(There are galaxies pinwheeling all around me and I can’t sleep.)

there is a malignance
festering within my bones.

night has hypnotized me numb.

it pulls Lake Michigan’s secrets in.

i stare at my cracked wrists.

there is mold in the crevices
of my mind.

i need stardust, to taste the burn of light.

the moon pulls blood from my heart,
shivers from my skin,
a sirens scream from my throat.

Totalitarian menace
refined, tailored pants
bleed malignance and
fear.
What stalks the passage,
normally?
Tear off my clothes, with subordinate cruelty
and tortured fiefdom from the sun
invading damp alleyways
and musty cement corridors
abet you enthroned
on that sidewalk stump.
I curb,
the habit
blindly happenstances about
yore salty ruins
we yodel, indiscriminately.

The bitter drink is that of loneliness
Its company,
Pure desire. How it destroys a soul,
Magnificent malnutrition; magnanimous toward
Malignance.
A yearn. Unanswered, festering wounds.
Crashing thrashing, harassing,
Then caressing.
Loneliness still sings.

I remember a time when we knew how to fly.
It was a feat that just came to us out of thin air,
and oh how thin the air really felt when we took
off. Our finger would cross, cross like the stitching
of a hot air balloon that knew no bounds, filled with
the air we exchanged into each other’s lungs, and
propelled by the pulsing flames of our hearts. Your
sparkling eyes were intoxicating whenever they met
mine, they bore the same sparkle as the wishing star
in the sky I used to put all of my hope and dreams
into. Every instance our lips locked into each other,
whenever your mellifluous hair sashayed by my
nose, or each time you cradled my weary head to
your *****, the more our wings grew; grew to a
point where together we could soar to heaven off
of a single push. We danced through marshmallow
clouds as our wings tickled the sky. You carved your
name across the top of my heart then tucked the
needle of a compass beneath it so I always could find
my way home. We never knew where we were going
but trusted the winds to take us where we needed to be.
We never turned our backs to the skies for it was our
refuge, it was our entirety. Together in the far reaches
of space, boundless and free, the world below became
a place we had long since forgotten.


I remember a time when there was gray in the sky, a
gray that hued to black. Together we could not
recognize these skies and quickly became unsolicited.
The livid winds and the bitter clouds would pierce our
ears as they shrieked in malignance. A storm had
brewed and the rain was falling. The drops snuck
through the cracks between our hands. The harder we
grasped for each other the more we slipped until the
stitching our fingers once made became frayed then torn;
we were disconnected now. The whirlwinds then casted us
further and further apart until you were shrouded by
darkness. I was naked and alone save for the grief I then
became, facing the murkiest region of the storm. The clouds
I once frolicked with now spat a deathly light in my path
until there was nothing I could do and nowhere I could turn.
I wished to my star but I could not see your sparkle anymore.
I was at the mercy of the skies I once called home however
mercy was not to be arranged. The bright light paralyzed me
hard and fast straight through my heart, gouging out the
needle that always brought me back to you. I fell down from
the sky at speeds greater than I had ever flown up. Crippled
from above I was laying on the surface, with not even a scent
of familiarity. My once trusted winds fed the flames that now
scorched my majestic wings and took with it the fallen ashes
they sprinkled. The name on my heart I once cherished became
a curse, an endless reminder of what I could never find again,
where I could never go again. I laid there utterly vulnerable with
a single hand outstretched, reaching for the world I once knew,
reaching with hollowed gaps between the fingers you once
spanned. Over time the weeds I now rested in became hungry,
swallowing me into the dirt. I am consumed wholly to this prison
now save for the hand that reaches, reaches for a place that has
long since forgotten.

A mask of lies disguises my inner thoughts
Accompanied by a black veil which conceals my sorrows
A cage of snakes hold captive everything I ever bought
While ropes of disillusions hold back my tomorrows

Encountering materialistic poisons that plague my existence
With a side dish of infectious bad habits
Offered with a full menu of self-destructive malignance
That are stuffed into my boxed head like voting ballots

Having a desire for unwanted capitulation
Which lead to uncontrollable regrettable decisions
But a light guides me on a path to true elation
With nervousness overcoming my body like a surgeon making his first incision

Darkness becomes light blessed with colorful roses
A flame of love has ignited its route like a traveling circus
Followed by a wandering mind that creatively composes
As life’s symphonic strings are strummed, this writer finds his purpose

Jonathan Pizarro
Copyright 2011 ©
January 29, 2011 2:40am

Terrible illness
Anxious, irrational fear
Putrid malignance
Lack of warmth, sterile air
Earth nourishes her daughters

Rhythmically swimming into the deep abyss of this weird world
Our weird world
Their lies a nebulous of unknown creativity
Invisibly bloodying sadly shallow water
And until I drown
In the shallow salty water
I cannot drown the things that make me frown
Albeit problems I have, mistakes I've made, grievances I've kept
I'll never truly know
The life I could live
Insecurity is my disease
Insecurity is my cure
Sanctifying malignance molds me
Makes me madly married to anxious uncertainty
And what ever happened to simplicity?
What ever happened to the world I haven’t known?
Waking up to witness a white-washed will and
Waking up and wishing I could swim back in time
To the salt of the water
To the shallow of the brim
To the  world of untapped love

The Mask of Evil
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A Japanese carving hangs on my wall –
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not altogether unsympathetically, I observe
its forehead’s bulging veins, noting
the tremendous effort such malevolence requires.

Keywords/Tags: Bertolt Brecht, German, translation, Holocaust poem, mask, evil, Japanese, carving, demon, totem, forehead, veins, bulging, effort, concentration, focus, malevolence, malice, hatred, enmity, spite, spitefulness, animosity, maliciousness, malignance, venom, spleen, viciousness

How hard can you bite the **** of life
That’s the one thing I ask myself
Malignance unto Death
Rueful vengeance at the depth of apathy
The mind trapped inside the body
The man sits and waits
And watches the party outside the window
The love of the women
Nothing but flowers plays in the background
As the sandy foundation cracks beneath
The man sits and waits
And watches the party outside the window
But he dare not dive through the glass
Though he feels the Anguish
From fear that he might ruin the party below
Crème delish and everything else
Right and wrong are illusions of the mind
And yet, I cannot abandon them
Projected light into the darkness
Epson powerlite 1761 W
Oxymoronic by nature
Paradoxical in practice
I am the lord our god
Pinhole projection in reverse, we all watch the eclipse of infinite suns
And daughters that never really lived
But I regress
the artist is lost as he learns the skills of the trade
and the artist only ever existed in his own mind
fuel dried up
running on good vibrations
past inspirations
all distilled
like potato ***** with ketchup brewed in a prison toilet
but I regress
to the moment I was born
and I didn’t even know it

See the eyes, through jagged trees
Humbly calling out to thee
And the damp eagle plea
Downy arms falling free

As breath makes no qualms
With the levity of psalm
And the soot between palms
Lies still in fearful calm

Orion’s sprightly pace
Shrouds the cratered face
As pearls fall without trace
Miss the ocean’s embrace

Neon ghosts surround
The orphaned mobile sounds
As empty fertile ground
Now bitter and profound

Within malignance, the smell of stale night
As blue and then amber engulfs the sight

Awakened by light, and naked in shame
Slipping, scion of ****, from skin oh slippery and thick
Away from sight, with no luster or name
In corridors of flesh, pierced by thy kick, whilst in
Phantasms do dwell in minds murky swamp
Gliding in air, through life’s cosmic sea
In queer reflections, of youth’s insipid romp,
Ignorant to malady that life harkens to thee.

Of the feeble mind, demons slumber
In wait for gestures of youthful pride
In caves do inhabit, where sperms of hell may ‘bound in number
In carnal filth, thy river of life ‘came rot by lies
Slow in decay, both despaired in heart and feeble in mind
“Come unto me,” he sayeth to thee
Leeching from wounds of flesh confined
From cradle to corpse, by thine malignance of HE
Of young, tender flesh it is time is to feed
Mindless in thoughts, how willful thy bleed,
By host,
Of demonic seed.

Every pink pustule pounds my skin like an artillery bar-
rage. Your horde swells with my stress, bubbles up from my
rage. Volcano head, a v of violent irritations between my brow.
Doctors prescribe petroleum products to ease the water pressure
from your oily fracking.
Every splotch a rig rising up over the water, and YOU
place every dot target practice for pointed looks. No mythical halcyon
calms the red waves and YOU,
the construction company placing rows of pylon.
Risking lifelong scars pounding railroad spikes across the Great Plains,
With no grand plan or project to mask my pains


With what form you take, it must be the most
Awful, vile, loathing, malignance of being,
Where you cannot be complacent in your own immutable form,
that you must plague others with your
adolescent pestilence.

But a pestilence of lilies’ dot
the starry pond
The lovely constellations,
have no need for an Andromeda,
And have no worries, for my residents are no Cancer,
And that hope of divine light shining through such inconsequential motes,
also shines through, bathing my face
before I sleep, night after night,
And I see the stars through my rosy windows, as I lay back in my cot.
And where Greek Gods so methodically placed every gentle blót,
a cherished love had never not known the halls of my temples.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  Send Not to Ask for What the Vulture Seeks

                                                  or

                         Try not to Look Like a Dead Cow

Coragyps atratus, with wings spread wide
In narrowing circles menacingly
Soars in malignance above the countryside
I think it seeks…I think it seeks…for me!