by Ian Randall Wilson
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| “Death blue butterfly” by mirrurin at Deviant Art |
It's like waking from the dream of an accident
into the accident, real and sure to be bloody,
the day pulling hard from the list of extinct thoughts
suddenly revived after 50 years.
It's easy to be furious with the ones
who read the entrails but ignored
the auguries, secure in their belief
the drum would not beat this day,
forest sending smoke rings back in time,
and yet I find I am furious with myself,
feeling at fault that somehow we let them—
I let them—turn the wheel
so the earth-mind must shift
toward thinking again
about bent wires and blood.
Except those endowed enough
to survive the ruins
and make it to the coasts
on damaged wings, the back alleys
will open for business
and the blue butterflies
will once again
die there. How can it be
that the permanent road
now leads elsewhere?
Oh, the six are resplendent
in their black robes pretending
the sunset is not bleak.
They hold up their hands
which they claim are not stained,
the rest of us stand covered in ash.
When they entered the pit, they told us
the air was settled, vowed all was settled.
How good of them, how good
for them in their bribed cabins,
their false and active gods arranged,
watering the Chrysanthemum.
Ian Randall Wilson has poems published in many journals including Puerto del Sol and Alaska Quarterly Review. His first full-length collection is entitled Ruthless Heaven. He has an MFA in poetry and in fiction from Warren Wilson College. By day, he is an executive at Sony Pictures.