~ Yellow Doomsday Dresses ~
Crows don't rile the pigeons,
it's raptors who raise their ire
along rain-splattered avenues
littered with busted lives
hung-up on the poppy-dope
that has them wan and cornered.
Church bells don't rattle heathens
where Jehovah Watchtowers fade on bus stop benches.
Yard-sale signs tacked to power poles point the way
to second-hand exercise machines and National Geographic
magazines. Wanda's corner is cold and sexless
now that the law has bumped her down to Tacoma.
We're both victims of yesterday's token sweep.
A folly of sirens suddenly strikes
the emerald state
as concrete hips and steel bones
crack under blistered clouds. Blasted panes
shred pedestrians while those at home
vaporize behind irrelevant doors.
The nuclear twisters have missed
these yellow dresses, my gentle neighbors.
Let's put them on and muse among
the stubborn dandelions,
behold the common sparrows of the weed
as creatures marvelous and rare.
Yes, we're done for, folks.
It's our last chance to really laugh,
sing, and dance
in these yolk-yellow dresses,
as we suffer feathered downpours
of dead and dying birds.
i think of Ann C Free who
i think of Ann C Free who wrote of Ft Campbell Kentucky
where the army, upset with tens of thousands of blackbirds,
sprayed them in winter with chemical co. detergents which
cause their body heat as they froze to death to rise visibly
as their souls prepared to also