I, too, have been in the underworld like
Odysseus, and shall be there often yet …
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Tripping into court Morality
cringes silently, bells on the tips of his toes
exaltedly clang his life’s work, as leotard
and tassels splash gangly to Wagner tones.
High beams and grey hooded revelers,
Lohengrin toasted from marble mugs,
filigree nectars beneficently gulped,
it was deemed our accused was a prophet,
allowing the death of Gods,
come to absorb us in non-existence.
Wise men in purple robes suggest a
lusty flogging, reflecting that violence,
commenced with the comedy of pain.
Clenched brittle teeth crack,
synapses shatter and snap,
the gavel gashes hard, again and again,
against the tear-stained judge’s stand.
Pried from this seat of Turin Justice,
the jingler of Christian conscience
curses through rigor, foam, and spit,
condemning his condemner
for striking the poor dumb beast below him.
Craig Kirchner has written poetry all his life, is now retired, and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. The parallel, horizontal, blue lines on white legal, staring left to right, knowing that the ink, when it meets the resistance of the page will feel extroverted, set free, at liberty to jump the two skinny, vertical red lines to get past the margin.
He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Decadent Review, New World Writing, Skinny, Neologism, Wild Violet, Last Stanza, Unbroken, The Globe Review, Your Impossible Voice, Fairfield Scribes, Quail Bell, Cape Magazine, Edge of Humanity, Ink in Thirds, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lit Shark, and has work forthcoming in Chiron Review, Flora Fiction, and Valiant Scribe.