Dire Azure Poem by Stan Petrovich

The small bottle exploded
in her tiny hands
and the infamous powder
covered her face
making it look like some sad
caricature of clown makeup.

I nearly laughed but caught myself,
like stopping suddenly in mid-windup,
when one can become seriously injured.
Go slowly when going fast,
or peer into the sky
and give thanks that muscles are sly.

Let no man instruct
a fellow on how quickly to act,
because there are volumes of times
when going nowhere gets you
there faster than rushing off.

Some undersea creatures mimic
their dire azure ceiling, stringent
in behavior to act like another thing,
another being.
Mimicry is also the call of cancer,
whose duty saws off neighbor cells
in order to replace their own fetid guts,
like growing molds, fungi, smuts and rusts.

So, in the end, my mother got cancer.
It must have been vile azure's answer.