Fatal Cries
"Woodman, is your courage stout?
Beware! the root is wrapped about
Your mother's heart, your father's bones;
And like the mandrake comes with groans."
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Beware! the root is wrapped about
Your mother's heart, your father's bones;
And like the mandrake comes with groans."
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Mandrake plants dominate garden beds around my house
their human shaped roots pierce dark soil
cozy up to rocks
and pebbles,
nightshade
then
takes
foothold
producing
violet bell-shaped
blossoms causing delirium,
mind expansion, vivid, intense hallucinations
recalling disparate voices
lost between shadows
someplace in
my past
where
edges
joined and
sidewalks curved;
locked in humanoid
tubers, their shrill shrieks fill night air
like wailing mandrake roots ripped from reality's throat.
