Treading the Fire
Ernest Williamson III – United States

maybe beauty will remain an abstract dirge

a mantra to be ruminated over like a submerged leek becoming tender in warm water as it seems to me all as vanished from our worlds galaxies and cliques much poetry has propelled into the bellowing mushroom cloud of noxious gas

Earth has garnished her seedlings as the trees convulse in 4/5 time leading scholars to compendious shame shaking with violence muttering intellectual gibberish to the delight of the spittle forced out with the saying of it

but what about me the reporter

the documenter of my purview

what do I make of anything now

I say to myself in this pallid skin

in these pallid days

perhaps I should go tell it on the mountain

given the effulgence of effort

not merely in mind but of the being directing my reticent walk out of a crawling crowd

Ernest Williamson III is a 32-year-old polymath who has published poetry and visual art in over 180 online and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Professor Williamson is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University. Get more information here: http://www.pw.org/content/ernest_williamson_iii.