpected and provocative peek, my dear
yet clenched fists can't hold, so drop the pretense
here's a true heart standing ready at your side
a friend always there, defender of your pride
a doubt always near, so easy to deride,
in the juxtaposition, dear, you continue to reside