Need to shake myself
before
I lose my grip.

Been a dour hound
time I think
to take a trip.

These layers of dust
I can shift
once I find my feet.

Got some surface rust,
but beneath
still thumps a steely beat.

can’t speak about you in words but
in the heaviness of trees on unrelated stones
or all the things I didn’t chew
the worm of history froze silent
no axis mundi in my blood but
dysmorphic dreams
your rancid placenta

I can’t speak while
you spin around on streets smelling of flesh
and the layers of time squeeze all the screams of me

mother: the furthest language

Solitude is a fine thing before it tips into loneliness.
Loneliness and solitude live in the same house
and balance until lonesome perfection prevails. Then,
isolation, black and deadly, squeezes from the heart
a choked scream of gasping need, until, finally emptied,
all that remains is a ruined cavern bereaved of light.

  ~mce

The same echo of an old song
drifts every midnight through my window
it will not leave me alone--I know not why-
every note seems to sigh in sorrow

but I have no tears
for the long-lost past
as youth is but a forgotten blissful dream
the poet speaks lies when he says that love does forever last.

Eat, sleep, breathe, excrete,
a body living does not a life make.
Oh! Black dog do not my heart devour.
Only the lonely know only the lonely.
Know thing not without touch lives.
Do you smell that smell? Do not inhale.
Kick hard to keep the burly beast at bay.
Or cross the bar onto wine-dark depths,
Song of sirens. Whispers of doom.
How soothing simply to sink. Down.
Sometimes, the brain may prefer the drain.
Make the judgementally ill be still.
In my mania is my maintenance.
The abyss remains to revisit always.
Difficult balance: live or cease pain.
To resist. To defy. All that does remain.
Good morning, blues, how do you do?
To keep it or to give it away.
Bump. Bump. Down the funny steps.
Bear up. Hold on. Call that another day,
though sand through the glass’ neck still drips.

I've only got one bar
on my phone and there's only
one more between here and home.
Ten dollars in my pocket may as well
be a thousand. Like a penny
in the fusebox, I could make it last
until the lights go out. There's a cowboy
band playing. A wooden Indian
by the door. I don't think he listens
to their stories anymore. He's quiet
on the subject. He's quite an object
of curiosity. Instead of two-stepping
all night long, maybe I should take
that Indian home. Use the last bar
to call Coleen. Tell her to put a ***
of cowboy coffee on. We'll tell stories
of our own. Sing songs in the old way
about better days when we were young.

Look at me
Look at me
I'm scared into flames
And I feel there ought to be a joke round here
Somewhere
Hold onto me
Hold onto me
I'm flying into space
And I can't find anything that matters here
Nothing really matters

Flying high
Flying way too high
With nothing to hold onto
And needing nothing at all
Because everything is possible
So, let my wings glisten in the sun
For tomorrow I crash hard into the ground


                                           By Phil Roberts

"Like a black leukemia of stars"
my soul turns in on itself
far more lonely, far more sickly in spirit.

Above, the same desolate landscape
of your dark isolation,
and below - blacker landscapes of black!

Neither the far-off cry of love
nor the nostalgic come-hither of death
disturbs anything within me any longer.

... And only the relentless light ray of lucidity
stabs through, colder, even colder, without mercy
without doubt, without hope, without even a shiver!

Nichita Danilov
*translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Cristina Cirstea

Falling leaves hurry to gather
at one worn headstone after another
like a funeral party uncertain where
lies the lost loved one it grieves;;

Time and wind tug on the memory
left in this absent minded cemetery
no one comes visit but weather and me
and the dead lying under the trees

have stories nobody can read.

of legendary origin
encroached upon
throughout the centuries
by human fear
   seeking protection
   near some venerable shape

you stand

aloof

   silently balancing
   symmetrical circles
   of roots and crown

patiently oblivious of parks
and buildings made by those
who vainly walk in awe
to grasp the mystery
   in touch, in picture, meditation
   of otherness unmoved

plantlife millenial

Someday I will leave
the cold sea

Leave its dark quiet wake
like all the long nights
I've forgotten

I will go sleep
on the soft shoulder
of the mountains

Watch her hands
cupping the moon

Somewhere west
of these frozen sad dunes

Say goodbye to the cry of the gull
and the bluewater wind I love

that leaves me feeling so cold.