Rough Roads To Roam (Poetry Monthly)

The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind

slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined

at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned) 

sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,

when the lightning peeks in where the tension hangs tight

while the lanterns, alarmed, appear fulgent with fright.



Having lost both his hands, and now dancing for dimes,

Captain Hook haunts the alleyway's rivers of rhymes,

sometimes singing or prancing to mimic the mimes

with white faces contorted to pillars of pain,

as the ringmaster murmurs “we're all the insane”

and the inmates dunk donuts in droplets of rain.



With their hammers in hand, in their plum pinafores, 

Satan's soldiers of fortune wield powers of Thor's

leaving blood on bent bodies, the tombstones of wars

lining highways and byways  with manna and gold

for the mastermind movers, survivors consoled 

with some pie in Valhalla (or so they've been told).



Above boulevards, battered with batches of bricks,

flys the Duchess of Dawdle on waxed candlesticks;

while she watches, debauches, her Gigolo tricks 

as he talks (on their walks in the summer-day parks 

where a parrot kneels praying, a parakeet barks)

’bout the buffed brazen beaks of the latter-day larks.



Hoary goblins glow gruesome, they leap from the loft

to the hard-hearted rues, shedding tears that they've quaffed

through the night of the dead as the clarinets coughed

and the keepers kept watch so that no one escaped

dingy dungeons where priests and their puppets hide caped

behind walls lined with tulips and justice hung draped.



In the Garden of Eaten, where apples once grew,

lie the bones, somewhat blanched, from the last barbecue

and the snakes strut like storks down a lost avenue

along tracks  like the cracks on the mask of the moon

all alight with the shadows that seep down a dune

as the firefly crawls from a crimson cocoon.



Phantom trains travel tunnels (dispatched in all haste),

voiding tickets to nowhere, it seems such a waste

to see roadblocks with red lights at dead ends misplaced

at the base of the bowels of the bottomless pit

where reflections of life seem so damned counterfeit 

from the back of the eyes of the blind hypocrite.



Lady cockroaches, camped in the Countesses' beds,

are commanding crusaders to fit arrowheads

to the ends of burnt bridges suspended by threads 

from frayed thongs of diminutive bald balladeers 

taunting Cerby, the three-headed dog, serving beers

to the pagan disciples of bold puppeteers.



The oceans lay barren, the garbage dumps filling

with fracking and cracking and lead water spilling,

for milling and drilling are thrilling but killing

the birds and the beasts and the tea leaves, soon falling,

yet gurus roast chestnuts but can't heed their calling

while mauling and crawling on knees while they're brawling.



Unshorn sheep in the meadow are led to the bay

to be brainwashed and fleeced, trusting donkeys that bray

of the virtues of demons that haunt yesterday,

while the vultures deflower the turtle dove lanes

where the blood trickles up and the cruel crimson stains

Easter eggshells and feathers – that’s all that remains.



One eyed bees pilot lines through electrical storms

and blind hornets hum hymns when they're swirling in swarms

while the rest are repressed as the blue marble warms

(regent Queens losing sight that the end has begun)

and for eyes of the ewes, veils of wool have been spun  

and the wasps fly their flags from the butt of a gun.



Seven trumpets (attempting to echo the horns

of the Siamese goats and the three Unicorns

giving birth to the mirth in the temple of thorns)

sound the bugles of sorrow inside of the sea

of crazed lies of the wormwood afloat like a pea

in a pod of dark dolphins that can't disagree.



Often bellowed by barkers, to crowds with no faces,

are words (in their aftermath, leaving no traces)

of picnics and parties in limbo-like places

on paths to perdition where pundits are preaching

and sirens belch bullets while pirates prowl, breaching

the shadow's barbed branches, with whistles blown, screeching.



They're dissecting dissenters that dare to annoy

and then trample with jackboots sent in to destroy,

until taming the toes of the last Gypsy boy

who gets caught in the craw of their cold catacomb

with no rescue by running nor staying at home,

and no freedom to breathe, only rough roads to roam.