Black Thursday (Rev. / Rep.) Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

There was a kingdom,
there was a thread
bound by Love;
now it rests
without peace,
its last fiber,
weak, and fragile
hypnotically dangling
to and fro...
tick-tock;
third hand... dreams eye
rapidly moving away,
and, here I lay alone,
under warm sheets,
awaiting the stroke,
with rue and angst,
dyslexic midnight,
by clock or by date,
numerals astern,
twelve or twenty-one,
sequence no matter,
symmetric and fixed
like eyes of the dead,
the blackness encroaching;
now, heart-bloody breathless,
there be no life signs
as the Bishop arrives;

Last Rites, Corpus Christi,
dominus vos biskum;
see the slap happy people
from the great Cast, cheering,
what a circus in the midst
of sparked isolation;
and, peace then finds one,
while misery the other,
such a circus in motion
saw the big tent flailing-
to the late night gusts,
as the spirited carousel
takes it's last lonely lap';
the steeds fall hard
from their pole impaled dance;
like a Capriole caught in flight
stumbling over the fence,
each one, one and all,
bloody wood-cracked to death;
"there be no looking back",
says the Bishop to the Knight;
for the Queen, she shall survive,
the King, now just a Pawn;

time it moves so ever cruelly,
not a moment for lament,
for rue pique or pathos,
still the kingdom bears Life...
just not here, anymore,
as Cause and Consequence
like a caisson...rolls along,
while a Princess breaks ground
to a newfound day's fancy,
a kingdom she deems worth
the saving and the keeping
for whatever fortnights pass
to possess and to behold-
dreams of love, dreams of life,
or could Life be just a dream?
Time is ticking,
day's move fast,
twilight dies in glaced blue ice,
and midnight, the twenty-first,
clearly now, twelve-twenty-one,
encroaches hard and fast,
December's black Thursday,
so dank, disturbingly haunting,
one can only hear the clock's,
maddening final moments,
of a kingdom out of time.

And the silence of Death,
memories cut the dirt,
loves lifeline in time
forever lost, forever dead;

tick-tock, tick-tock,
tick-tock, tick......................



FjR-MMXVIII