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Friday, March 30, 2012

The Quack's Lament [Today's News Poem by •••/@ten_ten_ten/TJ Edge, March 30, 2012]


The Quack's Lament [Today's News Poem by •••/@ten_ten_ten/TJ Edge, March 30, 2012]
By ••• (TJEdge)(@ten_ten_ten): http://tententen.posterous.com/

in the year of mercury rising
i ate white calomel
and applied salves to syphilis biding
in bodily alleys hid well
as we'd lie to patients sizing
up nostrums to sell

by the coarse cloth of night
we lit pine fat torches
danced hi-diddley-red blue and light
on coal dust-folded porches
stacked in burlap bags of blight
children smearing scorches

the taxman etched lines on my tongue
as into glass i bottled
white mercury powdered with a black lung
from a cracked skin infant who waddled
where mud and meat and flies were hung
and whores were manured and mottled

and in that year of mercury retrograde
we carved in dung and dust
diagrams in the skin of the sun to aid
us in assuming a more fatherly trust
and of many young girls women were made
to satisfy our daughter’d lust

til faces caked with tar and feather
we rode across the briar
horses whipped in blood and lather together
barely escaping the ire
of townspeople writ in cork and leather
with wings of broken fire

we let blood into smoke and chill
and round an empty mine
they strung us up and did their will
packed our bodies in brandy and brine
without even a hole to fill
fated thus, born under a mercuric sign

holding hands with mercury and sun we go
where hell wobbles to and breathes us fro

“Mercury may be hiding water ice, NASA spacecraft finds”
MSNBC, Space.com, 3/27/2012 3:28:39 PM ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46871204/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T3Yvsl1lJF8
“Retired Pharmacist Arrested in Albany Mercury Poisoning Case”
Paul Grondahl, Times Union.com, Updated 01:57 p.m., Friday, March 30, 2012


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1 comment:

Obsidian Eagle said...

A fitting read as we approach the end of our first out three Merc Retro cycles this year.

Had a little trouble with the rhyme scheme at first but once I got into the swing it carried rather well.

BTW - Why no more updates on your Posterous?