You ensnared me like a dog in its cage
Locked me down in your cellar
drove to my estate
told my son it would be okay
Massacred my family with my face
And made sure to replay it for me everyday:
recorded the depravity so I could see it on tv
-Said to me:
"I know your heart is bleeding.
I will set you free when you watch,
Without shedding a single tear."
-I remained locked up for close to a year
I needed to know why you would trap me here
just to let me walk away
when you finally released me at gunpoint;
I learned to keep my tears at bay
Your response when I pressed for a reason:
        
               "...its just a game I play."

You set lives on fire then set us free
How many suicides have you kept as trophies?
Does it tingle like a wet tongue on your neck,
When you rip a life apart?
Presenting to us the imploded pieces
Like a perverted work of art?

You psychotic shapeshifter you sicken me
You serial-stealer of sacred space
You think the human race is a plague
So you became, "The Locust-Eater"
Playing out macabre fantasies
With such swift shifts of physical features
You delight in deriving such clever machinations
To deceive us ...
...but can you deceive yourself?
Underneath the bone and sinew
- you are still just YOU
...even though you masquerade as everybody else

How can I spot a chameleon in a kaleidoscope?
Belay your false colors.
Show me your true shade.

I studied you
Created a secret space- like you
Where I could stash you safe
Poured through claims of being kidnapped
By a being who could change its shape
Corroborated their claims-by the dates
Of misdeeds they were framed for
-And when they took their own life
In my research I found a smoking gun
-In your case your kryptonite
You must regress to your real skin
         once every month
So i set out ...
picked just the right target...
...and started to hunt

To lure out the chameleon...
I captured something...
      
        That I think you might love.

You wore Anessa's life like a glove
Was she to be your masterpiece?
You committed a crime so brazen- as her
it went viral within a week
you stole her child in the darkness of night,
Anessa's husband- that child's father
Must have been filled with such awful fright
He called authorities, you fabricated stories
you turned the victim into a suspect
Over a single fortnight
Not long after he was killed
in a drunken bar fight

As Anessa you were spotted months after
Ignoring a green light of a busy intersection
Parked in the middle of the road
Placed their child on that busy street
Then sped off in the other direction

Anessa was blindsided when you finally
let her go
Oh, i bet you waited with bated breath
For her self-removal from the world?
You ensured she would never again
Get to hold her baby girl
But Anessa never gave in
Did her steadfast resolve
feel like I rash upon your skin?
Where it festered forming feelings foreign
to a fiend such as you?

You scratched that itch
Began by sending her anonymous gifts
Even started shifting into her too
Stalked her waking moments
by engaging her as a stranger:
all the while unaware your sick infatuation:
Had put her in danger

I'm counting down the clock
I kidnapped maybe her or You
I left my address at Anessa's house
A note saying, " this is a game I play now too."
Soon now: a month will have passed
And it all comes crashing to A head:
at last.

So shed your skin
Prepare to fight
This vendetta ends here:

Tonight.

There is a lighter
          
           Just

waiting to ignite.

A knocking at my door
A knot in my stomach
Anessa...( or is it You)
bound beneath my floorboards?
I peer in the peephole then pull You (Or Anessa) out of that hidden hole
I drench us both( for every second You stole)
I  pour it all over
( my life will never be whole)  
I douse everything in here in gasoline
Confess your sins
(before the fire finds them out)
Its time to come CLEAN!!!

And it seems:
I will be dipping my hands in red tonight.
This will all end in the worst way.

I open the door
let Anessa( or You) In
She runs to my captive saying,
"Where do I begin?"

"I made something of my life
after it let me go
At first, it caused the Locust-Eater misery
You see it toys with humans:
ones it knows are weak
I was so meek and feeble before we met...
Yet,I'm the one person it failed to defeat
Its game gave me strength i never knew...
... resolve had always,somehow,eluded me
I do believe its games are vile...but,
They are necessary?
Please,**** me instead
"...but let the Locust-Eater free"

the captive Anessa(or You)
begins thrashing their feet
I yell," which one of you killed my family?!"
They both calmy respond:

" Me."

The lighter flicks in my hand
I'm unable to speak

A month has passed
Which one is the one I seek?
They both insist I let the other go
And you should know:
it slips from my hand
The lighter(like my grip of reality)
falling faster with exposed flame
adhering to the clear rules of gravity

The two Anessa's embrace.
They both begin to burn.

False colors from the chameleon fade out.
Hungry flames swallow me whole.
I am( am I?)...
seeing the Locust-Eater's true shade:

This is how I take control.

-

An army of seagulls, like Amazons
guardedIng  the gate to the harbor.
stopped him and before letting pass,
asked too many probing rude questions
in an impoverished language
dominated by caws and coos
and many other strange sounds.
No human ear can quite easily catch
"a fantastically foolish lingo",
his human mind sitting on
its high perch judged,
"If ever I have to learn this
how would I manage ?"was the anxiety
that made him judge, it seems.

Life in this twilight world of ours
hides full of surprises,on every turn.
He wouldn't be able to compare
one sunrise or sunset with any other
decide which one was better,
by any standard,
Uniqueness remains the greatest problem sans a solution here,
then, how could one surmise humans are superior to animals?

A cute seagull, a girl for sure, had shown a keen interest in him,
(her eyes were beautiful and she smelled really nice
hence the guess, that was corroborated later)
she tried to sit on his left shoulder as he walked forward
and tried to make friends with him, before any other could attempt!
She was eager to fix up a date with him, that evening itself!

"Do you think I am bit fast, abrupt?" she cooed
"Still a ****** at this age, don't you think
it's high time to worry about it, already?"

No expertise he has  to calculate
a seagull's age, *** appeal and what the plumage suggests,
a stern looking seagull, obviously with some leadership role
stylishly lands in front of him, in a bid to impress,  tries to enquire
about some membership card, that seems to be essential
bit exhausted, a humid day it was, he was amused
why should one be worried about the union interests of
the privileged seagulls in the harbor area, "Am I too one?"

That's when he had a suspicion crept in his  mind
is the harbor gate crossing really means that he too is a seagull?

But yesterday was so wildly human, with it's follies all fallen in place
a rumbustious night he spent with his rowdy girlfriend
who insisted that her left breast loves him more than the other
wanted to test her theory then and there, and started to complain
gravity has started to work wrongly on her endowments
"Act fast": she would urge, fully drunk, she was cawing like a bird.

"Aren't these enough evidence to prove, I am not a seagull. Mr.Judge?"
his quivering words, dissolve in the cacophony of disapproving seaguells.

Crept in the surgeon from the ashen winds
Peaceful, baleful autumn fire
A descent climbing ever higher.

A special case to him it seemed, starched white
His breathy steam corroborated.
The nurses rush ‘tween bed and ****, checking
Vitals of lacking that but the enigma
Curiouser and, oh, the blank screen displayed it.

There, as sight, the network of bones, all disposed
To their center, by blood and vein, all there through.

What caught the eye, a screaming white blot
In the thick of his bare cavity
A cold urn, well wrought
Had in its mouth a thousand streaming shards
Burning, pumping all the same by some miracle
That rigid effaced youth and flesh
Taking its gestalt’s place.

A nurse approach in ample fit to begin,
Crack his stern starch baritone, there he burst
Take him away; nothing is wrong
Amateur at best, irreclaimable at worst.

awoke from a dream last Wednesday
strangely refreshing and uplifting
resounding in music
the notes still reverberating on my heartstrings
it was the first dream of my brother
since his passing
it may be my first dream of him ever
he was laying in bed
contemplating his demise
don’t know if he was speaking before or after the fact
guess it really doesn’t matter
with one simple sentence
and just a hint of anger
“Life is stupid”, he said.
implying remorse and resentment
for still having so much to do
I backed away to give him his privacy

as I readied myself for work
he got up out of bed and found me
happy and smiling, a sparkle in his eyes and teeth
corroborated his contentment
he was walking around the house playing his guitar
it was acoustic and unplugged
but the sound was electric
he was playing a Mexican folksong
his ex-wife appeared, singing the refrain:

“Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores
por qué cantando se alegran
Cielito Lindo, los corazones” 1

his song struck a chord whose message was immediate:

“sing and don’t cry
for singing gladdens the heart”

his daughter’s seventeenth birthday is today
with a party this weekend
timing is often coincidental
but it seems to me
this message was for her
and everyone at the gathering

for those who would listen
Terence would tell us:

“Life is stupid...so sing and don’t cry”

Unfold the map of the world and trace
a kaleidoscopic boot-shaped country
rising from the waters lavished by Atlantic
in a multicultural basin at the heart

of a flat globe. The Mediterranean birthed
by the Zanclean deluge, witness of myriad
exoduses intertwining genes to encompass
peninsular cradles of early civilisations,

a medley of ethnicities trading goods
discoveries and ideas on sailing caravels.

Two thousand years later the remnants of
the Roman Empire vote, the democracy
they had co-founded two thousand years
before, on philosophies of justice, equality

and human rights. Power to the people,
lost in the process of history making,
populaces disillusioned and frustrated
at millenary successions of failed rulings

corroborated by corruption and personal
greed of those chosen to represent them.

Today Italians vote anti-establishment
thereby at long last rejecting ideologies
of the past, too old to bare credibility
electing a party set outside the box,

no left right nor centre, victory of populism,
communism and capitalism burned
at stake for their crippling sins albeit
international cold-war renaissance attempts.

Marking the end of the twentieth century
the twenty-first bets on the refreshing breezes
of new tantalising illusions, cuts to public debt,
income of citizenship, youth employment,

tax reductions campaigned to allegedly increase
family spending, for whatever we do we are
all bound by a unique reigning doctrine under
the unified global empire, of consumerism.

The moment you depart
from the stagnant, terrifying pole
I can see it through the glassy eyes
that you picked up the shards,
and shades of all the energy in us
before putting it on the plane
oh sweet soul, sweet untold
but I can feel it, and you can't hold it.

You are the embodiment of truth
a destroyer of corroborated lies
the sun slips away, oh you make it stays
everything in place, oh sunny side days
I am amazed at how far I've went
without having you at the other end
you put the meaning in Ying Yang
gone are the days of firing blank.

The age of understatement passed
horizon hangs from dawn till dusk
enthusiasm for the solitary odeum
helianthus laid at the mausoleum
you killed the ever-present sadness
and the endless parallel to happiness,
the tomb has finally been breached
I'm dumbfounded, bewitched.

You right the wronged in me,
and the spectrum burst into something
unlike the Pandora's box
Magna Carta suffered, and love
is all that I've ever heard.

Once there was a nation, which
Boasted of its wealth and size.
In that nation lies became truth,
And truth became known as lies.

Thus, the country corroborated
An expert's wise and salient prediction
That soon the people everywhere
Wouldn't know fact from fiction.

"Science is irrelevant,"
The leaders of the land decreed.
"Clamp down on critical thinking
And we'll maintain control indeed."

The people became MORE baffled,
MORE confused, MORE perplexed,
And wondered what kind of craziness
They were going to encounter next.

The art of political doublespeak
Was praised, encouraged and expanded.
If you called it gobbledygook,
You were severely reprimanded.

Reporters who sought facts were called
"Purveyors of mendacity,"
While those who were irrational
Were "pillars of veracity."

The general rule was answer a question
With a question, or try to deflect
Any queries toward dead ends.
The tactic was called "Misdirect."

The leader was an expert at
Duplicity and subterfuge.
Ruling without intelligence
Can work when a person's ego is HUGE.

Sad it was to see such a land
Change from what it once had been.
Not until people opened their eyes
Would things improve. Not until then.

- by Bob B (3-21-17)

talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
and when you're done talking about it
talk about it some more

"but what do you do with the ashes
from the myth you burnt down yesteryear?"

irrelevant. its scorch marks will eventually heal
in the meantime,

talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
and when you're done talking about it,
buy her flowers

and convince yourself
that the color of the flowers
will communicate the love you have for her

"but the love doesn't exist, in fact
love is a matter of pair-bonding
and consistent vicinity"

you are so right! but just because you know
how love works biologically
doesn't mean you have to live in solitude

which you have been for so long,
but let up, and refer to my first instructions,

talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
because language creates reality
just as much as it describes it

and when you're done talking about it,
buy her coffee in the starbucks
and talk to her about those real feelings

inside you, and maybe they're inside her too
but you don't, won't know unless you
talk about it, talk about it, talk about it

and once the myth is built, the greek prophecy
will prove true, believe you me:

you will feel again
you will love again
you will die again,
you will live again

and when you doubt again,
talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
with her friends, your friends, and your family

because feelings that are corroborated
are somehow more real than those
that are hidden

The things that might have been
what sights we might have seen
but as always with a dream
we have to wake.

Waking can be corroborated by
the many times I waited
for these dreams
I have
to
come true.

Lies drop easily
from the greased wheels
and who in society
has never known that?

Sleep walking they talk to me
those friends that I'll never see
but
I hear them constantly in
the dreams that I dream.

two alternate titles:
1. Gander seeking goose that laid the golden egg
2. Incorrigible lottery dreamer
linkedin with previous poem I wrote
though modesty deters
crafty, lofty, nifty, thrifty... wordsmith
and Perkiomen Valley poet
i.e. yours truly quietly to gloat.

If lady luck smiles on me denote
big plans to relocate self and spouse
to some tropical island paradise
by the dashboard light
(the above line credited
to musician named Meatloaf)
upon arrival of my steamer
rather Ferry large boat.

A fool's errand finds me
emptying out billfold,
especially as the winnings
increase ...fivefold, sixfold,
sevenfold, eightfold, ninefold, tenfold...
ample resources to remould
living nonestablishmentarian existence
surrounded courtesy webbed, wide wold.

Paradise visage and eyes
a bulge with dollar signs
whets imagination with
Mega Millions ticket bought
for potential wealth
overtakes rational self
with delusions of grandeur caught
allow, enable and provide flirtation
with fate to experience rich draught
envision emancipation proclamation
from penury a distant battle fought

expect the usual outcome
after next drawing
to yield monetary naught
temptation for instant
mega millions eagerly sought
human foible to reach
until life lesson taut
for elusive *** of riches
streak of universal desire
and tacked clear of shoals,
where hard scrapple existence wrought.

This poor man's pipe dream
nsync with the milkmaid and her pail
where fanciful notions pluck me out
being day late and dollar short
essentially pennilessness in the extreme
story of mein kampf fortune teller
also known as Zoltar speaks machine
said contraption did foredeem
substantiated, kickstarted, corroborated...
courtesy an archenemy Joaquim
(fiend nixed) and his tall sidekick Kareem
both rogues could shine
figuratively impregnable longerbeam
and discern mine ill fate.

Meanwhile creative endeavors
and linguistic pleasure
thru the literary attempt
suitably with poetic third eye blind
palliative, yet less rewarding versus
garnering large sum of money
would be a dog send
allowing, enabling, and providing
arrogant stance where proletariats deigned
delivered by one blessed angel in disguise
redemption and salvation
considered thankful find
with challenges or commiserate

courtesy  poverty that doth grind
and complement via words of positive kind
feeble attempt where words synchronize
readers may espy hidden puns
(and divine inspiration - ha)
within this rhyme lined
to pry poem or prose from mind
deliberate semblance to communicate
and extract idea from cranial rind
analogous how stitcher doth tightly wind
a tapestry of rich and royal hue
while twittering and tweeting
“better luck next time.”

alternately titled: incorrigible lottery dreamer
big plans to relocate self and spouse
to some tropical island paradise
by the dashboard light
(the above line credited
to musician named Meatloaf)
upon arrival of my steamer.

A fool's errand finds me emptying out billfold,
especially as the winnings increase ninefold.

Paradise visage and eyes a bulge with dollar signs
whets imagination with Mega Millions ticket bought
for potential wealth overtakes rational self
with delusions of grandeur caught
allow, enable and provide flirtation
with fate to experience rich draught
envision emancipation proclamation
from penury a distant battle fought
expect the usual outcome
after next drawing to yield monetary naught
temptation for instant millions eagerly sought
human foible to reach until life lesson taut
for elusive *** of riches
streak of universal desire
and tacked clear of shoals,
where hard scrapple existence wrought.

This poor man's pipe dream
nsync with the milkmaid and her pail
where fanciful notions pluck me out
being day late and dollar short
essentially pennilessness in the extreme
story of mein kampf fortune teller
also known as Zoltar speaks machine
said contraption did foredeem
substantiated, kickstarted, corroborated...
courtesy an archenemy Joaquim
(fiend nixed) and his tall sidekick Kareem
both rogues could shine figurative longerbeam
and discern mine ill fate.

Meanwhile creative endeavors
and linguistic pleasure
thru the literary attempt
suitably with poetic third eye blind
palliative, yet less rewarding versus
garnering large sum of money
would be a dog send
delivered by one blessed angel in disguise
redemption and salvation
considered thankful find
with challenges or commiserate
and complement via words of positive kind
feeble attempt where words synchronize
readers may espy hidden puns
(and divine inspiration - ha)
within this rhyme lined
to pry poem or prose from mind
deliberate semblance to communicate
and extract idea from cranial rind
analogous how stitcher doth tightly wind
a tapestry of rich and royal hue
while twittering and tweeting
“better luck next time.”