A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

.
From their private jets,
The primal privileged
Spot a spark earthwards,
The glint of the rolling
Out of guillotines.

Guillotines so tall, waiting,
Just for them and they know
It was coming, as they know
They have it coming.

The rabble they so despise,
Yet pander for as they pull
Wool and leave all in cold,
The wretched who someday
Read injustice in the leaves,
The Princes of sham, cloven,
Always bearing woven bags,
Carpet dreams of desperate,
Down trodden, never fearing
To be trampled, till the blade
Is shining in the searing light
Of new day.

For retribution is a fable
The reptilian upper classes
Are cold to see as it strikes,
Their forked tongues,
Eventual as slimy winter
Strangles themselves
In a hollow cave,
Unmarked.

Even the dirt is soiled
With their fame, their
Scaled names, even
Sun will not shine
On the bloodied blots
They have wrought.

Such murderous stiffs,
Who enslaved all warmth
And empathizers in a rug
Fit for a tomb.  And all their
Art as false as they!

The earthy shall rise
And salt their mortal
Wounds, songs will not be sung
For the indifferent masters
Who now pour into streets
Made for severed muck.

The only beauty they left:
Opulent, soppy-red coiffured heads
As they roll on the potholed,
Sooty pavements.

Eyelids descend like a guillotine,
decapitating the visual stimuli
my mind engrosses upon in daylight.

Then there is a numbness as the
cascading representations of my
day are all rendered darkened silence.

*"My day is colour, my dreams are black and white,

They say we are free.
Free to bark, if no one listens.
Free to scribble, if no one prints.
Free to inhale, if it doesn’t cost too much.

This is not anthem.
This is not lament.
This is autopsy.

Let the ink blister the page
for those whose stories
were throttled before sunrise.
Let the silence rupture into
a thunderclap of what should have been...


Judas of the Womb

Her name was reduced to a whisper.
Her death, a technicality.

She died of sepsis? No!
She died of legislation—
the sanctified paralysis of law.

Izabela.
Thirty years haunted by patriarchy.
Twenty-two weeks into a doomed gestation.
One human life overwritten
by a cluster of cells wrapped in legalese.

“They’ll wait until it dies,” she wrote,
"Or I will."
She did.

The state shrugged.
Three men in coats clutched
their degrees like shields.
Guilty, but not too guilty.
Penalized, but not inconvenienced.

And somewhere behind a mahogany desk,
a BBC editor ticked the
"Do Not Disturb Poland" box.
Because truth, like radiation,
is best contained to domestic fallout.


The Jester Beheaded by Branding

He made them laugh.
He made them uncomfortable.
Then he made them look at themselves.
That was the mistake.

He survived presidents.
But not the quarterly earnings report.

The axe did not fall.
It slid.

No cancellation. Just de-prioritization.
No outrage. Just polite press releases
and quiet exits.

The revolution will not be televised.
It was tested poorly with key demographics.


Soft Guillotines

Not fire.
Just foam padding and soft lighting.

No jail.
Just "violated community guidelines."

No riot gear.
Just Terms of Service.

They won’t stop you.
They’ll just stop broadcasting you.
They’ll hide you in the cellar of the algorithm,
behind un-skippable ads and SEO oblivion.

Your words are welcome—
as long as they sell soap.
Your outrage is valid—
if it fits in a drop-down menu.


The Global Echo

Warsaw, Manhattan, Manila, Paris.
Different names for the same soft boot.
The same velvet rope
around the neck
of the narrative.

They don’t ban the voices.
They dilute them.
Filter them.
Render them un-shareable,
un-searchable, un-fundable.

We live in a marketplace of ideas,
where truth competes
with cat videos and loses.


The Hollowing

When liberty must pass through a monetization filter,
it is not liberty.

When satire must first clear advertising compliance,
it is not satire.

When journalism fears its own clicks,
when editors redact themselves,
when profit margins call the morning meetings—
we are not in a democracy...

We are in a theme park of tolerated dissent.


The Sliver of Soil

But still—yes, still.

There are cracks in the concrete,
uncatalogued by surveillance,
unpolished by PR.

In those fractures, we gather.
Not to shout—but to build.
Not to trend—but to outlast.

We will forge our voices into chisels.
We will scratch our stories into steel.
We will be inconvenient.
Unprofitable.
Relentless.

So write what they won’t publish.
Speak what they won’t air.
Sing the verses
that sour their brand strategy.

And if we rise, not in hashtags,
But in habit—
not in virality, but in volume—
not in fury, but in fidelity—

then liberty may yet bloom.
Not fast.
Not free.
But truly ours.

Hands like guillotines
sever ties
flee fleeting moments
of traumatic scenes
and gay parades
on ink-stained clouds
blushing like mushrooms
tinted by the sun.

I'm
Done
I simply
Refuse
To be
Pretty.

Cute, maybe
Adorable, sure
I could stand a shot at
Beauty.

But I will
Not
I repeat
Not
Conform to
Pretty.

It's surely
Nice to be
Pretty
But I'd rather
Take my
Sincerity
Or hilarity.

And I won't
Sacrifice my
Dignity for
Regularity.

Pretty faces are
For sale at a
Dime a dozen on
Our magazines
But I'm looking for
More than eyeliner
And lipstick
Guillotines.

I moved past
Pretty
Lost my shot at
Perfection
When I found a
Crack
In my gritty reflection.

Not to say I'm giving up
On my beauty intention
But woman cannot survive
On wardrobe interventions.

I dream of living to see the next revolution,
And of the men who will not live through that revolution,
Of the air humming electric static heat in anticipation of the inevitable riot,
Of the holy barricades standing in defiance of Heaven,
Of the enlightened kicking down the doors with guns and masks, asking;
"ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE PROBLEM OR ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION?"
Of gallows for the dogs of war,
Of guillotines for the capitalist pigs,
Of a firing squad for every reactionary content to oppose the wheel of history even as it crushes their bones down to nothing,
Of the end which justifies  the blood staining the cities red as the hammer and sickle cells that divide and multiply fevered in the streets,
Of the ghosts of iron men long dead still insisting that we take not one step back,
Because men get arrested, animals get put down
And God,
God made them as stubble to our swords, boys
And with blades clenched between their teeth so climb the dregs of the Earth to the surface to taste the apples they shook from the trees,
In 24 hour news cycles the slogans repeat to infinity:
"NOT RESISTING ARREST"
"NOT COMMITTING A CRIME"
"I WAS NOT A THREAT, WHY DID YOU TRY TO **** ME"
You can only force people to paint the smallest target possible on their own backs for so long before you end up in the crosshairs
I have seen the faces of  my saints painted on the walls of eternity -
Of Trotsky,  million headed proletariat staring daggers through the hearts of the tsars,
Of Cromwell, crusader for the ungovernable force of will,
Of Robespierre, headsman of divine terror riding on the wings of the Angel of Death,
I have seen the end and the means played out in countless dramas across millennia,
And the only question that remains unanswered is this:
Are you gonna be a part of the problem or are you gonna be a part of the solution?

A pallid page: laid out for guillotines
Of chickenscratch all frantic in a trek
Across that indifferent monstrosity.
The lines ascend, but tend to end a wreck.
This certain fate stalks they who brave the Blank:
To crumple and to crease, to never cease
‘Till but the wiliest, weathered words remain,
Stalwart, scarred; final heralds of the peace.
What end is sought in this warmongering?
That question’s murk curses humanity.
Minds have been known to yield to stronger things…
the dinner bell, perhaps insanity.
Yet brave these squabbling syllables we must
Else face the terror of collecting dust.

Giles Corey

What is there, really,
Left to say
When you cannot trust
The honest pay?

Do you, really
Hear the sounds,
Of the clocktowers
coming down?

I do not, really,
Know the time.
We're just acquainted..
No friend of mine.

No friends at all
Are mine, per say.
Just folks to call,
From day to day.

From day to day,
And dusk to dusk.
There's nothing left
But empty husks.

I'd gouge my eyes
With forks and knives,
If that would bring me
To Saint Ives.

Gouge my eyes
At sight of her
Hopes I despise:
empty aquifer.

That saturate the souls
Of bedazzled bums
And homeless ******
Sent to pick the crumbs.

Great fallen father
Oh, dying mother
What way is water?
Who hid the shelter?

Your sons and daughters
Are frightened now.
They cannot win
They don't know how.

We all have fears
Of how we'll fare
When you say,
"We need more engineers.

To build the cities
And the gutters
And the gluttons
And the guillotines
And the gilded glaves that gorey Giles brings.

To pile the stones
On our frail young frames
As we're forced to cry
To **** our names,
"More weight."

Face first
into the pasty mud
too weak to crank myself up
too ashamed to continue hugging earth
but we all hug our mothers when we're hurting.

Finally risen from the pit
Face up, proud, and defying
I gave him my stony gaze
Face caked with loam

He sneers
I could swear there are
canines in all gum roots
as he speaks
tongue dancing to farce
I hope he guillotines the messenger

He utters
you look pretty when you wear
the ****

He thwacks me deadly
I tip and tumble
right down
down

It is the betters years now
I've soared up, up
up
and now people wear mud
for me
not on faces
not that I'd care
I'm paying them, after all
after all, I'm not buying their souls
after all, they want to be here
they're happy
and after all I've been through
It's high time someone takes the mud
for me... and then
I see her

Red hair rippling in radiant sun
casting glints of desire I catch with
hungry eyes
Her skin pale as pearl
Her face speckled like rich mineral
Her features delicate and strong
Her eyes, sharp and bright and silhouetted, like
windows to a garden,
yes,
green eyes.

I've tasted never
I've spoken never
of such quibbles as love,
but her beauty is the embrace
I've never known

It's all a shimmering flow
a cascade of fluid memory
the quenching of things
not known to be thirsted
My eyes open to a path
I've just found the will
to traverse in peace.

Yet, like Jack and Jill,
we go tumbling down
down
the hill
and...

It's a wedding anniversary
not ours
because silence
and delirium imbibed
is preferred on such occasions

I smile
She glances
and sighs deep
unearthing cavernous
voids
of misery
caked on memories
of bittersweet mysteries
called love

It is only in the mirror that,
with those windowed eyes,
she gazes with scorn, pity
a truth meant for me

Shame crushes my heart
heartbeat pulsing like
a crumpled soda can
rattling on empty road

With languid brushstrokes
she applies the mascara

You look pretty when you wear
the ****
I said

The pin drops
and with it
the canvas...

One man's trash is another's face
We can find solace in the
shattered remnants
of our dreams,
or we can challenge
the very precepts that
assured our rightful happiness

“ash”

a swelling fills my chest
it sounds like heavy waves crashing
against jagged cliffs

     stars stars stars

silver spears descend
   i am pierced


        here

through my clavicle

the rain-swept streets waft with reminisces
  like stale perfume on a black wrinkled shirt

            my head half
submersed in water


                tickling my ear

        I can hear my nose breathing
                  heart pounding
                      throat gulping

body floating

                         dismembered
                  

                       in this liquid abyss


               like a spirit lost
                        in the neon-green ether
         of absinthe

                            lips
              press against my shivering skin

                 a warm palm plunges

                            clasps my numb hand

   a light delves

                            into the obsidian chasm

                   pallid faces

      innumerable

materialize

               from a cavernous distance      

fiery orbs combust

              crackling

                                like dry wood

                               in a snowy forest

smoke billows
                                     towards the fathomless night
                            
                             rising

                       rising

                rising

                   chest

swells
                      
waves

     crash
    

lungs

            bells
                          

eyes


ash...

II

“Shadow-Play”

The shadows in the corners of the room
whisper my name
they are the same shadows
by alley ways,
            behind tombstones
       beneath beds
inside my head

over the plains

the highest and whitest of clouds
cast darkest hues

the brightest of suns

i think of you

                         the whispers get louder
                         the curtains flutter
                         the air turns colder

somewhere a murmur

                         shhh

be still   be still  my dear

the rope hanging in the attic
                        the vague visions through the static
                                    the tremors of the addict

shhh
  be still
      my dear

                          love casts its pallor
                                blood on pale collar
                                  i hear you call her


                   by candle lights
                        as rain drops
                               and winds howl
                                       and wood creaks


      
               icy razors lay on warm tubs
                            guillotines fly through the air                
                    birds fall from thick heights
               like notes of despair


don't shake your head
it will all end
soon
in the corner of the room
There
where the shadows call out your name
like the wind sweeps the rain


               pull out a smoke
                    drag over a chair
                          sit by the window
                            and stare


there is the world    there is the world
   you are not a part of
                there is the world
            full of cruel love
        there the children laugh and play
like you never have
or ever could

   It’s understood

                  the rain floods into gutters
                       the once crisp leaves drift
                          they sog and they shudder
                          from spring-autumn skies
                                 down down sewage drains
                                     all truths mask in lies
                                          all love in pain      

shhh  shhh

the shadows the shadows

   they whisper my name

III

“eternally…”

I see your spectral silhouette
   hovering on the sea's horizon
      at midnight

  as the surf struggles and collapses
     before my feet

    it's so **** cold
     my gut convulses
      my hands shake
        my being shivers

              your hair whips
                 the dark air
               like thunder

                           the wind lashes
                         my numbed skin with coarse sand


            and it's so dark

                    the moon oscillates wide rings
                            of pallid skeletal light

                               and you flutter there exactly
  where the sun set
       six hours ago

                                 when its afterglow
                    disintegrated
                             pixel x pixel
    

                               your shadowy figure
                                   now beckons

                                      join me
                                    this night
                                and every night

                                    hereafter

                                      love
                          
                              I close my eyes....

                                    ...

dancing and sweating

  we lay in my room

             under burgundy covers

                      reeking of cheap beer
                               and dirt

your ******* still slightly moist
    flung on my chair

  my sticky shirt still emanates smoke
     like an industrial factory

you arms wrap a

I've lost time counting headlights and lamplights and streetlights and stars. I've literally lost time. Each day I wake up, and watch the evening drift by in a sunset, I fall asleep and watch the moonlight sail away on a sunrise.


It was an empty promise, these lights all around. It was an empty promise, that buzzed with the current a few thousand volts. Lights...pale and broken bulbs bleeding gasses and lies. But I guess in the dishonesty of some idea so pure, I found the dream that Teslas lightning tipped fingers yearned for,


A quest of solid gold that conducted an orchestra of thunder. And so lights couldn't be a lie anymore,


They could only be a dream, a dream never fully realized so long as the frozen dead fingers of liars past held their grip. Edisons overgrown yellow tinged finger nails, piercing through the veil of misty electric sparks,


Yet here i am


The light bulb is over MY head now! And my brainstorm is an F4 hurricane, my bolts like guillotines for your greedy fingers!


Because this is the generation of new light, of new thunder and new mayhem.
Of illumination!


A new generation carrying torches, casting out our light bulbs and our lamp posts. Forcing fire into Mason jars and using flames like they were new again.


No no no
…
Not Mason jars. Pull those ******* light bulbs from the headlights and lamplights and streetlights, fill those ******* with gunpowder and unstable explosive mixtures and make stars, *******!


Make flames that burn brighter than Edison's unholy lies, that tear down the dome and bring the skies falling!


Watch everything we've built, watch corruption and lies and racism and false superiority come hissing out of the cracks, trying to save themselves from the building pressure,


Trying to claw their red boney fingers from the fire but they can't. Because they are the fire,


And we will all watch as they burn like they always wanted to. Their voices shining past all of the glory their burning visage may grant, their bodies becoming one with the chaos that is our country.


And then we will have nothing left but ashes. No more eagles. Only the right and left wings of a Phoenix,


Risen from our ash and tears, flying into the sky to become the sun...To shine like nothing ever seen by our eyes so used to a false light.


Because it's time we became the sun. It's time we chose a real light to follow, not a halogen tube spewing gas over sickly bodies. No more light bulbs to only last a few weeks. Were tired of artificial light...Tired of breathing oxygen made in a lab…


Maybe it's because we've lost so much time under buzzing broken bulbs, under boot heels and tyrannical ideation. We've lost so much time staring into TV lights and camera flashes that we've only been able to wait for someone real to step into frame...


We've lost so much time counting headlights and lamplights and streetlights and stars. Counting the minutes till a new hero appears...I'm ready to be the light.

~

Sluggish, my eyes barely focus,
headlights seem faint
through this cracked windshield
in heavy traffic, bending lanes
with detour signs collecting travelers
like gas station snow globes,
displayed in between blurred white lines

Monstrous *** holes shake me awake
from the thoughts crawling
deep within a weary mind,
a casualty of a night to forget
which will not soon be forgotten
as digital numbers, glaring red
catch my eye and I see…5:38

Darkness engulfs the cab of this truck,
dash lights cringe and flash hypnotically,
out of round tires draw skid marks
on a lonely winding pavement
As my feet fall through the floor boards,
scraping on glass shard encrusted asphalt
bleeding beyond the speed limit

White knuckles grip the wheel
while doors become giant guillotines,
slashing at faux leather seats, exposing rancid foam leaking
battery acid on the engine’s severed heads
Everything begins to spin, losing control,
a bright flash and I shift to see…5:39
and the sun comes out presenting a beautiful day

i remember
(a pluchritudinal memory)
when almost so effortlessly
our lives lied to us most indefinitely
in the hours that return with
lashes and chains—

as in clothes heavy soldered
to washlines, the waft in the air is as familiar as the rain cooling
the blades of grass you speak of,
something the dark only conjures
waiting at the brink of my unclosed retina.
i know all of these well-placed memories
like furniture you have arranged
under the hollow hands of the home.
yet barely even so, a fond memory of—
the daedalus outside or the cut
gladiolus, plucked out of the moseying hour's vicious wingtip.

we do not always die like this.
when all our dying whispers are thrusted
underneath mouths of stone,
when all of our wishes hold a flame
paler than a vague rekindling of the dead.

sometimes promised something an ellipsis would half-ponder and postpone
in word's mid-birth.

the raging moon had waned.
all the windows shunned — hermetic,
air outside potent, leaving all books
half-read yet fully opened.
the children hide behind thin shades
of roses,
i can hear the steely grit of the flesh
pared from the bone as my mother
guillotines with kitchenware

we do not always die instantaneously.
most of our ways to go leave
demarcations on soul — something so easily displaced, doubled array of its arrival into half-wakefulness.

something only a last prayer thumbed
down to the last bead
and we cannot cry anymore.

night's flumine seeks to rebuild the wound undone delicately
leaving my breath and betraying my body.

we somehow always die like this.

.

Sluggish, my eyes barely focus,
headlights seem faint
through this cracked windshield
in heavy traffic, bending lanes
with detour signs collecting travelers
like gas station snow globes,
displayed in between blurred white lines

Monstrous *** holes shake me awake
from the thoughts crawling
deep within a weary mind,
a casualty of a night to forget
which will not soon be forgotten
as digital numbers, glaring red
catch my eye and I see . . . 5:38 am

Darkness instantly engulfs the cab of this truck,
dash lights cringe and flash hypnotically,
out of round tires draw skid marks
on a lonely winding pavement
As my feet fall through the floor boards,
scraping on glass shard encrusted asphalt
bleeding beyond the speed limit

White knuckles grip the wheel
while doors become giant guillotines,
slashing at faux leather seats,
exposing rancid foam leaking
battery acid on the engine’s severed heads
Everything begins to spin, losing control,
as I finally screech to a halt at a stubborn traffic light

When I glance to my right and I see her,
singing along with her radio,
more beautiful than any song I’ve ever heard
She notices me staring and smiles,
then rolls down her window and blows me a kiss,
I roll down mine as she points to a little coffee shop
and says, “Care to join me?”  I nod in agreement

I once again catch a glimpse of the clock . . . 5:39 am,
but suddenly time no longer matters

Open smiles were fading away

As the seeds grew into trees

Innocent babies falling on the mother

Foreign guillotines flying free



The river of blood flowing by her

Mother’s sons are rising too

Fiery eyes blinded by the sister

You were a part of it too



Open your eyes and look up at the sky

Oh Mother we won’t let you cry

Your salty tears gushing down the rivers

Will bring your boys back home to life

Pretty birds will sing out for you Mama

We’ll build a heaven around you

MA!


All the toys were stolen by the father

And the children suffer in loneliness

One ******* gone brings around another

Our pockets overflowing with emptiness


Sad little sister fears the brother

She can’t hug mama all alone

Left to kiss the feet of the mother

She has lost her way back home


Its time to wipe your tears ma

Its time to forget your fears ma

Its time for me to come home ma

Its time you were not alone ma

Its time to….

buried alive; (in) sane; or harakiri?

a trifecta of horror
cuts through the lush foliage while i
writhe in a nest of
eldritch entrails

anxiety
rises up like an ophidian
coils shedding every quarter of a noon
ready to strike -
i lose movement
and falter through the streets
the meeting rooms,
and the endless conversations that end in stalemates;

my anxiety
an ouroboros of volcanic self-effacement
spills into posh mental facilities (lies)
and shoddy hospitals that turn the sick into the living dead

humiliation
burns bright red (magenta)
and brands my delicate skin with age-old glyphs
they mark the end of a civilization

the birth of a metropolis
with twin suns and dark monoliths
where the mob guillotines the visionaries
and the artist dies a dog's death.

Many of the world's greatest Leaders throughout our tumultuous history have;
Many of  the insightful Revolutionaries in stink hole and glory hole countries have;
Many of the oppressed, disenfranchised and cheated also have.
Look to Lenin, Mandela, Gandi, Nehru, Havel, Bhutto, Ceausescu, Charles I, Papadopoulos, Lady Jane Grey, Louis XVI, Marcos, Milosevic, a pile of Mohameds, Mussolini, Nicholas II, Pinochet, Saddam, Marie Antoinette, Pope Clement V, Selassie, Baghdadi, Duvalier, and, let's not forget the author of Mien Kampf, Adolph the Tenderizer.
And what do they all have in common?
Some, before they became boldly notorious, and others, after they became criminally notorious.
Some, looked out their window and saw platforms being erected.
Others witnessed gallows, guillotines. posts and walls.
They all got some time in:
PRISON. GAOL. JAIL. COOLER. LOCKUP.  DUNGEON. KEEP. PEN. BASTILLE. CLINK. STATESVILLE. SLAMMER. STOCKADE. THE BIG HOUSE.
You get the idea.
His time will come.

Wake! Kokura to a novel world of peace
Under the canopy of dark divine clouds
A million deaths and a zillion days of sufferings
Ah! Flown to a distant land
While the holy hands patting your shoulders
Away Nagasaki crying,
… a loud ghostly cry..

When the fat boy shed fireballs from above
Flitting shadows unable to find a cwtch
Death solidified, melted to florid streams
On a boundless billowy sea of hellfire.
Murky minds killing unknown souls
Burnt alive was innocent, wicked and wise
On their knees, a nation bend
Away victory cried,
… a loud cheerful cry…

Ah! Know me first before you please
to squander guns, grenades or guillotines
At least the cognizant me die in peace,
And a better predilection for your choicest blessings.
Silent guns are a hackneyed dream
Begging only for a better aim
Away hope loath to stop,
.. a loud wishful cry…

Here is the vond vedette,
Here are the congeries scopulous at the alluvion combe - a serow discovers a yawn
Within its palm. Electrical storms redd over this mountain's peaks its verbs, spate it's cwms. Lichen flux ecesis, caught in the current towards veridity.
A verderer hazed by chessile guillotines, naves hain- dwindling grike of corrasion

Indomite lithoids behooving one's obstacle of self, set by sanguine puerile innocent knosps. While the eyes howk that merriment of skin-cleft sensations into the reweaved aureoles, those many colored plumes of split flowers, which open into brightly singing dactyls of these grieving bield and obscene vocations. To the gulch of one thousand bells, and only the passive nestling interstices to anoint them

The silence was sinister, as if, sound had lost its vocal chords,
the days arrived and sunsets painted the sky in crimson
and gold leaf ensembles of artists dreams.

While they sat around a table, document drivers ran around
pushing agendas, translating armageddon scenarios
if the other side raised a finger or pulled a trigger.
So the sulky diplomats sat like doormats where
the national feet were wiped upon and trust was invested
in their stupidity. Harvard education, pin-striped suits
with loud aggressive neckties announced their status
to TV crews and intrepid journalists, hanging on every word
like guillotines, to ravage the leading newspaper stories.
Headlines were deadlines. Diplomats drummed
up side angles for photographic faces  to appear firm
and responsible to the taxman's money.

Here they gathered
with their policy whisperers awaiting for a signal
to open their loaded dialogues of positions and
policy shifts. Yet no one said a word.

The silence, for once, kept all the mouths shut
( one wished permanently!)
no one said a word for 3 long hours,
but they sipped chilled water, took notes of nothing
glared at each others sides and took notes
again of what was not said.

At the stoke of two, when the clock belted
a twang and the echo bounced through
many empty heads, the diplomats rose
to call it another day of negotiations.

The cold war had just had its 9th meeting.

Author Notes
The Revolution says little, but the war take sides. Diplomats are busy 'discussing' how to end the war, and find a solution. Their policy positions are so entrenched, that little happens. The silence is as loud as could be. Meanwhile, the guns boomed and little childrens playgrounds were pock-marked with cluster bombs. Lines of refugees, walked up the mountains seeking shelter in neighbouring towns. The cold war complemented the heat war that was raging on the battlefields of doom. Please stay indoors.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Non, Liberté ! non, Peuple, il ne faut pas qu'il meure !
Oh ! certes, ce serait trop simple, en vérité,
Qu'après avoir brisé les lois, et sonné l'heure
Où la sainte pudeur au ciel a remonté ;

Qu'après avoir gagné sa sanglante gageure,
Et vaincu par l'embûche et le glaive et le feu ;
Qu'après son guet-apens, ses meurtres, son parjure,
Son faux serment, soufflet sur la face de Dieu ;

Qu'après avoir traîné la France, au cœur frappée,
Et par les pieds liée, à son immonde char,
Cet infâme en fût quitte avec un coup d'épée
Au cou comme Pompée, au flanc comme César !

Non ! il est l'assassin qui rôde dans les plaines ;
Il a tué, sabré, mitraillé sans remords,
Il fit la maison vide, il fit les tombes pleines,
Il marche, il va, suivi par l'œil fixe des morts ;

À cause de cet homme, empereur éphémère,
Le fils n'a plus de père et l'enfant plus d'espoir,
La veuve à genoux pleure et sanglote, et la mère
N'est plus qu'un spectre assis sous un long voile noir ;

Pour filer ses habits royaux, sur les navettes
On met du fil trempé dans le sang qui coula ;
Le boulevard Montmartre a fourni ses cuvettes,
Et l'on teint son manteau dans cette pourpre-là ;

Il vous jette à Cayenne, à l'Afrique, aux sentines,
Martyrs, héros d'hier et forçats d'aujourd'hui !
Le couteau ruisselant des rouges guillotines
Laisse tomber le sang goutte à goutte sur lui ;

Lorsque la trahison, sa complice livide,
Vient et frappe à sa porte, il fait signe d'ouvrir ;
Il est le fratricide ! Il est le parricide ! -
Peuples, c'est pour cela qu'il ne doit pas mourir !

Gardons l'homme vivant. Oh ! châtiment superbe !
Oh ! S'il pouvait un jour passer par le chemin,
Nu, courbé, frissonnant, comme au vent tremble l'herbe.
Sous l'exécration de tout le genre humain !

Étreint par son passé tout rempli de ses crimes,
Comme par un carcan tout hérissé de clous,
Cherchant les lieux profonds, les forêts, les abîmes,
Pâle, horrible, effaré, reconnu par les loups ;

Dans quelque bagne vil n'entendant que sa chaîne,
Seul, toujours seul, parlant en vain aux rochers sourds,
Voyant autour de lui le silence et la haine,
Des hommes nulle part et des spectres toujours ;

Vieillissant, rejeté par la mort comme indigne,
Tremblant sous la nuit noire, affreux sous le ciel bleu... -
Peuples, écartez-vous ! cet homme porte un signe :
Laissez passer Caïn ! Il appartient à Dieu.

Jersey, le 14 novembre.