When he thought of death
(if he thought of it at all),
his mind took it to be
a burden of life,
for everyone knows
that this earthly shore
is terribly infected
with the miseries
of numberless mortals
who slowly died,
exhaling away hours
with each breathy
rise and fall
of those fragile lungs.
Her last three footsteps
raised the devil.
At the sight of her,
hell surrendered –
besieged by the spirits
of plunder and
confiscation.
(Another blackout poem inspired by A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)
Grow up, they all say
But when I try to plant roots
they poison the soil
(Written for a #haikudaily tag on Twitter, theme was “grow”)
If Edgar had a muse
to hassle and abuse,
why not I?
Enter those raven’s wings
and all terrible things
from finer days gone by.
I meant to share this poem around Easter, but forgot. Guess I had too much going on. This poem just sort of wrote itself, with the images of both the commercial and sacred aspects of the holiday mixing together in my mind. It is not meant to be offensive to religion, but instead, to compare and contrast the cheerful, innocent brightness of welcoming spring with the actual gruesome reality of a crucifixion and resurrection:
Scrambled Savior
Easter
pastel eggs
poor Jewish carpenter
whipped, beaten, and scrambled
last supper
omelet
I hated you
the first time we met.
You had replaced my old love
before I had the chance
to even say goodbye.
You dared to appear
right as he vanished –
and for that
you had to take the blame.
Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and haven’t been feeling too good anyhow, so thought I would post tonight. Here are a few more elfchen poems for your reading pleasure (with a few slight poetry form rule breaks lol):
1.
Woosh!
Down the
electric slide feet
first and head banging.
Rock on!
2.
Captivating,
moonlight glinting
off a rocky
ocean shoreline, lonesome
yet ephemeral
3.
Projection
please stop
blaming others for
your own bad ideas –
evolve
Modern women
Obsessed
with the hair
on their heads
At war
with hair
anywhere else
(Poetry by Maranda Russell, marandarussell.com)
Not many 10-year-olds
could be hit
by a speeding
delivery truck
while crossing the street
and live
to tell the tale…
but I always was
a weird statistic.
The truck ran
me over
with the ease
of a speed bump.
I even had the
tire tracks
and imbedded gravel
across my stomach
to prove it.
When I woke up
in the ER
I screamed out the names
of all the people
I was going to sue…
until my mother
bought my silence by
bribing me
with the promise
of a brand new
Barbie doll.
(Poetry by Maranda Russell, marandarussell.com)
