Terror Alert: Level Magenta

The mist-gift that was morn
came replete with impractical
compunction to make song
before the sun-pulse
on the pave-stones beat.

Charlie’s gummed-up chakras
made the getting out of bed
an unfun game of crusty decrepitude;
so he pressed fresh the coffee,
assumed certain sure-fire asanas,
dialed up international news
on the radio,
and made his paltry parry-thrusts
at the sublime just the same.

So long was the misfit mired
in intentional obliquity
(by root-deep timidity engendered)
the he sighed in straight-forward fear
to raise his bender-rattled voice
and actually speak.

So, stepped he through the door,
shut, per habit, locklessly
the loveless, luckless night before,
looked up and out direct into
a cerulean sky-wrapped sun,
closed his moonshined eyes,
recited some warmed-over lists
of so-well-thought-out,
well-wrought wrongs
by power-drunk,
non-Herculean,
pseudo-humans
geared to gurgitate
and sew great dread
into the hewn hearts
of impoverished persons,
send them over hill and dale
and sea to get their young,
glory-hungry guts/brains/bones
all split/blown/torn
on this self-same earth
(distant, tis true)
where other hymns are sung,
prayers intoned, rites enacted,
where other clothes and cloths
are woven and worn-
the self-same earth which
contracted his mothers worthy womb
til he was humbly born,
the self-same earth
which grows the very food
he chews each damned
and blessed day/month/week.

He writes this down then,
‘stead of saving, shreds it
for Carnival confetti,
heaves a sigh and sits
and meditates naively.

He will not lock his door,
can’t exactly pin the point
at which this habit happened;
can’t much feel the fear for loss of things,
can’t quite conceive the why.

Attempts he to discern
if this is deeply true,
if this idyll bird-idea
has Pheonix-wings enough to fly
or is simply daffy, dodo.

He dreams himself a butcher,
malapropos and blundering on
with dumb-dull, rusty blade,
feels, sharply, rue,
all dopey unredeemed.

Elsewhere, it so seems,
handsome couples of
re-tread revolutionaries zealous,
clear a future’s pathless path
with tried and trusty machetes.

The well-honed blades,
on cutting tender jungle tendrils,
emit the sweetest “ting.”

He ope’s his eyes
to curse the day
his Ego bade him
wag his too-rough,
wrong-sounding tongue
in unmelodic attempt so sing.