Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead

They say color doesn’t make a man. But green makes a witch. The green of the tears of trees or the flattened old bill or the slices of bread standing too long. They are the green that wake me her at the sun’s alarm, grasping at her wrinkled skin, clawing at the protruding bones — and to bleed if she had blood left to spill. The green that perches a brooch on her cape, that balances the two-ton hat owling on her spiraled head. The green is in capitalism or the belief in our friends the West or the billion-dollar gluttony whose mouth hangs above us, forcing us to bent back and sore fingers, afraid of the looming digestion. Fear of the silhouettes of flying monkeys in cop costumes, their talons and teeth sharpened by years of capture, and their brain dulled by the nightly torture. Fear of the shadow of the broomstick that dives direct 45 degrees downwards, scraping the gravel, and into the hovels. Fear of the shade of the triangle hat, the unchanging crown of power, the smaller, the higher, the topmost tip of government. The witch cackles, the knots in her throat etch, green tongue licking the monuments of power — and we all stop, creeping to our doors, tip-toeing to the town square, blown away by her enchantments, ignorant, but fingers-crossed safe. The mines collapsed, first just the passageway, then the stones fell, an avalanche of a vagina, murdered nature, murdered woman. At nights, we fasten the chains to our neck, we pluck the eyes off our heads, and we huddle together, nude, for comfort more than love, for safety more than passion.

Then she died and was buried in the mines. The majestic plural, the self-declared empress, the unreal queen. We mock parades, we fly dark flags, we rub our eyes to weep. In the cemetery, the revolution is twelve feet deep, unmarked, pissed on. But, hail, ding-dong. The bell tolled. The Wicked Witch of the West is dead.

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This is the 100 Songs Project, a 100-day writing challenge based on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs. Every day, I write a short poem, prose piece, or play based on, reacting to, rejecting, accepting, or doing something related to one of the songs in the top 100 list.

Please consider liking Deelaytful on Facebook. We’re doing a promotion in preparation for the 200th post in a couple of weeks. If we get 500 likes before the 200th post, I will be uploading a video of myself singing a medley of Disney Princesses songs on YouTube.

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