KS Culbreth

My April Love

The cult is burning, two dozen
daisies and their parents dried
and pressed between the pages
of a family Bible, the loving
leader, perhaps twisted,
pathetic, ashes.
Right or wrong, seventy-something
dead.

Hurry, Armageddon, hurry
my April love.

The threat of early sleep as
the breeze warmer and warmer
blows through the quiet house,
the threat that I may miss, may
sleep through the warming of the
breeze; alone again, and then
the violin quivers like
the fiery tulips below the window.
Alone again and thoughts of you
which are forbidden,
prettier than spring.

Hurry, Armageddon,
hurry
my April love.

The city is not rioting, for
two will hang of four; two
perhaps guilty, perhaps not.
Two will hang but not for
the fifty-something killed
in the melee last year, killed
because a stranger was beaten;
two will hang for the beaten,
not the killed.
The city is not rioting
for two will hang of four;
besides, they’re predicting
rain on the west coast.

Hurry, Armageddon,
hurry my April love.

The melilot has sprouted a
bed for the dandelions in the
small patch of front yard.
The train bulls by as I
spiccato lighter than
the hummingbirds above
the coralbells, for whom
I play. Somewhere in that
nature is this impulse
between us. Somewhere
between nature and the
world that impulse is
covered as with
the hangman’s hood.

Hurry, Armageddon,

hurry my April love.

They have been ethnically
cleansed, shot on the square
and in basements, mountains
of bodies bulldozed under,
tortured, dismembered,
forgotten, and I have no
idea what each side stands
for.

Hurry, Armageddon;

hurry my April love.

The English Channel is being
hollowed after fifty-million
years. The ferry just isn’t
fast enough anymore, so a
tunnel is being bored
between Dover and Calais.
The entire world is being
bound together but not
by harmony. A thin
copper wire knows
all the works of every
theory of divinity,
a pulse of light
everything there is
to know about each
of us.

Hurry, Armageddon.

Hurry my April love.

I am alone because
she is away on business
again. I shouldn’t
complain; it’s not her
fault. But I am filled
so with poetry, nature,
life, and love. This
hyacinth blooms beneath
the heavy hedge, is rattled
by the thundering train.

Hurry, Armageddon.

Hurry, my April love, hurry.

They are satiating themselves
to death, feel they own and
deserve, yet have no idea how
they received, this earth.

Hurry, Armageddon.

Hurry, my April love,
if you are to come
to me at all, if this
month is to be shared,
if I am to play the old
refrain that is April,
watered with tears
of mellifluent nectar, a
melancholy whose
familiarity cheers, the old
refrain we have always
played together, the old
refrain we will find
one day has changed –
hurry, for I fear that
the time has trampled
upon us. Am I a fool
to believe that you
and I can slow
those thundering,
trundling wheels?