Burnt Cross

[Makai]

I'm not quite White,
spoony fairy-tale secrets...
archaically encrypted in,
hushed Ivory discretion.

Tar brush, dipped in honey pot~
painted our temporal arbor,
with Gadarene Cherokee~
not olive branches.

My unconditional man,
his lush African mouth;
milk-chocolate sheathing,
and Seminole-everglade vision...
counts coup on foolish wisdom~

Black Brothers disquieted, fretted,
“Man, better stick with your own kind."

Aryan Brotherhood's
burnt-cross hackle points, warned,
“You better, stick with your own kind!"

Think he listened?
Myriad choices, moving mountains,
the only boxes he ever checked...

Those diminution labels,
are fully packed with rabid dog's
leavings, on groomed verdant lawns.

[~Sophia~]

I'm not quite White,
spoony fairy-tale secrets...
archaically encrypted in,
hushed Ivory discretion.

Tar brush, dipped in honey pot~
painted our temporal arbor,
with Gadarene Cherokee~
not olive branches.

My unconditional man,
his lush African mouth;
milk-chocolate sheathing,
and Seminole-everglade vision...
counts coup on foolish wisdom~

Black Brothers disquieted, fretted,
“Man, better stick with your own kind."

Aryan Brotherhood's
burnt-cross hackle points, warned,
“You better, stick with your own kind!"

Think he listened?
Myriad choices, moving mountains,
the only boxes he ever checked...

Those diminution labels,
are fully packed with rabid dog's
leavings, on groomed verdant lawns.

Hi Maki, this is a fascinating poem. I had to look up Gadarene but only found a reference to a demon which would I think change some of the meaning? Love the second and third stanzas to bits. If this is auto-biographical I hope the discrimination you refer to is in the distant past!:(

[PrinceMyshkin]

I'm not quite White,
spoony fairy-tale secrets...
archaically encrypted in,
hushed Ivory discretion.

Tar brush, dipped in honey pot~
painted our temporal arbor,
with Gadarene Cherokee~
not olive branches.

My unconditional man,
his lush African mouth;
milk-chocolate sheathing,
and Seminole-everglade vision...
counts coup on foolish wisdom~

Black Brothers disquieted, fretted,
“Man, better stick with your own kind."

Aryan Brotherhood's
burnt-cross hackle points, warned,
“You better, stick with your own kind!"

Think he listened?
Myriad choices, moving mountains,
the only boxes he ever checked...

Those diminution labels,
are fully packed with rabid dog's
leavings, on groomed verdant lawns.

You really dug deep for this one and came up with metaphors as solid as things from the under-earth! Everything up to that final stanza was so vigorous and powerful that I couldn't have predicted how you would end it - but you did, with a magnificent flourish of contempt! Those "groomed verdant lawns" fill me with a bit of dread, as if they might have the power to continue in their smug, self-satisfied way. This is something like the horrifying last lines of Yeats' "The Second Coming".

Bravo! Brav-effing-o!

[Lokasenna]

I don't understand it, but in much the same way I don't understand T. S. Eliot's poetry. And believe me, that's a good thing. It's mystery makes it all the more compelling.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I don't understand it, but in much the same way I don't understand T. S. Eliot's poetry. And believe me, that's a good thing. It's mystery makes it all the more compelling.

Eliot himself once explained the way he read poetry: Encountering a new poem, he would read it through once without trying to decipher it but trusted that a hint, an intuition of what it was about, would come through to him, and with that intuiton in mind he would read it through a second time, more slowly.

But sometimes I for one never get the entire explicit meaning of a poem but revel in the texture of it or the music or the strangeness.