Angels Weep to the Changing of the Gargoyles What better shape shifter than this fallen angel, so beautiful as to make the heart stop and the eyes to question?- With a kingdom all his own and his angels in liveries of golden feathers; their mission to assure disharmony and disorder for time immortal. The Day of the Last Judgment held no mysteries for them. They would remain forever loyal. He was eager in his visits to the middle ground in search of still more souls to goad his former Master. He was the personification of perfect evil, the most marvelous manifestation made by the Creator for purposes his own. Time will tell the reason for it all and the necessity of Hell. The serfs who stared into the nooks and crannies would notice the shifting gargoyle in the shadows and marvel at still more mysteries to feed their supposed, silly, superstitions. Who but their own would believe them anyway? If they told, the form would only shift back by the time of their showing. The monks were as to good angels and not to be bothered by fool’s stories of changing, shifting gargoyles. They were surely safe anyway, were they not? No, the Prince of Darkness would have marked his selection and laid his temptations down for them by then; and moving on, shape shifting into another gargoyle, always with the gullet open and the beautiful eyes following. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell	Now I Understand! Oh Vincent, now I understand! I’d forgotten so much about London but not those sad sunflowers. Those around me ‘oo’d’ and ‘ah’d’ but I just thought Oh, I see. You understood the power in cutting; a slow demise, a wilting in the sun stretched by smelly water- or was there water in the vase?. I think not. The courage of your weapon wounding with thick bold remarks. Did they think the impasto from tubes? One shot only led out a barrel. What an expense is pain! Why must some think beauty must be pretty? Who sees any prettiness in the swirls of those starry, blue skies? “The sadness will last forever”.
The Jacket with the Missing Button The body is not easily identified: a young, black girl around aged twelve; cause of death, unknown, but probably exposure, it being so bitterly cold these last few days; no signs of trauma or violence; neither poorly nor expensively dressed; no means of identity on her; and no explanation as to why her body is found hanging by that convenient hang-loop on the back of her military-like jacket from the chain link fence hugging Rte.1. A Sunny Surplus, sleeveless, military-like jacket, of an olive green, it is neither badly soiled or entirely clean; more in-between- used and worn for some little while; the jacket has many pockets, all of them oddly empty. The pockets of her jeans are empty as well as are her shirt pockets. The shirt, a plain blue, compliments the barely fading jeans. The treads of her tennis shoes betray no unusual wear, and her socks are all white except for gray bands at the tops. This sorely, inadequate jacket for such raw temperatures neither looks recently purchased or bespeaking old. The article of clothing has no tears or stains. It is not exactly in and not exactly out of style. All the buttons are still securely sewn on, save this one. "Look! It appears ripped or rudely torn off!" This unexpected incongruity in the face of so much unembellished and austere impersonality, breathes new life of its own into this forlorn cloth clothing its sad, abandoned, and dead owner. This jacket with the missing button suddenly contrasts with the melancholy anonymity of the child. The county sheriff, the coroner and her assistants, even the lone reporter, flash in hand, live tape reserved for stories of importance-- all seem more subdued than usual as if a dreary and heavy mist has descended upon the taped off area where someone has taken her down from that crisscross of metal by the simple act of lifting her up, off, and down onto a clean, black tarp from the dew dropped fence at what is fast becoming dawn. That olive jacket with its missing button is for now disarmingly distracting and of immensely more interest than the disturbingly empty riddle of a young, dead, black girl. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell	Her Devoted Bowfront For so long she has entrusted me with Scribbled secrets and rhyming recipes- Now at death she has no more right to these Than the felled, pine tree that gave form to me. I’ve been robbed of pigeon carry Scooped from the top three- I’ll be damned if I’ll surrender Her pensive, scripts, ribbon wrapped in the bottom! Tug and pull as hard as her will- The heat waves of mischief o’er me. Swell my final bastion’s walls- I’ll wait out this designee’s impulsivity! How I’ll miss the gentle tug of her- The considerate closing of the parts of me, And the reflective sweep of that small hand Upon veneers wed to her devoted bowfront. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell *The photo is the property of The President and Fellows of Harvard College
[2006] A Sestina to Refrain From Baghdad near and afar attend a refrain; eyes billow crimson spying clouds sanguine. The knifelike wounds are deep as regrets are awful and no succor for fools your uniformed peace. I would the world were not this nice comrades and I safely and rudely absent. Here with no bush and too little cover present, allegiance tempers a query too eager to refrain, lest you think youth be complacent, stupidly nice. Do rosters repeat duties not sanguine? What’s the going price for peace save to sully honor with deeds so awful? For rumor is rampant and doubts are full with approbations of allies so absent, and growing so the tally of final peace. Verily do we not recall a historic refrain; the chorus of mothers weeping eyes sanguine, and heed the councils of nations delicately nice? Assume this land suzerain as to suffice with the toppled tyrant no longer awful. Consider it done and be sanguine; the weapons of mass destruction absent. Echo the muezzin’s sweet refrain. Strike your tents. Depart in peace! Reckon your troops the legends for peace lest they grow dissolute and too nice. Discordant whispers caution you to refrain, ‘fore thunderous shouts make elections awful, and driven in haste all caution absent your hawks find their nests less sanguine. Hear from here tempers are nary so fine. The Kingdom’s oily de1eds pump no peace, and fair pursuits of this Republic go not absent. Assume no mandates distorted and not nice, for much that is already done is awful and soldiers march to a rude refrain; She’s bloody awlful She sure ain’t nice! No thanks, sweetheart. I’ll refrain from that price, and wait on peace with some arse that’s nice! © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell Tweeter, Tweeter, Dumb!   I woke this morning deciding to be depressed, focused the media to stoke that fire that burns within; stuffed sugared feelings into the furnace that fuels my stroke, stoked, heart, and decided to write, no type,   before downing my daily meds, all seven, pretty pills, all in a line like some cocaine kick to the clogging drains flowing out an old pump.   I thought to forward the fading strangers and failed closures within in my contacts this protest against the growing tide, but indolence won out the day, and I decided instead to cop another day in my well worn bed and muse on happier days when I had any interest in the thirsty garden.   I peeked out at the feeders. The finches are almost all gone, flown to safety in numbers that dwindle each year, like hippies dying, one by one, irritants to Reagan written history. Someone intimated lately, laboring over a crossword puzzle, that even Samuel Clemens might still be present somewhere, hiding on some dusty shelf in a foreclosed bookstore- asked me if I thought he might today be considered liberal.   CNBC suggested we may need to test the bottom again. I’ve tested so many bottoms it’s become passé. Bottoms are society’s taboos, and an outcast’s opium den, one floor above any chamber in Dante’s hell. It seems to me more and more are drifting down lately to that dangerous bottom where “freedom’s nothing left to loose”. Like Jefferson there is that ambivalence in me that on a dark mornin’ like this sorta’ makes me hope so. That liberal in me, well, it just won’t die. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell	NOTE: Q is pronounced chin. Huang is pronounced wang. The Qin Soldier of Qin Shi Huang I have severed many heads in the service of our king. Send word to my village of an ever soaring rank. We move against the Chu. Soon all under heaven- kowtow now to Qin Shi Huang, who awaits to offer His tally to the revered River God. Let all the Gods welcome Qin Shi Huangdi, first emperor and living God. 2008 by E.D. Ridgell
Adzio Lido, pubescent Pole . Depart, dribbling, leeking , cholera on Lubeck gossip. Driftwood! Venice, soddenly Doge. Recede, stinking sinking, prostitute of Paris pillage. Lagoon! © 2006	A Jewel In Hartford's Crown She still bespeaks a commission for ingenuity. She is fancy and whimsical, dressed in Victorian Gothic, a rarity so like his imagination. Were the ceilings mark twain high? I didn't think to ask. The docent was intent on time, a metaphor himself, for the change in feelings wrought by death and time within this house gone homeless. She's long since fallen out of mode, her vistas ruined, replaced by things more recent and pressing to Hartford. He loved to gaze from her eyes but found this too distracting, when his pen raced its way across page after page. He mused instead in a windowless corner near a sunlit desk overlooking a beautiful, felt covered, cue table, sporting a gentlemanly manor. The girls were dear in those early years and liked to play with cherubs pawned from atop the bed's headboard. Many years later he'd die, his head wrong way round, so that he might gaze at these angels with their sad reflections. Invention placed ambition before caution, and she was lost. He was to lose so much more. Almost the last one standing, he bore on and on, while she fell into disrepair and he into despair. "...a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death." And so, first with Susy, then Olivia, and finally with Jean he hung on, waiting. Tenacious to the end he did precisely what he said he would. He came in with Haley's comet and he flew out on her fiery tail, seventy four years later, one of his nation's most beloved writers. Humorous and whimsical on the outside, serious within, He so complimented that beloved home that restored still stands today; waiting and warmly welcoming all, including me to a jewel in Hartford's crown. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell ___________________________________________________________ Matins At Matins; his nocturnal Vigils, the clouds in his mind would part, until last laudates in the final psalms, would signal the closing in again of his red sea of doubts. The long troubles between Stephen and Maud, ending on flowing red fields of Lincoln, had not fostered these beads of thought. The loneliness capped even those troubled times. The damp had come into his joints. He no longer was favored for being young. He began to settle into a soured residue bottled in boredoms corked in cups of repetition. The way that had seemed so clear and lit now was shadowed in rambling vines, overgrown. With each ensuing year another fear came forward, fears common to uncommon men. Simple but strict doctrine, rote prayer, insistent acceptance- every attempt at surrender had failed to foil these sobering arguments that in fact with facts belied the norm. The retreat within was under siege, and like the king and resistant queen he would have to pit reason against faith before the inevitable feast of worms. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell