Blood – In This Moment

I know you know what I mean…..

The Box

My soul has hands that feed my mouth
delight boxes marked “poison”.
I have second hands that are language.

I gave up youth for silent lips that
spread too thick. Two plump
pulsating cream puffs injected
with secrecy.

The boxes piled up to a thousand acreage;
a still wall with a calm face,
sipping tea with the Queen of servitude.
I have become a slave to iron curtains
and black rods.

Once upon a decade ago, I slept with
meaty warriors with bull-dog ears.
They carried sturdy death machines that
slaughtered innocence.
I heard them slice my siblings
to hamburger, while my stable body hid
in a homosexual bed.

I bled out of my ears for one tight night,
then woke up to the funerals.
I faced a casket with strawberry frosting
trim, small china pieces laid across
the mahogany lid.

I tipped with warriors, drinking their poison,
swallowing fear in full, single gulps.
They offered me a butchering tool
and I pulled it in, deep through
tissue and cartilage, into the warm cherry
pie that was wrapped inside my body.

I melted with metal. I succumbed to
murderous beasts that carry
angry weapons,
and without useful hands,
or mouth,
I became a box.

In A Bad Habit

The graveyard passes me; I am buried
in there, somewhere.
I never got a map.
I got sweet that sweet fragrance of sympathy
from
hands that still pulsate. But a map?
No!

Maps are cold. Indifferent. Without
reason or definition. Identical hands
to
hands laid away forever.

I had a fever for twenty years. It was
habit.
So, I wrote a note:
I am in the graveyard. There is no map.
It is cold, yet I am not.
This fever has warmed me,
blanketed me,
forever.

I hid the note in butter. An arrogant, cheap stick
wrapped in cold paper. The refrigerator
would keep the paper stale.
Then, I left. To the graveyard. It passes me.
It slides off me as if
I am butter. Melting.
In a fever.
A bad habit suddenly hitting my blood.

The Charge

Hard back

pages, stained with time and
an aged aroma.

1915. A battle is painted.
Acid slashing,
spitting.

Direct eyes leap from a tiny cliff
onto young bodies. Bloodied. Abandoned.

Somewhere, some mothers stand as sharp
as shrapnel,
bullets piercing their wombs,
their children’s supple homes.

Trembling hands
find a gun
and
a buddy. A soldier. A boy.
Death has no time in
these fields. He is hurried.

Frontal attacks sweep
unprotected spots. Blurring instinct.
Blinding the Earth with a scarlet bath.

Burying dirt with
young boys,
men.

1915. Hard back pages, stained with
memory and
the scent of suffering.

And this….
just the beginning.

*About The Charge by W. Douglas Newton.

Soldiers

In the beginning,
it was as if barren logs
were thrown together in heaps
for
decomposition

cautious steps
young
benumb

do you hear the bombs?

we are in belligerent land!

The Speaker is right

hazardous air hovers
stagnant
air is vacant

a perilous scent lingers
under
my nostrils
disorienting
direction

South twitches!! To the left!

Barren logs
are not!

They are
amputees!
Victims of explosive surgery,
nerves of Soldiers’ exposed;
an operating table…

God’s acre.

Soft, barren bodies
thrown together in heaps
for decomposition.

A few operative
bodies
are moved,
thrown together in heaps
for bandaging

sent home to their
wives
children
friends

with a perilous scent
still lingering
under their nostrils

disorienting
direction.

 

An Accidental Abortion

The snow concealed the ground around me
as I reached inside and
clutched for the new
soul
flourishing.

My clutch turned into
a grip of uneasiness as the
new soul did not
reach his hand back for mine.

In a trepidation, I froze…my hand came
back to me covered
in blood….red body
fluid trickled down my leg, speckling
the snow – warming the frozen
blanket and
revealing the solid ground below.

Blood so bright in the snow, soaked brown
in the dirt. Blending the colors, ignorant to the
trace of the
part of life it just consumed.

I screamed at the ground!
How dare it soak up
the little
flourishing soul
as if it was nothing! A piece of
my very own soul!!

Not a word of gratitude or comfort from the
dirt for the forfeiture of
my nurturing body!