if I walk for a while
I can get out of the city,
the chaotic place
echoing from the causality
of all of the wire skeletons
and every silhouetted structure
painted against the sky.
the night burns a brighter dark
than the shadows of skyscrapers,
and the architecture is an oily black
droning a metallic buzz
that sticks to the road
and the people that cross it
with cars and shoes
so they remember where they are;
drop their inspiration
down storm drains and gutters
and forget the words
they worked so hard to find again,
searching their closets and dressers
for eloquence they can't remember
tucking carefully under their pillows
just the night before
or was it a month?

I can keep going for hours
watching mile signs pass--
reading them with no reason:
mile 337, 338, 339--
feeling the road beneath my feet
writhe like snakes in its unevenness
and turn to dirt and pebbles
that keep pace with my steps,
******* into boulders
that roll slowly forward--
but I leave them behind
in whirling eddies and clouds of dust
kicked up by my trudging
and the sighs of wind.

the signs are becoming infrequent.
they skip numbers now as I pass -
surely 764 doesn't come after 749 -
I can't see the old buildings anymore
and all of the buzzing people
are safe in sound, far away
too far from the mile 764 sign
to hear my heaving breath
or my beating heart,
but I can hear them both.
the last mile sign is scratched off,
the number on it replaced by silver:
crisscrosses and a crude, scrawling zero.
below the mile sign is nothing -
a steep drop ends the ground,
swallows the snowball boulders
and signals my rest.

here I sit and dangle my legs;
I lean against mile zero
and stare into whatever it is
stretching out forever before me.
this is where the storm drains empty
and all of the inspiration pours out,
I've decided, like surging rainwater.
beyond the last mile is an ocean,
troubled, violent waters in the distance
but almost mirror-like at the shoreline,
so far under my feet
I can barely see it.

is this a dream?
one grows tired of dreams
and yearns for sleep.
the boulders groan forward,
hurling themselves one by one
off the edge to the water--
they fall quietly and are no more.
I want to follow them.
I close my eyes,
push off of the sign,
fall quietly as a rock.
for a moment I am open,
****** into beauty and inspiration,
my lovely splurge of hyperactive thought
and then I wake up,
return to the city that buzzes
with useless words
and lost musings.
my shoes are where I left them.
I decide to slip them on -
I know if I walk for a while
I can get out of here -
one grows tired of sleep
and yearns for dreams.

One of many apologetic arguments
is an application of Game Theory,
as defined by “Pascal’s Wager”;
ideas of infinite gain make leery

skeptics doubt a likely existence
of an omnipotent and omniscient God,
Who is worthy of our time and talent.
They believe this premise is flawed,

as they willingly bet against Hell,
damnation and its infinite losses;
the discussion, of rational thought
and atheistic stances, crisscrosses

mental boundaries in search of Truth.
Is finite loss of luxury and pleasure
worth the Christian lifestyle today?
Where are you storing your treasures?
.
.
.
Author notes

Inspired by:
Gen 1; Matt 6:19-20 and

More info on Wikipedia

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
Amazon

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2016, All rights reserved.

They call me Subject B.

Belly full with the pills
they fed me, still hungry,

legs pumping
to pendulum this swing,

inside a playground
that ignores my miming,

shrieking and throwing feces,
at hairless beings who nox me.

Dreaming of melting
the swing's chain, I fly
feet dangling over
cages of sick chimpanzees,
to a distant galaxy
that grows banana trees.

Awaken I see
empty syringes strewn
outside the crisscrosses
of my cage, trenchcoats
storm like flurries.
I still cannot read my nameplate.

I hope on my swing,
pumping my legs
back and forth,
back and forth,
back and forth —
glassy eyes watering.

Artist
That’s what you said you were.

But are you really?

Coming to my doorstep with the promise of blues
And reds
And all shades of purple.
With your paintbrushes
Set and new.
You said every stroke
Was me and unique
That every curve was
Drawn
and accentuated
to perfection.

Unware was I to what you were going to steal…

Because what you left me with was raw
Blacks
and reds
in crisscrosses
and arms
legs and
hearts torn apart
with bitter irony.
Every stroke
was inevitable
and laced with
the real scent
of horror.

I was the canvas.
But did that make me a work of art?

Day
Crisscrosses
With night,

Somehow manages
To touch the other's hand
Even if
One is allergic
To the heat
And the other,
A fear of the dark.

There's a striking
Balance in the
Muted gray
Of the groggy sky—
A scenery
Not very much unlike
That
Of a slumbering owl
And a waking wren,

One creature
In cahoots
With the darkness
And the other
Perhaps too
With light.

Both,
Sing very
Different songs—yet
Both
Seem to arrive
At the same purpose:

Which is to see
What the other
Really is made of
Beyond the light
And shroud—

Touch maybe even
Forbidden wings and
Quietly
Sing some more;

In this habitat
Of shadows
They—we—will not be bothered.

So sing, wren,
Your truest of songs:

"Good morning,
"Good morning,
"The day is
"But coming,"

So sing, owl,
Your truest of songs:

"Good evening,
"Good evening,
"The night is
"But leaving."

And so now kiss, night,
The plodding day.

There's a man in a purple shirt
eating ice cream
at eight in the morning,
a lady in a wheel chair
putting on lipstick
& an elderly couple
sitting
across from me
figuring out their smart phone.

Jim Croce croons
about time in a bottle
as the tapping of shoes
crisscrosses the concourse.

A baby screams
and three workers
converse in Espanol.
The ticket-taker types frantically
on her keyboard
as Mr. Nice guy
is longer,
he's ****** about
his missing reservation.

And me,
silent as can be,
sits here alone
banging away on my own cell,
connected to another world,
oblivious to those around me.

[Amy Wright: Here too there are tears for things]

When asked how to be of use, clenched when the hand
yearns for consumption – nothing was happening and when
you look within the azure you will see the multitude
of sun’s tireless handkerchiefs bleating in the distance.
   Today is Saturday, and nothing else was happening.
   I used to lament over the cities you have turned over,
and within the same day, found they were susceptible
to consummate within a name – an arena for collision,
of all the crisscrosses and the winds that mark our places,
to all ships making their way, traversing into the lateral voyage,
the undertakings our sure fear: we do not know how to be involved.

I take it that a spray of Sun occults your face,
like watching in a squalid cinema, something a slapstick would
conjure a stylistically dumb image, or the prattle of
bunkum hubbub drowning loudspeakers in plazas.
You know there is a part of you that goes missing
  every time you hear me pass carefully under the care
  of toppled light, and there is a part of me that engages
the dark in this straining mutiny. This is such a troubled time
on the hardline; a martinet on the other cheapened end
of a totaled horizon hollering at gentrified space, eyes sternly
fixed on the mattress, conspicuous in urbane manner, something
shadows bade with hands, lifts up all the ragamuffin days:
   to capture you in such moment, such oneness, of no complication,
like a clean Yamazaki on the house, or a metropolitan district
   augured with rubicund crisscrosses, streets sidereal in measures,
an aggressive ******* at the end of the curb, the spanked curve
   of the mordant asphalt, and the rise of body heat from yesterday’s swelter;
  something only I could have thought of in white thighs of little ladies
    and peering birds for collarbones: look at this, maddened, retaining
    nothing but age.

Forty tears were pooled in his eyes.

A reality of hardship sunk in
Capsizing a boat of fears.

his parents had left him a penniless bloke
his time would be spent trying to stay afloat

The daily news would house all the jahbs
the other families &  friends were pointing him away from trouble

He would meet a new boss.
A stomach never tiring of crisscrosses

When he sat -down inspection began
Was he trusted to be a stan
Finally accepted he began forging minerals

The door closed at the home.
The company issued tools.
Heavy iron forged together with mighty wood.

Clear yellow lights illuminated the mine’s dark

A new spot would be all to him.
He began picking and digging
The earth's rocks, and dirt.

Learning other names was to be his strong suit.
But ability and strength left him with cahoots.

Soon heart's pumped laughs
Sending echo’s down the earth mine's shaft

Curing the ailed eyes
Of a boy with no ties

o  o
  X
 /  \

An open scissors
crisscrosses its way
to Dover where it is
eXpected to sever the
umbilical cord which
is currently connecting
The UK with BruXelles.