The shooter enters:
Deadly earnest in resolve.
Laugh heartily, friends.
PROMPT #5
write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment –
or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.
O.K. I did the prompt. Now here is one I had in my drafts:
Selvas de Santana
La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.
Baudelaire
. . . Be ye therefore wise as serpents,
and harmless as doves.
Matthew 10:16
Eternal in divine recurrence,
Wisdom summons to her feast.
Harmless dove as wise as serpents;
Meets the singing crying beast.
Rhythmic vision’s dark assurance
Made symbolically complete.
Borne upon upon nocturnal currents:
Comes the undulating beat:
Fabulous jungles of her love
Are glimpsed—as apes, excited, howl.
Dazzling plumage from above:
Cloudbursts startle tropical fowl.
I wait, that white Abraxas dove,
Poised in delight before her gate
And ready to partake thereof,
Entranced in wild hypnotic state.
Now metaphor’s dark humid heat
Is loosed with her cascade of hair.
Black magic beckons: Take and eat.
That all taboo may tremble there.
Red chiles drying in the sun
Distill the thatched-roof village fire.
Rhythm’s laughing children run
Then plunge in pools of pure desire.
CONNECT/HOOK 
I find the haiku quite evocative, but am not sure if it is the training kicking in (must squeeze poems like citrus fruit!). It is an interesting take on what I found an absurdly uninspiring prompt (I could not think of anything to save my life), so am quite impressed with your offering!
I am more impressed with the second poem, though. Impeccable rhyme and rhythm, and beautiful imagery (I am particularly fond of the metaphor’s humid heat, but the whole poem is a gold mine). Plus, I have not listened to Santana in a while, so this was a treat all around.
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I have always been fascinated by the Klarwein album-art on that album in particular, and with the passing of years I find ever more in its mystical depths.
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