It's Still Life

An Ekphrastic Poem: Melancholy (illustrated by an AI-Midjourney interpretation of Melancholy by Edvard Munch)

There’s a paleness
in his religion,

it’s left him somewhere between
genius and foolishness,
between a polluted tide
and a ruptured hollowness.

On Sunday, after listening
to chanting priests,

he fills out a Donor Card.
He wants to donate a rib,
make a tree branch out of it,
or maybe a woman.

He’s gone off his food,
and can’t smell the sea,

and he knows that this time
there’ll be insanity and gloom.
So he closes his eyes and
waits for colour to return

from melancholy.

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These poems/prose are draft versions, written in participation of Writers’ Digest (Poetic Asides) November poem-a-day challenge. The aim: to produce a chapbook for submission. ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter. Images are ©Misky, and created using AI-Midjourney.