Nightmare – Revised

The pea soup tentacled fog

That was (and is) a bad dream

Wrapped inside a nightmare

Which swallowed whole her life

Thins in wake of

Swooshing determination

 

She strides head up to the podium

(Later, surreally televised clip

Confirms strength of step)

Dares to harness

Her voice

Quavering yet poised

 

In measured cadence

With heartfelt emphasis

She dauntlessly projects

Her story

Mortifying and human

 

Audaciously asserting

Rising from

Smothering depths of

Cloistering shame

Her truth

This nightmare chapter

Will not be

All she wrote

Floodgates

Her life spilled open

Gushed through

Flimsy and fractured

Dam of delusion

 

Tirading torrents

Swept away

All of comfort

Life familiar

 

Floodwaters

Now receded

Sludgy stinking

Residue remains

 

Hidden trickles

Of former existence

Whisper tauntingly

In her dreams

 

Sweet clean waters

Of connection, love and

Meaning elude

Outstretched, grasping hands

Frat House Saturday Night

Ghetto frat house

Realm of droop-drahw’d swagger

Colored boxer briefs cling

Outline gang-banger buttocks

Their curvature and musculature

Now familiar landscape

 

Pre-summer Saturday night

She and suburban Bunkie

Listen in fading twilight

To hustler’s ambivalence

Fear and appeal of the streets

He has forever called home

 

He smokes a blunt

(Finally a visual for the term)

Blows smoke toward them

Sharing his favored relaxer

Outlines his foolhardy

Untenable intentions

 

Short -term return to the game

Hustle up a nest egg

Invest and leave the ‘hood

Carrying with him memorial weight

Of homies gunned down

Right hand man serving his grandma

 

Mixed media portrait

Callous dealer

Endangering young lives

-His, friends and strangers-

Shellacked hard shell over

Frightened lonely little boy

 

Ears and heart open

She holds the stories

Poured out in intoxication

On unforgiving baked concrete

Glimpses she would never have had

But for her stint in the hood

Prison ABC’s

Atmospheric atomized arsenic arcs

Belligerently bombarding “bitches”

Caustic cognitive creations

Demolish decorum and dignity

Effervescent, ecstatic evil

Fomenting frightful fury

Gargantuan gang of gnats

Heroicly hellbent on hopeless hedonism

Ironically isolated in ignorance

Joined in juvenile joyless joviality

Kenetically killing kindness

Laughably labeled “ladies”

Malodorous malevalent mothers

Narcotic nodding nuances

Onerous offensive obstacles

Pretending pervasive penitence

Quicksand of questionable queens

Reign of riotous reprobates

Swaggering smut swilling swarms

Tenacious tentacled tantrums

Undertaking unctious underhandedness

Vicious vying for victimhood

Wanton waspish wallowing

Xeroxed xenophobes

Yearning for yoga, yin-yang

Zeroing in on a zen zenith

Metaphor Salad

The mélange of metaphors

Thrown haphazardly upon the air

Skullcap lifted and spewed out

Spun and twisted

Mixed themselves in a frenzy

Merged in an athematic medley

Tossed, artlessly reassembled

Into a tasty

If incongruous

Word salad