Fragments (Fingers Poem)

By Emily Grochowski

Fragmented are fingers

But fragmented I linger,

As memories disintegrate to dust and all hath withered away,

Ought this mind have been purgatoried since my doom of bubonic plague

Yet I am immune; envision phantom fingers through a hand quite maimed:

Mimicking

A deconstructed pentagram, each line a Luciferian prong,

Mimicking matrix columns, schizophrenic numbers throwing you in the wrong,

Mimicking limbs from mandrake roots, pests of gallows taunting all accursed,

Fingers mimicking matches ignited, behold the flame of meaning in reverse,

Mimicking

Stretched out cryonic jellyfish transmuted in postmortem stance,

Mimicking symphonies of nooses to become enwrapped in stifled trance,

Mimicking parasitic worms, pestilential feasts looming upon decay,

Fingers mimicking vines intertwined with a paramour’s mind led oddly astray,

Mimicking

Black-hole piano keys in inverted fifths of a Mephisto waltz,

Mimicking clinical syringes sewn in to nullify each “madman’s” faults,

Mimicking trite specimens embryonic, as pixies immortal in chrysalis,

Fingers mimicking hair follicles of Nietzsche’s mustache upon the abyss,

Mimicking

Sticks of fiddles of Liszt rearranged in all backwardness undull,

Mimicking arrows in analog chime clocks that ebb your life expectancy to null,

Mimicking tendrils of poison hemlock orcs fatal in parallel dimensions,

Fingers mimicking shadows of vapor to alter perceptions in dark intention,

Mimicking

Hallucinations of quills from melodic nests, feathered-foe madness,

Mimicking candles on which crows falter, blackened vacuums upon ether’s canvas,

Mimicking laurels with undazed stems, its photosynthesis is my misfortune,

Fingers mimicking rooks, bishops, and pawns, in anthropomorphic chess-life abortion,

Mimicking

Blood vipers, strands of Medusa, menacing spawns of Basilisk,

Mimicking scrolls with incantations of banshees desperately howling to exist,

Mimicking fragments of large intestines, nadirs of Dahmer’s bliss infernal,

Fingers mimicking towers, Quasimodo’s cathedral, bells tolled in suffering eternal,

Fingers progress to capsules of nepenthe,

All is consumed in prong-like labyrinth of empty,

And feasted on nondescript ashes of poetry forgotten,

This plague committed thievery upon my fingers rotten,

Thus I haven’t an interest in that which lingers,

These verses are my palms, these lines are my fingers,

These lines – a leper’s neglected prose already forgotten,

These unfinished sentences of a soul yet unbegotten