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Poetry Hour
28 Mar 2007 10:39 amIt's been a while since I posted poetry, hasn't it? Out searching for inspiration for my remix redux fic - it's not quite holding together, you see - I came across this little gem. It's terrifying - a horror story in verse - and I quite adore it.
THE KNIVES
by Anonymous
They came on a Saturday morning,
In the shimmer of mid July
And fell through the air without warning
And were seen by no mortal eye.
The first victim of note was a schoolgirl
Who was out with her friends jumping rope:
The cord was cut loose in mid-twirl
And the child dispatched in mid-lope.
The next was a harmless old lady
Busy feeding some birds on a bench;
She looked up at a sky raining feathers and blood
Then bisected with scarcely a flinch.
Nearby a traffic policeman
And a speeder both met sanguine ends,
Then a boy on a bike, and a man in his den,
A cheerleader and two of her friends.
By Sunday the terror was spreading
Whole buses cut clean in half,
Babes were found diced in their bedding
Or floating in chunks in the bath.
Then a priest lost his face in mid-sermon
And his Bible divided in three
And a cat shed nine lives and a fireman
Left his hands and his head up its tree.
And each time the slicing was sudden
And each time the cutting was quiet
And the earth slowly grew more blood-sodden
And the populace threatened to riot.
The 'knives' the media named them
For they sliced wherever they fell:
A trite little tag for a terrible plague
But there's no fit expression for Hell.
The airwaves were buzzing with guesses
And theories and pontification -
None halted the bloody distresses
Or calmed the terrified nation.
The anchor man shed objectivity
And knelt on his news-desk to pray
His front was a picture of piety
And his back slithered off and away.
Men of science opined the solution was clear
It was nano-machines or molecular chains,
But an actress insisted through a quite fetching tear
What was needed was heart and not brains.
The government spokesman said nothing was known
That could safely be shared with the press -
Then he lost all his fingers, collapsed with a groan
And expired to their mutual distress.
The knives multiplied without mercy
They rained thick and fast coast to coast
The streets and the fields and the hills ran with blood
And I realised all hope was lost.
But they stopped just before it was finished
And a few of us lived 'til the end
And I was a lucky survivor
As luck's understood by a fiend.
We stand in the rubble - more like children's blocks
For the knives cut cleanly and true,
Among the dead scattered like dismembered dolls
And puddles of blood turned black-blue.
Some think now about starting over -
Rebuilding the culture they miss.
All I want in the world is an old-fashioned knife,
For I have both the will and the wrist.
THE KNIVES
by Anonymous
They came on a Saturday morning,
In the shimmer of mid July
And fell through the air without warning
And were seen by no mortal eye.
The first victim of note was a schoolgirl
Who was out with her friends jumping rope:
The cord was cut loose in mid-twirl
And the child dispatched in mid-lope.
The next was a harmless old lady
Busy feeding some birds on a bench;
She looked up at a sky raining feathers and blood
Then bisected with scarcely a flinch.
Nearby a traffic policeman
And a speeder both met sanguine ends,
Then a boy on a bike, and a man in his den,
A cheerleader and two of her friends.
By Sunday the terror was spreading
Whole buses cut clean in half,
Babes were found diced in their bedding
Or floating in chunks in the bath.
Then a priest lost his face in mid-sermon
And his Bible divided in three
And a cat shed nine lives and a fireman
Left his hands and his head up its tree.
And each time the slicing was sudden
And each time the cutting was quiet
And the earth slowly grew more blood-sodden
And the populace threatened to riot.
The 'knives' the media named them
For they sliced wherever they fell:
A trite little tag for a terrible plague
But there's no fit expression for Hell.
The airwaves were buzzing with guesses
And theories and pontification -
None halted the bloody distresses
Or calmed the terrified nation.
The anchor man shed objectivity
And knelt on his news-desk to pray
His front was a picture of piety
And his back slithered off and away.
Men of science opined the solution was clear
It was nano-machines or molecular chains,
But an actress insisted through a quite fetching tear
What was needed was heart and not brains.
The government spokesman said nothing was known
That could safely be shared with the press -
Then he lost all his fingers, collapsed with a groan
And expired to their mutual distress.
The knives multiplied without mercy
They rained thick and fast coast to coast
The streets and the fields and the hills ran with blood
And I realised all hope was lost.
But they stopped just before it was finished
And a few of us lived 'til the end
And I was a lucky survivor
As luck's understood by a fiend.
We stand in the rubble - more like children's blocks
For the knives cut cleanly and true,
Among the dead scattered like dismembered dolls
And puddles of blood turned black-blue.
Some think now about starting over -
Rebuilding the culture they miss.
All I want in the world is an old-fashioned knife,
For I have both the will and the wrist.