Poetry

[C C]

The ruin and emptiness of cognitive decline, and the futile pretense of halting its progression.
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Maintenance Crew (2024 version)

Down a road that's bare of traffic.
Feral district. No demographic.
Cracked pavement sprouting weeds and grass.
Billboards wincing at their vintage past.

Mental spaces. Delusion roams.
Troubled trees groping cobwebbed homes.
Factories burned like twisted cages.
These are dementia's yellowed pages.

Through a town pocked by street art scars.
Sunken-eyed facades; beheaded cars.
Silence still greets our monthly rite.
We're waging on to a better fright.

Relic diner outside the limits.
Desolate farms reached in minutes.
Did Plenitude once bless this land?
A suave shadow surely stole her hand!

There's the spire where judgement started.
Much love lost to the great departed.
Tributes spiral round point zero.
Nameless plaques for each antihero.

What revelations stayed the foe?
Some redacted document might know.
Armed grunts sweep our surreal scene.
Techs upgrade the stout sentry machines.

Requests, directives suffuse hexed air.
Childhood dreams moan deep from their lair.
Above jade hills, light leans its head.
We leave before afternoon has fled.

Later, night's poison slips her levee.
A fat, leering orb sags heavy.
Stoic scarecrows command the field.
Forlorn again, but shall never yield!

--Cece

[C C]

Next month. Finally got it up to 32 lines, usually necessary to fill an animated GIF of 150KB (with images).
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Shipwrecked (2024 version)

Weeks of creaking timbers.
A voyage beyond stark slopes.
Ship's logbook remembers
How foreboding frayed our hopes.

Oaken ribs cracked the dark.
It lurked muted like a snake.
Damning glare from dawn's arc.
I'm aground upon heartache.

There's haven at the caves.
Brittle bones beneath barbed vines.
Biting flies come in waves.
The greedy gulls hatch designs.

Others have known this isle.
A place of loss and mistake.
Just one's self to revile.
I'm still wrecked upon this ache.

Up south's leafy thicket.
Searching for treasure in vain.
Strange fruit, but I'll pick it.
The peril might dull the pain.

Clinging without reasons.
Ragged sails flutter and break.
Ebbing through the seasons.
I'm still wrecked upon this ache.

Stranded down a pale sea.
Farther than the Queen's domain.
Blurred ghosts can't rescue me.
At our ruins I'll remain.

Hollowed by grating winds.
Wobbling in Poseidon's quake.
A toll that never ends.
I'm still wrecked upon this ache.

[C C]

Again, the monotony of this oft-repeated structure is due to such having to conform to the ways of a square-shaped [generous] 150KB animated GIF (or alternatively the more severe 97.7KB and 100x100 pixels at SF).

Actually reduced the size of this one (first drafts were more than the desired 32 lines), rearranged and touched it up a bit to make certain things more vague. (Akin to a pop-song often recruited as background music across different movies/shows and scenes, you don't want to make things so specific and lucid, without metaphor or placeholder status in _X_, that it obstructs a reader in adapting it for their own usage or meaning.)
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The Creeping Trumpet Vine (2024 version)
Cece

This twilight is unpleasant.
Rising for a steeper decline.
Guess you're my next to final present
from the creeping Trumpet Vine.

Grateful you made the journey.
How's life after glancing down?
Whether ledge or on a morgue gurney,
we're pushed by the family clown.

Step out to the veranda.
I'll get my tall cocktail of pills.
We'll listen to wild propaganda:
that earthy breeze through daffodils.

Clouds of starlings have drifted.
Your shadowland seems far behind.
Somehow knew that it had been gifted
by the creeping Trumpet Vine.

You're such a patient figment.
Wings akimbo like a swan.
Imagination lacks commitment
to keep a long-lost seraph gone.

Nine months of tribulation.
Several years that were benign.
Then rain was copped and sunshine taken
for the creeping Trumpet Vine.

Visit more, we'll stay in touch.
You've not aged since breathing was free.
Sorry if I quizzed, inquired too much,
about your ill reality.

Many scapegoats to relive.
So I surely should not malign.
But there's always a symbol to give
to the creeping Trumpet Vine.

[Zinjanthropos]

This won’t be as classy as CC’s latest. It’s in keeping with what I’m tired of hearing about. Had trouble sleeping last nite so conjured up this trailer park rhyme during my being awake, which sort of inspired me for some reason.

Long Day

I’ll be leaving Edo tomorrow
Just so I can get there today
Going to be so much fun
Like the band on the run
Everyone get out of my way

Told the guys to warm up the engines
Make sure all the systems are go
When you own your own jet
Modern day Juliet
Isn’t far from her Romeo

Going to cost plenty of money
But I’ve got a few bucks to spare
I’ll pay to damage the green
Please don’t think it obscene
It’s America’s big love affair

In Vegas to cheer on my man
My lipstick a dazzling red
Can’t help but wonder
What’s the over/under
For television views of my head

Let’s hope that it’s raining confetti
The traditional winning team shower
I won’t be getting much sleep
If the boyfriend goes deep
I hope it won’t take any more than an hour

[C C]

^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Fitting and adroit tribute to the oncoming situation, Zin. I'll probably wind-up having to ask hubby whether they spent a half-hour or more segment about it in the pre-game coverage, since I've usually got better things to do than watch even the usual tedious __.

I really do hope that a combination of her rush to attend the event and the "global mind" focusing on this so intently doesn't result in some horrifying irony like an Amelia Earhart or Hindenburg. Best wishes to Taylor and Travis themselves -- it's actually the media's fault.

[Zinjanthropos]

result in some horrifying irony like an Amelia Earhart or Hindenburg.

I was thinking that too. Be a bigger story than Super Bowl. The hasty feel to this makes me nervous for her.