Whispering the Abyss
a spider spinning gossamer armaments
Your supercilious scorn transcends sentience
Letters scowling one by one until they become sentences
Seeking targets that you can’t see spuriously
Software will not save this space that you seek
To hold furiously
They say your words, like swords, can twist within
But when salaciously slung, start to lose sincerity
As blind as the space and time they sail electronically
Through to grasp purchase, despite silence
Clawing lens over limb
I find sanctity in these broken sticks and softened stones
Worn smooth by spite shaped in sartorial transparence
Once fathomless, your depths betray your desolation
Persistent petulance is a snare that snags rather than slices
Seized by the need to hang on
About the Creator
April Grist Rhodes
April Grist is a silversmith, music lover and cat connoisseur, returning to writing after a long hiatus. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with her husband and three traveling felines.
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More stories from April Grist Rhodes and writers in Poets and other communities.
Satellite Savior
It was a week before what would have been my grandfather’s eightieth birthday, and he was finally up at the pulpit. A somber delegation of a few hundred people occupied the pews in front of him. His entire family sat in a special section off to the side with pages open to verse in our laps. The ceremony would have run its course seamlessly had we not created the spectacle of howling like a pack of irreverent dimwits before Pa was even in the ground. Bemused mourners looked from their hands to my grandfather’s corpse to the television screen behind the casket, indecisive as to where their gazes belonged. Certainly not on us. Tears collected in the creases of four generations of crow’s feet and dripped onto our fingers as we unsuccessfully tried to use them to mask our smiles. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 was lost in an indistinguishable chorus of sniffles, giggles and gasps. The time to weep and the time to laugh had collided in a post-mortem flux, characteristically commemorating the life of Cecil Burl Grist.
By April Grist Rhodes2 years ago in Families
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Published on the 18th of May, 1953, ‘Go Tell it on the Mountain’ became the book that James Baldwin is probably most famous for. Including the very real impacts of violence upon the African American community during a time of turbulence for Civil Rights, James Baldwin became an absolute superstar not just of his race, but of the oppressed in every situation, in every country, all over the world. From Palestine to the Civil Rights Movement, from the LGBTQA+ to Muslim Migrants from war-torn countries, James Baldwin is the voice of the oppressed not just through the way he presents the division, but the way he presents a reality that the oppressors could not possibly be aware of. A reality in which every day is a fight to survive. What makes this even more real is that this is a semi-autobiographical novel. In my personal opinion, James Baldwin was the most articulate man in history.
By Annie Kapur3 days ago in Geeks
Comments (2)
Oooo, this is a very creative take on the challenge! Loved your poem!
The second last line - wow!