Love, the quietest volume tome in this apocrypha

dysphagia, a fantasy of crossing seas to see

a phantasm in fantasia, met with aphantasia

stolen from the mouths of babes, dysphasia

on deaf ears, aphasia, blind eyes, dysphoria, America

distribute misplaced distrust, fairness it's just injust

inform the infirm of interim canned worms within

the mind's eye, boring huh?

Lustful fire, borne into the, **** of discontent

this continent of opinionated, belated, celebrated

hated, content, resentment, revolution, civil discussion

and civil war, fare is fair if justice is injust just rain flaming corpses from your blimp *****

deflate your egos, throw out the discus, go and fetch the dogs some biscuits

**** everything, reclaim nativity for the crackers, ingenuity, ennui in ***** revenue reviews, incoming claims of independency

choke on your proclaimed declarations, a serpent's scale tipping your throat closed in silence in privacy

in support of engineering a wedge split Twain the ***** Joe-ked about between history and heresy

them old cats crow the same song Jim heard crow, a length of rope to hang yourself and go free

die you Tyrannical Oedipus Rex, die *******, die

long reign supreme anarchy

long reign supreme equality

the only true moral equation to solve human error will always be open-air savagery

that's just the show the stage is set for the world to see.

Thy neighbor: a biblical statement on community

the feeling you get alone beneath a streetlight

when it starts to drizzle rain late at night

and your hands are full and pockets fat

with information on where you live

who you know and love, your phone

and license, your keys, your confidence

that no one is following you;

no one has any reason to want to know anything about you


Yet you feel eyes on you in the open

when you believe you have privacy

your dome is the underside of an eye

placed within the socket, with many hive-scattered eyes

set in hexagonal walls staring down

unblinking, therefore all seeing

tracking your every move with the reverence of royal airs

why do you despise the comforts of the throne?


Your subjects, faceless, nameless

inconvenient, observant, who are they really?

Thy neighbor, just as private, quiet, secret, they are not it!

Yet you feel eyes, for this is the animal

wild, who surrenders by stepping into the trap

finally, relief in the jaws of civilization when they embrace man

and their teeth too weak to do the job, employ metal ones to snap


No more do we run the trails of our forest home

no more do the woods and wilderness we roam,

no longer belly up in the sun do we roll, nor happily do we lay

only when we are outmatched, and must pray to be spared as prey

no more do we kick up dirt or chase scents on the wind

now we shiver in our dark crate, embrace the trap we set within

this is what puts a sick dog down and domesticates a wild man.

All these white skulls in black robes

gather to form a scraping of the Grim Reaper's knuckles

pale bones that crack over a century

flakes fall, democracy a mockery,

society reaching to tug on your regency

swing your scythe, then, amateurs of Death

creeps-to-be, the sleep of the burden

that you miscarry, a jury of a baker's dozen

presided over by pressure, a phantasm form

informing decision, the swift thievery

of civility, it's clear the query presented

and who you answer to are not your people

you have more in common with plague

famine, pestilence, strife and conflict

caused by misjudging your own ability

to walk the edge of a conscience

slick with the blood of right's robbery

go and wet the knife, rest in fear at night

instruments of ****** who play an orchestral masterpiece

if your backbone bent straight with morality,

your souls would leave your bodies out of disgust for the high price due on the lease.

More of a confessional lately, isn't it?

Offsetting the vibe of this being art

there's a barometric pressure gathering over this mausoleum

pushing my head down so my eyes cannot look up the path

to see the funerary gallery as this storm-dirge plays the accompaniment to my march

across a mud road that feels like a steep ascension to-

all my work collected; rotting to high heaven

above this monument, within a grim eye-portent, swim the shadows of tears

vultures circling on the wings of thunder reflect bolts in their hungry pupils

starving as they swoop to bite of crumbling stone rooftops

nibbling of gargoyles, salt and concrete in their beaks

like arrows loosed from a bow of divine insight

their quiver a gray, bellowing squall

with rapturous rupture the dive bomb begins

upon the dead raised by the flood from the grave

the aces scream that all important call

an eye opens on the world below to behold the feeding

finally, void-borne teardrops fall.

Home and all the love that fills the chest
the time-lapse decay of the fox into maggots
and nothing more
weaker and softer in a cave whose walls are all pillows, marshmallows
shock-absorbent sugar
rend away the flaking clay of this charade
throw the snakeskin ticker tape flash paper over this parade

Where silver chains are collar and luxury
time spends the people who keep track of it
where watches are cuffs and monitors hold the gaze
competing with the walls that breathe noxious notions
contorting memories into convincing realities like dimensions
like a spider weaving a web over a dreamcatcher in a waking nightmare
singing a lullaby and a curse while it works

Requiem, a deity to which sleepless thoughts raise divine desperation and pray
the time snaps grey off the faux, a revealing display, a show now to stay
and nothing more
grievously believing conflict is direction or that purpose is assigned
wandering in search of meaning in an oasis that goes on forever
where nothing that grows is edible to the palate; all the water is vile
the oasis does not bend to desire or greed, when the situation is dire indeed
it is only a small comfort to die in the shade, surrounded by everything you need

Rests, how many have this body taken, for what is it if not the body of work
reliefs, in the headlines that stress folds in the paper on which life's story is written
retire, not forfeit, not quit, but tired again and again after so long
explain, no, do not aid self-destruction with loaded questions and firing squads
intentions be ******, to hell with the regrets and knowing and picking
like death-eating birds, determined to find meat in the fur of that fox somehow
...
all that is without oneself cannot be mine
all that is within myself is both mine and all there is
it is a far easier way to live in chaos, never knowing a moment of serenity
for one must choose peace within and manifest it in all facets to be serene
I am lowly and settle for respite in a quiet mind.

This stillness is not without turbulent whirls
all to mix up the blue
inaction does not mean patience
contemplative and painless
anxiety produces paralysis like a venom gland
biting into the self

So often misread and felt unseen
misunderstood, striving to explain
in a voice unheard over the room
ideally one understands the fear and risk
focuses through the adrenaline like a tunnel
threading many needles all at once

Genius is not such an abject view
stuck in the way of its own progress
while unhalted momentum slows down
and all brake to catch up
thus taking no action creates the disillusion
that steady, calm and observant makes a leader,
perhaps fit to follow the tail end

Envy of the ease
whose nerves do not manifest in ice clutches
that they dance before the eyes
step by step through life, always certain
even when befalling those missteps
like a maple tree leaf,
they merely pirouette and twirl away.

Cold and still in the dark, an inner eye turned to the future
that well of uncertainty that stirs deep within
calm, slow flowing streams of thought from the ocean
a focused spirit, melancholy in its clarity of self
but comforted by the sight of an old man

He says evil is a hard choice to make;
some never get to choose in the first place
it is rarer than the good that it pulls minds away from
yet only by exertion can it be done, energy consumed
even in a void there is a presence of peace
and if you exist in nothing, the only bad there can be
is what you create out of nothing
wisdom is not having answers, he says,
but being open to the possibility that all questions are like life
open ended.