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| Poem |
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Paradismal by Gregory Harvey
 (2 ratings)
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They stowed aboard a zeppelin to escape living death in Eden.
It connected to a freight train running North-West even.
Beside the tracks they built a camp, it grew into a town
and they named it ‘Paradismal’.
Their leader was a man with leaking rainbows on his cheeks.
He felt at home among the forgotten and the freaks
among the deserted plains the wrong side of paradise,
at home in Paradismal.
Among them was a frill-necked lizard who was just a sheep in mind.
She adorned herself with all the precious stones she’d find.
She was enslaved to the fools while aiming at the sun,
there in Paradismal.
A boy was born in hospital without any skin on his bones.
He took what the lizard shed but lusted for his own.
He kept it in the grains near the narcotic factories,
growing in Paradismal.
A leprechaun hides his gold in each second odd-numbered street.
He smiles and laughs with the children that he meets.
Yet there are people with knives often watching him;
from shadows in Paradismal.
There’s a minotaur at the bar who wears a dead king’s mask.
It obscures the present and the misshapen past.
He sees clear the future in basic shapes and colours,
drinking in Paradismal.
The news reporter walks around with his darling little kid,
the bottom half has feathers, the top part’s a squid.
Sometimes he considers getting the test done,
outside of Paradismal.
A sapphire forged in gold becomes another dusty trophy piece
for a couple whose ambition upon their death will cease.
They stored it in a fire place, broken now forever.
Destroyed in Paradismal.
The butterfly’s in charge of the city’s library’s and mazes.
He hides cocoon’s emitting smokes and hazes.
He’s read all the books, except for the fairy tales,
passing time in Paradismal.
Awed by spectral dust storms dancing on her sleeping eyes,
she shares her white sheets with the enemy who cries,
“A rose petal world in the whispers of thought!”
stunned in Paradismal.
Mother Hen lives on a roof within the sharp day’s light.
She never lets her chicks stay out too long at night.
They pray to Loki for Mother Hen to wait inside,
the church of Paradismal.
A rainbow comes every 3am with no light to guide itself.
So busy with creation it forgot about it’s health.
It is missing a few colours, violet and green,
sick in Paradismal.
The seraphim in the temple has a clear head full of holes.
On Tuesday’s she sleeps naked on a bed of coals.
Discs are spinning in her throat, mapping time
there in Paradismal.
In winter the boy’s robot trudges through sleet, snow and frost
to play no limit hold em’ against Ouroboros.
All in on two deuces, poker face mode on,
games in Paradismal.
The armoured man with guns speaks with the coroner’s lovely wife.
She complains that today she’s already seen him twice.
Once in the ocean and once in the sewers,
history in Paradismal.
And Eden is still just a four dollar train heading South-East
connecting to a zeppelin flown by Gabriel’s beast.
But nobody visits, they lack the will and desire,
content in Paradismal.
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