Melodic Rose wrote this poem in response to our September Poetry Prompts:
VEHEMENCE
Not By Works Of Law
Would you deviate your hand
from the bowel of this contemptible deceit
that you would squander my flesh
with all the parlance
of a martyr at the cusp of his
unintelligible nature.
That you would stare into the face
of your past
and remember not the lie
Remember not the brazen antiquated
observance of men who cast their hands
over the desolation of a woman’s
bare skin, leaving stretch marked
lines of indifference.
But this is where we have fought
and died.
This is where we raise arms
and lower flags
This is where metallic steel toed tongues
and the lucidity of passionate boots
have made declarations
of manifested belligerence
this is where the trite maleficence
of her eyes will reach out into the universe
beckoning the stars into formation
and this is where her history falls,
a towering deity of opportunity
in the midst of the sea
So that not even time could erase it.
Not even the eclipsed stench of
the whip could leave it’s signature across
her back
As if to say my lady
bares her darkness with no fear
and little shame
and she would write her name on the earth
only her words bleed like the nudity
of one whose body has become impaled
by the eyes of the masses
Paraded before all men
to be crucified on the deck
of a ship.
Her story veering off into the horizon
so that she would lay down to sleep
in the bosom of Abraham
and simply
R e m e m b e r.
dis•articulations 2015 