Arthritic Paranoia by Ric Vrana from the chapbook "Brain Screams"

Arthritic Paranoia


Angled sun late morning
through chalice windows.
Quiet house alone.
I'm offering up a sacrifice of pain
for the indulgence of a demanding god.
This would have been my mother's advice
once when arthritis
was only a word on an aspirin bottle.

The body feels itself.  My hand 
over the coffee, interrupts
warm vapor rising
like a fragrant spirit.
Behind me the rigid cold.
Outside is the dripping, glistening world
where death is everywhere
and short life indifferently snuffed.

I'll shake the stiffness soon,
and return to my wooden work,
chastised for now, but 
how long does this go on and 
does it progress toward some end,
preparing my lonely soul for a purgatory
when one day my step
does not clear the predator's jump?

http://ricpoems.blogspot.com/

overstunned by the raygun (ekphrastic poem inspired by The Stunning Rayguns live @ the Firkin Tavern)

they arrived with a peace you had to sign for
first sashay before their breast-stitched felt thunder
ravenous bells rung by deafened priests
refreshed the unbridled scream gallops past
the punk-plunked & plug ugly
this remastered sagittarian trance
arrow pointed at plaid curves
furry crane secured the smallness
between rib & hip bone,
cat summons served to the bun-tied
princess flushed in the dank dark
descent signals overswell
in grammatically incorrect waves
parched seafoam outshrills the whale
song tincture, shrills out
the bloodworm's ejulation
to sow seed over seed
on the other side of leaf
overtumbled, overwet
the overking of the overcloud
bled from blossom throne
to blossom bed, overwashed into
this overrented bumbledom
burnbeaten screeve man, mistaken
for homeless, knabbles the fairy ring
on the side that burns, preaching
protein's bad news in a plasma gown,
overswelled with overawe,
greasy dancers shimmy in the skull
hollow of my ale strangled drug stare,
plinked rays stipulate speed
unfastened her locomotive hair
fled our monument's stumble
up the smoke ramp, corroded wafers
buckle above the slumped,
retrieving fossilized jaws,
overblown on the gull conch
bloodshot before the bared bling
of their wailful eyes plucked
on the tavern's front fuckin' step,
where waiting wept
for departure's wallop
to defer the dirty
scrape of their simian jangle,
waltzing in the place where
they last made sense, receiptless
and unapproved by managers
strangled inside a neon hood
screens flicker with the spectacle of
a corrupted contest, buried in bicker,
so fearless in their boneyard, where
the bread is brick & stacked chimney high
screech tone composed by candlelight
seethes in metallic adoration

http://www.stunningrayguns.com/