ManicDDaily

Warning!  (Ha!)  Four draft poems below for Corey Rowley’s (Herotomost’s) prompt on With Real Toads to write about a last supper.  Please feel free to read one or more!  Thanks!

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Last Supper

We no more will be eating
when we slip into that night.
No, then we will be feeding
those still fueled by light–

the grass that curls,
the grubs that pearl,
whatever sups on ash–
We’ll take them where they might be bound
until their past too seeds the ground

and together there we’ll lime the corn,
not waiting for what next is born;
for we’ll know not wait nor want alike,
when we are eaten by that night.

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The Last Supper

Before the restoration
the fresco barely lingered on the wall
like the last taste of broth
in a bowl,
its drawing as fine
as the shadow of hair stranded
along a temple,

worn by that water
that walks everywhere on air
for years and years and
years–

a wear that wore the pigment
to aura, washed it with
such seeming beatitude, that we never even thought
of how people truly sit
around tables, or of a man working with
wet plaster, egg, the glue
of a rabbit skin, his own
bread, wine–

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No More Roving of a Sort  (After George Gordon, Lord Byron)

So, we’ll no more go out eating
so late into the night
though the heart be still as hungry
and the street lights still as bright.

For a child at home’s asleeping–
at least we’ve put her thrice to crib–
and she’s now too big for squeezing
‘twixt the table and our ribs.

So, tho’ waiters’ feet be fleeting
as they promise service soon
we’ll no more go out eating,
beneath the bistro’d moon.
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Last Supper

He stopped eating several months
before death
as if his mouth could only manage
breath.

“But you love tomato soup–”
“Don’t tell me that egg’s
not soft enough–”
“Come on, it’s getting
cold–”

Sometimes his chin would swell
with the tight clamp of lips,
skin shiny as its own lamp,
as if, like a kid, he wouldn’t,
when he couldn’t–

for the person inside
wanted to live, certainly,
not so much for himself,
as for the one re-heating
the soup.

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Special thanks to all who got to the bottom of this post! The painting is by Leonardo da Vinci, a fresco of the last supper–this pic, pre-restoration; no copyright intended of photograph whose source is unknown to me.  k.