Beheading smacks

I.
The last of rays is on his deathbed,
a slab of fired clay. He grasps a move
with shady lungs to breathe in vespers.
When drapes are down, find forty winks, a trove.
Not in the well-locked doors, in God we trust.

Your yesterday choked throats with spirits.
To dry, it wanders in the palate sky.
Reached bottle-bottomed height? Just seal it!
In bays of truth Death bathes eventides
where darkness hardens, wears the moonlight crust.

II.
A naked square, dressed in the rabble,
is hungry for the drum-roll wafted sign.
The law and order judges scrabbled
for every eye on chopped-with-ax could dine,
track bumps of rolling head, and size a fluke.

The corpse with soul in heels still staggers,
weaves nothing but the cradled shade in steps.
Profanity is cast in saggers,
space-eating shouters, who wall echoes’ depth.
Humiliation fades in fumed rebuke.

III.
Beheading falls on headsman shoulders.
He rolls his sleeves up; fingers on the edge.
Before the strike, brief calmness smolders
for hands will lift the thin end of the wedge
to kill rehearsals of mob reproofs.

When timeless phoenix, fined to ashes,
revived in pain to browse genera trees,
heaves into sight where death rehashes,
all dead-to-be in mindless shivaree
meet their guard with wings and brute on hooves.

IV.
Throng-deep seclusion hangs, the armor,
while bridled lips prompt eyes to live a lie.
When under-bladed world gets warmer,
the moment calls for love that never dies,
slakes flames of hell, and cries in nailed knells.

Iconoclastic hands are gory.
You held the right on holy words and swore
with passion and contagious roaring
to be precise in your chop-headed chore
while Heaven offers its roof... and quells.

V.
Thoughts pumped through veins. Lungs fell right after
the loss of airflow followed by a blow,
the cuff on melting crowd and drafter
of, bogged in gapping and the afterglow,
cerise and tepid, demise archive.

It’s hard to see soul scars when heart beats
and even harder to remain in dreams,
glaze skies with pupils, at the white heat
defeat all fears and release some steam.
The moment squeezes love out of life.

VI.
News burns on tongues, gives smoke to rumors
to make adjustments when fresh blood cools down.
A headless trunk with gallows humor
hangs rules on order and leaves the town.
Main belfry spits out unnerving bells.

The hums lose echoes to grip walls tightly,
to cool in sweat and cupolas of throats.
They dress up face in bleakness straightly
to tune up larynx and suppress old gloats.
Thoughts, locked in circles, stick to their cells.

June 15, 2011