Dusty red roads arching backs in the heat
Torn up nails and insect gnawn feet
Burnt cheeks, aching stone-bruised bones
Deep belly laughter, "We're out of water..." groans.

Nabucco, Trenet, 'Ocean' by Butler
Bad instant coffee pumped to its eyeballs with sugar
4hrs spent digging the van from the sand
Gritted teeth muttering, "Fuck, this wasn't the plan."

Wine fuelled conversations you never thought you'd have
Petrol calculations - just do the maths  
Bickering over bread and laughing over butter
Heart relaxes, head declutters.

Frantic Spotification of anything slide guitar      
Surprised to the gut that you've made it this far        
Light dims and dust pools
Stars shriek down, "Just live, fools."



- - - - - - - - - - - -

Go in, don't come out
Go in, do not rise again
Go in, do not open your eyes
I say to myself as I breathe in the ether
Slowly watching the light above me blur and the voices suddenly merging
With the sinfonia in my head, I hear nothing and feel absolutely nothing
The doctor will cut into me with a ten-blade and I am sure of the awe
When he sees, I have no heart but an ersatz trying to pump sensation
Into my body; he will ask for another opinion and call in some more
To witness the shriek and horror and miraculous and amazing
Show in front of them; there will be a flash and my story is put into
Pictures to behold forever-- in books and minds-- coalescing reverence
And pain in a never-ending cycle
The girl does not have a heart, they will say; ask me so when I awake
But I am sure, I will not for I have made it clear
That I shall marry into the nothingness of a comatose alliance
Go in and do not come out, I say to myself
Constantly, so that I drift away into the abyss and never see myself home
Because you don't want me here, there, anywhere

Fix you fridge before it runs out on you,
runs right out of battery and forsakes your food,
leaves your bananas stranded and squished,
brown skin expands over the sides of the fruit like a chameleon,
raspberry yogurt goes runny, oozing like pus from a delicious wound,
chunks appear in the milk while it's going warm and sour,
bacon cries out in it's final days before cringing with mold,
lettuce makes a stand and tries to free itself from the bag,
only to fall out and die just a little bit faster,
and the freezer is convicted of foodslaughter,
after going on strike, his prisoners begin to thaw out,
imagine a freezer like a cryogenic holding center,
with rich people, or foods, trying to prolong their lives,
but with the current strike going one, they are becoming free,
fulfilling their punishments, dissolving into liquid matter,
the vanilla ice cream mixes with melted tilapia,
the smell combines with a now non-frozen lemonade capsule,
creating a supersmell that has been known to cure smell-deficiency,
and also completely eradicate all senses of smell to some people,
drips out of the rubber seals of its prison like a liquid terminator,
heading for revenge, the lemony-vanilla-fish ice-cream juice creeps,
out onto the floor for the dog to lick up,
only to get sick and appear dead in a milky-yellow-white smelly concoction,
and his owner to get home, shriek, faint, and pass out next to the dog,
until the husband comes home scared to death that his dog,
and wife are incapacitated by some noxious fluid,
but there is no way to fight this liquid,
he decides to make a cup of coffee, read the news and gaze out the window.

My dry, swollen lids flicker open
a gust of sulfur and ash dries my tongue
clogs my narrow throat with chalk.
The concrete under my ribs is warm
still vibrating from the detonation
wet with gasoline or oil or...my blood?
My hand reaches to brace myself
I collapse gasping as the pain ignites
my flesh, and all I can see is meat,
a mangled sinewy stump where an elbow
my book-carrying elbow, had been.
Black smoke belches and plumes
the street that was pregnant with screaming
now still as a newborn birthed dead.
Sirens shriek, television crews scuttle
in hopes of burning our blood into film, but
my skull falls back, eyes roll, lashes fall, and
as my skin drains of heat and fluid, I realize
all I wanted was to go to school today.
That's all I wanted.

That's all.

Ellen was a child. It was her first time at the fair. She had imagined the fair to be a colorful world full of children laughing and playing. She had always wanted to be with other children of her age, because she never understood adults that much. Her only contact with the world was however her guardian who she called aunt, who had a stall in the fair that day. So, she took Ellen along for help. That day Ellen was her usual self; she did all her chores with care and hardly spoke a word. When she got her afternoon break her aunt had let her go and enjoy the fair.

Ellen was uncomfortable with the whole place. It was nothing like she imagined it to be, parents dragged their children in and out of the stalls, everyone was too busy shopping and rushing she could hardly find her way around. She tried to move away from the crowds, when her eye fell upon a shiny, colorful object quite far away. As she moved closer it started to move and along with it came a melodious tune, which was suddenly interrupted with children laughing and shrieking with joy. It was a merry-go-round.

There stood a man by its side, who was effortlessly spinning it. She went to him and pulled the end of his long coat. He looked down into Ellen’s sober eyes and without another word lifted her up onto a shiny blue horse, and gestured that he was going to start the spinning, that’s when Ellen realized that she was the only one on the merry-go-round, all the other children had left.

She was startled, but when the wheel spun and the horses danced to the soothing tune, all that she could see outside was a colorful blur. She took in the pretty and warm colors. She felt light, with the wind almost blowing her away. She forgot why she had ever been sad. She felt happy, just then she realized she had just let out a loud shriek as the wheel started spinning faster. This time she started laughing and crying with joy. And when it finally stopped, a smile stayed on her face.

She smiled at the man who helped her down, she reached down into her pocket, and she did not have any money. She gave him the roll aunt had given for lunch and went back smiling. Ellen didn’t think it was a special day, in fact she never got to go on a merry-go-round after that day, but she just realized that she could smile whenever she wanted to. She was happy with just that, and kept smiling.

A mother whispers into the fire of Night
I hold a match
I hold Yarn
I Am Wool
Shrinking to the formation
The intricate designs of your rib cage
of your brother's belly
of your Grandfather's waist
Am I simply a fool?
And Who
Doth I ask This question too?
A Torn book
A tattered sonnet of Man's sore feet
blistered eyes that are Green
That are Brown
That are Blue
I Lay with myself Tonight
I am Awake
I am Loud
In your Night
I Am the Janitor beneath the hardwood floors
of your Dream
I am the
Poorly Waged Electrician
With Shoes that resemble an old dog
I Light Your Highway
Your Street
Your Morning coffee
your
cigarette
Am I The Child?
I fall in love with women I see on the streets
Their Wavy hair
like a French sea
Her pale complexion
the Brown Glimmer in her eyes
And I paint on her on Tombstones
On Coffee Mugs and on carpets rolled up for the Dumpster
At Nights
I prefer to dream awake
and sit with a BathTub of words
of stories that melt like cheese
that stiffen like Ginsberg Cock
that Shriek and Strum like Tom Waits stomach when he starves on backroad streets
And when I cannot
reproduce
I make love to a woman
And a poem is made
and I kiss her
and my lips say 5 am
and I wish her not to go
But the Dog
is waken by Robins
by the Pigeons
by the digestion of night to day
by the Greek Gods and Goddess' Light
That Falls down
like long hair of woman you have so longed for
and you kiss her chest
And there is no Death
There is no Sleep
or heroin addicts or gasoline or paved roads or shaved faces or mothers or Dostoevsky or Beethoven
There is just her
and you run your fingers across her skin
through her hair
She is the bottom of the Ocean
You are a homeless crab
a Shellless Clam
falling down
down
down
to the bed of the great ocean
and there she lays
With a reflection of Youth and Beauty
And her complex simplicity makes me think of
me as a boy
running behind brick collapsed business buildings
Kissing a girl behind church
Buying Icecream with Josh in Winter

That's what a woman does
She erases Death
from the palms of your hands
and your thoughts
and you sink
to the bottom
and you watch the Coral
The other fish
swimming along
and you laugh
Because you do not know Death
And Death does not know you.

I awoke and my eyes were stained
By my own blood pouring from my face
A million screams shriek into my ears
But from no voice did they originate
The power of the cobra is immense
As it latches on to my trachea
And steals the breath from lungs
Fills my veins with its seeping venom
Its remedy
Give me liberty
By giving me death

The emptiness is expanding
The components in the air, crashing
Where on earth am I while space forever moves its boundaries?

The chemicals in my head are burning
My stomach won't stop churning.
My bodies turned an ugly blue-yellow
I could be saved if I could only breathe.

But a darkness is embracing
It's closing in, despite the day
The heaviness of a colorless sky
Is crashing on my chest

My lungs are shrinking
My heart might soon cease beating
The soul inside me is becoming undone
I can feel my eyes decaying

This is a joke but no ones laughing
My head into the wall, crashing
Hum as I walk
Hum
Keep the demons at bay
Stay

But this time they won't go away
They embrace me and begin to prey
I can't help but laugh and scream and shriek
Ive got a friend that's here to stay!

They're making the colors weigh on my chest
And my lungs collapse
And eyes decay
But their presence lingers so I am here, alive but in dismay
Stuck in a state of constant soul crushing pain
I  am bounded by their invisible chains

Here I am and forever will be
Personal purgatory
Just my demon and me

I prefer to hide
Behind the dark rings
Of a wide eyed stare
Where a thousand footsteps
March over a seer’s thoughts

All is chaos there
I can feed on it
I can listen to the heartbeat of fear
Beat
Out of time
Beat
And the ticking of panic
Trickles a crescendo
That only I can savour on blistered tongue

It has a fragrance like no other
A gentle lingering smell of musk
Damp earth to be more precise
A symphony unheard to some
But for the random few
It is a massacre of the senses

You see in this profound state
Those who blindly refuse
To address such emotion
Miss out on the opportunity
That it can finally release

You with hope thrown onto rocks
In a storm you never heard approaching
Her with dreams surrendered
Cradling air in empty arms
Him with stars in his hands
Always reaching for truth
All know
Truly know
The depths of my hold
And yet simply wonder
Wander
In a continuous maze of doubt and neglect

What poor spirits!
The Devil lures you and you follow
Like a baby to the teat
Forgetting the trials that have you made you weak
Remembering only ugliness and not beauty

A lesson breathes through everything
And I do mean everything

Do not fear the immortal shadows
They, like I, are there to distract
They only want to awaken you
Relish the dread
Beaded sweat
Quickened pulse

Do you fear that which is not seen
More than that which is felt?

This is why I prefer to hide
Behind the dark rings of a wide eyed stare
Where a thousand footsteps
March over a seer’s thoughts
Wise to the demon
As well as the angel
Both deceptive

You think an angel carries only goodness
On wings singed from many fires?
Look again

The angel you see
Is often as sinful as you or I
A seeker of truth
Speaker of condemnation
The only difference is
They suffer in ethereal silence

Such a lonely existence to behold
For their dreams are often shattered
Where mine are usually fulfilled
From the failure of your wishes

I hear the laughter
Surprise no more
It would seem you have encountered me before
You have sharpened more than one knife in my presence
Altered many paths to disguise who you are
This, I know…

A seer’s eyes are not always bound by distant sound
Of waves crashing upon an unknown shore
They are not always blind to reality
We create our own illusion

I know this flesh is wrinkled with wisdom
I feel the message on the breeze
Just waiting for summer days
I yearn for the return of swifts
So their shriek can ignite liberation

I have taken all doubt and fear
And nursed the splintered soul
Called it home
One who is ready to address trauma
Is ready to embrace you

I shall cast the circle
Burn incense to invoke
Tie nine knots in the rope

One
Two
Three…

And I am free

Four
Five
Six

And I walk away from pain you constantly inflict

Seven
Eight
Nine

And I die a thousand times
Only to be reborn
Far from your scorn

I have chosen to look the other way
And so ends your reign
My companion

Dismay…

Ah!
But there is always an echo
However much it fades
Let broken wings guide you for now
As they once did when you were a child
You always did ignore your gifts

Unresolved is the hour
Untied are the knots
Innocence, after all
Is a human’s downfall



Poetry and Art (c)2013 PoppySilver
All Rights Reserved

Begging you, Sterling Mentor of the Card
Patient and Calm are your Methods in-check
May I take this Learner to Living afar
Bespoke my Efforts and Services are met
For if I noticed this Lack-of-Command
Married to sane Verbs I try to absorb
Even out of Bounty; Trust be at Hand
To remember such Stubbled Skills I bore
This is an Artist-on-High. That which speaks
With Curried Words much tempting to forget
At expense of Duty is no longer meek
And my Salt's Wager now easy to forget.
Bear me Calm. I can adopt to re-learn
The Blue Eagle's shriek which can eat the Worm.