Bloodletting
Bloodletting as blood sport.
Liquid red geyser lust turning eye-whites a shade of crimson
unwitnessed since Pangea removed her stitches, gushing commences,
her life force filling rivers, deltas, tidal basins,
dousing the ocean until blue-green shifts purple, a fresh bruise,
slickening, quickening the pace of evolution qua devolution.
Bloodletting as bafflement.
A vicious, over-determined cleansing vanquishes all debris,
leaving vast fields sterile, mouths wheatless and gaping for new songs,
plangent voices begging for redemption across a soundless void
incapacitated by sorry stillness —
only the echoes linger on, bloodless.
Bloodletting as bacchanalia.
Fur, feathers, skin immersed in a heady broth, orifices drenched in screeds,
a twisting tangle of limbs and tongues, prefiguring Bruegel and Bosch
and the litany of apocalypses to come,
drunk on ignorant suppositions, blood blind, incapable of
bearing witness to the dear chaos descending, breaking like blood waves.
Amy L. Bernstein likes dark. Inspired by J.D. Harms Saturday poetry prompt, “dear chaos.”
