poet2rhyme4tommorrow

And still his death haunts webbed wide world post American Civil War

Preface: On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy, \"Our American Cousin,\" President Abraham Lincoln was shot.

 

President Abraham Lincoln died approximately nine hours after being shot at Ford\'s Theatre. The assassination occurred on the evening of April 14, 1865, and he was pronounced dead at 7:22 am on April 15, 1865.


Curtain call -
Ford\'s Theater, April 15th, 1865...
Petersen House, Washington, D.C.
death prevailed across linkedin land
after bulletin screamed
out the barrel into revered occupant
seated within
the state box,
the flag-draped theatre boxed booth
located in the balcony
to your right as you face the stage,
courtesy
a single-shot,
.44-caliber Deringer pistol
with stony gall.

 

I admit to own a passion

for the Civil War in general,
and the life and death of
the sixteenth president in particular

between a hard spot of whiskey

and draughts of arrack;

nonetheless (without doubt), this Yankee

would be fain to travel back

to Antebellum America

amidst the urban din and clack
where smelting earsplitting,

choking industrialization

a deaf fin hit drawback,
and where dark shadows cast an eternal

edge of night twilight zone pallor

tubby somewhat exact

from mighty robber barons,

who tolerated no flack
(nope not even Roberta)

despite the bleeding nose against grindstone

inhumanity bearing down hard

with very little giveback

viz zit head as greenback

yes...no matter the noxious

crash course urbanization
(and attendant ghettoization)

breeding a lung wrenching tuberculosis hack,

this twenty first century middle aged

married man (an average Monterey Jack
ass), whose sought after

claim to fame penchant

modestly admits to whiz knack

crafting literary concoctions with no lack
of ideas, where one arose

strong as an oncoming mack

truck (this vibrant fascination

with the American Civil War

(even before Ken Burns popularized

global tragedy that affected
the webbed, wide world then and now
calamitous, iniquitous, and
ubiquitous event) in non black

and white (digitally remastered technicolor)

exemplified, enumerated, and emphasized
how a minor dispute got way off track

whereat stately commander in chief did pack

a punch analogous sans, barreling forth

like unstoppable quarterback

despite his six foot four inch

gangly physique cull rack

tried his darnedest,

(or substitute unprintable epithet)

yet a coterie of anti war subjects

figuratively and literally up in arms
wanted nothing less to sack

the sixteenth president,

whose aged fifty seven year old countenance
one month after

Ides of March death didst dance
during the low key celebration sans,

internecine bloodbath Grants\'

and Lees\' armistice

one hundred and fifty seven years ago;

 

the peace treaty signed

(April 9th, 1865) at Appomattox,

an irrevocable agony did blow

when that fateful, mournful,

somber night at Ford\'s Theater

the grim reaper didst appear

(like Jim) crow king

ably linkedin with Reconstruction

after one shot rang out blasting,

where crimson tide didst flow

drowning American history

at that juncture grow
wing no less painless today, which hoo
veer ring agony didst smite

incomprehensible cleft mow

wing down unfinished ambition, which no

one other than Abraham Lincoln could sow
the racial rift, that slavery trucked in tow
generations shackled with compounded woe

 

that fateful April 15, 1865
at approximately 10:20 p.m

one hundred plus sixty years; it\'s been

long since deceased taking deadly
gunshot punctuated deadly din,
whence sixteen plus decades passed sans
conspirator tried to get even
at Ford’s theater – forever
eviscerating thin lipped grin

of the sixteenth president - still
his unrealized promising dreams with in

Reconstruction paradigm presses
historians to speculate what
what kinship his unrealized
post-bellum blueprint

while he sat in his booth,
attended a performance of the comedy

Our American Cousin that night
when a bullet entered below

the president\'s left ear,

bored diagonally through his brain

and stopped behind his right …
wrought him slumped over,

now tis 7 score + 20 years witnessed
assassination of Abraham Lincoln
team of rivals mastermind, re: the
American Civil War wreck con struck shin
yet…his positive affects find him
honored with outsize depictions and a con tin

hue wing legacy sustained, whereby
hearts and minds he posthumously did win.

 

Said enigmatic man shrouded and idolized
with beatific, democratic essence
fantastic, honorific, pacific aura, dogma,
and persona with meager off fence

to generations of United States citizens –
enthralled ladies and gents

whose reverberations and ramifications
of humane karma lives on – hence

begotten progeny enjoying freedoms
perchance ensconced with rapt innocence
or those inured with sensibility and sense
can bequeath pride without prejudice
whether living in splendour or in tents
toward Illinois railroad log splitter,
whose humble roots forged steely covenants.