DARK SHORT POEMS

Here are some poems I wrote some years ago, and more recently. They are a much shorter read than my short stories! Tom.

SHELL CASING

I'm just a shell casing
            discarded,
by a .44 magnum
            word.

Alive, dead, confused
            that's me,
richocheting wildly,
            full stop.

Empty casing full of
            need,
too hot to hold
            a soul.

Word evaporates
            mistily,
momentum imitates
            life.

Never knew love,
            a word
of unknown
            caliber.

--by T. Jackson King, 2008


DEAD CARS

Dead cars litter parts of the Mojave,

their silvery mirrors turning with you

even as you look away.

Hot, dry and suffocating

close by those steel bones.

Sometimes it seems like they could awaken

and make it to Needles

for a beer and a pizza,

a dip in the Colorado.

Won't happen.

Carcasses stay dead

in the Mojave.

I know.

Been sittin' in my '57 DeSoto

nigh onto thirty years now.

No gas.

--by T. Jackson King, Epitaph: Tales of Dark Fantasy & Horror, No. 2, 1997


IN TRIBUTE TO NAPALM

From the sky once so friendly

your flames descend so randomly.

Bright with ember smile eternal

you belie thy source infernal.

No favorites do you play--

young and old, mother and child--all pay

The terrible price of almond eyes

and life lived without lies.


How tight the furrowed flesh

where once the liquid fire did eat

Its frenzied route through frame so fresh

with promise born of love's white heat.

Now all that's left of life divine

are scars and bones hardly so fine.

But then, 'tis no great loss nor blight

to one who died learning freedom is white.

--by T. Jackson King, in Shinjuku Sutra, 1978


THE PRINEVILLE NINE

Fire runs too fast

for simple bodies to escape

its thirst for flesh cooked black and crinkly.

But men and women who fight fire

soon tire, and lie down to rest at last,

their lungs steamed like clams,

their eyes hard-boiled,

their lips to kiss no more.


They put up a fight, those Prineville Nine,

full of fright but still they fought and ran,

fought and ran

uphill to the ridgeline

bare and black and oh so lonely.

Hot Shots they were called.

Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lovers

and others dear, called them flesh so near.


Words won't bring them back to life

nor offer up much of an epitah

worthy, for flesh cooked raw and black

by fire so red all fled

its angry embrace. All but

the Prineville Nine.

Some buddies survived that Colorado fire.

So still they live in memory golden,

the Prineville Nine.


Let not their sacrifice be undone

in picnic careless, in camping unmindful,

or by arrogance prideful.

Black baked corpses

are never a joke.

Except when people far away from fire

forget the Prineville Nine.

--by T. Jackson King, 1992


Copyright retained by T. Jackson King 2009