A scent,
remembered from morning
deepens missing,
yet the knowing
grows green, healthy tendrils
like the Golden Pothos
sitting in the window,
enjoying warming sunlight.
Inside a sarcophagus of stone,
I have dwelled,
a hard place in which to learn to live,
no breath taken, heart stilled,
where all living shrinks down,
behind skin and soul,
to be bound in hieroglyphic wrappings
designed by others.
Onlookers believing
the pretense they wish to see--
as I stopped struggling for air,
a mimic of the beating rhythms of life,
accepting the coldness of the stone.
Any warmth transitory as the sun
in its travels from
season to season
from rise to set,
in these years
I have known only coldness
after any fleeting glimpse of warmth.
Such a bitter coldness--
though none would think
I lived encased within stone,
so life-like my hieroglyphic mask,
a masterful mimic I had become.
Until stone cracked,
by mountain winds and sun,
falling in splintered shards,
crumbling to dust ‘round me.
My tattered, faded wrappings
torn, hanging loosely.
Until a hand, as if in possession
of long forgotten, ancient magic,
should touch long dead embers,
and in touching rekindle flame,
swirling within, spiraling outward
warmth that does not die
upon the withdrawal of touch.
A heat lingering, warming still,
stirs hunger once thought dead to life.
Sweetness pounds a rhythm out—
starting a heart to beat again,
blessed breath returns
to deflated lungs,
the shallow breath, the weak pulse
hold ancient power,
leaving flesh and blood and bone
to move in life again,
a life reclaimed from the stone
of gray filled years.
Cautiously, hesitantly,
I step over the dust of shattered stone,
making my way toward the touch
that carefully, tenderly removed
my tattered hieroglyphic bindings,
allowing me to move freely
within my own skin.
There trembles within,
a longing I never sought to find.
Hope rises and takes Fear
within its embrace,
transforming it to joy,
as I extend my hand
to the warmth of you.
I’ve revised and reworked an earlier piece written in 2017 as a response to the terrorism of Hamas and the war Israel has declared. It seems to me that this slaughter by Hamas and the retaliation that Israel is now forced to take cannot be what any God wants. Surely, it is not what the Palestinian people or the people of Israel want either.
The blood of children
falls as rain
on Holy ground.
The blood of their parents
chasing after
as if to save it,
stopping it
from concreating the land
to evil born of old hatred
as the world,
emptied of all care,
watches.
No uprisings.
No shouting in the streets
as this blood rain of innocents falls,
flooding the silent world
as nations watch,
hands bloodied
in pretense of helplessness
before turning their backs.
The seven descend.
Each with wings spread
enough to fill a house.
Shalom upon their tongues.
Throughout the compass points
they search to find
all the gnawed bones,
the muscles and sinew,
the heart and entrails
torn with teeth of hate.
And once the seven
gather all the tiny bits,
With flaming swords
used as needles,
they try to stitch
all humanity’s bloody bits
into one thing well knit.
Neither their swords,
nor spirit of their breath
have the power to seal
the meat and sinew to bone.
And then they know--
those who showed no mercy
would be given none.
Their heads hang--
Inshallah upon their lips
as they ascend.
Their flaming eyes
weeping tears of fire
as they see the red rider
striding across the land.
It is then the seven know
humanity’s avarice and hate
had broken the fourth seal.
Maa shaa’Allah a whisper of smoke
within their throats.
From the seven sets of fiery eyes,
their tears of fire
stream Retzon ha-el
across the night sky.
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