It is April and we are frozen:
stuck in a world we never knew
in a love we thought we felt
a life we never lived.

Remembering time past.
Hell, searching for lost time.
Idyllic maybe
But
Flowers wilt.

The idle wailing
of Sirens and Daffodils
Allows me to forget:

Nostos holds Algos.
Scylla, Charybdis.
Is the future come yet?

Every word becomes a mistake.
All triumphs a fleeting matter
worthy of none.

Eviscerate my joy and live in its corpse.

Who among us has not?
Well...
Well, what?

Specificities fall to the floor:
we are what we are.
Nothing more.
Nothing more.

Tears refuse to fall
Or cannot help but remain.
Tears or notears, poison all the same.

The walking Shadow:
relentless in its crawling means.
What of Sound?
What of Fury?

I hope
I hope
I hope....
I hope your eyes bleed until the light pours out.

“O thou invisible spirit of wine,
if thou hast no name to be known by,
let us call thee devil!”-William Shakespeare*

It's cold outside and colder in here
Under the surprising privacy
of a blaring crowd
I gleefully lose myself

Put on my pseudo-smile
and talk to my pseudo-friends.

Maybe even forget it.
Forget that I feel like a set of floating eyes
Forget that we're all mounds of flesh and hair
Forget
Forget you all

My eyes are brick walls and fence posts
And I am opening the gate to all in sight
I watch my ethos come crashing down
with every increasingly true glance
of yet another Siren.

Only under the blare and blur
of that frozen house
Could I have ever mistaken formality
(or the lack of)
for some sort of kindness or legitimacy.

I've nothing to say to you
but my mouth keeps moving
I've no joy to give to you
but my face keeps smiling

Curse the fate of the hidden one
destined to reveal himself
under most forgettable circumstances

I didn't remember much,
but let us be honest:

when the sun rises
(as it also does)
and your burning eyes long
for lost innocence and vitality

The air will pulse and the room will echo
but I will be gone:
and I'm taking your memory of me
as a parting gift.

What is this pulse I feel?
Stark, ever-present, the tumor with which
life is sustained.

The sky today is remarkably dismal
raindrops along the sidewalks
which I cling to:
not out of reliance --
but out of need.

The world is a bleak gunmetal grey
The Promethean fire of our reluctantly naked sun
cannot even bear to expose itself today.
So, it hides.
It hides like we all do.

What is this pulse I feel?

It hides like an introvert at a party
who escapes himself
into the blare and blur of a horrid
solidarity of bottles and children
and the illegal activities with which
they so complacently cling to.

Hides like a man in a pin-striped suit
who is concealed under white teeth and
leather lounge chairs and contemporary
architecture.

Hidden like child at a shopping mall
whose mother is almost attentive
as the child hides in a clothing rack
and screams:

"You'll never find me!
You'll never find me!"

And the mother realizes that her
child is gone
And the mother finds her child.
And the child never realizes
that he will never escape the eyes
of those whom he doesn't want to see.

The child may want a mask but masks never conceal effectively --
and if they do they're uncomfortable
and press against your face and suffocate your skin.
And it's easier just to let everyone see you
than to be an isolated mask amongst the ranks
of autonomy-hungry deoxyribonucleic acid.

What is this pulse I feel?

The child dies in a car accident several years later.
Oh, well.

And so, I am here --
the world is sullen and steel
as the raindrops fall upon the sidewalk.
It's as if the world is a graveyard
no one dares exit their shelters to
let the cold Truth gently fall upon their faces.

What is this pulse I feel?

The water falling from the Sun's shelter
answers my question:
"You are a raindrop, you fall from the sky
and land, cold, onto these concrete streets.
You may distinguish yourself amongst the other molecules
but you are all Hydrogen and Oxygen.
Your identity is nothing.
You are but an off-key baritone singing in a chorus.
The chorus is an ocean;
the aggregation of all human water molecules.
What's one drop to do?"

This pulse I feel?
It is one of billions, and it is indistinguishable.
I cling to the sidewalk as I step further --
hands in my pockets, stepping further.
Step.

I hear the abyss calling.
It takes the form of falling rain.