Poetry is...

Just a pleasant little ditty I wrote years ago. Actually, a character in the novel I wrote, wrote this. Having just rediscovered it and liking it quite a bit, I thought I'd put it out there. And remember, as Eddie Izzard says, poetry is like a song, only with more words and no music.

Reckoning of the Dying
Lips long gone from red to gray,
Skin far gone to clear
Ashen faces, once a-bright
Ponder endings near

The end was many chapters past,
Dénouement wears thin
Afterwords have all been writ
Silence quashes din.

To wit: to point, to make, to build,
Infinitives asunder.
Gauntly stares beyond the veil
Drain merriment and wonder.

The situation sedimented.
Complacency is testamented
No want, no need, no spark, except
The drive to stay impedimented.

Breath and time do worsen thirst,
Do desiccate the succulent.
No cries for moisture issued forth,
Accepting, never truculent.

Oblivion to be assured,
A short step off the ledges.
The mortal coil so inured
Has weathered off the edges.

Absolutes are not off-limit,
Divinities not thanked,
But blamed instead for lack of mettle,
Sullying the sacrosanct.

Absentee Father not in heaven.
Neglectful Mother gone away.
They soiled the nest they never built.
There’s no one left to pay

For sins against the supplicants
For contradicting their creation,
The charges all come down to one:
Gross disapprobation.

The Natural Order was suborned
To serve the Egos Mythic.
They sent to hell who did refuse,
Made sycophants prolific.

Pleased with their Bifurcated All,
The Good, the Bad: there are no others.
Unthinking Good ignore the Bad:
That which comforts also smothers.

The Godly Goal? Ubiquity.
Curse the thoughtful with iniquity
And trivialize what doesn’t fit
as Parlor Magic or antiquity.