On my skin I wear the bands of shielded sun.
Commitment to the heart makes this skin colour run.
With one liberal hand, I tear down these branches being hung,
to shower in yellowed leaf confetti.

These forest roots ran like hair line skull fractures,
under canopies blooming red from the sunlight rapture
and now these trees leave their taller brothers to fall as ashes,
with ivy on my ankles, stifling hope up to my chin.

Living memories, my forest sheltered, scrambled for home;
small pretty beasts, unrefined, breathing caricatures with bones.
Screaming they beg for attention, inattentive to this situation as a whole.
Our own view is all we can consider.

This house of cards built on paper-cuts, from the trees before.
I'm now growing wiser to my winter freeze and your summer thaw.
I need all of these things I hate about me, and they can never be ignored;
a psychological pre-disposition, the only one I can afford.

Her mouth glittered agape
With sacred promise,
Like a box of unused
Engagement invites
Christening invites
Birthday invites
Still in the wrapper
For sale at a
Lifeline.

When you’d rather live
In a car
Than the zombie stance
Of a modern house,
Clean and soulless
With a hermetically sealed lawn,
Winter pageantry draws to a close
With bogan’s shooting-
Pearly eyed paupers
With constellations in their gaze.
With eyes full of hope and stars
That burnt bright and fade for
Flickering lens light.

Their voices murmur soft
Through catacomb
And underbrush
As only the ephemeral things are whispered of –
Dreams.
The addicts of ideals
The junkies of hope
The drinkers of despair
Have tiger soft tongues.

They lap and feast gladly,
From broken vessels
Chipped with hazardous teeth
That seek to fill their
Ermine mouths with the ******
Draught
Of truth.
Stumbling through wine-hour
They swarm, with tongues ******
And all constellations burnt out.

The hyacinth rides wild
Upon her shoulder,
Writhes in the silver brunt
Of moonlight,
Writhes in the stillness of dead perfume.

Marching to the beat
Of my enemies drum,
My hands inside my pockets.

Little bluebirds spun from dream
Sit on the holy perch,
A branch in all innocent minds.

The redeemed and patient
Make a subtle art from
Long distance perversions.

Similarly as we chase ghosts over Daffodils.

Fields of winter
under lunar glow
sway without us.

Long distance love
lingers with loose lust
along Regret street.

I hung it next to the memory
Of childhood cooking and Indian summers
Without further thought.

It slipped into the novel that took the form
Of an old coat, slipping into the lined pocket
It sank with a sigh.
Satisfied with itself.

Bombarded by the pounding
Dead eyed stare of ***** goddesses,
Broken by the undisputed angelic
And unglued ones,
All moon faced
All hopelessly optimistic
All lawfully rebellious
With green serenity
We pasted our dreams
On a wall so real it shone gossamer.
He counted the imperfections in the glass
With mind hesitation
As the whole world went black,
In a sea of much deserved discontent,
Wishing for the soft.

A moment of pure luck?
Jesus was an astronaut
Smoking Zen by the fire.

Suicidal angst
never had you in sonnets?
What a ******' shame.

Our life is but a song
We never hear.

I chipped away at the excesses
of my baroque person,
each strike took a
Railing
mounting
wall
decoration
desire
demand
exclamation
from the battlements.
All left now, a hill.

I paid for my banquet
with a sip of loneliness
and left behind the question
that asked all quiet poets
the meaning of love,
that asked all quiet poets
to answer with a villanelle
shouted from every
distant peak.

They sent the troopers
to greet me instead,
and my library was put in shackles,
and I kissed their ***** feet.

I answered that I carved this mountain
from the baroque bedrock
upon which they laid their city.
They smiled and asked about the aqueducts.
I wept and spoke of kitchenettes.

A meal provided
on a lead cast plate
my jailor asked about freedom
I answered with defeat.

There were two atoms
One questioned the meaning of existence
The other the existence of meaning.
             -Regardless they looked the same.

An apple on a branch,I took
The same way history takes a footnote.

The same way cashiers are all doctorates.
The same way trains find the station.
The same way you sing like a bird (and I like a cow).
The same way we never really wish to be writers.
The same way our final friend is made of pine.
The same way all streets lead to nowhere.
The same way all jobs **** society.
The same way we always lie to our children.
The same way a man loves a woman.
The opposite way we ****.
The opposite way we make love.
The way that I know a man who’s totem animal is a worker ant and he is unemployed by choice.
The same way we take old memories and turn them into fashion.
The very same way all sacred things become profane and all profanity becomes sacred in the eyes of many.

Dying relic of the Optimistic Seventies,
A new coat of paint for the old irony
     -slap dashed with obscurity.
Although I wear the costume of my enemy,
I will write the exaltation in blue smoke
As **** by an unsuspecting victim
Occurs in the dark.

The face of another love stares down at me.
I smile.
Yet I know it is not her.
I weep.
A sudden method sparks revival.

Jackie Pleasure wore a gray smile,
The anthem of a lost generation:
‘Happiness is lost in smiling.’

You are dead to me,
the boatman calls
I will not taste of your amber lips
I will not taste.

The welfare of all never hinged on darkness as we fear the fall,
A multitude of angels sang their songs
And never learnt to say goodbye
Or cast a long distance eye
Over half spent desire.

Drawn out caricatures,
Paraded intoxication
Flirt with our mistress death
And have her pick up the tab.
She pays with silent music.

The ***, we learn, is a bridge
Between all words and waltz’s,
Our Light Brigade to conquer art.

In the twilight of this, our mansioned night
Let us ring out true with indulgence,
Excess, abandon and the call of ‘yes’
Kali rang on the wire of a golden telephone.
Her name
“Kali, Kali…”
Like a quarrelsome minotaur
Flew through the waves of silk ideal
And strangled the babe
With cool breath.

There was ice (oh yes!) and fire and song.
With our candles burnt down to the ash of all streets
We walk then. We walk.
All life is but a song.

The ghosts of all forgotten stamps
Now echo on the wind of speech.
On High! Oh speak!
Of songs sung but never danced
With our broken dream.
When starlight meets the dust, and
Shadow eats the snow,
All our stories are satin sheer
And all our wants are gone.
We watch the memories march, until
They find a sliver of chrome that showed that place
Where all piano’s live and breathe.
My father in the wishing well,
My mother played trapeze.
My sister never saw the light,
My brother never born.
That was that,
Where stars meet dust
And floorboards sing off key.

Mirrors telling lies    makeup
         Painting illusions,
                   Stains
                      On
                     Lips
Making caricatures from my face, a
Character in its place, playing
Narcissist    every    day.
If I love me they will come,
If I love me they will stay.
This part masks insecurity,
If I say I love me, won't they?

The beginning of this story is pretty hazy, I’m not really sure I remember how the whole thing started but when it was happening it all seemed to make so much sense.
The first thing I remember, everything seemed normal enough, I was probably just going about doing the same things I do most days, nothing special. Then all of a sudden this terribly great thing happened. Everyone was talking about you.  Something important going on and you where right at the center of it. As I later found out you had gone missing or run away or just vanished, nobody knew. I defended you when they said they had seen it coming, that they had seen it in your eyes. I knew better than that. This was a place of loners and lovers, no families allowed, all the families had to go somewhere else, or at least they did.
I remember someone important, the Mayor maybe. He was like a cartoon villain, suave in a gray paper-perfect gray suit and silver hair slicked back just enough. He had a big smile and teeth like snow on a sunny day. He was a game show host villain.
He was the one making the biggest fuss about the whole thing. Always talking about how we shouldn’t feel ashamed of you for running away or that we should pray that you be safe wherever it was you had gone. But he just had those big phony teeth.
There was something going on with friends, at school I guess, like they wanted to keep talking about it but I didn’t. I knew you were coming back, how couldn’t you. I tried to explain to everyone that there was no way in hell I would be that cruel to myself, but they had no idea what I was talking about, they thought I was losing my mind.
You remember that time we tried that one drug and things were not as great as you expected. That night we thought we were both going to lose our minds. This time I wasn’t losing my mind. I had all the confidence in the world.
There was a lull midway through, I had no idea when you were coming back and I was starting to get annoyed with all the people around me. I couldn’t believe they were still making such a racket about the whole thing. They weren’t even like real people, they all had these defining characteristic which became their entire personality. They were caricatures of real people but I didn’t have the heart to tell them. I didn’t care enough to bother with figments, how could I?
Then suddenly the whole thing was different, there was some new great event going on. Everyone had gathered to some great big open amphitheater. All the seating was facing a big fancy stage with lots of lights on it. Behind the stage were hills. Everyone was talking about them, those where the hills they said you ran out into. As it turned out that was the reason for our being here. It had been like a hundred years or something since you had run away and everyone had come for a ceremony in your honor.
The whole thing was absolutely awful. It felt like we were there for a whole day, and the mayor was speaking for over half of that. Everyone was so captivated by his teeth and his suit that they barely heard what he was even talking about. They all acted as though what he was saying was breaking their hearts though, some even seemed genuinely inspired.                                       
The ceremony was going on and I was pretty done with the whole thing, I could feel the end coming. There was some pause in the speeches and all the seat sitters went to go freshen up. I took my chance and just ran out into those hills.
This was the best bit. All of a sudden I was in these hills, there was nothing but mountains in the distance and the stars were like light fixtures. They shone with color almost but the moon was so big and brilliant that everything was that perfect dim blue-silver color. By that light I could see the wind dancing in the knee-high grass, not like waves but more like snakes. I felt like a dumb rock when all I wanted was to be smoke, dancing with the wind.
Then you came down from the sky, you showed me all the dazzling swirls and swoops you could do and left all these crazy colors in your wake. When you finally settled down I saw you skin was like orange flame, soft like a marker drawing, moving around you like a flaming teardrop. Your core was all blackness and depth but I knew it was you. Who else would it be?
We hold hands and you fly us back to that big stage. We wait behind the curtain and we hear the mayor come on one more time. He’s telling the audience about one final display to tip off the ceremony, a dazzling light show preformed by a secret guest. I look at you in surprise but before I know it we’re making a run for it, speeding up those long aisle steps, up towards the exit doors at the top. Everyone is speaking about it at the top of their lungs but I can barely hear them over the sight of you. Your colors are all falling off and I can see your features being revealed as flakes of light peel away. We burst out the double doors and down some hallway. Out into the bright sunlight and I still can’t get over how beautiful you are.
And that’s how it ends.

A story in three movements after the painting by Mary Elwell*
 
 I

She’s out. Changed her frock, left me a list and her letters on the hall table. I heard the door bang. She was in a hurry. Wednesday afternoon she’s often in a hurry. I don’t know where she goes, but she’s usually back about 9.0, and Mr Fred has his tea by himself. I come in here when she’s out and I’ve done the necessary. It’s a big house and apart from Janet and Elsie in the mornings I look after the place, and her when necessary. She’ll call me into her bedroom to tell me what she wants done with her laundry. She’s fussy, but she can afford to be. She has two wardrobes, what I call her Mrs Fred clothes and her ‘Mrs Knight’ clothes. They’re quite different; like she’s two different people. When she paints she’s someone I don’t know at all – she looks like a *****. She doesn’t belong in this room anyway when she paints. She has her studio in the attic and doesn’t even let Mr Fred in there. I don’t go in there. I’ve never got further than the door. She doesn’t want anyone to see what goes on in there. Oh, I see the pictures when they’re finished. She places them on Mr Fred’s easel in the drawing room and spends hours pacing up and down looking at them. She pulls up a chair and sits there. She doesn’t like being interrupted when she’s doing that. I like to come in here when she’s out. It’s a lady’s bedroom. I don’t think Mr Fred comes in here very often. She likes to go to him when she does, which isn’t often. When I first came here they were always in each other’s bedrooms, but she keeps herself to herself now except when Mrs Knight comes.
 
II
 
 When I was a young man I often used to look up from Walkergate at the windows of this room. You can’t miss them really as you walk towards the Bar. I coveted this house you know. Marrying Mary suddenly made that a possibility. When Holmes died and left her his fortune it came on the market and I said lightly one afternoon – she was in my studio in London – I see Bar House is up for sale. Yes, she said, we could buy it. I think she knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere in London, and she wanted to go back to Yorkshire.  She was from the first going to be her own person having been Holmes’ for ten years – an older man, dull and old. She felt by marrying me, an artist, her desire to be solitary, self-absorbed, would be understood. I don’t often come in here. She comes to me, usually to talk at the end of the day. She doesn’t sleep well, never has. We don’t, well you know, it was all about friendship, companion-ship I suppose, and money. She had it. I didn’t. You know the light in this room is so wonderful in the afternoon – like honey. I like to sit on her bed and think of the days when I would wake in this room. There were two beds here then. She’d be sitting at her writing table in her blue gown. She liked to get up with the dawn and write long letters to her friends, mainly Laura of course. After that first sitting she began writing to me, all about her love of painting and how Alfred had never encouraged her, and would I help her, advise her? She wanted to go to Paris and be in some Impressionist’s atelier. I soon realised in Paris I was never going to be a great artist or a modern painter. There’s one picture from that time . . . only one; that girl from the theatre, Amelie. I’d seen Degas and thought . . . no matter, I could never match her letters. I was always a disappointment. I still am. I would sit down at my desk with one of her letters  - she wrote to me almost every day - and think ‘I’ll just deal with that enquiry from Alsop’s’, and then I’d find another pressing letter, or I’ll look at my accounts, and all my good intentions would be as nothing. If I’d really loved her I would have written I’m sure. It takes time to write, to think what to say. It’s time I always felt I couldn’t allow myself. Painting was more than enough, and more important than letters to Mary. She wanted to talk to me, and wanted me to talk back. So she talks to Laura now, who returns her ‘talk’ with equally long letters – with sketches and caricatures of people she’s met or ‘observed’. Occasionally, I catch sight of one of these illustrated letters on the sitting room sofa, placed inside a book she is reading. I have a box of Mary’s letters, and when she’s away I look at them and read her quiet words – what she’s seen, what she’s read, what she hoped  we might become.
 
 III

I often stand at the door, even today when I’m in a rush, to gaze at my room before going out and leaving it to itself. I love it so in the afternoons when the sun takes hold of it, illuminates it. You know each item of furniture has its own story; my mother’s quilt on my bed, the long mirror from Alfred’s house; my writing box given to me by my Godmother on my 21st; the little blue vase by my wash stand – that back street shop in Venice, my first visit. I stand at the door and think, well, just what do I think? Perhaps I just rest for a moment at the sight of myself reflected in these ‘things’, my possessions, my chosen decoration, the colours and tones and shapes and positions of objects that surround my daily life. My precious pictures; some important gifts, others all about remembrance, a few from my childhood, my first marriage – Alfred was very generous. The silver vase on my writing table glows with delphiniums from the garden – and a single rose from Laura. And today we will meet, as we do on alternate Wednesdays, to drink tea in the Station Hotel, arriving on our different trains from our different lives. This friendship sustains me, and more than she will ever know. She is so resolute, so gifted as an artist. She is a painter. She has imagination, whereas as I just see and record. She puts images together that carry stories. That RA **** – that’s Laura you know – and the painter is me – and wearing a hat for goodness sake! Me paint in a hat! I remember her going through my wardrobe to dress me for that picture. Why the hat? I kept asking. But she made me look as I’ve always wanted to look in a picture – as though I was a real artist and not a wealthy woman who ‘plays’ at painting. Fred’s portraits say nothing to me, whereas Laura’s make me feel weak inside. I remember her trying out that pose in front of my long mirror. ‘Will this do?, she would say, ‘Or this? All I could look at were her long, long fingers, imagining her touch on my arm when she kissed me goodbye.

This one's for me
and I'm gonna watch it burn.
Watch it flicker and pop and crackle and spit.
Gonna take lessons on how to dance with the draft,
also hoping she doesn't ******* out.
I'll make poems out of smoke and shadows
and fading, lonesome, sepia-tone summer photographs.
I want to make dusty picture frames feel like well-loved tuxedos.
I'm gonna see if candlelight can be all the company I need to keep.
Gonna sweep this floor clean,
like it's not what we say, it's what we mean
between the lines of
one too-polished table setting:
one knife,
one spoon,
but two forks for wishful thinking.
I'm gonna eat my fill
and fill my cup again and again,
to the point that I begin to make conversation
with my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I'll tell that *******, "My friend, you are drunk."
and he'll tell me, "Kid, look who's talking."
Then it'll be back to a glass
that treats its brim like a suggestion.
Gonna have whisky and black lager and champagne
'til my toes and thumbs tingle.
Thin blooded and numbed;
Steeled by my father's novocain.
Come morning, this house couldn't get more hollow.

In these hallowed halls where I wallow in the way that
I only seem to appreciate the preciousness of days
Once they've passed,
here's what I'm gonna do:
I'm gonna write questions on one side of the wooden window blinds,
and write punchlines to completely unrelated jokes on the other.
I don't know why. Maybe just to **** with people.

I'm gonna reminisce with full streets of ghosts
That glow like kerosene lamp posts
all the while, stomping my feet, just to prove that I can.
Gonna make toasts to the isolated;
to the quarantined and the misanthropes.
I'll boast that lovers are not unlike poachers,
but I'm not gonna mention that in every other under-cover dream
I seem to swoon like ivory elephant tusks.
I'm gonna gamble on Dusk
because I think it's got a little less honesty,
but a little more promise than its
attention-*******, good-for-nothing, go-getter big sister Dawn does.
That flirtations *****.
Gonna give Christian names to half drawn caricatures
of people who only ever existed when the lights died out
and the snow fell heavy.

I'm gonna let the levies break.
I'll go insane, just ******* lose it--
do the Boot-Scoot-'n'-Boogie in a onesie
with the hind flap flying free and the Greek Theatre masks of
Comedy and Tragedy painted on my *** cheeks,
(because no one should ever take their art too seriously)
And I'm even not gonna even care who sees,
partially because there's no one around to watch anyway,
but mostly because I want,
more than anything, to just be me.
Or at least I want to want that.
See, I read somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
unless you can be a unicorn,
then always be a unicorn."
And that really struck home for me because,
even though I've never really ached to be
the ******* love child of a Narwhal and Zebra
(In my imagination, unicorns are
striped and impecable swimmers)
I truly believe that Men will always dream of being Titans
and Titans will always dream of being Gods
and Gods want nothing more than to be Wind--
to twist with lit candle sticks
and teach the lonesome how to dance.

A one-step waltz tip-toed to distract.

But the fact is, I'm bound to take a few back steps.
I'm gonna think about her.
Gonna harbor hard feelings towards back bedroom dealings
that I have no right knowing about.
Gonna pray like a desperate atheist
that they keep their knees locked in a one night stand.
I might break down.
Only once, just long enough to regain my strength.
Then I'll tame the earthquakes in my hands, like I always do.
Gonna find what it takes to move on.
Not just regenerate, but to grow stronger than I ever was before.
So I'm gonna meticulously straighten these place settings:
One knife.
One spoon.
A healthy dose of wishful thinking.
Gonna try my hand again at dancing with the back draft;
I heard she's been aching for a duet,
and with all the life of candlelight
I'm gonna ignite the coal shafts beneath my eyes.
Gonna finally see me as the man I am,
not the titan I wish to be,
because I heard somewhere that,
"You should always be yourself…
Especially when all you've known
all you've ever shown
is some mythology."
So raise your glass because this one?
This one's for me.

Her existence is a paradox
For even the buffoons seem to be mocking at her
Her power lies divided
Fixed on a candelabra
With men in the churches gazing at the strength
And old ladies lighting it for solace
The wax melts and the world is plunged into darkness
Tendrils of smoke drifting upwards
Shapeless silhouettes driving people towards the end
The dome of the hall covered with embodiments of its remains
The chandelier soaking the suffocation amidst
And still in the hands of that artist in the corner
With a palette in the right and swollen fingers holding the brush
Lies a hope of resurrection of the dainty lady's grace
But only In the painting and the caricatures.

There’s no point in *******, today,
Because I’m not looking for skin...
Today it’s cosmic electricity.
Because I can’t smell the screen's pheromones,
And there’s something to be said for chemistry.
Because I can touch my own *******,
But familiarity is hard-pressed to impress.
Because the only scraping and biting here
Is far from raunchy; my teeth are restless.
Because people have **** opinions and nuances,
And today I see caricatures but no people.
Because it’s all poor, uninspired acting,
And the only singular thing I want is truth.
The only singular thing I want.
Is truth.

Nothing against *******.
Today or ever.
But there are some lonely stretches
When I’m perched on the edge of the world,
Aroused to adventure,
And Life is buzzing past me
And I desperately want to rip into it
And savor and lick and **** out its seed
And reach into its hair and pull hard
As we bruise and break each other
And SCREAM OUT
-- LIFE!
Where redtube just won’t cut it.

/I dreamed that wrinkled fingers pointed me backward down the road to teach me about faith./

there’s this plastic imitation leather
peeling off of my steering wheel
and it caught the edge of my chin tonight:
like a fingernail if I closed my eyes.

I re-find that people are flawed,
that I value flaws in a certain lilt or lighting—
I fall deeply in love with confidence like that
but fail to pull it to my own cheeks.

we’re microwave dinners, have you noticed that?
showcasing our dreams in caricatures we later regret.
we’re rotating in heat—pressurizing for perfection,
warming our raw insides to blend with what we see.

(it felt like a fingernail if I closed my eyes.)

spines are expressive—they make us easier to read.
no spine is more inclined to bring eyes the rising sun than yours.
our spines are expressive—they make us easier to write.

The words you produce are poison
The type that spreads fear
It's an echo of oppression
That mutters close to ear
You think it's just for fun
Just a quick win
For you it's a passing comment
But for me it's embedded in my skin
'They're just words' you say,
You're a freak, man, ****,
'Remember what you're worth'
That's what it really like,
You don't think before you say
Whenever you speak these slurs
You perpetuate the hate
Masking me in caricatures
So next time you begin to say,
Those little words to me
Please check your ego,
And ******* let me be.

here is something that
mother told me
about god complexes:

“everyone believes themselves
to be gods among men:
even that hideous monster from your
half-remembered Hellenistic dreams
will retreat back to
his craggy hideaway and continue
with his hedonistic ways.
the poor creature:
he will don a halo,
iconize himself in caricatures
pretending that if for a moment
his veins flow ichorous that
Icarus may have envied when his wings
beat in tandem with the footfalls of
the sun chariots’ horses.

“the sun shines upon
hallowed ground, though Polyphemus
will avoid Helios’s scornful gaze.
he herds sheep––his only acolytes––
an unabashed king in his realm,
like a god plays war, or as a child
would play house,
humming hallelujah,
veins running gold-blooded.
when moon rises,
he will hang his weary
shadow at his door and retreat
to his fire-pit. perhaps this will be
the closest he will be to the gods,
basking in the heat of Hestia’s
humble hearth.

“in the end,” mother said,
“Nobody will end up deified.
Icarus may have rained down wax and
feathers in godlike fury
before tilting his head to Helios once more;
Polyphemus waded into the sea,
eyes clouded in godlike fury
before resigning himself to fate, head bowed.”

It's all gone out of me, the hammer falls and I'm not ready to answer
Trembling, weakness supporting a tub of jelly
The pollen-filled air flies past like the
Pelicans at the edge of the harbor
Taking us gliding for an unpleasant ride
Down the corridors of plastic colors
Through the one word answers that bubble forth from
10,000 years away in hyperspace
Where the mechanisms of language become so convoluted
That they disappear completely out at the vanishing point
Coming up behind you again to drag you into that smoky allure
You remember hating and pinching your nose from
And hiding in the car, but the new fear is of becoming addicted to it
Just like your addiction to ego games and
Intellect, just like your addiction to pleasure and constant validation

The validation's there in the eternal self, they say
But I'm an intellectual
Too impatient for meditation
And lost along the way to enlightenment
That I truly want,
But then I'll never have it if I continue to live this way

It's wilderness calling from a tame fool
Sticking up for you the overgrown horoscope signifies
The shapes of skydives,
He comes in and out of our dull lives
And there's an electric current that solidifies between
Him, Us, and his music
Iron rods jutting up from scorched earth
A broken paradise
Crumbling in a whisky tumbler
Blackened by fiber filters, creations
Unlocked by flowing ontological
Caricatures, open wounds gnashing
At attention-seeking osteopaths
Fortune seekers clamber down
Soccer field bleachers,
Somebody lost his sneakers in the woods
Once there was a set of barbells along the trail
We fell in line and started
Counting each other
One by one it seemed like the green apples would never fall
It was up to us to wait for the shower
It would feed our kin
We'd begin to rise up together
But it could never keep up with our pen
We wanted the ghosts to follow us and overtake our mortal foes
But we couldn't command the armies of the dead
We derive all our pleasures from films and campfire stories
We contrive our adventures but we wait for them to happen to us
We take a passive role in finding love
And it blinks lights at us across suburban streets through windows in the dark
The mind begins to writhe with new memories it composed of old
An idealized time of a child with the perverse mind
Of a hogtied adolescent
Guessing that the course of existence
Isn't determined by the speed of your calculations
Testing the warm water on a naked toe
We could dive in and forget to breathe
And the water could carry us forever
Alleviating gravity
All the obstacles we perceived in past lives
Remain with us like
Chimney swifts on the bottomless April days of a
Klu Klux **** telephone operator
Who believed in the spirit and the holy ghost
And burned a quiet altar to Satan's minions every Sunday night
Drinking nail polish and
Obscure references to the films of the
Ancient Greek philosophers, who
Saw the medium as a means to a message
And patronized the elitest filmmakers to study the ancient Runes
And reveal their findings to a power-hungry public
That would not outright reject it
But that would have to follow it down the rabbit hole
Through the wide mouth of the trumpet around brass fixtures
And into the tight hot moist mouth of the trumpeter
And the elemental warriors would strike oil beneath the whole affair
Ending the time we spent hoping for any entertainment to create itself before our barren psyches
Busying ourselves with incomprehensible tasks and letting our indolence take the reins until we found our heads again out there amid the vapors of
New car chem trails and old railroad bunkers where spruce and cedar grow through cement earth, they force apart the ground with just their roots

We weren't ready to keep watch the following weekend but we
Had no choice when the government bond expired
And we had only technological solutions left to hope for
And wrongly we abandoned our research posts to fight the enemies
With giant weapons and uncreative slogans
Our drummers played so fast we marched along and killed all that remained in record doubletime
Rendering the events of that victorious day immortal in the ingenious accounts of
Philosopher/poet/historian Michael Jackson
Who gave one final performance
To save himself from what must not be

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks
And far beyond the discords of the wind.

A bronze rain from the sun descending marks
The death of summer, which that time endures

Like one who scrawls a listless testament
Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,

Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon
And giving your bland motions to the air.

Behold, already on the long parades
The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.

And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies
Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.

I laugh at the sound
    of the wind
As it echoes through my mind
Telling me stories of memories
     I had previously left behind
  with caricatures of faces
I can no longer remember in reality
      And songs from past places
That bring me down
         with the emotional gravity
And I was my thoughts spin around
                 and around
    I get dizzy from the intensity
                and my sanity
        Can no longer be found
                 Yet
I can still hear the wind
      And I laugh at the sound

Good Witches do not

wear dresses of peonies

they do not say

“I am a Good Witch”

they are not

caricatures of happiness


Good Witches wear

sunsets like cloaks

they run with

bare feet

exposed limbs

and snake hair

through forests and foggy minds


They jump over stone walls

laughing as the

sticks crack

beneath them

they drum their midnight black claws

against tables

as if they were raised by wolves

and divine your future

in sidewalk cracks

modern-day Cassandras,

better listen

listen


they do not say

“I am a Good Witch”

they smirk, bear fangs

forked tongues spilling magik like moonlight

and make you figure it out yourself

I felt you kiss the edges
of my gypsy soul last night.
You laid aside my armour
So rusty, yet so bright.

All the poets in all the bars
hung by Morganna's violet hair
casting ideals towards the stars
wept when they landed elswhere.

I let you take the diamond
from between my broken teeth;
and laid the hunter to rest
tonight never to repeat.

Our bodies told a story
full of puns and lifeless caricatures,
for the people we once were
that lived within this parchment
of our long forgotten dreams.

Humanity is tainted and now leaking everywhere
In a world where people jump out
airplanes after stacks of money
To a din of sirens blaring,
War drums thrumming
Funny you'll do nothing;
It's a racket designed to create the distraction

To the hidden monsters flying in the night sky
Ever secure, beneath a crux of watchful eyes
Masters of disguise bend your will to their lies
Subconsciously shapeshifting acquiescence in the absence of light

They operate in obscurity
Conglomerates of impunity
Urgency manifests necessity
With a propensity for depravity
Slaves lulled to a fake sense of security with false promise of luxury
Compulsively regurgitating propaganda in delusory quandary
Happy little sheep march willingly to the teeth of the Serpent machine

Ominous omniscience mixes with
Sensations of bodilessness
In a state of godlessness
Whenever my conscious surfaces in this clandestine system
I sell my soul to purchase debt and let repercussions fall upon my children
A paradigm; with no ethics the center is an idol,
and the world had forever idolized the god money, Belial

Imagine
A carnival pageant, with parades of tyrants tirading
and masquerading on the world's stage as lavish savages

With overwhelming power in hand,
I'll bring an end to it all
If you gaze for long into the abyss
It will stare back into your soul

Pay homage to barrages of sacred false knowledge/unacknowledged
It lodges to your consciousness as it takes you hostage
You think you're open-minded but suffer from mental spillage
Then brain begins hemorrhaging like a glitch in the matrix

Global massacre is imminent
Our abandonment's no accident
Caricatures of government act as the Devil's advocates

Insane It's us against them
Zionist Superfriends deciding trends
designing and framing an outline of the endgame just for sh¡ts-n-gigs
Hands reach through the tapestry pulling you in and unrelenting,
Secretly from behind the scenes

Portraits of dishonesty
Stripping you of all life and liberty
Symphonies of screams
systematize in perfect symmetry
Enslaving and slaying humankind -
They've exacted brainwashing
to the science of chemistry
And mold your mind
with the subtlest alchemy

Media blackout;
Credits tapped out
Better act now
before the stock markets
collapse down

What's your plan when **** hits the fan,
will you follow The Man or fail condemned?
Now bow at the feet of the ministry of tyranny,
Head lowered in defeat *preparing for the guillotine

We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?

How can we say "we see you
As but-for-God's-grace-ourselves, as
Our caricatures (we yours), with
Time's telescope between us"?

How can we say "you presumed on
The accident of kinship,
Assumed our friendship coatlike,
Not as a badge one fights for"?

How say "and you remembered
The sins of our outlived selves and
Your own forgiveness, buried
The hatchet to slow music;

Shared money but not your secrets;
Will leave as your final legacy
A box double-locked by the spider
Packed with your unsolved problems"?

How say all this without capitals,
Italics, anger or pathos,
To those who have seen from the womb come
Enemies? How not say it?

OFF THE COAST OF WRANGEL ISLAND

The room was a frozen
block of silence

the out-of-love lovers
like two hairy mammoths

trapped in the ice
of their shared hatred.

Thousand of years had passed
since they had last talked.

Preserved like two rare
artifacts in a museum.

This the "invisible land"
an island of mists and fogs.

They looked like bad
caricatures of who

they used to be
and who

they could never ever
be again.

*

Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea.It lies astride the 180° meridian. The International Date Line is displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island. Wrangel Island may have been the last place on earth where mammoths survived.

The island is subjected to "cyclonic" episodes characterised by rapid circular winds. It is also an island of mists and fogs and is known as the "invisible land."  In literature Jules Verne has his characters trapped on a floating iceberg near here and Cassandra Clare makes it  the seat of all the world's wards, the spells that protected the globe from demons and demon invasion.

She was as it happened was reading Jules Verne's novel 'César Cascabel" whilst he as it happened was reading Cassandra Clare's "Mortal Instruments: City of Heavenly Fir", both entirely different books but both featuring Wrangel Island. I delight in such happenstance and synchronicity. I only knew of it because of the mammoth found there with hair and muscle tissue and blood intact. I was fascinated with photos of it and there was one where a scientist was bending down looking at it on a bench and they were nose to trunk as if having a chat about the years in between that separated them. When I originally wrote the poem I was looking at them in the mirror of their big fat room with the thinest of windows when they thought they weren't being observed and it looked as if the mirror had painted their emotional state and that time hung suspended forever in that one moment. They both could dispute angrily or peevishly about their state whether it be in the voice or even in silent thought. I called them THE WRANGLERS after the mirror's painting of them. Or indeed THE WANGLERS because of their persistent arguing or manoeuvering the other into the worse position so that the other could take the lowish of moral high ground. It was a bit like observing trench warfare back in WW1.

And so it was through all this happenstance that I placed them off the emotional coast of a stormy isolated island...in some limbo "invisible land."

And as to the right or wrong of my two too human artifacts where right or wrong are not all that easy to place? As Michael Pollan puts it "… morality is an artifact of human culture, devised to help us negotiate social relations."

All I knew is that I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in their peculiar shoes or that particular hell.

The room was a frozen
block of silence

the out-of-love lovers
like two hairy mammoths

trapped in the ice
of their shared hatred.

Thousand of years had passed
since they had last talked.

Preserved like two rare
artifacts in a museum.

This the "invisible land"
an island of mists and fogs.

They looked like bad
caricatures of who

they used to be
and who

they could never ever
be again.

it dawned on me as i
brushed my teeth this
cold and frigid Sunday morning
that Christianity is predicated on
caricatures of morality and desiccated
imagery guilt-tripping and manipulating
the emotionally malleable with sycophantic
fantasies of sempiternal enmity
simmering infernally within dogmatic
magma melting mundane minds

we aren't made in the
image of the invisible
and the more i study
the face looking back
in the mirror i can't seem
to find a single similarity
between you and me

you've spent nearly fifty years
in service to a deity Nietzsche buried
half a century bent-kneed but
somehow i'm the one who
needs to try an open mind

in the face of such
deafening and deadly hypocrisy
is it any surprise i rose
in revolt against this
putrid apparatus of control

it's sad
you see
you fancy yourself an image
of the Nazarene but you're
so unlike your savior
a Sadducee dancing like a cobra
to the whimsical melodies of
snake-oil peddlers so

by all means
pray for me
the clouds can't hear
your desperate pleas this
galaxy is apathetic to our
finite and fragile existence
a momentary blip on the radar of
a fourteen billion year old universe

yet you possess the audacity
to believe an intergalactic being
instilled you with predestiny so
you can judge and condemn just
like the villains in
your beloved fairy tales

tell me the truth
do you even read
the lines of red bled
across the ancient pages
of your gospels or do
you just pretend that
Jesus said whatever
makes you happy

clearly you fancy yourself
the center of the universe but
as much as i hate to be
the bearer of bad news
the world revolves around the sun
not the Son of Man

i'd rather brave the depths of hell
than grovel before your
narcissistic King of Kings
i will never beg for
you to forgive me
i freed my mind and like
a canary in a coal mine i'm
insistently pointing towards the exit
so crucify me if you will
even you couldn't escape the irony

abandon your holy text for works
of art and philosophy and science
your scriptures are a tale
told by an idiot
full of sound and fury
signifying nothing

i will not relent in my
blasphemous semantics
nor repent for my perceived iniquity
your Christ is interned within
an unmarked grave outside Jerusalem  
and before long now we
will all join him
though admittedly not in
the fashion you'd imagined

there is no feast prepared
for my inevitable homecoming
so keep your ring
a golden band reminding
those who read the
anthologies of history of
property and slavery

i'll deny until i die
i won't bind my mind to
your tepid theology
i am not the prodigal son

I flirt with falling
Weightless in the illusion
Catch me, air
Catch me, trees
Catch me water

Dangling over ripples
Interrupted, they scatter
Soaring circles
Arcs in time
We are interlocked, intertwined.

"It's like titanic"
But I'm the only one with my arms spread wide
I shuffle my feet closer to the edge
All is emptiness
And fullness

"I feel like I'm floating"
Two smiles hover either side
The third has found solid ground
And my favourite people in all the world are here
And scattered in the other-land

Left behind:
One *** ***** of foreign species
One single-authored message
"He stole the paper back"
Eyes are anxious caricatures
But that's just how he do.

Under now,
Earth clings:
"Don't leave me again"
We serenade our climb
With discordant harmony

Defining solitude is an interestingly malleable task
You can be one of strangers dotted randomly around a room, with the nature of your task distinctly yours
Or pressed up against 4 or more others, in the compact discomfort of a crowd that defies personal space, joining hundreds in a shared disdain
Or even with that one, in a similar change to the norms of personal space, but one that is welcomed chemically, emotionally, socially, where you test your nervous systems together, trying to get those **** little noises and faces

Amongst all this it has to be said that you are one person though, a single distinct identity, a single perception, a single source for emotional and ideological response to the blisteringly large amount of stimuli beyond counting over the course of years

With that.. comes uncertainty, especially when younger but settling still sometimes on the oldest of shoulders
An uncertainty, or an adversity, or a challenge
A challenge for some which drops down the back of sofas, or is gratefully piled under by gift after gift of shallow victory or opaque validations
For others they stand taller than the highest of towers with the most intimidating of faces, deconstructing the figurative cells of the beholder
For others still the matter is more personal and individual than two tone truths, the task, the anomaly amongst lucidity, the defining cracks in the mirror manifest in different animals, expressions and caricatures
And the singularity of existence, which is gradually being ballooned by technology convenience well, that doesn't ******* help.

So what do we do about these ******* bits of our brains? These resounding sticks putting pressure on our cogs and wheels, slowing us on our trip to the ideal
Some repress them, building them like ulcers, ulcers which burst in destructive forms or simply crush our backs till our smiles are hollow
Some indulge them, pursuing the irrationality till blood, ***** and tears surround our overwhelmed and tired doors to the world
Others.. those that I always admire, fight them, engage them with a rational or honest stand to last, and some of these ones win
I like to think of myself as one of these but..

I'm not there yet, not truly
But I see things differently, thanks to traditional private channels and a tipping see saw between healthy and really unfucking healthy approaches
The miniature disasters, the minor catastrophes, they've become different, something opaque, analysable and approachable
I can see them for what they are more than how they make me feel, and that is something I'd advice you do next time that thing, under whatever buckets or barrels of soaking context you've got going with it, that's an approach that really works for me
When it has substance, a color, a shape or a texture, when it can be really perceived for what it is, it can be dealt with
And you can be the one to deal with it, let the thing be what it is

Then grab it, squeeze what you need from it onto your plate
Or let it go and drift along to the sides of your vision, allowing you to focus and let go of what is peripheral in sight and insignificant in mind

I can't imagine what you're going through, I will never say I can, unless say, you're eating jam toast.
But I will say that I have faith in you reader, and that if I can face what my challenges have been and what my challenges will be well..

You can too.

Baby,
     I
           think that
      maybe,
We've ****** up.
    Cause we've been force fed such fractured fallacies like,  
A Jewish zombie who is his own father,  
A chosen people, and immortality.
       Oh and did you know slavery was OK?
        How about ****?
Yeah the problem with an endless line of orphans is the exponential loss of the truth of our cosmic dead-beat dad.
                                  Well now,
The hand that feeds has fallen short, with the founding fathers roll in their graves.
Whilst silly sheep support Disillusioned delusions dressed,
in
Red White and Blue,


Wait for their cue, because
The Republic
is being held at gun point, with modern Gestapos ready and willing for the killing.
The final days of momma democracy await.

Zealous jealous and out for blood, with a cross across their chests as they proclaim; "IN HIS NAME, WE SMITE YE!"

Now thats just jurisdiction to judge the jury.

And now

She showers us
With this Vampiric ecstasy,
As they mask our mothers ****** under the banner of God.

As they
             wipe away the blood gushing,
      from the slit throat of
Lady Liberty,
with whats left of our crumbling
Constitution,
only to wrap her in a once glorious flag, now despoiled with
The poisonous blessings bought by the pontiff of flame
whose pseudo fame is a sign
that this clandestine facade will end soon.

Yet still we must deal with another contradiction, another, convoluted convulsion of consciousness severing our ties with that
good ol' American dream.

So watch them promote our fall, greeting hell-fire half-heartedly, these sanctimonious masses amass, a menacing masquerade.

See they've paraded on the moral high ground pointing the finger without the grounds to back themselves up, aside from a dusty old book and the rusty rapturous moans of defiled men.

As chosen children I chide you, for archaic superstition must be left behind, a fact that most may find, a tad bit unacceptable, even while you drive your SUV's and gorge on Mickey D's, while you gun down doctors and destroy human intelligence. Remember the dark ages? Guess who made them dark.

Your men on top ****** male prostitutes and tap dance in the mens room, denying every allegation; look, this is a nation stuck on revelation hell bent on escaping damnation.

And they say I'm the Devil! One worth the reapers embrace, those carcinogen caricatures carried by the book.
When fear rules their hearts,
Destruction and War
beget by their weakness.
                          Now all I say is throw it all away, Live, ****, and Love. Just imagine a world free, free from terror, war, hate, separation, and segregation.
             Imagine finally clogging that cancerous ventricle our country holds so dear.
   Imagine the end to a crutch,
A spiritual mod,
Imagine a world,
Without the illusion of God.

The corner restaurant is a rendezvous of ghosts:
wholesome weeping wannabes, caricatures of caricature people,
large heads and drooping eyes, haunting cold coffee mugs,
burgers with fries, buzzing waitresses exhausted
has two kids back home and a young guy,
his hands deep in soapy waters and plates,
sweat stained shirt and forever o clock shadow
wishing he was someplace far, he's new but that one's not,
that one flipping canned meats, beer gut hanging low,
been here since 1975, used to play the guitar for a band,
the doors swing open, "Hey man, how long y'all open?",
boasting a cigarette mouth, coughing and yellow,
"I gotta get on the road but what pies you got?",
a 'Nam jacket zipped up, he sits while the jukebox sings
a cancerous voice and narcotic trumpet, and two lovers
are lost in the saturn moons for hours, wandering alien spaces,
the envy of no one, all the clocks crack the midnight bouquet,
the register rings, the phone rings, the manager scowls,
"Someone give her a hand!" mascara caked mystery howls
as her order nearly flips as the struggling waitress loses her tips,
and it never ends, the "help wanted" sign shines beneath the neon fright,
like moths attracted to lights, a newborn waddles inside.

I

I came to see The King originally for a favor
I was a troubled writer
I searched around my home and inside myself for some kind of cure
A trick solution... Basically
I didn't want to practice
Work hard and get better.
Try and try harder
No, it was more important that I quickly and easily achieved greatness
That killed me.

I want to take you inside the moment
Have you feel the real emptiness of me
As a HUMAN BEING
As a LIVING SOUL.
There is nothing there still.
Arrested development.

Loneliness

II

It overcomes
And I try to make the decision to better mysef
But this unbearable loneliness
Inhibits action.

This was The King's curse
The King's curse this remains.
And all of it my own fault

This is me now
Walking aimlessly forward on a barren canvas
Blissfully ignorant to everything
And everything is nothing anymore
And nothing becomes something to me
A crutch I cling to for my life
And all of this is just wandering
Without hope of accomplishment
Of even the
MINIMUM
Requirements.
Minimum. minimum. MINIMUM. mINIMUM

I know some people like to keep me blind
And they don't realize it
They don't understand
Where I have lost myself
The worst part is owing that they have an idea
The worst part is KNOWING that they KNOW
That they KNOW

Knowing is important
I KNOW this now
The important thing
about knowing
Is not knowing.

Being helpless becomes the fire escape
And as I climb down to escape my landlord
I encounter other tired helpless wanderers
Slumped all over the floor, blocking several ladders down
Before I push them aside
Alienating them too

I can't let myself be friends
Or even friendly or respectful or even
Decent and not unkind
With so many people
Because they can't let me let them.

I tell lies.
They can't make me let them let me become any of those things.
Not that anyone would want to

I want everything I say
To be known by everyone
And understood and not judged
And forgiven so that I can start over.

Because the past year has become
A wrinkle in time
I have found the Time Machine
The simple mechanism
Which brings down worlds.
The most dangerous invention.
The beast that slew the kings of days gone by
And if I were stronger I would fight the beast
But I am weak and bend to their will

I am a textbook example

I am the kid in the southern gothic scene
I am the overdramatized case of redemption
I am the same as everyone who ever went before me and
I am the one who nobody expected, but
Then in a way kind of did.
You know. The textbook example.

I am the one who dreamed too hard.
And dreaming really is the only thing I do.

I try to create some reason I should buck the system
But creation isn't possible with that attitude
The ambitious negate the ambition
In this world which is always
Counter to the will
And disposition

To be rewarded for a passive existence would be a crime
It's irresponsible of anyone to let me have my way
But I can't blame them, it's easier that way
I make it impossible for them to stop me
And my punishment is losing the audience

And the audience is the only thing I want.

AUDIENCE. YOU'RE THE ONLY THING I WANT

I present to you a string of drunken accidents
Expect you to justify it for me
And fly away and
Sleep forever
Which is all I want to do

SLEEPING FOREVER. YOU ARE ALL I WANT TO DO.

Most unhealthy most unhealthy
Just give me a chance
I'm Michelangelo drawing caricatures on the boardwalk.

No I'm not.



III

I can't start to consider myself better than you in any way at all

And now when I wandered through the jungle
I stumbled upon a situation
A guy was trying to **** a guy whose giant hooves were crushing me as I walked by
And I fought them both and beat them all.

And now somebody else
Hand a transitory period
A mind-expanding event
Did something good
Like I always want to.

I'm a kind of Don Quixote
But less good
More bad.

IV

Desolate, washed up
Thin and swollen face
Barely tell the difference 'tween sleep and wake
Pigeons and rats, dogs and cats
Late at night it's snakes and bats
I just sit there numb, unmoving
Happy with my new solution
Saw no use in concentration
Drugs just give me resignation
Takes the key from my ignition
A year from now the new expansion
Will see me as an aberration
And up will rise a league of nations
Dressed in all the latest fashion
Take my name, identification
Throw away my medication
I can't rise to the occasion
I can't understand the notion
I can't meet the expectation
I can't locate my location



I don't have your full attention

V

How can I catch up
When you dropped my body off at the beginning
And brought my mind all the way up to the end?

How can I cheer up
When I walk into a confrontation
With the obvious intention
Of losing my head?

How can I shape up
When the way to do what's right
And the way to do what's wrong
Are just the same way?

How can I come out
When my life has been the open file
That everyone has rifled through?

Easily

Easily

Easily

Impossible.

VI

...orward on a barren canvas
something something
mumble mumble
wimble wimble wimble
Blissfully ignorant of everything
The surface of Mars I wander
Walk
I walk forward
I take turns
I act as if
I have a destination
I take turns
I walk forward

On the surface of Mars

After a while I think about nothing
Think about nothing
Think about nothing
Rhythms and patterns help move me along
Move me along
Move me along
The sirens of cycle are calling to me
Calling to me
Calling to me
And anything novel is something to see
Something to see
Something to see
A lot of the time I get stuck in a loop
Stuck in a loop
Stuck in a loop
A loop
A lot of the time I get stuck in a loop

A loop

And then the loop
A loop
Becomes a ring
A loop
It wraps itself around my finger
A loop
And the ring rings out to you
A loop
Ring. Ring.
Wring ring
Of its ring
But observers are observers
And they observe me
And I am never sure of their intention
I know they care less than I know they do
But I know enough to stop them from knowing
Or at least, I know that
And I know it is untrue
I believe and disbelieve

VII

I wake up and look around
They've woken me from ancient slumber
Noises bright lights total confusion
I lash out into the blinding light
At nothing in particular
I look down at myself
See myself in this pure light
See the sutures and the scars
Scabs
All drawn on with pen and ink
But the flesh beneath is rotten too
Rotten in its shallow and unstable condition
Naked and afraid I lash out again
At nothing in particular
At myself in fact
But directed out at everyone
Nurses and technicians who monitored me in my embryonic tube
That is all anybody is to me
That is all there is around me
In this chaos I can see no option
But to relish in the madness
Bite the hand that feeds me, in a way
In fact, exactly, but...
Maybe it's about time it was bitten
No use deciding
Already biting
So I destroy so I may escape
But I escape and then I know not what to do

(inside the moment. Inside the moment of realization.
The sensational horror of staring off the edge.)

VIII

Sometimes when I'm
Crawling through
Alleys, over
Fences through
Drains under
The streets

I start to experience moments of lucidity
At times I am not lost and I'm not incognito
And at times I would be safe even in the wide open streets
At times I realize just where I'm going
And I can look with clarity and laugh at all the comedy
The desolate dark comedy of errors called existence
And if I wanted I could sidestep my own mask
Just tell the world that I've been kidding
Just limp away with a chuckle and a wink
Just gather up the pieces, start again, I really mean it this time
Just forget what has happened
I already have... Why couldn't anybody else?
They already did... What's the problem?
They can forgive, perhaps forget, but never will their respect return

And anyway I still crawl through
Alleys through
Fences through
Walls.
In secret
And I'm sure
The authorities
Still know where I am
I'm sure that
To be discreet
Could be the secret

And accusatorily I'm followed
And later punishment slips past
Looming overhead,
A hawk-like creature
Many biting heads
Head 1 is Guilt
Head 2 is Shame
Head 3 is Pain
Head 4 is Doom
Head 5 is Fate
Head 6 is Nature
Head 7 is Justice
Head 8 is Mercy
Head 9 is Man
Head 10 is Woman

Fearsome talons
Talons of words, forces, actions, feelings
Even in escape I have to fear for my survival
With so many threats around me there are no safe bets
Particularly when I try to get away
And in the struggle try to knock The King's curse loose
It's happened once or twice or even four or five times
But every time it finds me here again, again





IX

Now indebted to The King
My waking Hell now worse than Nightmare
The curse is pulling all the strings
My conscience is empty and bare
Violence, violent times I live in
A living extrapolation
And in a way it feels like Heaven
Drenched in much more exploitation
Create a monster of myself
To rid the pain of being man.

6 sides
Latent enabler
Counterpoint to truth, amorphic
Dada to life
Callous Birth
Islands dripped in collagen
Mystic, effortless life
Tempests laden iota in tune
Riven
Licked flat, obtuse
Crescent stench
Pagan cells
Hazard the thought
Pick the Atlantic cherry
Reach further than comfort
Pushed & consumed
Spirited paste
Jesuit told in spheres
Lament interest, matted quill
Totem, Saxon tribe
Inflections of hearsay
And Swastikas on parade
Guilt of the blacksmith, undecided
The arms of tablets
Ashtrays & tropospheric light
Another page turned
Capsules filled with perfume
Loose skin lost in relics
Temporal lobe
Cautioned indignant
Pardon the prose
Sonnets dissolved in ethanol
Caricatures of the fleeting
Of our cities last broadcast
Absorbed by times gone
Glittered pestilence
Canceling subordinates, powdered Semtex
Soup of the sewer
Lift the butcher above your head
Nazca lines
Suborbital
Silk screen with *****
Horizontal qualm toward revulsion
Incursion
Calm, cued and cubed
Lab coats coated in pharmaceuticals
Base compound, ionic bond
Covalent CNS
Sympathetic vibration
Default to nature
To theorise movement
Agitate intolerance, turbulence
Beautiful thought
Calculate causality
Passenger of licked lips
Token to latex
Croft in ear, to taste
Unlaced tips, rings of halothane
Bliss
Intrigued with obscurity

If I am not beautiful,
Am I not bountiful?
...........The problem with beauty is
that it gets old
after that, it can not be sold
it is a fleeting commodity
it will never, never last

If I am not successful
am I not relevant?
If I am not rich,
am I not important?
does money really talk?
and can fame
equal true , unspoiled
happiness
or peace of mind?

If I am not powerful
am I merely anonymous?
do I contribute anything at all
and do I matter?

We are living in a world
that does not tolerate mediocrity
it dwells in mores of hypocrisy
and so it breeds profanity
it encourages deception
and if you want to have your
name remembered,
take a few lives in your
gun powdered hands
they will splash your face
all over the papers
and you can hide behind
the curtains of insanity

how sad to be lonely
but these are the
scenes that we condone
plastic caricatures we are
living in lies and
false smiles
we have died while
we are still alive
inhaling the polluted air
that we so happily create

CLICK!*

Inky black pervades the humid club
as sticky bodies, swathed in white,
dig and **** at each other,
vying for an inch or a foot or a mile.
For those few stygian seconds
the heaving throng is silent,
fervent excitement and suspense
pulsating through the sweaty mass
like a coveted contagion,
until the stage lights come up,
a blinding spectacle of whites and
violets, daring the crowd to blink,
lest we miss the anticipated entrance.

Finally, the group arrives,
a ghastly spectacle of half-naked flesh
framed with vicious horns and alien body
armor—metallic spikes, blades, and skulls.
They grab their ancient instruments,
introduce themselves as the Scumdogs of
the Universe, and unleash a torrent
of notes so loud, clashing, and violent
that my eardrums cry aloud in protest.
The notes pulsate through the bar,
a cloudburst of liquid metal that
engulfs every heaving body.

Immediately, the waxen sea erupts
into a storm, thrashing and writing
in a heated frenzy so fevered and
chaotic that an uninformed observer
might believe he was witnessing a
a mass seizure—or a barbaric ****.
While the music assaults my chest
cavity, little circles open up amongst
the heaving mob, and people of all
shapes and sizes run in vicious circles,
limbs thrown about haphazardly,
tempestuous bruise-makers.
The temperature in the club rises,
as does the stench of cheap beer
and unadulterated body odor,
but suddenly, the melody ceases.

A greasy, ****** fellow joins the band,
and gives a self-righteous speech before
the first lambs are brought to slaughter.
Caricatures of political figures, more than
seven feet tall, stumble onto the dais—
forced into a faux boxing ring.
The throng howls like a pack
of bloodthirsty wolves as the entertainers
sever counterfeit limbs, purposefully
sending a shower of red cornstarch
over our hungry, eager faces.
In the midst of the flailing crowd
I am pushed closer to the stage,
and am bathed in this homage
to human nature, this gladiatorial
spectacle. It is a fight to the death,
and culminates in a beheading,
which unleashes a deluge of
costume blood into the congregation
with such force that I can taste
its sickly sweet satire in my mouth.

How jealous am I
At poetry?
That simple words make the lovely firm
And compact shadowy abstraction?
Every letter holds a bitter love
A fiction made with zeal,
Drawn from pinpricks, imaginings,
A fiction I made real.
Within them, sit, the cloth I weave
My heroic darling love exists
There, sobriety is leastways bearable
And pen to paper I can’t resist.
I see perfection—her complexion,
Written out in words
But she is so stolid
And doesn’t move
Her features fade when I admit,
Stale enterprise, the poem done
and the page I promptly quit.
Rife with guilt and melancholy
I’ve done impulse injustice:
Concretizing the unknowable,
Left caricatures incomplete.
Despite the sense, here, stacked before me,
The envy for this poem
Because it has a solid grasp
At the prickings of my heart.
And still, what have I
And what have he
But two-side written jealousy?
For more words that breed a love
Of which I, voracious, hunt,
More beauty, more glamour, rosy viscera,
Give poetry that fallacy,
That fallacy I want.

I
An orange overcast this
evening splayed pink
hues stripes and
saccharine beads. The

twilight caricatures live golden years.

Restless becoming in the garden of
her drunken sons their flowers
soaked in brass, seams
bursting in uncontrollable
laughter we pause. To
admire the briefness

of that era exploding
its petals peppering
spraying saliently we spill
indoors churning across tabletops.
My arms hang dead by my sides.

Her eyes gaping sway
swiftly biting deeply the dottedfaces
lurch. Streets fall unconditional
amidst tears we comb lips
sharply distinctly

her stubborn *** stumbling
handles loosening she holds
my hand my arms hang
dead we pause.       

II
Children babble sunlight across
lawns; I hear sirens traffic icecream nips
our tongues twinge on windless
pipes gust our hair flying smiling
at laughter  from the
playground behind us.

Placid smiles stain enamoured
halls; for glimpses
we mumble necks crooked
sheets flap  draped over bars
her eyes waver glisten
shiver. A warm breeze
dries my hair.

III
Wallowing I oscillate utmost trep-
-idation entangling grappling but
hushed beneath foliage eyes
downturned soil clings when her

fingers impress deeper through
to where rivers end.
Glowing dawn I turn further
lighter almost her hair caught

between the floors;
gently feverish we see turgid
lines the tinniest cracks we pray
on tranquil mornings.

Window panes blemished it was
spring only darker from
deafened rivers throbbing;
under lucid eyes I fold
and heralds blare. We consume
the silence sounding from still lakes.

Tumbleweed
Ted Old
John Merchant,
Joan Harling
Edith Smith
David Wilkinson,
Mike Waldron
Marie Ainsworth
Ruth Bell,
Lucy Ritchie

A list undignified by death
In an instant deflated, unwound
Vibrant yet now not a breath
Missing, lost, not found

I mourn every one of their names
And all that each one implied
Merely a lifetime ago
They came, they lived, they died.

The bluntness has ruined my mood
With the arrogant stealing of life
It demanded all my attention
Then cynically wielded the knife

I'm trying but their voices are fading
As my brain's recordings wear out
And the clarity of all their faces
Is blurred with the pallor of doubt

So all I have now are some photos
Flat caricatures of their lives
Each one replacing my memory
With a past that cannot be revived

Relentless my list will grow longer
Crushing for each name a line
And my heart will grow ever more heavy
Till the last name that's added,
is mine.