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Laudanum Tinctures

by Channie Greenberg


That observable, illuminated potion of codeine, also morphine,
Eases ecchymoses as well as pain from other kinds of bleeding.
Inversely, fervid restorations can’t counteract horrid prolepses,
Regardless of iterative nature or time spent in transhumance.

Plague victims, whether microbially stricken or of broken hearts,
Seem to pule until the very querulous sounds they emit become
Sublunary, that is, until losing all reference to improved spheres,
All attachment to aeonic worlds, to former, noble bits of life.

To wit, from my window, I watched authorities take a woman away
She had already ceased to clobber, having otherwise made her home
Disorderly. No one would admit that bedizened beauties, regularly
Sought proximity to that crone’s medicines or wanted her wisdoms.

The lady’s universe spun without batteries; no electrical device ran.
Rather, the heavens’ selfsame reprobate agents created her energy,
Helped swirl her tops, rotate her planets, gyrate her odd sepulchral
Entities over many broad chiliads, around many speckled systems.

Galactic travel’s an imprecation. Simply, space farers die rapider
Than tortoises hunted, rapaciously, for soup or accessories’ parts.
Even when drugged, star sailors tend to revisit family no matter
How rugose their viscera become, how despondent their darlings.

Human stoma can open involuntarily, letting out horrid, chthonic
Seepage, dark or otherwise evil minxes, indications of pestilence,
Make innocents leave behind baldrics, despite youngins’ needs.
Similarly, pores dry up orgone, cull miseries among sufferers.

Precocity, especially in desultory, displaced aliens, occasions
Weird alembics, automated rot, machine-driven tosh, deliria.
As threnodies resonate in dreary halls, pilfered stellar palfreys
Flee, allow stridor to echo off chamber walls, flesh to fall away.


Copyright © 2016 by Channie Greenberg

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