video poem by JB Mulligan

This poem needs a white horse

plodding down a hallway

beneath bright torches –

and ninjas! We have

to have ninjas, dammit!

What's a poem without ninjas?

Curtains in the wind.

Smoke machines.

Eyes like Christmas lights.

And love. And loss.

Exactly like real life

but with ninjas leaping,

with people in animal masks,

with the well-lit post-Apocalypse

full of dancers and guitars.

Exactly how you feel,

but with a horse

whose breath steams

under the hallway torches,

who leaves behind him

brown and grainy pearls.

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JB Mulligan has published more than 1100 poems and stories in various magazines over the past 45 years, and has had two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books: The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation). He has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, and was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology.