Silent screaming

Monday morning, after a weekend of carnage, the retired men with white vans, too much time on their hands and too little imagination and sensitivity are still blazing away at inoffensive creatures that are infinitely more useful and beautiful than they are.

For the OctPoWriMo prompt.

knots tighten

taut

twanging like bowstring

the report of a gun

not placid

as the eyes embedded in wood

fiercely blind

clench-fisted against the ungraspable.

Knots bind

hands flail

unbound but helpless

in the face of flying bullets

and the brutish blackness

beneath the skull

of the hidden hunter.

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Cat stalks the night roof

The Daily Post prompt is: Elegant

The elegance of the cat, stalking across the night roof,

Pads making no sound on the sprawling vines,

Is one with the silence I reach out to and never catch.

Between open fingers it seeps and sifts,

Clanging on the hollow ground like iron saucepans.

Flowers nod in sleep, and the blackbird stirs,

Feathers ruffled against the cat scent,

And the city hums and throbs with an irritated rhythm.

Cat pauses to listen between the red-hot threads of noise

And hears the bird heart pulsing.

But I slip and slide between planes of babble,

Falling into a boiling pit of sound thick as tar.

Is there no silence in this world of compressed humanity?

Elegance of the poised paw, the spread wing,

Parabolas of beauty, slicing the stillness.

While I struggle with the viscous blaring and glare of the crass and the futile,

Cat melts into the night.