Skip to main content

The Game of Post-Apocalypse

 Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #220. Come & share a tale!


Pick up the haunted book, open the cover. 
You've been watching the glass for years
Surely the specters deserve a voice. 

Where have all the people gone?
They are still walking the spectrum
Watching for the Between store.

Where else would you buy the sheets?
Not that they wear sheets--just light
Spun with dust drifting silk.

Practical, are sheets. Familiar chores.
That's not why you walk reflections
Listening for subtle coughs.

So many layers to the dim, flat world
Now that sunlight shatters among
Walkers and discount shadows.

Learning to see the art of desecration
Won't confine it to the deadly book.


I worry too many think it's possible to win the apocalypse. 

-- Chrissa

Comments

  1. Sherry Blue SkyJuly 23, 2022 at 10:13 AM

    I worry about the same thing, Chrissa. Major denial going on everywhere. Your poem is haunting - so many great lines - I especially love "So many layers to the dim, flat world
    Now that sunlight shatters among Walkers and discount shadows."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carrie Van HornJuly 23, 2022 at 10:32 AM

    What you have done here is brilliant Chrissa! I love the questions and the learning to see the art of desecration. Like Sherry said it is haunting and that is what gives it such a presence and power. I had a feeling this was the image you would choose. I was thinking of you when I chose it my friend!

    ReplyDelete
  3. robkistnerJuly 23, 2022 at 12:28 PM

    This has impact Chrissa, and hits at the center of today’s issues — excellent write. ✌🏼🫶🏼

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gillena CoxJuly 24, 2022 at 8:35 AM

    "Practical, are sheets. Familiar chores.
    That's not why you walk reflections
    Listening for subtle coughs."

    My favourite verse Chrissa.
    Have a lovely Sunday. Thanks for dropping by my blog.

    Much💚love

    ReplyDelete
  5. Keith's RamblingsJuly 24, 2022 at 9:07 AM

    Each verse is a complete poem of its own. A poignant piece indeed Chrissa..

    ReplyDelete
  6. Marion HortonJuly 24, 2022 at 9:50 AM

    We carry on as normal don't we? Great poem. Particularly love the lines in your penultimate stanza.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Susie ClevengerJuly 24, 2022 at 1:57 PM

    You have a great voice for the image! Love this "Practical, are sheets. Familiar chores.
    That's not why you walk reflections Listening for subtle coughs."

    ReplyDelete
  8. FireblossomJuly 24, 2022 at 2:15 PM

    I insist that they do wear sheets. It's a requirement. :-P

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in...
15 comments
Read more

The Soul and The Spine

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #195 . Come and share! When it blew out the candle, It began to speak, voice low,  eyes dimmer than flame. Jenn believed, once upon a childhood (she's still there... but it's waning), it inhaled fire. Spines, tonight. Gears ladder bones and metal and plastic, all that lived, rungs to heaven. Heaven is a level of space where you can't breathe  so they used to send the dead. When the flame goes, it takes our memories with it. But not bot files. Maybe it believes  she'll sleep easier if bots go breathless, too. It continues murmuring and she pretends she's hearing a confession in a box Like the song her mother plays when the dark stretches  between signals We can handle shocks. She can handle the dark, the small  not-flame of its eyes. It's finally winter!! Which means bitmapped frost on the roofs, cold mornings, and a table full of succulents that are pretty much glaring at me because the kitchen window isn't the same as full su...
14 comments
Read more

A Single (Terrible) Poem

 I did not buy the poetry book whose sample Was page after page of essay and praise. I'm not following the trumpets. Today I follow the ringers-- Huzzah and call out the streets! Lift your arm, swing the bell; Call out the quiet, call out the neat Call out the loud, call out the bold Call out the wrong, call out the wise We remember the bells We shiver the skies.    This isn't about...anything. It's not about nothing. It should go without saying that a poem shouldn't need an essay or a textbook to be what it is. And I'm not sure why, with a stack of poetry at hand to be read, one silly Kindle sample (and writer's block and anxiety and...) would push my buttons so badly. But seriously. Where is my parody book full of fake blurbs that runs for 50 pages and ends with a single (terrible) poem?  -- Chrissa
11 comments
Read more