PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

by Jeph Johnson

usually at burials
a butterfly will drift by
she's docile, soft and slight
fragile, with delicate eyes
and yet somehow killed
this powerful man
formerly full of life-
previously full of might

slain by disbelief
perhaps misunderstanding
who I was

or prophesying
too well who I'd become

beyond this grave
of perpetual funerals
there's no mourning the life that's gone
for survival it's now become

no wonderment or magic
mystic, God or Christ
just memories of my reflection
holding onto her so tight
and that God-damned smile

of innocence 
reflecting back
that I had discovered
on my own

hopes, dreams and prayers
were saved and invested
but became bankrupt
in this depression.

black Monday
all weak.

understand happiness
from the past
haunts the present
like a wraith.
resembling an apparition
with skin cast aside
from a serpentine nightmare
a cocoon horror show

this man
a box.

she was
angelic companionship

as the butterfly
she fluttered
and was lost forever
in the breeze.

she only flew with me
during my
season of contentment,
a season of comet frequency
her tail pointed elsewhere,
unaffected by the wind.

she cannot return
to where she belongs-
I cannot return
to where I began

her sugar-sweet
symphony song
is conducted with
macabre orchestration

she shines on
the backside of my skull
like an 8 mm
foreign
black and white
stag film
from the late sixties.

scratches her nails made
have healed
but the scars are
numb and intense
like masturbation
with a five

year

old...

picture

of her.

-

think tire tracks in fallen snow
deadly, dirty, thirty below
by attaching herself to him

reverse metamorphosis
monarch to cocoon
chrysalis to worm with legs.

in my mind her nylons tear
and right about now
the worm reaches my brain.

the coffin lowers
my eulogy is read:

"she is living,
he is dead"