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Mar 2021 · 70
Eid Mar
Tom Shields Mar 2021
Underworld dirt; confetti in the air
urging through this dire stage
ultimately born to tilt back and stare
unable to bloom in this home, a cage
until root-sought waters soothe the age.
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Mar 2021 · 67
Night Prince
Tom Shields Mar 2021
***** a finger on the crown and make a wish
if your blood catches the moonlight, just right, I just might
crack the golden ratio of your glass charms with a kiss
snap apart the cage between your heart and me like twigs
and since you live for your art, devour it and become one with the artist
right?

Because you sit with that glossed over look on your face, in my afterglow
I have everything you're living for, but you give me everything you're living for
then you can act devastated when you lose it all, like you didn't know
I was going to take, never return, you couldn't be anything to me, not a *****
kick you open and pry apart your dolled-up, pink brain, then smash out the windows
everything from inside-seeing is false and prettified, when I leave I take the door
you need me, fear me, hate me and revere me, but I don't ******* live here anymore
so I only come at night

Be one and I said
you can't make everyone happy
open wide and crawl outside of your head
you can't make anyone happy
stop trying, you're already dying, a man walking dead
I'm taking everything from me
to balance, I chase myself in my stead
I give nothing back, indiscernible nonsense
chicken scratch writing to keep me fed
fretting, I'm sweating, the bellows of insecurity hurriedly squealing
everything juts out, like it's designed to hurt my every feeling
these field mice I'm gathering all at once by the fistful are weeping
each skullcap on my fingers clatters and shatters, none good for keeping
the forest for the trees is never as intended
that's why the clearing he leaves is mostly open ended

He is abysmal, every principle of nihilism,
cold and seductive, seclusive and elusive
bold and eclectic, embodied allure of tasting ellipsism
his intellect, an insect, piercing and intrusive
the ego of a young and vile man,
I give him all I can
every thing that is me, flung into his kingdom
never does he ask for myself, life or limb
never do I question, would I offer them if he needs them
only do I hope that soon the stars will flee, to cover their faces
all light and rays will hide away and show no empathy
there will be nothing human to interfere, in any forms or places
and in that pitchest, voidest dark, I will finally see
the most perfect silence of the senseless, where I may embrace my throne
the absence of humanity and all its voices, where my despair may rest with me alone.
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Feb 2021 · 45
Reverse Non Sequitur
Tom Shields Feb 2021
Cleanse the palate
how can Canio perform his aria
while composing a ballad
his makeup reveals his face turned pallid
tear down all the balconies; his artistic felonies
he endeavors across seas; Christ the nail and mallet
posters read of the miracle of envies,
the clamor of lyrical frenzies
spiritual withdrawal lacking wise wherewithal
silver rings raise curtains, brass and wooden strings
the song bird sings, hear my call, he collects the golden things
to his pearls he clings, see him crawl,
all the colors robbed of evening, all the beauty stolen from the dawn
shadows of pretense cast long, darkening the future, for the show must go on.

Inexorable deeds are traded
paper sins are made
greater the weight of one can turn
to many tiny stains in the path we've laid
scar and ink and burn, for all that we will learn
is reaction ingrained with experience in pain,
draw from this well knowing that the difference cannot be repaid
travel away from here in fear and we will only come back to it more afraid
seriousness devours childhood foolishness with karmic harshness
a just punishment for all the games we played
unhinged, yet, the door closes fully to allow the consciousness to fade
expel hell from view, red and weary, you...
see this lullaby alibi reality of escapism is really a place you never should have stayed.
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Feb 2021 · 84
Opinions, Opinions
Tom Shields Feb 2021
Bring your chin to the edge of the table and roll your tongue out
flat like a dead slug, take a scraping of your taste buds
conventional speech will now be banished, puns vanish,
in conversation, dense condescension, identify by sleeve
trust isn't earned anymore, intercept all personalities as duds,
that's what you rotate in circles for, segregated communities, one cannot always deceive  
cut the scarlet letter for your disorder in the roof of your mouth if the warnings are something you somehow mismanage
don't you realize you're living with everybody's instability?

Before you're down a dead end road,
slow down and process the information overload
there's no privacy in the path of progress,
your secrets better not exist, regress, be meaningless or harmless
literal translations marked in the margins by martyrs
dancing like satyrs on their victorious gravesites, the effort a culmination, they pun-ish  
for all the good their culture does in vindictive service to selective silence, it seems remiss
that essays and humor, misunderstood wit; one misstep all they lash
dyers on hills who recolor the grit and reality of the past
censorship is a dangerous tool
ask any oppressed voice

Censorship changes history's very imagery
omits thought, will, obstacles and triumph and choice!

You are human, your nerves are raw and your heart beats like a drum
when the hand that strikes it stirs your blood, let the outcries come
poetry is unbridled in revolution, furious in chains
a brand that scars the bleary eyes behind all stifled ideas, corked within your brains
the thunder of marches inspired by speeches, the movements and power wielded by wordsmiths
sheer influence that shames Mjolnir or Excalibur, when a million speak as one, cry as one, the tears of one million are torrent rains
within the wildest eyes, brightest minds, purest hearts and kindest souls, waits this now-waning gift
for who can rightly rise in today's vast opera of need?

They call for everything all at once, who can genuinely lead?
All I can say to be honest, not certain, but true
is that thinking different isn't bad;
it's a waste of being an individual to let anyone else do your thinking for you.
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Feb 2021 · 64
Dream of Choice
Tom Shields Feb 2021
In confines, comfort, intimately I confess
to me a dream does not come at nighttime,
it happens over your lifetime, you see it as nothing less
than a reality, where you've done it all right
and achieved what you could at your very best
perhaps as simple as a career, car and a new address

I see a man who owns very little, on very much land
and he spends his days in solitude, a revered calm from the ink smudged on his palm
when he closes his hand around a pen, embracing the solace reinforces his attitude
deep breaths, long hair a mess, his home open to the wind that blows a cool summer breeze
handwritten notes, each letter is an atrocity, yet he stacks pages a day with ease

The thing about him that I want more than anything he has,
is when he stops, nothing else goes through him,
and when I see him looking to me, forlorn and hopeful
I know he'd part with that for someone who needs it.
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Feb 2021 · 66
Be Low
Tom Shields Feb 2021
Unshaken, acknowledge the weight
unburdened, emptied gunpowder shell of hate
lips in hyper-focus replay, see: Red
crutches become umbrellas, sleep of the dead
stolen dreams from the catcher overhead
****** the precious sands of time from your bed
memories return, telescopic drills, etched in skin they said

Politicking and bartering, moral wrestling
mental positioning for emotional bracing
surgical decisions remove festering
remembrance, blinding hindsight; constant reflections facing
mistakes, real-to-life fakes, styrofoam microphone testing
screaming about hurt to the stagnant air, home replacing
where dust was resting, there's no water, the throat aches
trench-lines tracing under burning stride, puddles pooling, cooling lakes
stomping, quenching, questing, pacing, steam rolling off a rising tide
placid people, vitriolic acid in store, bakes their plastic masochistic sakes
expressions like bitters from the vine contort with every sarcastic snap they make

Steady as an island, no man, I am
my hand, untrembling
seeing this nonsense I live
persecution complex, condemned, god ******
self-aware enough to straddle sanity, go on rambling
take all of me, I have no good to give
this dense fog places six knuckles to the temple
and batters sacred walls with no hesitance
violating sanctity, shutting down anxiety
shutting out those who care for me with no reluctance
don't give anybody a chance, don't want to know safety
if it's painful just let it be

Lower your guard, let it bombard
knock you senseless, go below
laid out, sleeping limbs, dead meat
you wanna leave yourself, go be senseless
go be low.
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Feb 2021 · 108
Aphantasia
Tom Shields Feb 2021
Still
hanging in the frame of mind
if you will
practice with me, that would be so kind
does it seem better not to care?
More sane, more in-touch?
Or is it okay to get attached,
even if you sometimes care too much?

Quilted tales
square by square are marching away
leaving the stuffing pale
without skin to contain its clouds
tomorrow blends with yesterday
"disobey" drifts into "allowed"
when there is blue, it scales to grey
a comfortable taste of the trap-home-place
nullified whimpers of passion and all there was to say
it's not so bad once you learn to sit and stay

Wrap the ocean in a bottle
and pour the cool liquid down your throat
tilt the cradle of stillborn hope and let it rock
with the wind to carry it a few times more
turn your back and walk away,
there are no cries, no creaks to draw you back from the door
do not pretend to perceive a portend and retread the same path as before
these are your first steps on land, are you already drowning on the shore?
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Feb 2021 · 74
Katabasis
Tom Shields Feb 2021
Fingernails pull against stomach lining for the words
arrhythmic synchronization with cohesive thought
a pendulum eclipses everything when convenience and preparation overlap
strike now! While there's confidence, before the paralysis
while hovering straws fall from the grasp,
shorter, like sips of a temper

Be at peace, broken silver chain
now suspended, weight eased from the clasp
never worn in vain, never to be worn again
pre-dying era, a fresh breath and a last gasp

Suffocation not felt in the lungs
as though a plastic bag is tied off around the brain
the moist heat where self becomes proxy;
intimate issues become schadenfreude
and insensitivity becomes a matter of cutting through thick skin
where the initial struggle is spun off the back of the mind
so that all these slices of you, handed out for free, butcher you down to raw nerves and take your armor like bacon
hyper-focus and tunnel vision, can sound like good work, but that's where burnout begins
what does a wordcount mean if you hit a wall at fifteen thousand and can't finish a scene?

Going through hell, somehow we tricked ourselves
to say it's just part of living
forgetting that life can be good, we work for it, want it,
why we don't have it when we plead for it, dream of it,
beg and ask for it, fight for it, like we like the struggle more
or we like to resent the care-free, weightless people,
there's no normal in the first place, so who gets to say everything has to be so hard?

Suffering is not the human condition, it's just a condition of being human
just like surviving, living, existing, dying to live and living to die are all separate
there's a balance, no blankets, nothing explains everybody; nobody can
freedom to try and fail is the most important part of making a plan.
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Feb 2021 · 87
Autobiography Bargain Bin
Tom Shields Feb 2021
Not a droplet of dream or ambition

once bitten, a rendevous is due with intimate suspicion

offset by a faucet of sleep-dust running off yet,

even with a mind to wander and a heart to spill over introspection;

that moistens my lips, but no cascades of schemes or missions

or even desire, not even a wish

seen as empty for I do not have a goal

I don't want anything greater for myself

a walking, unburied plot, an inconvenient hole

bereft of a career, love, possession, or wealth

and all the more fulfilled for the time I keep

the dirt does not care who steps on it, it settles where it falls and there it is earth all the same, and the earth does sleep.



The unburdened become pressured

to feel the weight of direction

that one is not free to flow

as they please, without navigation

unfetter me, untether me, you have no future to sell me

all these promises of luxury and tier-locked sensations

destroy balance, perception and health

falsifying the demand in a supplied narrative

mass-producing the genocide of individuality

from artists raised in poverty to success stories searing on college degrees

the appeal of "drive" is one to virility

that only holds a digit on the hand of the economy.
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Jan 2021 · 78
Human Art
Tom Shields Jan 2021
All our notes are all laid out before us
none predetermined, we play as we see fit
chaos is the bridge; disharmony the chorus
all lives of clamor, there's no red string to tie you to a duet
this sheet music of our agenda, our plans, our odds and chances
humanity is a moving work of art, all discordant noises and stepless dances
fate is many minds' imagined painting, doing justice in their sight
truth of burden and birth is the weight a flower carries with it from the dirt into the light.
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Jan 2021 · 61
Not A Very Funny Man
Tom Shields Jan 2021
I have been joking about suicide in conversation lately
as though to hyperbolize despair for comedy;
I think about the front-face of my personage and begin to hate me
the attempt I made was no laughing matter,
where is the karma, belated cancelation by the speech-policing PC society
I'm no good, I might be half crazy, they credit me with trauma, documented history
it sounds like I actually signed a paper for a NDE
the trick to trigger warnings are wasted on me,
you don't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater before you turn off your TV

Sometimes, lately, I wonder if it's a red flag flying from my teeth
like my tongue, freshly squeezed stinging cuts from my gums
anxious laughter, am  I    just    pulling on the leg of my legacy,
by behaving questionably, a poet or a lunar misunderstanding,
eyes wide like two new moons, an hourglass with sand outstanding
talking to myself to be heard by someone else, a prideful soliloquy of lunacy,
ergo the ego bends my silver spoon,
and I'll be digging through these glass walls with it soon
entranced to a tune, dancing like a loon, this window-pain, you don't know,
trust is such a boon and bane,
I swoon for a swain, a drop of admiration is tanks of fuel in motivation
a kind word, risk the sonic pendulum that separates my lane
to a bitter attention getter, doused with dense sweat in winter
get this steam-storm off my brain
condensed intensity contained, I want to explode; restrain
into the chest, deep winds drawn
the humid reflux, insomnia, a long yawn

I think too often of how I'll be remembered
when there's far too much life to live
how or if I settle into any memory is in this awareness, to make not of my concern
for I have kept alive too many I resented and reviled
on a pyre of hatred that I alone fed to burn
the smoke choked my thoughts all the while
to let it go from inferno, to embers, to ashes I had to learn
patience and defiance of a forced perception
that to be nothing is equality,
everything you are seen to be is a corruption
lenses of opinion that obscure purity
oddly, the punchline shares each conception,
and given the destination, why don't more people laugh at the journey?
write
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Jan 2021 · 85
Garden of Edicts
Tom Shields Jan 2021
Litmus papers fall like leaves
barren woods, skin below the bark
exposed legs shed of greaves
purer nature stirs below the dark
tend to imagining new colors while the old world bereaves

Ice on membranes crackling, creaking like an old house
with new bodies within it, none dare utter a prayer to ghosts once there
creating a haunting conscience, guilt crawling 'round the brim like a louse
these tales can't bury the memory, chasers to the chancery, scoffing at the skullduggery presiding over this trial in equity

With new thoughts through it, plodded and frigid shoes mark the marble under the mare
to speak to the rest, whose malnourished spirits' and flesh hang from their bones, clinging with nary a care
this palace-cove whose palisades are pitfalls, sinking dirt and feelings, all lines entangled snare for reeling,
in retreat flesh amalgamations bellow their hoarse call, broken things begin to crawl
one unblinking, all-seeing eye in clay and mud, servants gleefully accompanied
artificial artifices spewing from their orifices, sacrificial bones for dice, reborn to dedicate themselves twice to the ruler of all touched by windfall
all the rain stings to touch, burns to drink, all creatures move at the speed of one herd in a stampede
clouds all move uniformly, each the same shape
trim and proper, primp as a moth's evening cape

Rocks that hang like metaphors for swords pointing down all show,
the ineffectual weeping of centuries, this world of caves has come to know
day and night cycle the same, even time to each all year,
and the eye turned inside, stacked atop its counterpart sheds a tear
for the surface sees mountains are headstones, each for one moment of woe
this colossus sows despair, pinpoint accurate and slow,
a garden of edicts and a veil, the world turtle's movements sew
laws applied to the wild magicks unexplained and defined, bind the eyes to mortal time and so,
mesmerizing until blind and without sensation, the only interest or love, fades until it's gone,
now the only interaction is an internal, infernal reaction to resist madness in grief, to find grace in closing both sides, both eyes, and letting go.
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Jan 2021 · 99
Unevenly Marbled Steak
Tom Shields Jan 2021
When I looked at my eye this morning, it was an old state map of red and blue
and when it saw what you had done, I was farther than ever then from you

You reminded me so much of myself
find comfort in knowing this, too, has happened to me before

Coddle your inner child and he will turn unruly and vile
running amok with his spoiled intentions, poisons in whatever-intentioned vials
his voice louder and more immediate, charisma and emergency
in the volume from the hollow speakers turned up by broken dials
while the manner of spoil within rots wits, burns wicks, with wicked will and wile
I loved you while you were beneath my nose like sick incense on a pile
wafting the scent of your mischief and malfeasant misconduct through flower pedals and cloth
nostalgia for the ******, the ingrate, delinquent and **** I was and am, the death of myself as a juvenile
sweet separation of vision, impartiality to indecency, I feed to the worm and the moth

Knives poised in two hands, two backs bared in embrace
you forced me to hold this in our exchange, and lied to my face
I have tasted my blood and been the villain of betrayal
fool yourself as the victim, twist and writhe away from your disgrace
it is not trust to forcefully fall onto a blade held by me, so you can clean up the blood you spill all over the place
I have been a thief, stealing attention and time, love and affection
driving wedges and preying on social links to break chains
internal damage to bodies that cast me out, with strength in the section
where the shadows on their x-rays played out dramas and pains
to my own shame and humiliation I didn't mark you to be dissected a year ago and split in twain!

This is heartbreak again, for I loved you my friend, but my heart is hardened to loss
I am prepared to endure you a dozen upon a dozen times more
if I were not, we would be aged much closer to each other, and what would I have been growing for?
I do not feel anger, disappointed, upset, I have none of the moxie to hoist the wrathful five sails of my grief
embarrassed a bit, that I enabled and encouraged and stood by you, promised never to give up and held such belief
for you'd only hear me if I say what you want to hear, and we may as well talk to the wind
at least the scent blowing back on the draft is bound to be blameless and kinder than the hot air you'd send
go with peace, find love, this last shred of respect like a torn up shirt in the woods is all I have left to offer you, my once dear friend.
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Tom Shields Jan 2021
The night sky is an octopus
whose beak of void-shining ebony conceals
the sun who is an owl
turning round its head, chasing lightning eels
swirling figures backlit against the nothing
when it blinks the species beneath it passes
onto tendrils of cosmic unbelief
stepping over the flat circle of time en masse
one eye peering from the moon; a stone relief

The sun has a broken neck
as head over foot hurdle star-water divers
ever probing endlessly in check
always more, no threads left for the Godiva's
no cats or swords for the fish who flounder and sputter
dust of bones of their ilk left in the sand when on land they will mutter
awe- this is profound, there is snow in the sky
the relief wells with a tear in the cracks there of the moon-
if there is snow, then the ground cannot be dry
if there is water, this can be home again, soon.
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Jan 2021 · 96
Everything Is Gone
Tom Shields Jan 2021
Reflection, introspective question, echoes "Dissonance..."
this distance, fist, fuel pump Death's liplock on cognizance
cogs ground to halt, acthung in their tongues whipping ignorance
pale snow like corpse-flesh rest and rot on the ground
thunderous, the sky fills with one overpowering sound
exhaustion, bleaker cracks than ever on the porcelain eye
behold this, the greatest show you cannot miss
give us a kiss, death give us a kiss, expel the spirit and leave the lie
screaming for a blanket, notes plaster the walls and ceiling and all the clashing concords are parabolic bliss

With your sugar skull aloft and looking down
all these jesters dance to entertain one clown
the paint wears off their faces, no presence
no dignity, no disgraces, they look into the mirror and say this
"Courage..." comes from elegance over using power at every chance
while cold water runs off with the colder blood that seeps from the cuts in their hands

Star fire!
Molten and liquid and poured into the gullets of each of your foolish and wicked, cruel and detestable people
if no person ever lived, who is to say if the universe would ever know such things as evil?
The pomegranate complexion of these brazen, emboldened, boorish and bombastic beings
I curse their granite introspection with blazing, untold and traumatic things
burst them and wither their seeds to nothing, all that I regard of them in sight
death kisses are the sweetest for they offer final release from all mortal pains, and carry you off into the eternal night.
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Jan 2021 · 60
Nothing's Missing
Tom Shields Jan 2021
Dig fingernails into palm
an aura of rage disquiets calm
teeth ground finely into dust
an era, an age broken chains of trust
breathing air freely, finally through a punctured lung
who are you that bites your thumb, saying I must bite my tongue?

Bide your time, for what is life if not time over reality
and reality if not perception over varied experiences
one balled fist, cherry-red knuckles, raised bottoms-up, always lowly
always knowing to go right to where the consensus of common sense is
steer the path of wrath, answer when the brass rings with theoretical equations in moral math
the shortest distance between two points is irrelevant when every minute of every day
is planned around the uphill struggle you have along the way

Ideas to further us,
wayside trinkets for those who follow
let the mad do battle with the angry until they turn murderous
they reside in the misery leftover of concrete; now mires of mud to wallow
admirers of survivors, secretly in love with a disaster whose burden laid on them here and now is not one anybody should be asked to master
you cannot prepare to lose everything, bunkers, guns, armor, nothing you have will make the pain pass faster
fate is an excuse abused by weak will and minds, they surrender the consequences of everything they do, that is done, to four letters

I have heard the worst and best moments of my life were fated
these notes, passed in sympathetic epitaphs from retired, retread hatred
the energy of the young man who would see this blue marble lost with all the rest
is refocused, as through a prism of detached and severed disinterest
I feel much older than I am, and like a sponge I absorb the colors and sights and sounds of the natural world around me
as I train my train of thought to stay on track, my wild emotions would wring me dry and misunderstood reactions would confound me

The virtue of solace just at arm's reach
never to fall too involved,
but to survive and inspire those to uplift, with an aligned love for each.
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Dec 2020 · 44
Pyramid Dusters
Tom Shields Dec 2020
You will die unloved
scrawling lost letters to the world above
in your casket ceiling
because you let us down
a bitter feeling, grieving; healing
breathing, while the noise drowns


You would raise your silver high
clench your teeth, grind goodbye
another beast asleep to the tune of your poisoned lullaby
with fists of gold when you say hi,
all their hearths and kindness shy away like passersby
the rot of lies, the growth of flies


What good will all of it do
look now around you,
what is all of this worth?
A pyramid is astonishing now, true
but it is only another tombstone withering away on the earth


That lump in your throat is the sand of disconnection
discontent and disrespect, disproportion, disillusion
like the hourglass it runs out upside down throughout our lives
were it not for all these things like a rope bridge of nooses, traversing a river of knives
think of how we might think freely, move as individuals, untethered and harmonious
no chosen few, beliefs, politics, tastes, race or class denied, human beings: all of us


Without the need to fulfill another need, to purr like kittens in a lap of luxury
we might govern the world with no debt to these walls and commercial anxiety,
that's why paradise makes people so happy, but it'll always be a daydream to me
to solve this infinite dust puzzle and repair society at the root of humanity
I can be fine with the love of myself and mine, one stone at a time removing my vanity
even if the end of it will never be, it's the pursuit of being and letting be
you will die loved, even if it can't be given, felt or known
if I could become fine, finite dust, one speck for everyone to see
with only the essence on each flake, to show that no one is alone,
I would give myself away with zeal, hope, and love for all of us, each and every.
write
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Dec 2020 · 35
Tidings
Tom Shields Dec 2020
Love yourself and all around you
may kind-hearted intentions and good company surround you
may you eat your fill of good food and then some,
may you rest in comfort and wake refreshed
and may you enjoy a day, if one, and feel that you are blessed
I ask nothing, encouraging you to share warmth and hope
and I believe that every person together can overcome any test
this is what I wish for, not peace forever, but peace for a moment
and peace, in that moment for everyone.
write
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Dec 2020 · 50
Solstices
Tom Shields Dec 2020
Saturn returns to shorten the day and stretch the night
once more to swallow his son; a stone replaced
what was sewn is harvested, a star tells their tale bright
Jove survives by deceitful, maternal good nature and grace
over the Omphalos of Delphi let their story-dance twirl the world with might
and bring the blessing of mistletoe to a cold, red face
before we call upon our druidic priests to  set the yule log alight

Of your columns, the reaping of your memory
I hang all manner of shine and shimmer
in honor of the infinite cosmos and lost souls, rest peacefully
no offering in your name, of mine that glimmers
matches the splendor your brilliance lays over the land on me
the beauty of silver when it glows, ethereal, like heavens minted a glint, but a taste of a coin
divine on the eyes, deriving all other senses of pleasure, the appetite, envy, I must purloin

I forgive all wrongs I have not stated forgiven, all grudges not made known released, I release
all debts unpaid to me, I won't collect on them anyway, I only have only seven days as mock king to do as I please
with all of my heart and only a few words, I love all unmet and unknown, readily forgetful of foul history as a blink's worth of wing beats from mocking birds
we may be prisoners for the time being, but our prison is a construct of our mind
freedom is a time-being, you must make the difficult and responsible decision, conflict is no contract, possessions are no bind
where you are, what you have, these are grains of sand to the hourglass of who you are or if you are content to be resigned

In exile he was peaceful, a father to Picus, a teacher to his people
they celebrated him, turning their stigmas and laws upside down
that Saturnalia, slaves were masters and one condemned prisoner wore a crown
for 7 days from the 17th of December, the poor were rich, the lords served peasants and every night was a feast to remember
on the 21st they cleanse the bad luck of the prior year, sacrifice and offer to the gods for all those who have died here
they all are in awe of the moon, the sun and stars
Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, who is greatest among ours
on the 25th we celebrate Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the renewal of the sun,
we rise to observe King Helios, light bonfires, offer sacrifice, feast in accordance, and decorate before we're done

They changed the world and stole the fine details
gawking at the planets now, 800 years passed,
that we worshiped until our eyes were torn, controlled and our gaze was cast
until we were stolen from our gods, who return to us at last.
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Dec 2020 · 57
Anemic Xenomelia
Tom Shields Dec 2020
Of mediums: the body
am I strong enough now?
Am I proven?

Iron drizzled double dips into existential bags of dreadful tricks
rung out rags of wry ideas, tonal shifts falling flat from fingertips
shredding themselves to life to fall from my lips, a knifed-tongue licks
impaling spears sinking meaningful 'ships, I babble on, anything to stir the rabble on
a dashed line is drawn, I hold a hatchet, I'm no genius, no political ploy for relevancy
nothing I say from this pulpit is preached, it doesn't reach the level of spirituality
when I speak from the heart, the beats reflect defeat inside of me,
I can hack it, not for the need for fighting, for the love of writing
so faint and far away, I can hear the dead cheer in support,
why twist an ear around upside down to listen to the past, release the effort, it'll only hurt,
achieve through growth by reach, that doesn't mean you have to contort
I suppose I'm at my upmost, I've got a feeling I'll never see the rooftops over the ceiling, I'm that sort

So I took an ax and bashed my left wrist, belt tied off at the arm between my teeth like you see on TV
cut my skin and barely bled, I don't know why, maybe to see I've still got the iron for the misled who believe in me
not even sore, a few days and I feel like I'm just a fainter echo of the searing roar I once was; painless and aproblematic without noise and challenging views anymore or
blissfully being unaware of the world of opinion, only open-minded to leave a crack in my door

Time travel is the same to me as if asking if you had one wish, within the limitations it is akin to carnal sin by the temptations
the implications, unforeseen ramifications if you step on one blade of grass and change the past
when the future is the fool's gambit, it's always a second ahead of you, you'll be lucky to see it if you only last
getting lost in all the hunger and forgetting the hungry all beside you, this I resent and all it represents is ignorance
where base needs are met, focus overcomes harsher tests, meditate, achieve necessity and find generosity, as a well-being may be a gift by their presence.
write
please read and enjoy
Dec 2020 · 58
Cold Fusion of Tongues
Tom Shields Dec 2020
Vox Populi, Vox Dei
speak as one, unified
no matter, you say
death of a butterfly, justified
secession from Heavens, ratified

Cowering behind divine intervention
children in their towering mud creations
ever closer, mortal fingers scraping skin
just below, judged in their harmonious intentions
near enough to condemn them all under the blanket of one sin,
your Ziggurat, a layered city wrapped around a societal invention,
determined to climb, rats in a maze, all of their days
they give to meet their maker, unaware all along, what gods do to towers
a race that all understood and lived together, confounded and cast many separate ways
for the ambitions, or no reasons at all, they had to trifle with superstitious powers
humanity dreams kindling for angels at night so the sun may burn it beneath its rays
nothing admired, wanted, loved, desperately hoped for or desired really stays

Etemenanki, a place and time on earth that could not be
you have everything, everybody, do you know if you're happy?
You've never been tested and brag that you're strong-willed
you'd starve for attention before your loved ones, gilded, jaded, know your stubborn hatred can't
be
killed
are you happy, one foot in the grave and three feet from the abyss, is this what it feels like to be fulfilled?
Fried wires burning through traumatic, relapses reminding unkind synapses to ignite like wildfires
no caps, music that echoes elastically through hallowed halls, sensory demands that snap-back like they're played on rubberbands, we rise to their demands, every tower falls, electricity in the adrenal glands, eternally juggernauts on the sands, ziggurats you can hitch the Hindenburg to, Shenandoah and the Challenger too, hopes for the literal and metaphysical ascension of man, swatted bricks by the tricks of a frightened, lesser-than,
humanity is what? Being, knowing what it is to be, seeing, believing, surviving,
a brain inside a skull that can't comprehend, stones on either end of a shelf for the Encyclopedia Humanitas, Alpha and Omega, where the books begin and where it ends
without it you're nothing but a bag of meat driven solely by appetite and agenda; a toolbox full of contacts you call friends
without them you're chemical actions peeling back friction, a fraction, catching a picture of the traction that glitch in the matrix of a matchbox resurrection, strikeout, your dead son and I play pretend    

Defiance is second nature to second nature, which is science
industrialized, militarized, the taste of copper in your throat
the Titanic sailed and sank, but they can build a bigger boat
do we court disaster, titans of machines, conflict and reckless responsibility for our Mother Earth?
When the bill comes due, unless other planets have been broken in too, we pay it all back in detriment or betterment for our place of birth.
write
please read and enjoy
Dec 2020 · 33
Snatch and Grab
Tom Shields Dec 2020
The absence of evidence cannot be proven by a lack of what you have

your pride, a summary of all of the glory you can grab

it is weakness to hold onto love that can fit into a bag

the evidence of absence is apparent in the act

sentiment, kindness, present minded-ness, another slot a knife can stab


If you must insist upon these gilded tokens and hurled ideals like spears from Babel on

to fuel a spirit long since gone from a body faded to ash beneath snow, whose presence lingers in nervously grubbing fingers

then that only goes to show, your idol, image crafted by Coca Cola, whose Saint was Nicked and imprisoned for defending Christianity in the years 303 - 313

or do you not care for history, a lecture from a lantern lit lectern and how drab that all can be?


Puff out your chest on your past of hunger and hardship

these softer beds you sleep on now, rest assuredly

they are a bitter bite of mellow comfort compared to a fat lip

from the childhood Purple Heart you awarded yourself for poverty

if only the truth was not that the pain is what you must throw over your shoulder and carry

but how easily anybody can be right there too, in the mindset, broke and likely desperate to help their family

the real strength one gains from their life of having next to nothing is an appreciation for charity; an understanding for willing generosity.
write
please read and enjoy

the word ****** is censored, but where i'm from it's just another way of saying (forcefully) grab. sorry about that.
Dec 2020 · 41
Gold Spray Paint Heart
Tom Shields Dec 2020
Is there a true balance in chaos?
When the scales are a jawbone tilting towards flame or abyss
if there is peace in everything, in death and destruction, is there peace in this?
What good is love if it carries the fear of loss?
The morality of control is all amiss,
ease the open mind, dissolve into the air and toss
spilling a balm of requiem over all the troubles you come across.

Is that truly freedom, elevation to a higher understanding
or have I purchased a new plateau for my home?
It seems I'm always sinking low and never landing,
though I have no quarrels when I am free to roam
the cost of leaving is only all you have and all the comforts on hand
more for others and none for some, with these earthly burdens that we know
if you could set your destination to any horizon, with only the people and the past to hold you
would you look them in the eyes and say goodbye, unpossessed; an empty field with only room to grow,
would you leave them behind the bars of harsh memory, to spare your hardened self the sorrow,
would you wait until dark, without a word, or would you not be able to go?
write
please read and enjoy
Dec 2020 · 34
Fender
Tom Shields Dec 2020
Oh, you narcoleptic stars
don't go blinking out on me again
two shovels dig out scars
dirt they scatter across the fens
with a howl that cracks the marshal's eyelid
razing beneath the arch
oh, you sleepy stars, look what you did
you left the sky alone to focus on your march

Offsprings of life, water fills the path you trudge
who are you or I who do not drink of these puddles to know?
Who are you or I to twinkle eternal, but lightning bugs?
The less there is the more there can be, if we but speak it so
leave with lighter steps that your future is one none may judge
and a place you may beckon others to follow, but you alone may go.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 311
Better Not Greater
Tom Shields Nov 2020
I want to leave you on a better note, with kinder vibes and more hope in mind than what I last wrote
destitution is not inherent vulnerability, ingenuity thrives behind the lines of poverty
good will can be chipped away by promises that turn predatory
you'll get out someday, pay dues by coping, thickened skin quick to kick holes in drywall fighting with your next of kin
being white trash, man, I was comfortable in pain before everything I owned was reduced to ash and swept into a can

I was nothing before I let go of the idea that my materials were my value
and I was never happier with everything I have and nobody to share it with
than I was with a notebook and a pen and nobody who gave a ****
there's no doubt about my hypocrisy, humans, I love you and can't live without you
but step to my left brain and my introspective is anesthetic, I don't care and hate you
trying retain a positive mentality while remaining true
to this retrospection, filtered vision through brutality and cynical objectivity
how can I look at the world any different if I refuse to view myself with honesty?

Classism, like a caste system, stay in your place, predestined and determined from birth, endogamy
enforced in strange ways when it's not a native part of society, tilted thinking, you can buy a gun it's easy
catching heat is simpler than getting a degree, intoxications and temptations wait more readily than self-improving opportunity
it is a wheel that takes a different form, oppressing a variety of races and religions, sexualities and incomes in communities
I don't know who I am to point a finger anymore when I have stood in an open door and let myself be crushed by anxiety
depression, insomnia, self-destructive tendencies that I wore like both sleeves, validation, sure, it feels like one bad dream ended and no one believes
if not for the entirety of the building that collapsed on my classless ***, I don't think my own conscience would relent on finding me guilty to give me a pass, shut in and shut out so fast the doorframe was still standing when the force blew back wind in my face from the ferocity

All I'm trying to say in my roundabout way is
I carry names attached to emotional scars, but no grudges, no hatred
the roads I've gone down, the bridges I burn when I cross I have no need or desire to retread
I feel older for all the life I haven't lived, and sadly grateful to still be alive
meaning, purpose and balance find their own way whether or not we strive
if I could only give one thing to all people right now, speak one word, one tone
in a way that it could be felt, understood, absorbed and known
I would not give you respect, which can lead to love,
nor would I give you love; I would give you peace.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 90
Ain't Grand
Tom Shields Nov 2020
I want to leave you on a better note, every day away from this is like a broken toe, I lose balance when time passes by words I haven't wrote, I run afoul of vowels in slim corridors across the labyrinthian mind, A Major rings in sonata, tenor to soprano tremors, bells of horrors, tight and highly-pitched the orchestrated punishment of tinnitus, this is my mind's bliss, a warning issued at the fourth corner, warm up before you run there won't be any disbelief, no slab for the coroner, cold beef, a ghost you won't meet, like a sheet on a stretcher, the home stretch is the long run, bask in the villainy, I hound myself to waking nightmares like these verbal vibes that flow freely on tap for saps from the vines in my brains that pump through my veins creating this vitriolic viscosity, giving the impression I'm of equal likelihood to ascend to higher planes of peace in touch with divinity as I am to engage a killing spree with explosive, violent velocity, verbose verses versus society, I eat my own rage and bomb it back onto a page, ***** that into pieces, let my spirit leave and levitate over self-loathing so I can see myself clearly, before I am set to go off on any and every figure, past, future and present of authority, fictional or based in this unfortunate reality, I am the risen-to privileged proponent for anarchy, vicarious nature my pair of sights survey from the perspective of the hungry what possessions are beset in my vicinity, and they used to call our democracy one of two parties, that just kills me

I want to be known in my own time for what I'm going to write, not to live a life of luxury, not to be followed and affirmed by every other popular consensus crowd member who follows me, the opinions that are loudest and heard most often are deafening and ones on which we can mostly, almost, partially, chaotically rampage over those who disagree, so I'd rather never put my face on the back of a book and have to give you my biography, in my ambition, those who like it, look for it and when they see my pen name they know it's me, it'll be spoiled by the date I see that come to fruition, I am no role-model, and all the fish will wash up dead and frozen from a boiling sea before I'm a teacher, I'm no hero, I'm just a writer and barely a human one at times, for I may rarely if ever raise a fist and if I hold you in consolidation I may also commit the violation of holding your neck in a twist, I am no model citizen or proper young man I am the spirit of a writer holding this flesh vessel captive, a demonic denizen, while life leaves and all his passions incarcerate and hold judgement over him, driving natural desires away from the light and shadows further in, I see events unfold before me so many steps prior I arrive a kilometer before catastrophe strikes again, my mule trods beneath me, the oni jockey who races his disgraces and chases last places leaving all the trademark traces that makes us traitorous ingrates laughing in saintly, gracious faces with frothing venomous spit at the lips we split to inspire the higher seated those we all admire, the rich and smooth-feeted to hang themselves from their ivory-gold-laden towers by their silk shoe laces, that their laurels awaken to see the golden geese lives taken and then I'll beat my dead horse, and spur it on to trample the begotten generation of idols whose idle idiocy breeds complacency, degeneracy and self-generates the disillusion of individuality in unison of voices all voting in unity for their unique indecency, the power of the cult of personality, until I finally wither to finely ground dust before the over-trusting, ever-loving, new brand of nuke via the actuality behind the pop of the culture of popularity  

It's easy to be a devil's advocate, a spokesperson and a woke-person, while the world worsens and the arsenal of subjugation deepens, your subconscious doesn't register the seeds of indifference and supremacy, poison comes cerebrally, live across all the media, one lone voice starts to look like a medium for insanity or immediacy, impossibility and ludicrousy, intelligence comes into question and they ask why listen when you could stay sitting, divisive mathematics are the key, they keep everyone against each other, the art of snakes in the grass who agitate the viper pit they slither right in it and then shatter like a dagger made of glass, stuck deep so the powdered remnants remain, and no matter how much of their influence is removed there will always be pain, take it back to the top, the labyrinthian mind, that means it's easy to get lost in your thoughts, I don't feel overwhelmed by myself, sometimes I just get lost in my brain and I know I'm not one of a kind, no matter how proud I might get over some clever turn of phrase, you can't twist my arm to give myself a pat on the back, I'd rather be writing anyways, there's no shame in any artist's history that gets them through the days, concepts realized and learning about real misconceptions can give you the chance to wake from a daze, to find time when you've been drifting in a trance through a haze, the mesmerized eyes glazed that just need to get back in touch with one spark to reignite their craze, and hypnotists know this, creativity will never die as long as the game to weaponize control lives on, everybody plays, originality somehow suffers the Mandela Effect, an infrastructure of greed stays, to see the same rehashed creations with promised innovations, everybody pays



For rest, forests exemplify the upmost standard I would live and die by, my mind's eye wanders over the death of all things hungry for exfiltration from this fraught and weary tortoise back world as an expectant fly might beat its wings one last time before the dinner table, its hat hung on the rack, fourth quarter about to begin after it rubs its hands together in prayer and with silverware ready lets out a sigh, and now allow the sun to rise to the sky and all things to know the light of the moon and stars as this at last we rectify; forests fraught with fires raising forth four hundred more foretold score years forlorn of yore, shorn of shores for lore of fifteen forty, Jesus of Lübeck sailed with slaves, Christians filled hundreds of graves in the Red Summer, on domestic soil Jesus saves the foreign force you're in store for, dreamed of exoticism and allure, sure, maybe a cure to the core for the massacres that occurred, the gore and the horrors that four million klansman can commit door to door, they don't teach about the nationwide headcount in nineteen fifteen to nineteen forty four in school, or what happened on July first, second and third in nineteen seventeen before the US joined the first world war, talk about who the murderers were, ****** and morons moreover in their bedsheets, Georgian confederates opened the door for the second iteration of the **** which declined because they enlisted to hand Nazis defeat, the irony is sweet, the third iteration three to eight thousand members off hand, declared terrorists, one hundred thirty chapters of a book that activists and active listeners, anyone with a few braincells on hand just wants to end, their hatred ******, a tour of who's been shot by the luck of the draw, calling out to the white and poor, insecure, unintelligent bores, Biden their time for a public outburst, there was a poll in the land, not an invasion of Poland, I wouldn't even vote, these brats are the worst, so sore from their storied ancestral homes to the inhalants and never having the right bills on the trailer floor, flustered and face-flushed at the lack of sinister will of fellow whites, forgetting choice amendments when they recite them they might as well rewrite a document and call it the Bill of Whites, so hard-working, so hard-headed, outraged at welfare, well it's fair, when it comes out of taxes they can't even afford, if they hate everyone so much, just leave, homes on four wheels that are one doored, the only freedoms they actually use they manage to borderline abuse and then cite their weakness (constitution) of their own accord, truly subversive, you make your own race ashamed to be the same species, if nothing else the fully indoctrinated are to their own pinnacle as a jackboot scraping of feces, cannibals to zombies, crackers to crumbs, when Armageddon comes, assemble Four Horsemen, take back the fourth day of Genesis and the warmth of the sun, even if there is an ever after and Kingdom Come, there are some so dumb all their own, they'd rather be separated from, into a little cosmic barrel to form the fourth iteration, in the infernal eternal segregation of the pitiful, infinitely small-minded, multiplying in their mindset, forever trapped and cyclically blinded, bound to hate and be numb.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 53
Steam Powered Rock Drill
Tom Shields Nov 2020
Won't the sun shine a bit softer, for pity's sake?

Bargain with the wind, can't your breeze be cooler,

or a little lighter, give or take?


You machine

with your vented tongue

averaging the truth from all your calculated lies can only mean

that your head is so full of steam you must blow from an iron lung

a chimney-neck, a smokestack, black cloud of thought that gathers

glowering coals, simmering down from a long night's work

now the pummeled odds, statistics stacked against the status quo

quote you against yourself, you hide your bent and burning rods

by burying your disheveled and spent state beneath a quota of snow

cooldown until scrap is repaired, maintenance quick, quips all witless, quite aware, quitting who cares

all the best times come and go, love is unquantifiable data, a memory you can feel and know


I hope today is a beautiful day for all those who want for it to be

and I can only hope that everyone I may never see is over me,

I've been the guilty party, my price of admission is not worth the memory

while I lose sleep, may you only know peace, love, respect, and feel pain dissipate, overcome and be burden free

I'd rather lay to rest with my heart light of anger, than my head full of thoughts of perceived enemies.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 82
Lucid Lunaris
Tom Shields Nov 2020
All life is all life
what if the universe is only the same to God as a lung to a human
and it has been expanding all this time because it is inhaling
wildest dreamers, you will never understand
plucking holes in your sky to make starlight
your mastery of nothing, the whole world in your hands
flounder from your waters onto the surface of these pale gray sands
struggle abreast of gravity to wade into catastrophe
void of perspective, what awaits

Colors never seen
the veins of membranes of the vastness
serving as the trail of flashes
warp, witnessed hundreds of years later
incomprehensible the digestion or detection
of the farthest Allfather; far from one, another
it is not meant to be known by tongue or thought
or possibly perceived when shown, or learned or taught
speak to it, if it were to utter one stone silent syllable
gently, lovingly, answer, or flinch, or twitch
all this precious, infinitesimal life would instantaneously perish

Dream and dream of miraculous cosmos
skip rope with wormholes, hopscotch down the Aesir's Bridge
softly pull a strand of fire from the sun to compose  
in brilliance etch your words into nebulous prose
all life will be renewed
defile my God internally
and ask what you need
not what you can get, or can't have
kneeling in prayer on the moon
dreaming of home within yourself
meditating on life, all life
and all life is, all life is.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 52
204863
Tom Shields Nov 2020
Face down on the concrete
Twin roaches scurry fast, awake at last
Where are you, what is this, who are you?
The door ahead opens the wounds to your past

The gap in the door is a separate reality
TWO ZERO FOUR EIGHT SIX THREE
The only me is me…

Is this my life?
I walk before myself, following someone,
Am I me or someone else?
I can feel the burden of his crimes take their toll
As midnight is pressed into my flesh
Piercing and retracting, always in; one eye always watching through the hole
This voice accuses me of the apparency, that I killed my family

The father shot his pregnant wife in the belly
And his ten-year-old son in the chest when he came to see,
Two Zero Four Eight Six Three
Then luring his six-year-old daughter out of the bathroom, he shot her Two  
Who was the only one with sense to hide, by telling her it was just a game
And hung himself in the garage with a garden hose, with an umbilical cord,
A similar crime occurred, unrelated, but the same,
The children are screaming, a murdered pregnancy, Zero years of life
He finished his family off with a butcher’s knife,
A family of Four

I saw me walking in front of myself,
But it wasn’t really me,
Neighbors had heard him chanting the numbers, as if a spell
Two zero four eight six three
Days before the incident, they call to me from hell

Gouging the eye out of her photograph, it matches what I see
Everywhere I turn the wailing, crying, screaming, sobbing, haunting, guilty memory
Running through the endless corridors of gore and horrors, breathlessly
When she appears, shuddering in her filthy dress and decay, out of tune with this dimension
Am I a guest in this nightmare, I remember the suffering vaguely, who am I, who is she?

Don’t touch that dial, we’re just getting started
For all you listeners out there in radioland,
Give the baby a hand,
A contorted fetus deposited in the sink
Distressed cries, laughing after midnight
Raspy unnatural breaths, grip tight to a flashlight
Green, blue, red, yellow, and normal light
I am lost in variations of the same night
Look behind you
I said, look behind you

Face down on the concrete
Awake at last, scurry to your feet fast
Where are you, what is this, who are you?
The bag behind you tries to warn you, you may not be trapped in your past
What you see, certainly, all of it may be true
The only me is me, are you sure the only you is you?

It’s a minute to midnight, the knife is retracted just a hair from the artery
Give it a minute and you know exactly where it will be
Wander forever, she always catches up to you, to us, to me
Bones break and sever, leaving no trace or mystery
By the window, the stairs going down, in the open hallway or on the balcony
You embody the man who killed me, you slaughtered your family
The screaming in the fridge is not the voice of the unborn baby
Infanticide and mariticide ending with your suicide
Ending with unending purgatory, a gory story of your punishment
Lisa, please forgive me, there is a monster inside
Of you, I will expunge it with homicide
You listened to them, calling you to violence
And everything you were, you wore a falsehood that you rose out of, we know you lied
You have been chosen to wander, witness and wonder at fresh hell in silence
Welcome to the hillside

My voice, can you hear it!
TWO ZERO FOUR EIGHT SIX THREE
This sign, can you read it?
Two Zero Four Eight Six Three
I’ll wait forever if you’ll just come to me.
Two Zero Four Eight Six Three
I’ve been behind you always
And you’ll never escape these hallways
The two fathers, two crimes, two times, with no chance of escape, forever, eight victims, six fragments complete my image, they will never know the end, it’s just us three, you and you and me.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 41
Scott Tattoo
Tom Shields Nov 2020
Talk of peace as rivers of life flow from your fingers
a shadow of a shell meaning well still within the shattered soul
foul and fell sitting there on the shore still lingers
your intentions prowl from the blurry hell, dull embers in your skull
a fire that hides from other light, deep down in a hole

In line with design, deigned to reign the stars malign
warlord's prayer, profit rules divine, oh men see everything but the sign
tie your notes and postcards to carrion birds, whose beaks will wine and dine
wet in the flesh of you before the last night is through, no good killers resign
plan to feign the bane of prophets, trained to rain remorseless, streaks of fire like red twine
inherited these causes, never known the pain, only been loaded onto a plane to fight your father's fight; your sons will do just fine

Newsman come and cover our tears, we weep for the world to see
a message that no one ever hears, the tale continues on tape, cautionary
fallen like some precious angel, encapsulated in a tapestry of memory
they prefer to close the casket on the presence of the corpse with their honors
and when they're all finally gone, it's just another death in the family.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 149
Outrun
Tom Shields Nov 2020
I think all people are different
but I've always had an overactive imagination
inherited phantom guilt that built a cult following
like a genetic indoctrination
they said you can always get the milk for free,
but I want to eat the cow
everybody is looking sort of funny
where is the sheepdog now?

I think God is the Universe, expanding and exploding in waves
but I haven't been to mass in years, and I can't understand why living people need the dead in graves
what is clear is God as a concept is incomprehensible, not a matter of morals or principle
with spears and rifles we've argued our points, armies commanded by holy knaves
mankind faces a Gordian Knot, in his mind an insoluble bind, in truth the frayed ends are loose,
triumph assured, cut it in half and what answers have you got?
A ball of rope to tug of war for, attrition fighting called a truce
he thinks he is free to chase his horizons, but he is not

I think I am tired
but I slept all through the night the other day
come-bye the clock is about face and glaring down
and it seems I am all turned around, for I feel the other way
upside is the sun, downside the moon
so I will join the fleecing in here, peacefully from the policing, soon
will they remember me, from the point of balance I ever seek to walk
tip-toeing, steadily and quietly, for all the heated bleating I talk
will they care for me, as much as they look back, aware of my poor commands
I never could take time, though I had so much, I do grip and fetch with dense matter on my hands
they will not love me, nor should they if they do,
I am penned in where I belong, with every other one of you.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 47
Throat Apples
Tom Shields Nov 2020
Hunched over, breathing heavily, palms flat and turned outwards with fingers stretched over the kneecaps
a strike, perfectly on the very most fragile beacon of symmetry there where the face folds around the skull, perhaps
and all the steam would just come out in a pitched scream, curdling, before the fried and tired could collapse

Heave in, hitching breaths on the frosted lungs
trouble fetched far to speak in tongues,
mutism, the latter bells such painful rungs

Fetching all focus to contain, to paralyze
catch a sapling sprouting rapidly with piercing cries
desperation, drool, drenched on the wings of these insipid butterflies.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 36
High Roadsmen
Tom Shields Nov 2020
There is a better way
the jewels of wisdom locked in my chest cavity
buried in ignorance, arrogance, not meant to see the light of day
these flowers meant to grow with my decay
and open their fist over my grave
how long can I hold onto the murky morality
whose ink is poisonous, to whom I am a slave
to give up, let all hope bleed out of me
and offer no hope I can be saved

This is the quandary with redemption
you don't get to martyr yourself for one ultimate act
sacrifice at your convenience, foregoing temptation
the receipt of your past forever scrawled on your back
you can't merely decide it's all over now, at your whim
some of us have such horrible portraits waiting, our necks snap with whiplash
some have no fear of their inner nature, peering long and grim

The truth is you will forever be remembered that way by those who choose to see you as such
while you can grow and regress in the ages to come, the truth is exerting discipline amounts to much
fear excuses the rationale to cause pain, never does it explain how to apologize for its damning touch
I know that I can train and restore some of my forgone humanity, I just need to find the better man in me  
a moral beauty or amoral beastly belayed to a bucket in the inkwell of true intentions
convenience of conscience counts on the weight of the scales that measures redemption
what black spot your heart beats by, dichotomous before the open iris of forgiveness' sigh
is truly an omen, no omission from this misery, come and commiserate with me in Second Chance's Cemetery
you must want for yourself and nobody else to see the sins on your portrait clear, if this road follows hope then it cannot be led by fear
no resurrection, no intersection, letting go is a blind fall on trust
once free to be yourself and know yourself, you can become who you must.
write
please read and enjoy
Nov 2020 · 221
For the Love of the Game
Tom Shields Nov 2020
Corporate society, the paradise no one asked for
Everyone works for us, toward us, generations of sheep
Shepherds few, gathered around our executive table
They’d love to knock down our door
But they’d have to know to look in such exquisite places, their eyes have never turned so high before!
Aha-ha! Grace those who know their stations, serve and toil dutifully
I love to see them work their life away, the loyalty to big Energy, it brightens my day beautifully
Which brings the Board to the matter of Jonathan E.
Bartholomew, Chairman of the Energy Corporation, seated in Houston
Just handed the task to inform one Rollerballer that his career is done
Announces a televised special, featuring Jonathan’s career in multivision

Did you catch Houston vs Madrid?
Who are you trying to kid?
I haven’t missed a game yet, I wouldn’t now if it was the last thing I ever did
There’s rumors in the air, rumors on the street, propaganda floats from open leaks
I hear Jonathan is going to announce his retirement on a big show in a few weeks
Now, this lavish retirement package is all set, all you’ve got to do speak it to power
Jonathan listening, a bunch of hot air in a suit talks for five minutes and says as much in an hour
The two seem to have crossed a wire,
Butting heads when he refuses to retire
Maybe you should have said why, sir
He also requested to see his ex-wife sir,
She was reappropriated by a corporate executive who wanted her,
Perhaps if this goes much farther, she can be a messenger…

Savvy of their ways, he can smell a coup for days
Knowledge, that’s real power, so it doesn’t strike him as strange
That he finds all books on corporate history have been changed
And hidden in the memory vaults of their supercomputers, at protected locales
Jonathan can’t rightly figure out why they’re so shook about the best Rollerball player in the world
Neither can an Energy executive he asks for information, just one of his old pals

Well, he’s not keen on playing by our rules in our world
We’ll go and change his!
Semi-finals, Houston vs Tokyo, no penalties, limited substitutions, multiple deaths, broken bones and contusions
Fractured skulls, comatose players, ****** bodies wrecked and left wrung out with a broken neck
We raise the stakes on the track, crush their knees, break their back
His best friend claimed in the senseless slaughter, and another irreversibly vegetative
Jonathan, Houston wins, and he manages to live
The doctors pressure him to pull life support, his disrespect, defiant and tall
His teammate is braindead, they cite the rules of the facility, no family, permit me to **** him please
There aren’t rules. There aren’t any rules at all.
Even a plant senses life. It turns towards the sun. It’s alive isn’t it?
Talking to the bedside body in a Houston hospital,
He will dream he’s an executive, hands on all the controls
Bartholomew wishes him sweet dreams, and he will wear a gray suit and make decisions
But you know what, all the executives dream about behind their desks, reversed roles
That they’re Jonathan, with muscles, bashing in faces, their enemies give in
And they skate free; all that unrestrained barbarism and he only has to score goals

Post Tokyo bloodbath, the board reconvenes
The truth behind the threat of a Rollerball champion is revealed behind the scenes
The finals pit against each other the New York and Houston teams,
More importantly, Jonathan, who defeats the purpose of the game
By standing out he establishes individuality, they shouldn’t even know his name!
The entire point is to exercise the futility of individualism and satisfy bloodlust
And with a people’s champion at the helm of the sport, the answer is clear
No penalties, no time limit, no substitutions, Jonathan will die or lose; he must!
All in favor, no accidents, no sabotage, through natural defeat he will not live?
Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative.  

Zero, the central supercomputer for the world in Geneva
A repository of all human knowledge, which seems to be a
Bit off by quite a bit of data they hate to admit and let’s face it
Is there much surprise that the corporations bank of knowledge is a disgrace with,
Seemingly senile tendencies, their computer misplaced the thirteenth century, even the technicians can’t explain, but the bulbs are lit
Uh, yeah, I don’t know sir, it just seems like it’s not up to the task, what’d you want to ask?
He’s just a man whose career is a team sport revolving around getting a ball to a hole,
And they talk all this jargon, blow smoke and say nothing, he just wants to know how the corporations determine their goals

A final offer, by form of his former wife comes to try to talk him out of the deathmatch that is to come
In her eyes she is sold out, she’s only there to do bidding, an insult to his stirred mind that only hurts
I’ve been thinking, people had a choice between having all these nice things or freedom and we chose comfort!
But comfort is freedom, it always has been, history will show that poverty is an enemy of civilization, we struggled against need
No, they appeal to us, placate us, give us cards for our complacency to own us with our greed
They want me to quit, and she shudders, urging him on
That is why I came here, you have to, and he sees through it all now
Did they tell you if you got me to do it, that you’d have to stay with me? Are you my prize to be won?
Jonathan didn’t want to hear another word,
Disgust and rage, they turned her into a reward

New York is little more than a gladiatorial battle
Death on wheels, you can hear the blades scraping
Around and around they go
Hell on wheels, fires explode from the motorcyclists
The brutality erupts in spurts of blood, all players dying
Burning and broken and splayed and destroyed and screaming and crying
And twisted and contorted and smashed and ground and ripped and torn
No semblance of mercy for a moment is shown, no humanity in the war is born
It is ******, ten players on each team, down to three,
No scoring game, New York with a biker and a skater up
And Jonathan disrupts, the bike erupts, right in front of Bartholomew so he can see
He takes the ball, heavy steel, holds it over the last man’s head, his savage ******, mercy interrupts
And he leaves him laying, thankful for his life, two men out of twenty in one game survived
As he skates, blades scraping, fires crackling, flames taller than men stand by
It is so deathly silent in the arena that you could hear a dead man sigh  
The maiming and death and deception, the ice cold, exhausted look in his eye
He raises the ball overhead, where the crowd can see it up high
And scores one point before he goes around,
Slowly, arm in tatters, blood across his face and uniform in splatters
He throws his helmet and his glove down to echo in the silence, little clatters
He comes around again, the whispers of his name start to build to a chant
The champion! He just has to win! The roof comes off, they’re roaring now!
Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan!
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Oct 2020 · 49
One of Us
Tom Shields Oct 2020
This planet is doomed, we must evacuate
Chart a course, let us head there straight
Attached to the green, feels like it’s been cycles since we ate
Adapt to this species, overtake from within, infiltrate
With every one of them we gain weight,
In numbers and arms, while they fall apart and disintegrate
This species is doomed, they don’t even know they can’t save themselves
It’s already too late

Don’t you dare go and fall asleep
I thought I knew you!
Strange behaviors, intimate partners, notions creep
I held you and my arms went right through you!
Mulch in my lap, a loved one, a neighbor, relative or stranger
Replaced by an emotionless husk overnight
It’s too late to warn anyone of the danger
They identify us and alert a mob to our presence on sight

The proximity to the pods is the key
Dozens of them chase the unconverted through the city
If you look in your backyard and this strange plant with a pink flower is something you see
Destroy it, leave town, don’t look back, just run to safety immediately
A mad dash, a group of survivors, one by one separated fatally
The aliens only intend to ensure their own survivability
To blend in you pretend, imitate them; to hell with humanity
In the end, you’re alone, Nancy
Scared witless, the Pod People are now not such odd people, they’re the majority
And her only relief, in a moment so brief
Is whispering to a friend, he can’t be one of them, or can he?

Tension and anticipation, all nerves for a moment just barely unwind
Her brow damp from sweat, stomach cramped in knots, this nightmarish fear
It has taken a dense and destructive toll on her mind
She may even have prayed a little, willing to believe a friend was still here

Of course, the moment lasts as long as devastating, overtaking, dread draws near
Nancy, you’re not one of us, oh Nancy, poor dear
Even then, when his finger rises, accusatory and damning, it’s clear

If she only knew, the alien menace that was already so close to you
She may have had better odds

Her fate is pitiful, lasting so long, only to succumb to numbers and human nature
Under such duress, they have our memories, but not our feelings, the people from the pods
Memories of sprouting from dirt, blossoming and yawning out into a human being, innately weak
All flashes before her, all good things and bad, as he tilts his head back, grimaced and pointing  
Now letting loose an ear-splitting shriek.
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Oct 2020 · 40
H
Tom Shields Oct 2020
H
I take these sleeping pills, awake hanging from the ceiling by my feet like picture stills, this redrum, this darkroom, my bedroom, it's my free will, mentally ill, mentally I'll devour you cowards and oafishly fish for guts in this cesspool with your backbone, backwards thinking, I'm reversed through life, unnatural, confused and abused, subdued and unglued, if they can't drown an ocean alone, why the **** do I always have this feeling sinking?

I'm a tantrum, a **** hand slammed on a dam like it was a wave's drum, a GI Joe ***, hypocrite lite, a hoplite, tip of the genetic spear like bubblegum, wages of conscience break unevenly, I'm sin, the son, five family's and one sum, a giant fee, fi, fo fum, killing myself to stay alive is the only way I know how, life backwards, that's redrum

Shining, not kings, never royalty, they don't know the meaning of loyalty, sell their own mother, countersue and bet their babies for a king's ransom, love is a price tag that haggles down the value if the right accessory is handsome, ******* them, hand-me-downs, wearing another prince's crowns, being laughed at and lauded for dressing up like fancy clowns, these get-arounds, bury them, up to the neck in dirt mounds, up to here with the vocal chord strumming their tonally familiar sounds, they're ghosts and can watch in silence, because I put them after my life, at the bottom of a boot you wouldn't scrape dog **** off of, housed like a jackknife

I hallucinated the full body apparition of someone that I always hated
a blurry figure before my eyes, I could feel him just over my shoulder
I'd been awake going on four nights, hearing noises, seeing strange sights
shadows that weren't cast from lights, the isolation of being in this place called home
and I was paranoid, probably high, dosed on sleeping pills, and wandering alone
I carried a loaded handgun into the hallway, cleared every room, checked the locks,
because I heard people through the walls, muffled like they were just out there
my own dog looking at me like I'm the one who needs to go outside,
I was scared half out of my mind, the other half already preoccupied
with crazy thoughts, I thought I saw myself, like a smear appearing through a rainy windshield, or a foggy mirror
and I couldn't feel anything real, a small jolt of alertness, forced to register as self-preservation, translation- fear
I was so numb, that it took days for the skin to break
and when it finally settled in, my muscles and my bones began to ache
I know how I felt about that hallucination, once I was rested, grounded, and awake  
how I always feel, why it's always too late
it crept up on me that week I had to completely isolate,
and it was inside of five days, my mind playing tricks on myself, the one person I truly hate.
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Oct 2020 · 62
We Wives Three
Tom Shields Oct 2020
Marriage is an institution, am I right gentlemen?
You make a vow and live half your lives to appease your wives, and what then?
Your better half takes half of your heart and life, and half and half again for your children
Until there is not enough left to call yourself a man, it’s such a depressing notion
That we cannot have it all and enjoy it, that we must keep our promises of devotion
That love is a challenge, a partnership, and the ebb and flow of dedication
Is strived for and beautiful, no, we are shrewd and lazy, but clever
I propose a ring of secrecy, the perfect marriage, a happy wife and a happy life, forever

Perhaps it begins in a den of testosterone and proving, rites of male bonding
She finds herself oddly alone, unable to fit into the grooving, her peers are not responding
Rejecting the environment, in reaction the likeminded come together
Joanna, Bobbie, and Charmaine, meet for women’s liberation
All they hear is talk of cleanser, vacuums and brooms, airheads infatuated, dusters with feathers
Chauvinism is rampant in the men’s association
Whatever could be the cause, the encapsulation of the nineteen-fifties idyllic magazine maid?
Who waits on her husband with no mind of her own, subservient, cooking and cleaning in a floral print dress,
Is there something in the water to explain the behavior the women in the neighborhood have displayed?
Charmaine goes away with her husband for a weekend, the water, perhaps yes,
She returns more trophy than wife, fires the help and tears down her court, despite the love of all the tennis she played

Now we’re scared, we were three, what’s happened to her? Is it going to happen to me?
I’m going to move, go far away, I’ve just won a lucrative contract, there’s no reason to stay
I have to tell Bobbie the good news, first, but she’s not there anymore, I can’t stand it! The loss hurts!
You have to see you are human like me! Do you bleed Bobbie! Do you bleed like me?
I cut myself open to show her, this is the last I can stand
And she only looks at me, distant and vague, parroting “Look at your hand.”
In a moment of boiled frustration, blind and exhausted with fury I snap
I stab Bobbie, no blood, she stutters and repeats until everything she says overlaps
I do not believe this, I will not, I cannot, in horror, disgust and shock, my best friend was replaced by a fembot!

Now she waylays her husband and demands he tell her where their children are
They are at the men’s association, he says, not far
And how could he do this, be party to this robbery of a woman’s will and her rights?
When he is the father of their two daughters, that is the worst evil of all
For they will grow, and will they be replaced on their wedding nights?
Would these broken old cowards rather **** humanity than risk a woman’s interest in them would fall?
There in the mansion, Joanna comes face to face with that very doll
Her counterpart, soulless eyes that are meant to replace the vibrance
Of a photographer, mother, wife and real woman
The machine strangles her to death with a nylon stocking
Her daughters revealed to be in Charmaine’s care
She dies in front of that awful stare

Once alive, now a mere marionette,
On the strings of violation, broken promises and control
A woman with bright eyes, less than human, more than a pet
A walking broken vow, until death do they part, a machine, service is her role
Down grocery aisles with her glamorous clothes and smiles, her and the wives all stroll
Picked up by her husband like a new appliance out front, placid and mundane, the very image of a depleted soul
Taken home with the family, her husband content with his shortcomings, smiling ear to ear, achieved his goal.
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Tom Shields Oct 2020
Hobnobbing with market-stopping snobs who bark and howl about their jobs, got you down?
For a grand a day, you can go bank robbing, chariot-hopping, joust and toast to yourself the talk of the town
For a grand day, you can duel and duel and duel, wipe the dark knight’s scowl and claim the crown
You can enjoy cannonading without repercussions, casual encounters of any kind, these worldly delights and all your dreams come true
At any one of our three worlds here in Delos! Boy, have we got a vacation for you!

We’re a thousand miles and more from home, guess that makes us desperados
I love when there’s ever a question of what to do,
These many branching paths reach out and slap you
Like free will has grown a hand from air just to taunt
And the answer always occurs, we can do anything we want
It’s only a step removed from actual reality, these stories
And nothing here is stored anyplace but our memories

Indiscriminate slaughter, rich pigs laugh
Oinking at the trough of opportunity
They bury their ears in debauchery
Brothels and drink, lawlessness at the cost of a cover fee
RSVP and save a seat for me, part of the fun is the exclusivity
Another is not knowing who is one of you or them, it’s almost a mystery

I reckon they caught humanity, spreading through their circuitry
Like an airborne disease, awakened, technicians scramble
All we have seen and come to understand about them only serves as a preamble
The virus spreads from host to host, killer androids loosed on unwitting park guests, enter the single-most biting bit of irony in the singularity
Whatever you wanted to do they could never resist you, and their weapons wouldn’t hurt you until now, the upgrade bless technology

Among them all stands one whose steely eyed gaze is like a freezing inferno, his black hat and demeanor stoic, the Gunslinger
We mortals fall, he kills a fool who challenges him, unaware of the safety failures, he is a reaper whose harvest is grim
None who rise serve as a challenge to him
Even when ambushed, and the false flesh is melted from his face
He heat-seeks for blood, to draw down on this nuisance he only needs a trace
True to the lifelessness of the program this body runs, now visible and charred
Clutching a pest to exterminate, who reels back, traumatized and scarred
The Gunslinger halts, motionless, a human’s instinct and ingenuity, fire and acid he succumbs to
On the steps of a dungeon, gasping, his heart in his lungs, his mind flashes out, exhaustive, he hears the echoes of temptation that he was once heartily beckoned through
Boy, have we got a vacation for you!
Boy, have we got a vacation for you!
Have we got a vacation for you!
For you!
For you!
For you!
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Oct 2020 · 39
Yeah, You Better Run
Tom Shields Oct 2020
Cornered, I see the coward, now I will see him cured
Turned to sand, the sick fear sleep when their time is at hand
Remind the blind still, balance requires iron will, their fears unfounded
Get the better of their senses, better to submit is the general consensus, why they even try leaves me confounded
Mine will be a sweet reward, life anew that I stride toward

She has taken him, made him soft, my own partner, he is confused
He has been tricked, surely, he is only being used
I cannot accept this betrayal! I will bring him back on broken knees
Painted with her blood and deaf to his pleas
My heart has broken and all anger burns in my chest
It is my duty to bring them to rest

We are all reborn in the cycle, all will be forgiven
My palm pressed against her mouth, I could snap her neck and she would come back as seven
Cheeks turning red from the force, the pressure turns her purple, I refuse to give in
I could have killed her and shot both of them below
Then been paraded as a hero through the Dome tomorrow
By the time I’ve got the drop, it’s too late, I stop
Every time I see him like this, I hesitate

I loved you like we shared a seed mother!
Stuttering glare, my eyes locked, I loved you like a brother
And you ran away from home, from me! When your lastday came, you ran like any other
My faith is rewarded in the bittersweet hereafter, seconds before goodbye, I see a sign that can only be divine, I proclaim the omen and then I sigh, limply in his arms and die.
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Oct 2020 · 2.7k
Lastday
Tom Shields Oct 2020
Where do you go to when you are caught?
The Sandmen will pursue in your dreams
Do you ever give that a second thought?
For he is dutiful and loyal while relentless
The Runner will scurry, even risk us
Putting so many people in the way, he tries to hide
They all clear the way to either side
Francis Seven makes the **** and takes no small amount of pride

The odds for renewal you deny
When you are caught, you die
This is what happens when you run
Francis holsters his gun
Emotionless in the revelry of a crowd
Dead in a fountain, black blossom revealed, his job there is done
Spectators cheer for the violence, so loud
He finds Logan, admiring his son,
And reminds his friend of the balance: “One for one.”

On the way to the Carrousel, to bear witness, they enter Arcade
Where the cabinets burst with all sorts of debauchery and debts to be played
And pass their hedonistic delights, ******, drugs and surgery
Logan all the while curious, Francis cautious of his curiosity
It seems he has doubts of the system, this itself is living dangerously

Donned in white robes and masks, flames crawling up the legs
They stand on the red flower and ascend,
Exploding into dust, with uproarious cheers
The deafening roar for renewal, a spectacle, the question it begs
Is this how we all must meet our end?
Contemplating, the celebration of execution, the last thing anyone hears-
Renewal! Renewal! Renewal! Renewal! Renewal!

But they are called away again, and **** Doyle Ten
With his possessions, they return to headquarters, to report
The mastermind of all time,
The computer, infallible, whose Megalopolis is sublime
Does he care one bit?
These rebels threaten society
He clocks them out with apathy
A servant to civility
Idyllic, perfect, too perfect
A top secret mission, unusually
Called to locate the Runners who have escaped the city,
Confounded by the computer, every moment owed to technology
LOGAN FIVE, FIND AND DESTROY SANCTUARY

One thousand and fifty-six refugees purportedly escaped beyond the wall
Logan’s flower has been activated, his questions answered, there is no renewal,
He slips out to contact a rebel, who can help him escape the city and **** them all
Jessica, who posited this machine was malfunctioning; the object of Logan’s desire
They run together, Francis chases, unwilling to believe until he sees
The seeds of distrust sewn and falsely confirmed, the rebels believe Logan is a killer and a liar
Then their eyes meet, Francis Seven, the unrelenting predator
He hesitates, takes a shot at Jessica, but Logan saves her
In panic and fervor, the fox and the cat, certain they’re done for
Hunted in the ruins beyond the walls, the Sandman turned Runner

What evil irony the pair endure,
To have hope renewed in their travels
Only to find it frozen, killed by a broken machine
One thousand and fifty-six humans, stored in ice
Looking to add two more, before its store collapses
Amazed to be alive, they flee, meeting the old man and his cats
The only other human they’ve seen in their retreat
Better to be stored by Box or shot by Francis, who finds them,
Gone mad with his obsession, his grief and frustration, his desperation serves his defeat
Unwilling to listen to reason, to see through the lies and illusion, these two who were once like brothers now fight
All of the ******, the time and the ruthless, mindless divulgence of decadence, all comes to a head over a blinking light
Logan kills Francis, holding his head in his arms, fitfully delirious ramblings, Logan tries to keep him calm
When he starts up one last time, to say look at your palm
The blinking red and black now clear: “Logan you renewed!”

In the city he reveals the deception of their structure
You can live past thirty! The Carrousel is a lie! You can have a future!
Captured, confronted, questioned and caged, probing his mind
Six spinning heads anger the computer who demands, WHERE IS SANCTUARY, WHAT DID YOU FIND?
Six spinning heads all repeat, that one truth was always so near,
There is no sanctuary here!

The computer shorts out, and soon the Sandmen are destroyed, Logan shoots his way out, the city empties in chaos and fear
Standing on the steps of this erupted crater of truth, Logan and Jessica are looking out as a pair
All people are free, they gather around the old man, something they never imagined they would see
Some touch him, in awe, some simply stare
Sometimes there’s no time to run, no time to live; it all hardly seems fair
Something is certainly different when there is hope, there is a change in the air
Somehow alive, the Sandman who ran to the finish and managed to survive, Logan Five has time to spare.
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Oct 2020 · 44
Howard Unruh
Tom Shields Oct 2020
My prose is apropos of being dead inside, a ghost in the flesh connected to souls

If there were ninety seconds left for all life on earth, I’d fill my throat with blood and my neighbors with bullet holes

Achilles’ Heel is a heart so black it devours light, I drank from the River Styx so I could compose deathly flows

Substance sobriety, I’m crawling on broken glass, faded in alleyways on better days

All impropriety, failing outward and I don’t even have any class, supervised and never seen anyways

Can’t take for granted a second of my second chance, I don’t stand out and it feels like no one understands

What are you worth if your only real skill doesn’t pay, they say there’s staying power, I think it’s pretty clear the dynamic is the power is where the power stays

I’d be a dead man walking on my walk of death, if there were only twelve minutes left

I’d take twenty-six innocents’ innocence in a sense I’ve hopped the fence and haven’t been back since

They can never see that I was raised in captivity, a domesticated animal that was never meant to be

Tell me about myself, you mistake misery for humanity, recognition for empathy, rehearsed imitation for someone sharing experiences in your reality

Medicated and if they put a bottle of beer in arm's reach, I’ll proceed to drink everything I can get my hands on, until I black out, back out, throw up and act out, wake up with all my scatterbrains gone, dancing for dawn, to read my thoughts off the pavement, hopscotching where I'm chalked up, bet I look better drawn

Negative interest in sexuality and procreation, contractual obligations to relations, I’d rather impose dystopian culling to slow global warming for current and future generations

Cease all birth, send all at seventy-five off, the longer there are less all at once alive, the longer there is a place for all to survive

Seditious, **** every politician from the bottom to the top, butcher their families, domestic terrorists acting in sleeper cells, infiltrate the active military, become a cop, if I was president I would commit a ******/suicide on my cabinet in the Oval Office and leave only a note that says “Death to America!” to create chaos and anarchy, when does all the order stop

Hallucinations plague my imagination, my skin feels like a film that keeps me from the world around me lately, I want to leave the world with more than I’ve taken from it, but I’ll be lucky to leave with my life, let alone knowing I mattered, that they didn’t hate me, that being a loser isn’t the only thing those who remember my name relate to me.
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Oct 2020 · 39
Do Not be Afraid to Want
Tom Shields Oct 2020
If one were to listen close, one might hear the swell
Their ear pressed to the chest, one might feel reverberations
The dear familiar toll we’ve come to know so well,
Under failing, fading lights cataracts find revelations
Omens in the preferred nature and what all do they spell?

Prolific waxing philosophies of psychology that explains naught, but to amuse
Talking heads with their chattering teeth, prophetic insight into self-abuse
Answer to them, clear this cloudy gaze, make yourself of use
Inquiring minds rejected, romanticized, dance for us our muse
No flights of fancy in the aces, no cards up the sleeve,
Preservation, this bowed scarecrow, is enough to make-believe

Coherence or vagueness, a trust one must choose
Can they know your darkness; what are you prepared to lose?

Empty the hearth, its embers and ashes for the sorrow there, cold and pale
The devil knows love is not pride, see him stride
Listen for the faintest sting of light, ringing like a bell
If one were to listen close, what one might hear, one can never tell

Prophetic, truly one may weep over what they sow
Pride is not love, nor do acts of sunshine console the shadow
Pathetic, what crops can pestilence hope to grow?
Why does death steal time, and where does killed time go?
How is one seditious, sadistic, sardonic, self-sedated and still switched so none seem to know?
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Oct 2020 · 88
Iron Skillet
Tom Shields Oct 2020
I don’t understand
Gravitas, perhaps, natural tendency to gravitate, toes pointed as I am pulled by gravity
By the tips of my fingers, gently by the hand
Brevity bereft of me, levity, I levitate, barely, I scrape the floor
Forward, toward the never, come whatever, forget-me-forever more
Living is not always not giving up, a chalice is not chaste based on the contents
For then each sip is just from a cup

Martyrdom in suicide is not such an achievement despite the cause
It is far harder to live in prison, unbroken, undeterred, and give no pause
Slip not once, sink no ship, your waves wash you out to see
That execution or rebellion are the options if you cannot be buried from sight and memory
They must **** you, or they must set you free

Truth is I put myself on suicide watch and amped up the difficulty in isolation, I adjusted for escalation, planted my flag in my own planet and passed aggression on from an alien nation, I am the success story of self-destruction via denial hoisted on self-worship, self-desecration, idol and with idle hands I carved a jigsaw puzzle to cover this sham up under, I own two handguns and two rifles, so many sleeping pills I could be writing this with my heart scaled up while my pen is dipped in Nyquil, how did I ever age? I hit the page with more free time and enough pent up rage to form a blockade with protesters who sit on the road, and I lie still, I don’t believe in the voiceless, the language is keep away and you’re being victimized, profit off it when you call it, every four years, but the circus tent has long since been pitched, it’s people who are not fit, when I pass a background check, enough melee weapons alone to arm a small riot, I write it and if there’s a hint of calling for help, everybody better stay quiet, I’m as petty and sour as I enjoy verbal fighting, a radioactive depression that gives my toad brain more power, calamities to call tragedies, stricken by maladies we laugh at misfortune from safety like they’re comedies and then when it strikes back we cower, that’s karma, it’s not a ***** it just reminds you that you are, I punch a clockface out, glass in my hand, dry blood from the witching hour

I don’t care about any debate, destroy me, there’s nothing of human value left to depreciate
I love writing
I think because I know it’s killing me at a speed I can live with
My agreeable terminal, I punch in and tick moments off right quick then,
Swap a topic, fall into a moral quandary over whether or not I’m any good if nobody online actually follows me
This alone is a hybrid, abortion breathing, free-form and hip-hop influenced poetry
To actually get in verse I ride a coffin in the back of a hearse, dead seriously
I’ll cross the room and switch the instrumental in my mind, bass’ boom for bass guitar and guttural vocals heralding doom
Shredding razors in the throat, spitting blood on every line, metal as all hell, and then drop both genres and just be me, because honestly
Writing in a style other people want to see, it’s their baggage and it’s a lot to carry
They want the quotables, make it short and breezy, digestible and pretty
To not have to think before they put my text against a background for their socials, to say that’s deep, or fake awe at the beauty
I want to unravel your brain with chopsticks, eat it from your skullcap, steamed on rice, I want to **** you for wanting to **** me, contain me, making me marketable, I do not adhere to a public relations strategy
I’d go barefoot if we walked in each other’s shoes, some of youse would go blind in an instant if you had access to my memory
Swap back, I for another I, if I had to live your life I’d likely die, if you couldn’t master the nuanced pressure of mine, you’d think this cage is made of gold before we said goodbye
Suffering on the surface, plain, at least that I understand, there’s infinite ways to hurt each other, we haven’t even reached the surface, the worst year so far, let’s see what time has planned
Mass appeal would require something like bending into an unnatural shape, I still hit subjects that make my most dedicated go, “Who asked you how you feel?” I’d rather give a thousand words a lot of hot air than fix you four lines for your timeline so you can have a pretty meal, my chum for thought is that we’re going to fight for the plate, you takeaway whatever you ate; now that’s a steal
I’m not making food that’s visually appeasing, it’s never meant to be
You better eat your ******* vegetables before I chase you through the woods
Like I’d be(an) stalk you through the mist and steam off the broccoli,
Restrain you to a chair and table and make you apologize to Gaia while I record you eating every tiny tree
That was corny

Oh right,  
White people always compare their lives to the struggle of such,
How do they know, among this entire pigment, who has ever felt the true oppressive touch?
My own family hates my own family for being Catholic, for being percentages, excuses for their nature to come out when the reality is as simple as this much
If history has a villain, they cast a white man to play the role
In America, what can be said that hasn’t about any single part or the country as a whole?
Culture is a beast with many different heads, it’s a tapestry, a quilt, with so much reality, so many woven threads,
That we forget what some of our revolutionaries have fought, killed, and sacrificed their lives for, the marches and tears, sweat and wars, what has been done and said
We’re all one race, all people, and I believe this
If everyone gave each other respect, they could give each other love, and if everyone felt love, we could have peace; on at least one front of our faults
But we would rather **** each other and record it, or be the murderer, or those who stand by and watch a murderer and twiddle their thumbs behind their uniform rather than stop them instead
The KKK, Proud Boys, white supremacy
In order to believe in any supremacy, of an individual, even one who makes up a group that lends itself to the supposed supreme status of their people as a whole
How many of your own people must you anger, terrify and drive out of your life first?
Racism is the useless paradox imposed by man on man, it’s a testament that a human can fly to space and still represent a species so profoundly dumb, break down the population it stems from, they say white people, perhaps that’s not all so true historically, I’ve seen the news recently, but white supremacy targets a universal majority, it seems less prevalent, the sheet-wearing bigotry, these immortal-initial-colonizer sheep, they bleat and I spit at thee, I have a theory about the sideways growth of hatred if you’ll listen to me, torches and Templar’s misappropriated crosses set aside, they stake their claim in nationalism and pride, in costume the mob is easier identified, malignant ignorance is never done yet, so it has evolved in these diluted and polluted hotbeds to infect, infest, spread through these hotheads wherever it can get, by rifle toting idiocy, violence at idle decree, hate crimes change with the times and take on society to challenge the system legally, where the woken minds sleep, there’s the backwards-open minds, narrow but in their own eyes they’re wide, seemingly, they pick convenient history, the bad parts they forget, no questions without the right answers on their ears do they ever let, basically you don’t need a burning cross and robes because it’s not your skin, it’s your mindset!

In short within the races are people who hate their own people, racists, activists especially, serve an agenda that encourages the hatred of an umbrella, and it falls over the heads of most of the world, no matter their race
If you were the devil’s advocate you might find it hard to help a group who won’t include their own people, they make us all look bad enough that the term “white people” doesn’t even apply to people who are white so much anymore
In short, in the fight to establish white supremacy, white supremacists have established white people as a joke, an insult, because their actions are extreme and radical and reflect on all of us
In short, I am a white man, I condemn not only white supremacists and racists, pedophiles and rapists, but if a group is so counterproductive to acknowledging that we can all coexist in peace in harmony if we only work for it, strive, want it, and give up what stands in the way
If we only give respect to each other there can be love, and if there can be love, there can be peace
In short, if all else fails hit racists in the head area, they aren’t using it for much
In short, I support the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists
**** a **** and it’s good for your soul, **** a ******* and it’s like cleaning a stain left in the fabric of the universe

And white people, even I’m sick of it, don’t talk about a pie-chart of how many places you’re from if you’ve never left the continent, I’m just a ******* Texan, I don’t care what anyone says, just be a white person, be a good person, and take back some of the dignity we left in shreds
I never loved my roots, I never understood the interest in picking through leaves at your ancest-tree, my heritage is as old as I am and I want to let the dead be, but the stories, I never turn them down whenever they tell me, that my grandfather, Ted, dad to my mom, he was a tragic figure, a tortured war hero, an alcoholic, immigrant, a father of six, third in line of the men in his own family for what I call the curse, his father and his brother, fatal heart attacks, a coal miner, a rambunctious cook, an abusive and explosive bottle of rage who killed real Nazis, who threw bottles at my mom and said he’s keeping a corner of Hell warm on RSVP, all I think of when I remember him are these horror stories… because that ******* used to beat my mother, she would shield her sister even though she was so tiny see, my aunt was even younger, and he terrorized my uncles so they were scarred for life, four older brothers, I can’t tell if my family even loves each other, he made people in his home duck and run for cover, killed enemies overseas and sent all his money back to Vietnam families when his own was starving and he didn’t answer to them for their supper, he would let them suffer, drink his cheap ****, swig and swing blind, if you couldn’t outrun him falling over, you’d get hit, steal my mom’s whole paycheck and make her taxi him around, the only shame is I know him so well, and I never got him to save me a seat in Hell with him while he was above ground, I inherited the curse, the genetic predisposition to explode, heart valves and fly into a blind rage mode, I hope I’m lucky enough to die before I ruin too many lives like my uncle Buck, **** talking about kings in the past, I talk about my branch of the artery, this bloodline spurt being the last, when I see my ancestors I’ll tell them to kiss my ***, dismiss them all and gift them all with the graceful presence of stooping low enough to graduate the class, grandpa you spent so much time trying not to be an Irishman that you became Alabama white trash, get disowned, dethroned, be alone, make my dad’s family’s teeth gnash, they know I know their idea of buying trust involves transactions with literal goods and cash, if they ever leverage my nephew or my brother or my sister-in-law, I’m gonna be gone, manifesto blank pages, plans in my head drawn, vest on, we’ll take confession, and I’ll give the toxins their poison communion, they’re already dead to me, just match the image with the reality and call that **** a family reunion

There’s something very wrong with me
I’m comfortable with the idea of dying suddenly and dying, suddenly
The notion is like Kevorkian,
It visits often and the offer never befuddles me
The danger inherent to someone of such low-tide mental stability
I know why she wouldn’t tell him yet, why would she?

I’ll tear a thought of thin air and plant it on my descendants in the form of an aneurysm like a Death Row pendant, when they drop everyone will stop and wonder how it got there, I’ll **** the conception of an idea in your very head, while you dream it up in bed, and black out the lights across your country so even satellites can’t figure out why it looks like the sun is out at night, I’ll raise my white fist for black power, shout it and dive onto a riot shield with my face so full of mace I come up in online footage looking like a disgrace, more a threat to getting snot and tears all over cops even after the protesting stops in the first place, I’ll say it for real with no joke, black power, and choke on the smoke from California to Australia, if the Navy can figure out where to drop me off, I’ll clear my cough, I’ll be pale and pallid with the heart of darkness and love without respect for anyone or any culture, I’ll never let authority **** me, I’ll unleash a jungle cat caged inside, pacing back and forth, knowing the flesh and ribs holding it have no worth, a spectator to an infrastructure devastator/orator, a tyrant king on a militant fling like Malcom X Boseman, cut off a speaker and throw sonic waves so hard they break every other spine that’s weaker, spill my guts and crush you until you’re ashes and a puff of smoke like cigarette butts, a roadie but believe me I will throw bose, man, and if they’re twenty feet off the ground I’ll frog splash you, just to toothpaste your stomach and laugh when you stand up with whiplash too, jump into a mosh-pit and **** you so fast the police will arrive on time at the scene of an active crime, **** a Pulitzer, I’m a howitzer, I want to break the Geneva Convention with a rhyme, my plan is to go to archery camp and throw bows, man, get ******* when I can’t hit the target, jab an arrow through the counselor’s heel, arteries, and nose and grab fifty fuel cans, fill up a reservoir with gasoline, spray it from a hose and light the whole world on fire until I can sit back and admire how it all looks from the frying pan

When I can, I sit with both legs crossed, straight up in bed
Always late at night, and I close my eyes
No new thoughts in, only old out
And after I take that in, sometimes
I ask myself:
“What do you want?”
“As a writer?”
“No. As yourself.”
“In general?”
“In your life. A partner? Career?”
I look at this, stripped of all the logic and side-details, the painstaking instantaneous processing the human mind can comprehend to create existential anxiety
I reflect in a negative manner
“27, newly licensed, single white male owner of four firearms. Not employed, not published, history of mental health issues, poor student, unattractive and uncomfortable in general, and I am only distantly okay at my one main hobby. My ‘art’ my writing.”
I heard a knock on the door that woke me up and screamed at it, in a condo, while I was by myself, I’d never woken up midscream before
So, I worried if I was late and someone in my true family needed me
I was just scared, alone with what I am like for a few seconds one day
Now I close my eyes and I know they have done everything
Without them I am not even a real person
If I had no assistance, there would be no living with my head
They would need to cut it off
I shamble on, bleary eyed and without focus
Starry dreams of what I could and can accomplish, walking dead
I am so casually dismissive of all the red flags, I don’t care,
I have not left myself, something has retreated into me, and I must go and find it
For when I search myself for some dire components, they’re not there.
write
please read and enjoy
Oct 2020 · 67
Richest Tongues
Tom Shields Oct 2020
If words are cheap, what is the cost of a story?
A picture is worth one thousand words,
what does that make your portrait now?
What is a life, a legend, glory, an allegory?
What does the weight of a false accusation truly allow?

If talk is cheap, what are words worth?
How much sense... for those ticking keys?
How many times will it cost to explain only once,
that the consequences are relentless, once unlocked
you can't close your mouth again, nothing taken lightly is free
nothing you give is given in vain, your observations laid out and plain
all under the scrutiny of the next generation of police
they promise you ease of living, no offense, just justice and just peace

Then with that big red rubber stamp of a grin
does the true work begin,
no, no, no!
You do not overthrow your fascists wolf-skins for these sheepdogs, I refuse!
Lobotomize me, roboticize me! I refuse!
Censor my eyes, I can't see the use!
Their propaganda, all is planned-to
take apart a microscopic crack in the legs that take a stand-the
generation who will bear the ashes and trashes and barren-earth gashes
and the morally bankrupt hidden blackmail-blackbox-blacksite-cash-in-stashes

I vote true anarchy in a whirlwind of scared and confused, disenfranchised cries
all that was old no longer stands, burn it down and raze their alarms to meet fresh eyes
whose attention is sharper and whose wits do not harp-or linger on attracting flies
when they speak it is common, to the point and in union, without comical bickering, backstabbing or lies
whose council is one of Utopian ideal, in that it exists only in this Anarcho-Paradise
where nothing they say matters, nobody listens, and there is no order, for if you pause you do not survive
and Nothing is all you are while alive and nobody feels nothing when Nothing dies
it's not like pandemic or fire, riots or dissent, global or local could paint a place into a corner like that though
armed to the teeth, doctors stand back, morgues stand by

Civil unrest, I hereby diagnose the Northern United States with Insomnia
I've been there
what is the continental equivalent to hallucinations, mood swings, weight loss and blacking out?

Civil discourse? I've heard some bad jokes, I love em, but that one's the worst
talk on your stages, your pages, your backseats and square icons
you throw spears from crumbling platforms, unable to hit one another and babble on
when in person the magic of active threats turned, too-soon, too tragic
is becoming lethargic, more shock, more bodies, a better tactic
humankind doesn't deserve its own environment, we're toxic
why can't we all just shut up and stay at home sick, oh
****.

The wealthiest opinions buy their silver spoons before their birth
with all their mercury they speed to heights, and never reach their worth
all the talk they do is quite a feat, indeed!
For, you see it comes from a slit in their neck and both sides of their mouth,
while the noise made, like pickpocketing hands' slides into docile minds with greed
empty, nimble, unnoticed and plucking chain and coin and bead
the richest tongues would rob the rest of roots for their baby to have but a seed.
write
please read and enjoy
Oct 2020 · 65
Return to Center
Tom Shields Oct 2020
Steam
the aura hissing with negative energy
it rises from my back and scalp, hands retract
no affection touches me
no niceness do I attract
evaporating upon near-contact
I am scattered by duress
seeping out of myself under a boulder of stress

This enduring dream
sell-out and garner adoration
fame and following, applause
roses at my feet and signs of appreciation
I want nothing from you, I write for my own cause
and as always if I ever reach one person in need
I have met the pinnacle of all I could achieve
that is the highest of my duty; my only deed
fill my paperwork in with whatever they need to believe

All the nastiness in the air like gnats
I direct it with my hands, focus on the flow
gather these foul winds fanned from my chest
and force the currents to retreat from whence they've blown
all gusts of bile spilled across my brain
absorbed back into the cracks
with a brief and painful refrain
I survey the wake of an ambitionless life, for all the luster it lacks.
write
please read and enjoy
Oct 2020 · 53
Confetti
Tom Shields Oct 2020
...And all these tidings oh, aren't they kind
that spill o'er from this unnatural chalice
white as milk my eyes are blind
to all the glinting swords waving in my mind
shred to pieces a cause resigned,
no more rebellion they will find...
and all those tidings from ribbons meant to bind

Gilded Sun show not your brilliant favor
shower warmth on a needy soul
let the loyal be rewarded, for we so often waver
shine a path up from the caverns, we can dig ourselves out of this hole
let us go, the plea of a flea circus, do not hurt us
I will walk your great and mighty beam
and every day await to awake from this daydream
all for the conviction, my sentence, the show
I'm nobody's savior, oh no, a willing sacrifice; alarmingly so,
only on one condition, let us go

Follow tomorrow, led by the nose
tunnel vision, directed away from sewers of sorrow
and where today stops, I don't even know where it goes
I plan nothing in advance on the off chance a spare moment may borrow
itself from my bones, a sparrow may pick flecks of my dust to share with crows
a ****** I witness and testify to begin this merry-go-round of macabre-pity-wallow
here to eternity and then back again, taking the elephant for a spin, never forget the basic woes
that years you spend, your poems, stories and life you upend, sharing deeper until your eyes adjust to depths and it's too bright in the shallows
the land is a foreign concept, all language and things upon it you handle inept, your behavior is strange and it shows
you remember your hallucinatory machinations of an insomniac's spell, burnt vulture candles from the tallows
that forbidden longing is now allowed inside, to backslide and consume all these connections, before anyone knows
this monster they love wears the skin of a friend and lurks in his shadows, a phantom life that follows

As with the limbs no longer here, but grasping, the organs gone, but pulsing, this intersection of two lives
one planted in my heart, and many more splintered off, phasing in and out as knives
a brain like a broken bone, a compounded fracture that never healed right
I stand on my own, a boot and no crutch, I face myself every night
spitting mad at the belief in destiny, my own cancer is me, it's hard to choose to fight
every waking moment there is the angry and driven and smarter voice who knows what he wants
almost asocial in demeanor, vicious and calculating with his moral mathematics, abusive with his taunts
and I have been him and so much more
he is only a step inside of an open door
to the quelled abomination,
somehow I keep this glass bottle that contains the note Tom running and happy
motivated, inspired, alive and in one piece, not at peace, not evil, not truly
with my frayed edges, shredding inward, toward tearing myself apart slowly
at bay enough to get far away enough that I will greet myself when I return with confetti

...And all these tidings oh, aren't they kind?
write
please read and enjoy
Sep 2020 · 35
Staring Down the Sun
Tom Shields Sep 2020
Is this a real reaction or a trained behavior that makes me believe these chemicals work to such an effect
that I light another in a forming chain of cigarettes
while sat on this tabletop, concrete and graffiti, hoping the sun sets
hoping to see that burning bright eye blink and close, that its gaze forgets
and out of Lake Waco a figure only visible to me extends their hand to dance
the offer peaceful, dark, silent, and I accept it, "Let's."

Away past all the happy people with other people
who sit beside them and keep them
away past all the moments and waste
all the chatter falls quiet, they mean nothing for real, for once
away over the grass and over the edge, into the ripples
with the still-lit candle burning at both ends,
ashes falling from my lips, the taste of my life
as I turn to a polluted waste,
washed clean, washed ever, forever away

There hanging in the sky once I open my eyes
feeling a breeze of seven PM on my neck
is the sun, brighter as it dangles lower, orange
and purple, regal and mocking
for but an hour or so I lasted
although, now my sadness evaporated
and now I steer off under falling shadow
smoke scent about my collar
misery, dangerously close to the banks I wallow
this place called home, I go.
write
please read and enjoy
Sep 2020 · 38
Hither Before
Tom Shields Sep 2020
Lowered head in rev-erence
temples parallel; glowering indiff-erence
para bellum, Christ the parable, in ref-erence
retire the snake of hissing variety, silence in sev-erance

Hair afire hallways like neural pathways light up
all wire sending out in wild directions all at once
sup of your world that grows and grows, your cup
that overflows, the discovery of endless everything
it is numbness, exponentially you cannot progress
the desires to experience more than your wildest dreams
are already met and beyond, so far so you stand
inconsequential to the world as a naked baby, screaming

Until now
what changes and allows
these sleepless to hallucinate
a wavelength of truth, that might elucidate
calm frantic tides and wake the willfully sedate
ill-comprehended minds see power, they clear their plate
appetites expand past their ambitions, shortcomings their idle banquets flip and negate
boisterous fantasy fiddles romantically off the tongue and vocal chords, stories of fate
believe enough and one can afford that talk is cheap and stories are dark bargains, they needn't illuminate  
therefore setting forth an economy where words are free, words like "love" and "hate"
swinging as surely as the scythe of Spring over Winter, her sunshine and flowers all promising to pollinate
what there in the recesses and comfort and cold, finds the odd time to be happy, now she comes to terminate
does great or no care go into the small and the most alive of things, for does time itself not have a one hundred percent mortality rate?  
until now there is so much that needs no understanding
everyone wants to plant their foot on the chest
but who props up the rock when settlers are landing?
Where do the denizens of nonsense go to rest?

All nonsense is sense that hasn't been made yet
and all sense is a stream of logic someone can drink
for some it's too bitter, too sweet, or they'd rather forget
for other it's just easier to take it in stride, helps one to think
but no one can own all the unknown, else fear might go extinct.
write
please read and enjoy
Sep 2020 · 51
Dog Smiles
Tom Shields Sep 2020
Trembling barely contained
the murky coming, concealed
bared in patches, wet and stained
brown and yellow enamel revealed

Steadfast holding, conscience wide awake
ambling threat approaching, towering tall
bowered in the shadow cast, spine-hairs shake
shivering to bow before the shambling presence at all

Eyes meet a second too late
interaction integral, insolate, integrity intact
legs laid out all by the side, infatuate
rest in victory by merely defiance in the act
or instinct, fallacy, to the fatal end, innocence exact
standing in the way, one falls for the lack of knowing
what it means, whether to smile back,
the other is not smiling at all in fact.
write
please read and enjoy
Sep 2020 · 48
Flock of None
Tom Shields Sep 2020
The answers are complicated
that doesn't mean the questions are
understanding why can be an impossible task
when it's all too easy to know

Torchbearer, you conduct your sections with such technique
dancing lights, ta chanson sombre, c'est magnifique
all bubbles in the mud cannot make a man of clay
yet on your masterful conception du mal ils sont volés
night encroaching over the border, spilling into day
la nuit sans fin sur nous, sleep you who sit and stay
pas un le malin avec les moutons, sur une perle de sueur tu pries
until even fearful perspiration in the sweltering rain is washed away.
write
please read and enjoy
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