FOUR FEATHERS PRESS ONLINE EDITION: DEAD DAYS Send up to three poems on the subject of or at least mentioning the words dead and/or day, totaling up to 150 lines in length, in the body of an email message or attached in a Word file to donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59 PM PST on November 15th. No PDF's please. Color artwork is also desired. Please send in JPG form. No late submissions accepted. Poets and artists published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Dead Days will be published online and invited to read at the Saturday Afternoon Poetry Zoom meeting on Saturday, November 16th between 3 and 5 pm PST.

Monday, November 11, 2024

Lynn White

Holidays Of the Dead


Genocide Joe

has been strutting

his stuff

getting ready

to deliver 

for Christmas.


Santa came north early

as he usually does

and then with sack laden

he moved to the south

and then back north

for those he missed out

playing toy soldiers 

with real missiles and bombs.


For children alone

and families fleeing terror 

the bombs make a carpet

of what once were homes.

The tanks crush out lives

there’s nowhere to go,

nowhere to hide

for the starved 

and the maimed

even the dead

will remember the days

bringing presents

from Genocide Joe.


Armed to the gums

their neighbours afraid

helpless and hating

and hate breeding hate

and more hate breeds power

for the fear of today is the might of tomorrow.

Some history is made by these Santas of War

and more history is made by new Masters of War

and both the living and dead will judge Genocide Joe.




Last Rites


I’d always loved flowers

and you helped me fill my garden,

brought a plant

each time we met.

It was our little ritual

a recurring theme,

flowers for my garden

to bring me joy all my days.

I would like to lie in that garden

in the mist of the soft sweet smelling mist

of them 

forever.


But we all have our time,

our time to live,

and our time to die

and only your flowers 

will bloom eternally

each in its season, 

in their own little ritual

living on beyond me.


I want no funeral rituals.

When I’m dead I won’t see them on my grave,

won’t know that you’ve brought them for me

won’t know if you haven’t.

The flowers you carry 

in that season should be for you,

you that I left behind.

Don’t let them die

for me.


Nobody wants dead flowers,

least of all, dead people

in their death days.


First published in Pink Lady, Issue 1, April 2024




Apocalypse Now


The bodies are piling up 

again 

as past becomes present

again.

victims and survivors

of another Day of the Dead


united

by innocence,

by grief

by failure,


failure 

to protect,

failure

to police,

the failure

of lawmakers,

the elected 

and electors.


All of them failed. 

All of them opened the boxes

and let the witches fly out,

the evil ones,

not the healing ones


so now we cry out,

we victims 

who survived.


You failed us

failed us

failed us.


All those days 

the dead whispered an echo

that only the deaf could hear.


First published in Oddball, October 27, 2022


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