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.

Discomfort with ambiguity
the theme of closure
here's a hard life lesson:
the Pyramids weren't designed or built by cryptids
desperation for grand designs
Stone Henge credited to alien hominids
crossing the divining lines separating man's minds
from imagining human kind capable, and inescapable
reliable and just lie, re-lie, deceitful and deceivable
great apes, savage, and unnoble, creationist crops
ripe and now grim reapable, ****** slider switch hits
the oozing of faith, confidence and humanity feels seepable
no human accomplishment is keepable, on a potter's field for all history
the blueprint of unfollowable chaos randomly defined a grand design, is sleepable
there, ignore, snoring minds, theories strictly confined the outer possibilities
orbiting the thin air, small grey planets choked in binds, rock belts on too tight
it's as simple as the biblical angel or the unknowable terror that breaks the fabric of reality
an alien, with no context or understanding, nothing to draw from our own civilization applies
there is no fathomable way to anticipate contact or the endless anxieties
nothing to predicate how, if, we might communicate
it's a topic of marketable thought sold, undermining even the atrocities
slavery and brick layers longest days because it's more fun to think about
with a PHD, than lecture on practicality applied to those degrees,
there's certainly a more pragmatic audience for it; the enticing unknown
holds meaning, planetarily.

On a night where the wind was dry and arid
coming off a summer day of rain that left the surrounding woodlands humid
trees sticky to the touch, their red-brown bark left dark by the torrential downpour
now it seemed a clearing gave way in unnatural air
everything within the radius, dry and hot as sand in the desert there
not one wet blade of grass nor trampled twig
not even morning dew graced flowers that blossomed outside the huts
on the occasional sprig
in the center of this drought stood a lone tower, only a head taller than the tallest buildings
and still not as tall as the mighty trees beyond the surrounding woods
wherein lived a fell and gnarled creature, once human
who long ago had communed with magick forces for a wicked bloodprice
cursed to hold the borders of this meager keep against all life for its lifetime thrice

With a flourish they walked across these loose dirt roads
a dress laden with intricate gold against green cotton and silk
inlayed against such decorated, attentive details it seemed
with every rise and fall of the ***** that it covered to take on its own life
with every step and slightest breeze, to dance away from the wearer
a ghost trapped, tethered to the vain spirit of flesh that owned it
who's to say if a mason saw this, a bricklayer, the architect or some knight-errant
who had settled, no, in fact it can't have been the Knight-errant
Ser Hobbe was he, of barrel chest and light armor, with the club and leather shield to match
his manners, errant not to court a maiden, though the beauty enchanting him lived
and breathed, life into a person wearing her, the Garment of Green and Gold

Trees fell as the well-traveled road from the castle felt farther away, and well supplied
the people settled a village, small, in a reasonable clearing near to a river
with plentiful game and resources, intending to make it larger by calling upon workers
once they had established a safe foothold there and a system of order approved by monarchy
which lent itself to the tower rising, one floor first.
Housing the nobility, some cousin or other related to king and queen who lived weeks away
they stood in the barren home, admired the hearth and stone, then ordered it as if the earth itself would stand on command
to "rise" and "make it greater"
with only a crew of few able-bodied guardsmen sworn on their honor to the noble blood,
and all but two working at their behest, it became a setting for a coup in this development

Two stories. Another half or third, not quite as full and even as the first that housed who became known as the Wizard
though they are unknown themselves, only that the nobility found them and enticed them
took them in, and they were witnessed by Ser Hobbe, who was sworn into their service
no longer errant, now a Knight of their blood, promised the garment and its possessor in return
as though he were retaining a corpse that had been stolen from his care on the way to a proper burial,
as soon as Ser Hobbe was permitted this price, he took it in fashion,
the Wizard, an advisor on alchemical things, medical and magick to the nobility
it is speculated, was there in service to offer assistance to an ailing noble
be it the wife or husband, it has never been known, but in what became the attic
that incomplete, roofed over, third of a story that was itself the third floor
they were established themself, a center to operate
it is said that for months following the completion of the Tower
neither Ser Hobbe nor the Wizard were anything but venerable to anyone
anywhere in Ford-Moore

A ritual, tongue dipped to the root in ink for that
captures the essence of the wronged whose voices cannot speak
with curses that run as deep as their entire life, the heavy iron-gall
burnt wood mixed by mortar and pestle poured over the throat
and words in a language of blood-magick druids of highest orders have long forgot
whispered loudly the gallows-making cost onto these thatched-hut pigs to slaughter
that was heard and incomprehensible, as birds fled from trees, deer were scared towards people
rabbits hopped, and rain fell with heavy, pounding, driving, blinding force and fog
encircling the lot, an ancient voice that can only be conversed in once for the cost of two lives
one taken to make the poultice in preparation to receive the knowledge, and another to be the bearer of the power
every word symbiotic with something human eyes look upon and hear, but to listen and see a mortal mind cannot
one of the nobles, never know why or which, enacted the toll on the other and inherited the Tongue of Rot
it is said then that first the Wizard was alerted, and that Ser Hobbe was second to know
both quartered in the Tower, the Wizard scrying saw madness and sensed Hobbe
who was gripped by the fell Green Garment, as he wandered through the hall below
bursting through the seems of that cursed thing he sought,
his face stained with a pleasant, warm grin and the blood of the maiden owner, he faced the Wizard over the dining table
two dead nobles mere rooms away, Ser Hobbe an unwitting champion had an unshielded mind to the plot
with his might and club he was as formidable as the Wizard was, and they did not smell blood in the air before they fought

Rain fell so heavily there was no passage to or fro
no matter, as wandering forth from the Tower came a sinister glow
and all that is surely known is the faces of the dead then after, were contorted with the look of an everlasting nightmare and woe
they said for three times the natural life of anyone, as long as they walked past Ford-Moore East, if the sun was low
you could still see the sparks inside the tower from the battle raging, and feel the presence of all the residents warning you death awaited beyond the border; wise children and men regarded the wives' tale not to go.

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.

Shower curtain fall
hop, skip, jump, roll and collect them all
pretty shiny collection in the ball, a fist
never missed, like this, the equation
life divided by a shower curtain
time over everything that happens over time
equals life, divided by the fine line
cutting into the divine sea-brine grind
left on the ponderances played out to the extreme
wearing down a weary diminished resigned, unrefined, strip-mined mind
unkind, peek and time winds clockwork gears tight until the hindsight plight cannot fight
it takes machine might to resist explosive pressure under binds that never designed
sold souls a tin soldier in bolder eyes of better beholders beauty knows there is precious sculptures
where all that rests is a clay boulder

Better to rest
a marble in a grander arena than realized by the stumbling discoverer
sliced in half on Solomon's knowledge, acknowledged for potential
only a fourth, half for each half and half of that for half the effort
for half the price for half the blade
for half the cleaning of half the clay
leaving less than a fraction of a copy of the golem made
cleaned off the shovel that digs the grave that buries the victims of infanticide
dead crybabies, laid to rest at last, jumping jacks and skipping ropes
whips and nooses, caltrops and rubber *****
one grave dirt ire, eye invoked, spirit higher, fire high voices spooked at wind through smoke
on the wind a specter spoke
this clay tin soldier laid to rest in a toy chest sarcophagus
his jaw dislocated and lever actioned from the back, with a wind up key
wooden, stiff, disregarded and disconnected, eternally watchful;
a vigilant veteran from the pile of junk that forms his tomb is he.

Sing for me, why?
    This stone does not care for your stories
while wars may come and go now without me
nobody come around here and cry

Pray for me, no rye?
Today, still your heart and worries
I cannot hold out hope; raise a glass and say goodbye
rather in the blur of cheer this moment, than forever here
beneath a king's blue sky

If you have a time for panic
then can you spare a second?
I have a name for strength
and a name for destruction
these are both not me, simultaneously being who I am
this infectious calling beams down
assuring in its cacophony of voices
invisible fists who pummel my head into the ground
that tomorrow is only an idea, whose realization relies on choices
letters fall away, shielding me from harmful rain that falls like angelic pain in the brains where all this noise is

Hope is greater than the itching, nervous skin of teeth
you don't need faith, only know yourself and bear with one belief,
every day you triumph over yesterday, while tomorrow never was
today is always right now, speak on the future with your dominant intent; zero pause
if the future was a guarantee, what stakes in the present would there be?

There's a weight that releases my breath when I awake
an indentation, leaving a chest compression,
not too old, but my body is weak and I ache
to get out of bed is a mountain to climb,
and getting to sleep is the air growing thin
I can't afford to asphyxiate on someone else's dime
I'm living the slow burn of knowing where to begin
it's depression, waning and whining as it runs out of time

There's nothing for as far as I can see, which is a relief
every one foot in front of me, is one bad thing I've done before
put behind, as long as I can stay true to myself, I claim the belief
proudly, that evil won't make you happy, and I don't need a guide anymore
I can face this all, all alone, I'm not afraid to fall and never rise
I don't need an alliance built on reliance, I'll tell myself my own medicating lies
when I need that crutch, and I lean too much, I'll hold on tight to a mirror and look myself in the eyes
reminders of the pain and loss, the damage and the malevolent intentions
that I tore apart my heart by a well oiled machine of abuse, an ouroboros of my own invention
all my mistakes and suffering are acts of self-harm by my own machinations
I have been as sick as it gets, both sadist by proxy and *******
the cure is resilience and dignity, respect and pride; so to myself I raise my fist

I will subtract infinitum
look at me, I don't need them
I will defeat the tendencies and alluring notions
that call to me, echoing papers filing motions
override the system, go and self-destruct
go and hurt and know
everyone you love would be better if you gave up
they all tell you no
while you contort into a loveless malcontent
under the hammer of a conscience, trained never to relent
breaking every part of your character down to a simple formula, your dark mischiefs all represent
Evil makes you Happy
and you lay in a ball on the floor
Evil may make me happy, but it leaves me empty every time
I want to be a good person, but I commit social taboos and crimes
I am weak and depressed, an anxious egocentric insomniac
all my ideals are fantasies
evil may make you happy, intoxicating as escapism from reality
it grips your organs like cancer and leaves you hollow on your knees
with a reputation for begging to be let in once more, you cry please
your pain might be real, but they see alligator tears
and when you hit the bottom, the bottom even falls out
you must face a world of shadows by yourself, the greatest of your fears

With nobody but the memories
I could see my entire life with clarity
and the answer was plain, I'll take away the pain
all I did was act again in vain,
the future looming, I sought redemption
but there is no reformation,
I am seen as I have always been, no goodbyes
only attempts at temptation
I survived a black star day
and only so much later I face myself with only this to say
"Tom you have to take another step away
keep doing well, even when life is hell,
toe the line, progress one toe at a time,
are you ready?"

I'm no comedian
I have never told a joke
when I die I want you looking for me
no impostors, no mirrors, no smoke
nobody happy to see me
no joy; you better jump at ghosts
you better be sure, I better be ash
I'm no foreign man, I feel just as important
when I am laying with dogs, as I would be with trash
there's no song and dance, I am a portent
a wormhole in the warm earth, wet dirt deterrent
merely a spec, with what grandeur in mind
indeed, to conceive the things I would design
I feel closest to dying when I'm laughing
my lungs, the lines in my face, restrict me even expressions
I feel farthest from the stage when I hear whooping and clapping
my past is all one melted blur of disgrace and transgressions
I feel decades beyond my own life away from home
and I would feel worlds away from you, even if I could feel your breath in the morning.

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.

Discomfort with ambiguity
the theme of closure
here's a hard life lesson:
complex moral grey areas in the court of public opinion
are tried and convicted with such absolute certainty
that opinion runs into a spear-wall on the thought-crime of double-jeopardy
pariahs afraid to speak, seeming to appear flimsy with flip-floppery
when in fact, what can anybody know without being there, themself
this highfalutin sentencing, rent-free living in the shoes of the accused
and never taking a step outside, pay the dues, it's all a form of legal fee
today everybody is such an expert, information at the fingertips like Mercury
with the thunderbolts, bring lightning flashes, what's okay to think according to
whoever spends their time with me, awaiting approval Orwell, all's well that ends
take these foul-hearted to learn Love from the Ministry of, the greatest weapon of mind control
has never been hands-on the brain, there was a dissertation, novelization in '48 that explained it pretty perfectly
what we create can exact a toll steeper than 2 minute's hate, we police each other to greater expectations
set forth by creations always beneath the powers that be, imprisoned within these comforting confines
accepted, that inmates on the road are escaping crazies, this is sanctuary, our beloved Big Brother blinks and dreams up the inescapable- society.

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?

Architecture laid in the grimoire
a sketchbook of arcane blueprints
many-storied towers rising from the dust of time
and nothing, achieving the sky and ending abruptly
heads in the clouds, the end of the road
wish one might, with all their might
if only this could last forever
self-denied, glossy-eyed atop the height
that this red-yarn spun network is so delicate
tight-rope walking between two peaks
strumming the chord, straining the balance
giving and taking, waning, below there is the promised "never"
that fantasy of love, commitment to an institution
on either side are all the concrete hardships built by hand
that simmer on low, splitting hard lines in the spitting demands
letting go is easier than falling into the lurch to never know;
to forget, what it was like to be on solid land, fate tangled with arteries
in the roadmap that constructs the bustling cities, severed
a streetsweeper assigned to come and flood the needy
cleanse all these structures, hollow out all desire,
empty of trust they mean less and grow higher,
safe havens, home for multiples of two ravens
craven, warm by a trash fire, art deco lobbies and grandeur
gilded foyers, all signs point to something deeper, the surface of a liar
guarantees, contracts, no demolition, decay slow and crumble
no fault of the construction, blame time, the equation is out of our hands
it all comes together, separates and rises individually to its pinnacles, then falls apart slowly;
all according to plan.

What does beauty mean to you?
That is a challenging question
I cannot lie and deny that I appreciate the form and skin
but what it means, is more than that
beyond the image, I find people are most beautiful within

Therein lies the hypocrisy of this notion
empathetic, altruistic, honest, and kind hearts
intentions without agendas, good will without roles and parts
I see your eyes and what you consider imperfections,
though no body is without weathered complications
this is not what makes me call you beautiful,
it would be ill of me to judge given my orientation
I think everyone can be if they are not, or already is
and I do not flirt with deception, tempting insinuations
my love is only capable of intimacy within arm's reach
for I have loved as hard and faithfully as madness could never teach
to fall from those arms, stained with blood, draining life to live and lift myself, I resent being reduced to a leech
this is why I choose to see the quality that resides only with humans, there is complex love, redemption, free will to do good or bad and beauty within each

When I call you beautiful Aurelius, what it means to me
is not that your hair looks nice today, your eyes alight
or your face, though serious, delivers a measure of delight
my friend, as with anyone, I speak as truly as I can; I've thought on this
in my own mirror I see a figure fighting for his vain morality, a face only his mother would miss
my mind is a troubled aquifer, I draw from well meaning
while I send ripples through the ocean of my conscience careening

What does beauty mean? What can beauty mean?
Lovely, attractive, alluring, lurid, soft, inviting, a peace not felt since I lost home, someone serene
what I mean when I say one is beautiful, or handsome is a summary of the personality, to put their looks aside
not at the cost of the surface to subtract from rightful pride
as with others now and those from before, it is with you that time and time again I see
strength is not the only quality Aurelius stands for, you are a true beauty.

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.

Why don't we worship the amygdala, make it sound exotic, start a fever-fire in the tropics, pour ice over the horizon via helicopter, view the mind's eye like a crystalized Shambala, sell entry to inner-peace to create the illusion and wall the dam, there's no concept of reality without a sham, low as the almighty dollar, processed meat behind bars get your necktie pulled through your collar, I've been all over the world from the edge of my seat, I'm what you could call a stay-at-home road scholar

You braggarts, *******, maggots and fascists
politically correct censorship-sailors and catfishes
you politicians and career-victims, you're all slapstick
you talk too much and don't hold water
you bark at false alarms and pet yourselves because even a broken watchdog is right twice a day
and then ignore every other crisis you called all hands on deck to, raised arms to crush in uproarious righteousness like you were the voiceless minority's own private militant flyswatter
everybody has a voice, we're all screaming or sitting in silence, tired and apathetic
I'm going deaf, I've lost it and I can't keep beating this dead hoarse, the whole world has issues, why are we making such a meal out of ourselves like we were the main course
ever since being put in the spotlight when Columbus sailed up onto the wrong shores
you can recite the diddy of fourteen hundred and ninety two, but you know why Native Americans were called Indians is because he set sail for India initially, don't you?
I have little hope the future will even be able to keep the ocean blue

The only thing I learned in school was psychological warfare, every day since I first set foot on those grounds I've taken live rounds and dealt my hand from the bottom because you can bet on the flop life doesn't turn up fair, it's too much to ask for someone else to care, read from a script for drugs, your alcoholic or *** deviant teachers whisper be-wary of thugs, down sleeping pills, painkillers and my daily dose of brain-fire extinguisher with *** from one of those best dad mugs, it never fails that when you go chucking snails, karma turns around and reminds you why you have to watch out for disgruntled slugs

You might catch one with your name on it
slower than you imagined, this grueling dawn hits
the purple of the sky lines up with the shade of skin under your eye
it's like makeup made to match, a tone only being sleepless for so long
or being on the business end of a fist can really catch, unnatural beauty looks so wrong
it's become normal to manufacture sell and lie, be a product, a marketing scheme
wanting to lean into exposure, explode and fracture and leave behind a profitable footprint to follow at the launch site
it's inhuman, to be switched on for twenty four hours, seven days a week, to be a character, it's obscene
and to defend this are small armies, cute little consumers who don't think beyond the opinion placed before them, placemat bib and all
dissent is negativity, disagreement is not normalcy, it's not okay, you're attacking someone who's so important to me, they literally saved my life
insult and rant, sob and bawl
unless you were personally given chest compressions, or they showed up and held your head so you wouldn't swallow your tongue while you OD'd, and then helped you back from suicidal depression
I don't care if you've shared a stage and danced and sang together, all people are equal
and none of them worth what they think they are, good, moot, or evil
so you can waltz up to a celebrity getting into their car, pop them off and become a shooting star

Sit on the curb and crack a spine, the Catcher Murders loosely spun a web and cast a net all through a grimly imagined fascination of mine, what candid activity to activate a conspiracy for an elected representative on who gets to live, give me the nominee for Manchurian candidacy! Violate the vile walls of a small mind's sanctity, the moral composition of even the purest person is only sound in theory, threaten their family, test their temptations, loyalty and mortality, fill their head with supposition, non-disclosure to time of day, information, no exposure to familiarity, turn what they think is false inside out and convince them what was never real was all along a secret reality, watch them break their neck to stare directly into an eclipse like it was their fealty, to disable themselves in service to pushing out of their skin and beyond their own ability

Mind control is simply too powerful to be stopped at a question of whether or not it's ethical
if I wrote this while someone dictated it, with a gun in one hand while they fed me an acid strip
and I knew they had complete deniable culpability, say for example if they worked for the Central Intelligence Agency
and they were abducting citizens from America and Canada, for one big experimental acid trip
to create Whitey Bulger and Ted Kaczynski
I mean, I know everybody hates to hear other people whine, you fall on your knees in thoughts and prayer for or worship on forums shooters like the murderers at Columbine,
when every day someone provokes a loner, outright pressing them to slip into a violent state
I begrudge myself a few hard feelings against people, but I wouldn't **** time to squash my hate
a child with a gun is an adult making bad decisions, the grey area is a lot harder to see when you're sorting through footage of dead children, bullet-torn classrooms haunting your nightly visions
everything is a joke and everyone laughs in the privacy of their own shadow
when their standards in public are much higher, where there's smoke there's not always a real fire
how can you police yourself, live up to the idea of who you think you are right now,
don't look for an answer, go on and say it, how?

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.

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.

Phrases like embers from a bonfire besiege me, entwined in such noise
they light the way for wild and terrible mischief
such a scale burst drum skins to keep rhythm,
a cliff of imposing stature and will
conversations, mutterings and utterances, what-ifs left in the past
floating down in a swarm of amber and crimson leaves
like a great flame-tongue, to lick the world clean with unfiltered madness
so many strands of hair and one I chase over the ends of myself to collect
to hear a true remembrance and not an imagined back-and-forth
before Love was a frightening creature
set loose on back-crooked prey.

Matter sometimes just occurs accidental
from nowhere, never nothing, appearing transcendental
colliding like bad alchemy, occupying occupied space
fusion of foreign material subject to abject objects' pent-up mental
collusion-cohabitation, no attraction or slight gravitation, crash/race
= excited particles all jumping about, throwing confetti while they thrash the place
atomic action minus radio ***** with a dash more of a dramatic backdrop clash hashed in
makes for a grand tour, the whole world is a blueberry slush in your hands don't just stand there, pour!

Serrated stainless, chipped, painkillers ****** these sensations, but the nerves have no endings, it's not actually painless
giving up on everything for investments only to lose more and gain less
it's all a cavalcade of roosting home, big-top overplayed charades, more dimensions through this wormhole than a tank parade
equate to nothing, nameless and faceless, headlong charge, chicken without bluffing
the frontier of teleporting, walls with ears and eyes an infrastructure chock with innovations in suffering and human-stuffing
organic computers all running an opera from the balcony to the stage crammed inside
on the edge of calling fire in their own crowded theaters just to get off the ride.

How do you write like you’ve got a bomb strapped to your chest?
Any breath you take could be your last, this better be a will and testament
these words have to be the ones that defy death, they better be your best
they will outlive you, every moment they give you is a gift and this is a pen-ultimate test
everything I say, every sentence is a commitment, to be knocked out
I give everything to writing, two percent other elements
and I might be lucky to get someone to shout

That the words are too
the paragraphs need to be
much, moved down a touch
you are peeping toms, you see
there’s poetry in motion and trains building a full head of steam before they leave the station
I’m a locomotive about to explode and my brakes are on, we can fight about
what I write and how, the meaninglessness of life until the break of dawn
you’re off the rails with the thoughts you only think I’m on
I’d cut your house in half with a sharp word, watch those cards fall
apologize to your mother’s ghost for the collateral
family matters, I didn’t mean to **** them all

Oh, what the hell
take this all back a spell
I said every key I hit unlocks another moment
this is my torment, I love it, it’s a test
and I am consistent with giving an F; I keep hitting L
for life, for freedom, and the pursuit of madness, call it enlightenment
crumple up the paper, turn the page over,
embrace choking, strangling entanglement, anarcho-consumerism and politics, order and silence are best friends, I like my music loud, box your ears and deliver me an anarchist, the end is nigh and near, summon all your mounted heads and sainted dead, the sacred stand over your banners where you fall from port to land and mouth back to hand, are you boys proud now, forced a topical message like a burn ointment, crammed into something I said like yes doctor, I’ll call back and [forget immediately to] make my next appointment

Stress impacts the mind
it’s like dropping a pebble onto jello
shocking how predisposed to flaws we’re designed
I’m a head chairman when it comes to being stuck in mine
these gurus all come at the tree of life and how you’re living
with reflexive hindsights attached to their asks,
breaking down every aspect, until gelatin, water, and cold is what they’re given
they eat brains and swing axes
they’re choppy already, trying to expose glitches, digging posts ditches  
profiteers off dread that knows there’s no new frontiers, making illusions out of tears and magic happen here, talents and loose morals, heartless deadbeats, that’s what a life hack is

I never met another writer I didn’t root for, even secretly,
with degrees that shield them from criticism, burn up arguments on proximities
“This is my office. It’s a safe space and GET A LOAD OF THEEEEESE!”
I get it, you stormed the kingdom and took the keys
now you get to sit there in the same chair and talk to messy heads like me
but I get to sit here, and I have the same chair, and I don’t owe a college money
I get to be a mess and you get to deal with it, I can’t even befriend that out of somebody
and we get to talk about my writing like it’s the most important thing I do
but we skirt real issues because no one gets paid enough to handle what’s really true
and that’s why if time was a human being, I’d beat them like they owe me money and I’d collect double on behalf of you
and you’d condemn me for it, but I quit therapy and dreaming, locked it up and stored it
long as it’s not me, like dying, I’m all the more for it

I don’t have faith
in you
I see the similarities
in you
I’m not a man for family, I’ve got so little love left I can feel the ticking when a swell of emotion fills up in my chest, counting down like a held breath
I couldn’t express the things that I actually feel with enough clarity to a reader with letters by post anymore
my audience is invisible and blind
I spend so much of myself currently that I have nothing left to give to anyone or anything, my writing is energy and effort over time which amounts to real currency
so, I guess I’m broke, white flags out, if I had any sense, I’d save two cents
but I’m trying to make you feel this one last time, so let’s rewind
it’s okay not to feel this way and this thing I need to say is really only for the blind
⠊ ⠇⠕⠧⠑ ⠍⠽ ⠋⠁⠞⠓⠑⠗ ⠁⠝⠙ ⠊⠄⠍ ⠎⠉⠁⠗⠑⠙ ⠎⠞⠊⠇⠇ ⠁⠞ ⠞⠓⠑ ⠞⠓⠕⠥⠛⠓⠞ ⠕⠋ ⠇⠕⠎⠊⠝⠛ ⠓⠊⠍

How do I write like there’s a bomb strapped to my chest?
I spin a round in my finger-gun, hold it up to my head and make suicidal idle threats
sitting paralyzed from the chest down and running out of breath
public consumption is a game of character portrayal, I rolled poorly on the sheet,
I’m a walking bad decision waiting to happen, and just when you convince me not to take action
I’ll desecrate your throne, passively worse, a lazy heel, sprawled out yawning, just kick up my feet
I can sleep just fine, but I’m never going to be a body at rest
I’m going to do something even if I can’t do my best
every day this bed becomes like Mount Olympus, the air gets thin and it’d be easier to stay down forever
but I’m no god, I don’t belong, I play the odds, we’d never get along, I’m Promethean and seething again, I’ll steal your fire for all mankind so we can compose roasts and songs, light in your shadows, if I stayed silent for twenty four hours, for seven days, for seven weeks, it means I’m going to crack open Hades with a message not safe for the ill and the elderly or the weak next time I slip Zeus’ beak and you see me speak

There’s no excuse, no simulation, no destiny, no red string can be my noose you cannot magic-lasso me, there’s no institution, no holding cell that’s not in my own body and if I detonated it would be with my own bottled up relentless anguish, anger, hatred and messy mania, that’s chaotic energy, I’d rather these messages get bottled and sent out to sea, find your corpses missing from a field of plague-stricken horses, going coastal with a special delivery, drop my friends off in the dead of night, I know the perfect jetty, I want darkness, put curtains up, break the lightbulbs and nail plywood boards in the windows, put bars up, cut off the electricity, smash the breakers and the fuses, blindfold and cut you horizontally across both pupils if anybody refuses, a primordial void doesn’t even reflect this accurately, show some putrid, vile neglect, before the stars dotted the universe, before humanity, before a blackhole even knew what light was, I need this introspection to match the same inflection of my recent constant, nagging, pull in that direction, to match the gravitas, the gravitational pull towards the murderous, malevolent and sharper, more aware and present, side of my personality who values my own life to such an extent that it takes more active engagement from me than I ever get, I’m nothing short of exhausted, knowing I could be a glass great-sword with what meek average I have in intellect, it’s nothing short of invocation, evoking ire and resentment, to go further I have to devolve, to achieve the pinnacle of my words and see my art evolve, I can’t outrun the world, I can’t be happy, and I’m no revolution, but as the world revolves I revolt with no jolt from the state of always being plugged in, there’s mediocrity in settling, I’ve amassed such a depth of debt to the past it’s built up a toxic venom that I’ll never outlast, I’m just trying to cast a bastion to keep my lines cast in and while I’m staying paralytically still I still feel like I’m going so fast I’m strapped in, I just roll with the loss of control because I don’t fight the spiral, I know how this did happen, even though I’m going slow it’s no race; my life is over twice I’ve been lapped in, the change of pace is a joke to the deck with a few cards short, a full house to four aces, I’m a small hand away from a meltdown and a handful of crying faces, just keep changing gears and the cogs will lubricate, replace themselves and appreciate that being spared the machinations of a breaking down is mercy, if no one is close to me when this bomb strapped to me goes off, I hurt no one, and no one in turn hurts me, self-preservation and spared humiliation, that’s one way to eat yourself alive under fire in the situation, inside out, I spill my guts, no ifs ands or buts, nothing’s so dire, I write sometimes like I’m going to fight the monitor when I see it typed, and if the gate for the match is right I’ll believe I can deliver if I feel that hyped, I write like Atheists are right, like I write like God is spellchecking and Satan is rubbernecking, I write like the Grim Reaper is waiting for me to finish, I write like Big Brother has a special interest, I write like the page is endless, I write like I’ll be shot square in the brain and that’ll plain and simply end all surrounding suffering and pain, I write like my words mean everything and nothing, like I can change the world, I write like it’s the first time I held a hundred dollars in cash, I write with my knuckles white while my teeth grind and gnash, and I write like a thousand people are invested, it’s all the same to me if even one person is really interested.

Missed the mark, aw
I can't verbalize a visual
if I nock and draw
comprehend this visceral vitriol slack-jawed
I can victimize individuals with knock knock law
utilize your futile lives to ask who's there, ****
ding **** ditch, upcreek, just missed, to whom it concerns
I am philosophically fluid, blue devils could reach into my pool of words and pull a charge through it, but I hide my true self in pieces, keep my voices eclectic, if you think you know who I am from Adam, why are you a fan, I'm already the Hoover Dam, I'm hydroelectric
my wiring is just that way, I'm cynical enough to inhale in a vacuum, ******* the life out of living just for the power to stay
I'm an educated typist, simple in all aspects, adamant that little things hurt longer inside like I swallowed Atom Ant, letting go isn't in my blood, I'll break if I have to, but give up? I just can't
arrows point for the oblivious and help the lost, bullseyes glaze over tiredly as they graze peacefully or glare intensely, arrowheads that follow horns, spring of battle in the ground, that follow the kicking, snorting, charging, and unrelenting sound
a feather in your cap, shoot an apple off a chapel, topple into a hungry laddy's lap, give a kite and key a light tap, wake sleeping minds up from their nap, do not sup, sip sap from sleepy roots of wisdom, applaud, do not clap for the conditioned cheers of genius in its kingdom
now, after you have held everything taut for so long, so strong and confident that you know, merely point it in a direction and let it all go.

Oh, to be a butterfly
flitting freely upon the sky
a flower bud or strawberry pie
to land on bones soaked in nectar, I
think of watching monarchs with a tired sigh
to be as simple as a butterfly…

No tail guns, no tracers
no fire or engines roaring by
no, just myself, my wings and I
no wingmen or aces, if I were a butterfly
no dogfights or air raid sirens, no warm scotch chasers
with flat beer, only the pollen trade that I would ply
no stale cigarettes, no cold coffee, no need to keep my humor wry
I would frolic in the sun, happy and dry
over so many flower fields with my own kind,
if I were a butterfly

No spirals of smoke and flames
no chains, broken glass or blood or names
no more would my fingers bleed for hours as I pry
desperate, hanging on every whisper for everything I try
no stench or thirst or hunger would bother me, if I were a butterfly
no fear or obligation would bind me, no desperation would make me vie
for a signal or a weapon to call for help or escape, I would kiss my life goodbye
and I would kiss the blood and sweat off of my cheek one last time, if I were but a butterfly.

I cannot make the world a better place
I am not a decent human being
cynicism is welcome in my embrace
there's too much faith in optimism to leap without seeing
and they say that is believing, materialists who touch gods with their eyes
my God is our Universe, among a pantheon of others
somehow I know what people are capable of, all life is its own demise
yet, there is a universe in every human, a contained god
this cannot be abandoned, revert to a primal nature and forge stronger bonds to flee from
there is an inexplicable loss that occurs even when an unremarkable or evil person dies
though, we would rather believe that a landing is a blessing and not a refill to butterflies.

A rocket exploded in South Texas
left a reaching inferno from the base of petty worship
a god whose hand fell on no one, touched their eyes
pray in solitude, your words aren't worth it
just look for your answers in the skies,
where is your orbiting warship?

Imagine, invent and innovate on ancient lies
a better tomorrow, aim your arrows
in the machines mankind deifies
all of this squalor beyond the visible spectrum of light
is the reaction and consequence of what people decide
long to believe in nothing, demand proof by tangibility and sight
long to have faith in something, devote yourself by proxy to the discourse that causes deicide
there's always a holy something to fight, there's always satisfaction in taking side
all my cosmic gods and all ancient gods, pagan gods, all the gods of fiction and all the gods of tradition
all the minds that strive for enlightenment, worshipping education
scientists and philosophers, who are all pious in their own way
all the void and defiance, the uncertain and indifferent
launch and land and relaunch yourselves into life every day, make the most of flight before the ground interrupts your stay.

Trickle, the freshest water
falls
sweet, cold, teardrops
fresh from the pale pedals
fever-kissed by the dew
never know a gentler mist
painless, this frost
fell

Thrumming bumblebees' flight distorted and slow
bass heavy traces, trails of sweat, praise be the valkyrie
wandering aimlessly on her ethereal angel's wings
a pale woman on Pegasus to gather the,
fallen, think for me, of deeper, darker sleep
than even kings in their undiscovered jungle dens might know
unseen by the eyes of men and all the things their memories might show
what alien fascination of nature to recall an animal's lifetime
in the wild, among houses of caves and skyscraping fauna
where the temperature on the floor thick with vines
is hot and heavy with steam, condensation gathers on the lungs
like breathing in a perpetual sauna, perception gathers on man's tongues
deception of his meager imagination laid on the ears
croaking, groaning stalks of unknown life
turning one's own mind into a parasite
making a mirror of insight inside, reflecting back on fears

Goodbye tore open the sky, a fist through the ribcage
a bolt through the squall line
in a moment, Pangea on the ceiling above Earth
a nightmare remembered, reflected and projected
shown to this creative ocean of life below
the endless thick of Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Lion
whose eyes shine in the green that is bunched together black- like diamonds
striking a matchhead, the phosphorous tip of a finger
the kiss from a lip of one oblong, impossible, obscure God
splitting the last pure retreat from the disdainful nonsense of humans
in an environment where only so few can survive,
play us out on a high note, rest in peace assured
with a mutual trust, man isn't mind, no one leaves this universe alive.

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

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

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

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

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.

A wild sun refuses to set
ribbons rotate on the circumference
with thousands of eyes looking on
jagged tendrils boil this meager surface world
hear the screams, hear the cries
those who talk to angels

Sanctuary in the shade
safety in a secret
whisper a kiss to a bouquet
upon a headstone where it lay
beneath a sacred poem-prayer
meditating on granite in the still air
lay to rest the ghost-fire of resentment there
burn this incense, French inhale
cloven foot scraping grave-dirt, spitting smoke
bull-headed minotaur, lungs full of white sage choke

The wilderness is a spirited if pilfered place
lashed by this wicked star, ash falls from grace
prophetic tongues whirl in circles, speaking as if omniscient
beware, beware, dreamers cozy in the night
who climb the cosmic-skinned mountain of subconscious
the stone cairn-haunts of fireflies that light the way to the top
beware the abysmal black of Tartarus, that is far below the bellows
colder and darker than the wilderness, where not a nightmare dares to tread or trot;
nor has a dream been seen, beware

A void unseeable chews on innocent, sane, rational and reasonable minds
the seven pointed star, with oily, invisible corruption
that lays sweet words in stone with silence
how it moves across the air, an inverse to the wild sun
beware, there are no dreams, no rest,
there are no nightmares; beware.

...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?

Pick a mind from this bush
galaxies draw me off, I am repulsive
a weaker pull and a stronger push
the magnetic willingness of the world to give
up on this experiment, brittle dandelion dust, brushed off its face
let this inconvenient, insignificant human go and hold his breath in space
…
Would you just look at the stars with me?
I’m so sick of artificial lights
I need a natural night so desperately
would you just look at the stars…?
We are so arrogant to think they are ours.

My friend, it feels hard to breathe today

your open arms receive the burden of my pain

sharing more of me, the more of you I take away

this sunspot umbrella unfurls the evil on my brain

I'm writing to you like a journal, in solitary confidence

ignoble in my intrusion, with selfish insolence


Are you anymore a friend than the medicine that sedates me

calms and quiets my anxiety?

If I use you all the same?

Am I any less in need of help if my reputation predates me?

And I am both a label and a name?

I am choking on my misery today, lungs filled with lead

spread my disease, inhale the smoke of my fire and fill yourself with dread.

Grab the human race by the collar
shake them and throw them and make it clear
you are not house trained you roaming fools
you know nothing of fear

Now tell them "Stay!"
Now show me "Stay"
Spreading your idiotic messages
the nice things without which,
you can't live, more cases every day
the air you can't breathe
means do not leave

Now show me "Sit!"
Now tell them "Stay!"
Watch them fail, your greatest hit
on a loop, humanity on play
pompous and stupid acts of discussion
they're safely tucked away from recession,
and this is what they say
look at those dogs infect each other
protests in the USA,
they'll only hurt each other at the end of the day

Now tell me "Sit!" Tell me "Stay!"
Hong Kong is being systematically silenced
in response to allowing adjustments to the violence
that people can inspire
when their rights are set on fire
tell me nothing, reason will not reach my heart
I am enraged and want no part
spit on oppression and share the sickness
it is a level playing field with the masks off,
approaching half a million dead worldwide
avoid injustice, tolerate, bide your time, swallow pride
clench your teeth, roll over; clench your fists
let momentum play dead and stay inside
you have nothing to lose in the matter but your voice
it is the impossible unfairness, a dangerous choice.

I do not believe in you, beyond the flesh and bone, awaits my immortal throne, all this world is
ash and fallacies, you fall on knees to worship me, a false messiah, I despise the
ease with which I dominate your spiritualities, your bodies temples and I own the lease
with an iron grip on the leash, alligator tears fill a river, no denial, half life and half a trial
the grinding metal teeth, feed them your babies, until the stump foams with the entrails like the earth has gifted it rabies
insects in the meat particulates, springing forth and given birth, their lives are the meaning your sacrifices hide
I am the sword of union and unholy retribution falls with my decision to lay down the divide
I am the word of confusion and deathly distribution crawls through my incision whenever I decide
to cut a void in society, press a syringe to the vein and interject my opinion, you’d all better hold still and keep hope open wide!

We will post your heads atop the nicest parts of your downtown offices, turn storage freezers into sarcophagi
no horses herald the coming, an agent applied locally to our violence will prepare the area, they’ll be under waves after a thorough numbing
we will carve our kingdom from asphalt and concrete, no one can stop the foreseen before it is
Cyrus will not deny us, there is one cure to the sinful ways of thinking, treat individuality like a virus, join the cure and stand beside us
or be apart of a red sea when you see a whole army marching through your streets, upfield in boots with one goal, shaking the ground like we’re all wearing cleats, we’ll starve you out, believe we will besiege you so fast you’ll break by the time the bullhorn declares no one eats, secede defeat, you’re only programmable meat, spare the ammunition and we’ll only stamp you out in a shipment with our feet, to let the next settlement know they’ve been beat
now decry us, we condone violence, don’t leave us in silence, we’ll raise hell, **** your chosen, blow down your house and come back to burn you alive after you’ve been stuck outside, frostbitten and frozen, ask yourself if you want to bury the hatchet in your skull and wind up a missing person so no one knows then, tell yourself it’s for your own help if you listen when we talk and approach our sermon with your mind open.

High powered cancer cells keep the phantoms running
across the long table sharks that have stopped swimming
lazily gathering schools of fish that sit on their teeth for roll call
attendance is ecstasy, blood floods the senses and those eyes
as soon as they smell it, that's all they see, every meal a feast
every night an ****, delighting in the prey never knowing
never thinking, there's a killer in an empty suit standing next to me
wining and dining with the enemy, see notes for stacks of C-notes
drones churned out of pressurized trenches with condescending tones
sinking while looking down at the surface, forsaking basic humanity
collapse on your knees, don't ***** a fingernail in the coffin to extend a simple pleasantry
it's high time that you people respect my time, which is what the clock is set to
all these teeth make it hard to sneer at you, these evolved fish eyes can see that you're upset, too
primordial origins ooze forth in the imposter syndrome complex's original sinner's skin
greed, the need to cut the sacrificial lamb's throat, sup of the blood and find
there isn't enough so shepherd more, do it again, and then
the sun itself revolves around this table because I sat down at it!
That's the outcome of the scenario, no matter how you divvy it up,
it's just basic mathematics!
Disturbingly becoming human, equating to weak by the end, fists pounding the table
smirking with frustration, like a dog smiling and dancing on two legs for its food
screaming and wailing in place of a collected bark, a normal whine, taking place in the mind
shocked to see its own fingers it recoils at its visage into stunned silence
no matter where we go, these memories will never let us be
the things that think they have depth because they adapted to the deep
to serve their own ego, alas, there are many more fish in the sea.

In laborious anguish, cries that cracked the earth
window panes which shook with bellowed pains
Remus and Romulus, Abel and Cain given birth
Solomon, split us in twain
keep the whole, lose the attached brain

I welcome the poison into my life
it knocks and I let it in
and I ***** my guts as they unspool from my mouth
o'er the blade of my knife
soaked in the despair of eternal night that has yet to begin
I embrace the arms of ******, the hold of mutilation
arms of Hades take me away from the journey and to the destination
they whisper and mutter as he passes by there's the one with the open neck
who carries a dead soul on his shoulder
they don't know, those crows, whose lips for feed they peck
as our eyes roll over

A fine upstanding gentleman, my brother himself presents
with blood reeking on his hands, my brother himself resents
a killer with no intentions, ambitions, no control he does not relent
the finest necromancy combined a whole soul with the partial,
they cut the head off and preserved it in a jar, the baby's skull
his eyes open, turning in viscous liquids, tracking them wherever they are
an empty vessel for the monger who takes over, the wound beneath the scar
there is a dead man walking, being carried in the chest of an exiled noble
a dead man who longs for rest, who never chose to live
a ghost that haunts this disfigured puppet, strangling on the reins he gives

Now make your flesh dance!
Raise hairs, buds of skin, and a scimitar high!
If you will not discover your past,
your superstition will be your undoing and you will die
fall upon your sword at last,
let me out,
the jar tips over, the baby's head cries
let me out!
A man seemingly impales himself in a fit of madness
cursed by voices and murderous streaks of violence
he leaves only a stench in the street behind-
though finally, a being cursed to be trapped inside returns to its own mind
only to occupy a severed head that by sick magick managed to survive
and is to this day, millennia later, on a necromancer's shelf, in a jar, being kept alive.

Striped to the nines
these cats carry pig stickers
animal kingdom death comes quicker
shoeshine, no sunshine, grease ain’t slicker
chalked out in lines
lead bellies line mines
outlaws make laws, break jaws
drop jaws, buy cars, bank rob
live like all-stars, a full-time job
all-grime, an all-crime job
a romantic era of terror
splashy ink does injustice
while they sidle Fords with Thompsons
every John a Dillinger, every Romeo a Clyde
everybody comes to terms with hunger and iron
everybody comes to town either starry or steely eyed
they leave or stay forever, never rich enough to justify why these are the streets they had to die on
it ain’t pretty
black eyed beauties and black tied beaus
lies as easy as blood when the liquor flows
guns and love and money, everybody knows
it’s all business, question contracts and the details get gritty
you can get in clean
but you have to get your hands ***** in this city.


A blues musician blew through the nightclubs with his sound
the rhythm of struggle, poetry and soul come alive
one with his voice, his guitar, singing of how he strived
to make it to the bright lights, he thought it was a miracle he survived
songs of Southland and heartache, the sounds of a segregated culture thriving above ground
what scratch he could collect
he would make if he had to play until he broke his guitar’s neck
wise enough to only accept cash up front, no checks
he was not ashamed of a spotlight
a bluesman can’t be afraid
he tore down the house six nights
and on Sunday he prayed
when he heard his music on the radio, riffs and lyrics ripped and splayed
the mournful soul, howling moon, woeful pontifications and rhythms all butchered onto a premier
a darker, sadder set of eyes than he had ever seen fell back on him from his own rearview mirror
outside of a studio, champagne bottles broken on his back for white rock and roll
at some hour when the sun was too far to imagine rising
he found himself peering over the edge of a darkness in his soul
and the liberating relief was frightening, he wanted to force it to feel surprising
a brown neck and a half ago he traded his first guitar, offered to sign it, too
pawnbroker bought it off him for a bill or two, said “Why, who are you?”
He swapped for a pistol under-the-counter and the bullets
bought a couple bottles of liquid encouragement to help him think it through
he drove out to the record label where the thief was lauded on the air
sitting is his car with his last guitar, barrel scratching his head, parting his hair
he was half-awake, about to leave when he saw four people walking out of there
a quick release, trigger, clutch and gas, the conspirators who stole his soul collapsed,
he drove into town to sell it back one piece at a time just as fast.


Putty in palms
men melt in her gaze
Medusa couldn’t ****** a man as easily
Penny flies with fancy and never stays
she was the high school sweetheart, girl next door,
to the star quarterback, to the class president, who fought viciously over her
who were sidetracked brawling while she was romanced by promises of city life
which swept her off the suburban sidewalk, and deposited her in a diner
where a man would come to blows over her, promising to make her his wife
she led men to collide with one another, they called her the Lucky Penny
she loved the attention, flirtatious eye-batting and men being reduced to fools
it was nothing shy of flattery, her chest felt empty without superficial value
and what is a better showing of what you’re worth than what someone else is willing to do to someone else to keep you?
She never really cared beyond the surface for any of them at all,
until, of course, she was ensnared herself by becoming a moll
Penny would only go steady with someone as beautiful as she was,
this invited trouble to her diner, because
a pretty-boy gangster oversaw collections in the area, just as handsome, just as clean
every bit as petty as Penny, twice as angry, twice as spiteful, and twice as mean
he carried a switchblade knife, a jackboot blade, he would love an excuse to cut ribbons out of skin
he had the sharps in spades, sharp wits, looks, angles, and cuts, when they met Penny was already done in
pretty boy promised her the moon, gave her a pad, he made sure she stayed living in the lap of luxury as long as it was his lap, and she’d never step out of line after the first time he got mad
she was number three in a marriage, in over her head and scared for her life
Penny, the apple of every man’s eye, a prisoner, mistress, and second to a mafia wife.

Ruthless killers aren’t these snarling giants
they’re scrawny, little, barbed wire, white men
capable of extreme and unconscionable acts of violence
you never see them until it’s too late for status quo, still water silence
deeper though, you never know, a gun is just bamboo, a ball and black powder, light it
your next-door neighbor could be the next news-maker, a headline teenager
used to be you’d never know somebody got shot if they popped 911 on your personal pager
the world isn’t spinning any faster, but these gray matters will age ya,
I say, going postal isn’t even a clever turn of phrase yeah?

Sunup in the city, Chicago typewriters were dogearing a page in history
like firecrackers going off just before dawn, you could see them from a sky penthouse
the locations of every execution, it wasn’t a mystery
a plan went off without a hitch, an overtaking in the criminal industry
you can say it, business is booming
body-bags went out by the half dozen to a dozen spots, by noon sirens were still zooming
out of precincts, hearses and coroners, ambulances and firetrucks, police too
it wasn’t a warzone, it was a crime scene, every block everywhere, put tape around the whole county
you could bring every citizen in as a witness, they’d probably all have a statement, it was anarchy,
an entire organization was weeded out and killed, with efficient brutality, and get this, no payment offered up for a revenge bounty
nobody retaliated, they were emasculated, eviscerated, devastated and decapitated, nobody knew who held the keys to the city, but we knew to revere the new monarchy
and for months there was humidity so thick it made me sweat through my collar, an air of anxiety
terror is what you don’t know, can’t understand, aren’t able to feel, hear, or even see…


So, I’ll put a bomb in the mail, watch his face turn pale, stand outside the window
make his wife a widow, I’m not settling for the ironic justice he doled out
my life wasn’t nothing, but now it’s always something, ever since I sold my route
a job in this town is a weapon in the wrong hands, if you work for good folks, you’ll be met with injust demands
I delivered payroll for a law firm, took an armored van and stuck to plans
making sure paralegals and secretaries and partners see their paychecks, private sector, shotgun overhead on the rack, nine-millimeter on my side, and rifle in the back
same three to a car, I always drive, if you’re gonna hit us in broad daylight, it’s gotta be on Monday when we’re fully loaded, as we cross this bridge and you better promise we all stay alive
I get my cut, a quarter million, a Judas’ fee to guarantee the financial security of my family and we’ll be packing live rounds if you think of double crossing me, for our own safety
that day hits, we come across the bridge to a traffic stop
I was sweating bullets, my partner rolled down the window to talk to the cop
an accident ahead, then a sudden, deafening pop
now I feel the adrenaline flood, my face is covered with my friend’s blood
I’m kicking at the door, a ricochet bites my ear, I think my head is gone
but even if I’m dead I’m still running for dear life, I’m going on
I hear screaming, automatic gunfire, he’s shooting, taking them out with him,
he’s dying, I’m ripping my uniform off and ducking out, half-blind, the lights get dim
it’s days later, I’m contemplating the darkest things I’ve ever thought, outside a ***** cop’s residence
I’ve barely eaten, I’ve barely thought of anything except tracking this heist crew down, and now I’m showing hesitance
I’ve followed them since that day, I know this is it, they’re all inside, four bad men got rich and two good men died
one coward allowed it to happen, I’m gripping my sidearm, they won’t strip me of my pride, I don’t need any evidence
He kicks the door in, gun drawn on four men, their families just outside, seconds tick away, sweat drips, feet sway, chairs slide and casings clatter, he serves up an equalizer on a platter, that day it’s not a blue matter, it’s a blood splatter, eight dead, four thieves and three collateral, with a lone gunman at the heart of it all.

Fisticuffs always calls up a type of fighter, former priors
agents looking at delinquency like juvenile homes are boxing regency
adopt a son, own a slave, train him to fight for his home and do it all legally
coattail riding, meal ticket punching, a prizefighter raised from adolescence
to do one thing as soon as he enters a ring, turn lights out, win a money bout, leave opponent with no recollections
a colored boxer, killing competition in a record winning Olympic position
never shies away from trouble he tucks his chin and takes it double
always looking on the uppercuts, combinations break safes, open faces and break up guts
a contender for a spot, he’s dreamt of this, he’d give everything he has now away for this shot
it’s a chance at a chance, the only one he’s got
he loves his foster father and his foster mother and it feels like they’ve worked to give him a lot
sitting front row in reserved seats, while ten rounds pass,
his brain rattles in his skull, while they eat popcorn and sit on their ***
hands trembling in his gloves, slumped in the corner, cut the swelling eyes to let him see
he is dying ninety seconds at a time, how long can he last?
His masters don’t stand unless he falls, their love is slavery
these gloves that keep his hands in fists are new cuffs, they contain him, set him free!
He spits blood on the mouthguard, leaves his teeth on the mat, presses off on his knuckles and clears the ten count with the referee
eyes like a monster, he finally snapped, and wore the leather out
he proved his love was stronger than anyone and anything,
by beating his opponent into a fatal coma, in twelve rounds, blood pooled at silent spectator’s feet, as he continued to swing
it was an undercard they never forgot when he went back to prison and left it all in the ring.

Terror is what you don’t know, can’t understand, aren’t able to feel, hear, or even see
and for months I dreamt of what I saw that day with no lucidity
I was locked down in the tragic relivings of a marred, scarred up, firebomb charred memory
they look for the truth in their ink, why does that burden fall on me?
All I am is all I could ever be!
Dogged, **** tired, I put a cigarette out on my arm to see if I’m awake sometimes
sometimes I do it to see if I’m alive, after bearing witness to fresh hell, in some crimes
investigative journalism, my life’s work, it’s all dirt
digging for one breathtaking coffin, until my lungs hurt
it’s misery in a city of misgivings on loop for eternity
they know no one can stomach the bottom; even the bottom falls out
and the bowels and the guts spit up their disgust, the bile discussed their vile supremacy in doubt
but the duty still lands in my lap and I carry it readily if wearily
a good deed is unheard of, which is why the death of all factions
all fractions of crime, all at one time, all one action done on a dime, is killing me
I know there’s something more behind it all, that kind of slaughter would take an army
where does it begin, who’s covering up, lying and playing pretend, where does one thread stop when another one ends?
Am I standing in a web or a noose?
Am I cutting through a conspiracy or am I cutting myself loose?
I feel as if I’m suspended by my own suspicion!
I am lost and I’ve been more directly involved, more focused on a mission!
There are laughs in the walls of motels where I stay,
when I take my pills and check out for the night they giggle “Have a nice day!”
I’m sure of nothing, why do I know there must be foul play!
The streetsweepers must have an agenda, they must profit in some way
but they don’t come out of the woodwork to claim any coercion or pay
any heroics or fame, if any figurehead stood behind them, that person stands at bay
while I wait with bated breath, knowing one thing of murderers who achieve a getaway
that they either are assured of success enough to retire, or to attempt a grander feat of death…

Once an aging prima donna fell upon a spotlight
with all the natural talent of the charismatic, valorous and gallant, a comet in the starlight
she could sing and act and dance and grant wishes with magic if directed so
so, she was a child when she graced stages with her presence every night
crushing the pressure of performances that sink politicians by the sheer size
she could captivate and entertain, dazzle, razzle, sizzle, and shock a crowd
ahead of her time and curb and curtain, her cast and calling, producers she seemed to hypnotize
evoking the ire of every other actress, singer, dancer and magic woman living loud
she burst with color onto silver screens and took the world that was hers by any means, the masses she could mesmerize
even in black in white they fell in love with the gaze of her baby blue eyes
and the only thing to slow or stop this comet’s meteoric rise
was time, she was too old for the parts they wanted every woman for,
tapdancing and vaudeville, lounge singing and musicals, from the ivory tower to the first floor,
an aging prima donna, who would never want to play a bit role or a fill a hole well, she was a goner
she wanted to trailblaze, turn these old ways into new days
and she only needed new opportunities, a chance to shine in her advanced age
for the elderly actress desired to perfect an archetype in drama, beginning with one screenplay page
she wrote herself a major part, around the central cast, so the young talent could shine in the brighter lights, while she would create a legacy to outlast
and they look for her today in her films and wonder what changed to make it so,
that the energetic and happy woman lost all her glow, to go and wither into shadows where she would play the crone and cantankerous, conniving, lonely gypsy or old widow.

In a new era, a new form, the prizefighter came back, weathered the case
five to ten
years off the prime of his career
militant Islamic conversion in the joint, scowl permanently on his face
disowned his adopted home, disemboweled his circle to scorch earth for some personal space
and worked harder to prove he deserved to earn the boxing commission’s good grace
got his boots back on, never out of shape, kept them laced
older and slower, but stronger than ever, a lifestyle change is a new pace
he met a new agent, a man with his true interests at heart, cross it and hope
he’s representing the same faith, referral by a cellmate, representing the same race
he’s educated and well-dressed, his lawyers got lawyers who all send money upriver
so why would he ever sell a fighter downstream? He’s all about one color, one power
the power is cash and the color is green! He’s selling prizefighting like a butcher sells liver
looking at his prime killer like he’s working by the hour, like the man has never been here
he’s lost speed, gained mass, sore in the bones from time’s past and passed in the joint, he’s one night away from an official anoint-
meant, appointment with the king, a racial salesman who takes advantage of the divide to provide a talking point with his melanin
when he doesn’t care, he doesn’t even see people before him as more than cattle or less than human
and with every victory he’s seeing clear, the field he’s standing in is tall grass
he’s struggling to see the path he walked in on, but he’s got to keep burning through the gas
promotion, fight, rounds of blood and sweat, hand held high, interview gab, it’s not over yet
locker room politics, agents and deals, brands and lawyers and contracts, contacts, pagers and producers, politicians and televisions and business meals
he’s got a clear role on only one side of things, that’s why he lets the bird out of the cage because money talks and sometimes ******* sings
but when it comes down to trimming the fat, he earns his living in training and between the ropes in how he lives and how he wins when he swings
and he goes out with a record of sixty fights with eight losses and no contest, one of the most controversial champs to duke it out in those rings.

That they either are assured of success enough to retire, or to attempt a grander feat of death
I swear to ******* God I’m being followed ever since I left the last spot, it’s like the city knows I’ve been holding my breath
it started choking me, hands wrapped around my neck, I’m cut off from my office I can’t even cash a field check, I left my kids in the separation, this story is it, I don’t have nothing left
I’m chasing lights where there’s only flickering projectors, looking for the big picture at the point of origin
it’s never going to reveal itself to me, I hear the voices of professors trampling my voice again
the streets don’t just open up and take every killer, thief and ****** back, every assault charge and corrupt landlord, cop, lawyer and councilman
all the big fish swam away after the attack, like rats on a sinking barge, it’s their word full stop, against the everyman
but if the system breaks down at the point of their cogs, the people who do their ***** work, and witnesses all suddenly outnumber them with righteous indignation, armed and willing to catch a case then…
Who’s going to be left to clean up after that?
Three days, five days, eight, fully awake with the full realization, a health hazard with walls where I sat
the story of the century in my lap, I looked like warm crap, like something the buildings and streets formed teeth to chew up in their maw and back out they spat
figures not even the bones of this old gal would like the flavor of an emissary to the truth
I rattled my fist to the ceiling on the ninth day, kicked a rat of my mattress, pulled the story off my typewriter, and muttered “Let’s see how they like that!”
for the first time I saw daylight, I saw a kid standing outside waiting to rob me, hand in his pocket, he cocked a hammer and told me to drop it,
I stood frozen, sure everything was true if they were waiting to stop it going through the presses, I was ready to die when an old man came by, chased him off with a cane and yelled “Stop it!”
this boy dropped two rocks he clicked together to make a gun noise in his coat and ran, I was stunned and I just studied the face and thanked God for the old man
I interviewed him, a source for my civilian militia, and next week I was in a real bed in my apartment when they ran the issue.

Many months ago, something crazy happened, our family had a tight net over the whole city then it snapped and
lieutenants, enforcers, soldiers all turned on each other on the orders of opposing captains
we turned to our cops, sergeants and detectives, turns out their own were capped before then
cops were ******* with corruption and a lone gunman who hit their families and crossfire killed three kids, four men, rich thieves died poor men,
every single lawyer and city politician at that time was locked up with all eyes on the boxing commission and a homicide spree tied to a ******’ blues musician
it was like all the focus left and they let clowns just step in, meanwhile we were undermined by our own kind, greedy backstabbers and
they cost us the whole operation, cannibal rats, growing fat off our own hind end
in the confusion every two-bit hood and crook, every able-bodied gun and ******, every veteran and rookie, all the way from the bottom to the Consigliere got took,
I found the underboss hanging on to evidence that shut the Don out of the state from a firebombed butcher’s shop in the back by a meat hook, bullet riddled legs limp and falling off, a dozen dead thugs by a card game in the back, plates with cold steak and scrambled eggs
papers ran facts on the carnage, questioned the anarchy, only one washout journalist tried to explain
he must have racked his brain, put himself through so much pain,
in a blind spot there was just another crime, on a scale that looked insane
he said good people were out there, outnumbering the bad
that no matter the hard times, those breed helping hands from survivors who know what they’re like, because they see you having the same day they’ve had
his words were in print, but I felt them reaching out and the fingertips fell short of the grasp
he was a man drowning in senseless slaughter, coming up for air and that was what he saw in a gasp
I know they need hope, but they don’t know it like I do, it’s the environment that breeds the opportunity, otherwise we would never get away with what we do
people don’t make the city clean
you know what I mean
there’s a system, they operate it, a monolithic, twisted, broken glass jaw of a weaker species that spits spiteful and sick ****, it’s full of hatred, eyes red, bureaucrats that ******* cats to see them land on their backs, it only speaks the language of violent acts so it only understands you if you attack, everything in the string-pullers is the least of actual humanity, it’s forsaken because they are the most of what a person lacks, and we answer to their highest calling it’s brass tacks, it’s a blood tax, it’s a wish come true light the candle at both ends and wait until there’s no more wax,
the city isn’t *****, it was built by us, it wasn’t perfect when we got here, but we **** sure broke her trust, you either live the life you want or you die how you must.

Afterglow grieve bereavement
violaceous flesh limned
kindled espied populace
afflict exultation ayont
disengage, uncage, redeem
bewail materiality it would seem
wager evil haply on dreams
venerated existent ken ataraxy
here transpires this idiolect soul-to Pliny's ism;
lone eminently felicitous forebearer.

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.

Manners over matters at hand, I do not stand, this is where I live, but it's not my land, you can live for anything and be killed for nothing, bring to bear a harsher march through marshes, a larger charge of volition, voices in unison with the same demand

the pandemic, it's systemic, of a cyclic, sick bicycle kick system, capitalist democracy, consumerism, candidacy cherry picked, politicians are an environmental hazard, one big oil slick, I feel the stress and anxiety, depressed and regressed as much into my shell as I can be, I don't look for encouragement from my friends or family, I'm okay, I'll keep my head down if no one has to keep their eye on me, if everything looks fine, nothing's wrong, see?

But I'm losing sleep, McClain, yours was an exuberant spirit, it was light, your smile was joy I could touch from a still image, innocence like that, I'm nowhere near it, your laughter is infectious and I'll never hear it, but your sobs, your final moments, burn like a poisonous fire inside, you were so full of life and you died in fear, it's *******, I quit, I'd never **** an American out of national pride, to be that lost as a cause my soul would abandon me because I couldn't even find my way back with a spiritual guide, I'd rather the right to remain silent be outright denied, so all the sealed lips are finally pried, there's no answers to anything without discourse and discussion, a dialogue from either side, when the people have exhausted all arguments, fight until the last drop of blood is dried, we celebrated independence, and Lady Liberty sighed, we lied, we're not United States, we are divided gates, I live in the suburbs, I know my neighbors are doing great, it makes my teeth grate, there is prolific hate, frustration enough to drive a man irate, it's like warmongers, embittered diminished returns, Iran, well I ran your license plate, found out where you ate, ready to catch you up and show you the drill, fearmongers, making ignorance stronger, wound up and ready to ****, tourists in your own home, killers homegrown on a bank loan, I'd rather dive off a bridge than enlist where I live, I'm in the middle of fair wars, I'm no fan, I'm no Afghani-Stan, they say power is measured in a nation's fleet of aircraft carriers, there's nothing scarier, than to have known, you could line em all up to hear the bray of ***** from the bay of pigs, a brigade of world leaders strafed by migs would get smoked like cigs, and they'd come for your kids in a draft before they'd come after me, offering up guns, they want your rising sons

I felt heartbreak for a young man I never even heard of before, cops mocked his death at his own memorial, I couldn't shake his beaming face and they pushed him through death's door, I'm unemployed, and I'm so ******* annoyed, by utilitarian standards he had every right over me to live, he was a massage therapist with a longer life to give, I'll never be half as loveable or kind at a glance as he is even now, if I could give you a second chance, you'd only have to tell me how... it's like they're big game hunters and big name hunters, with no shame under, remorse is important when you carry a weapon, if you use force you need to feel the brunt of that, it's no small indiscretion, being law is supposed to be tense, if you slip up on the job, people can die, and that guilt never relents, so where's the missing elements? There's ineptitude and attitude, shrewd and crude police, you cannot flash enlightenment, but the blues always come with some jazz and a sense of entitlement, it's a wonder where the good samaritan went, so, we live in this ongoing American Experiment, lab rats one and all, who knows what the hypothesis meant, equality was never sent, we can die for it and still be killed for nothing by the government, it's an abomination, the administration of conspiracies that bring stable geniuses to their knees, ******* generations and spread disease, no love for your fellow brothers and sisters, your voice they resent, ever since the end of the Obama-nation, we're dreaming of living within a wall, away from you all, with economic power and arms to stand tall, while from the inside out we fall, it's easy to pin every problem on Trump, he's the scapegoat to end all scapegoats, he excels at being the public punching bag president, but there's hail to the chief and there's head to the snake, it's a cancer, we're so strong, we held ourselves up for so long, trying to remain prominent, it's been imminent, if there's a countdown I'm giving it, under suffering, many people split, with no peace, no justice, only the declaration of a conflict unrelinquinshed, under the rule of total *******.

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?

I wished I knew what you meant, the accusation after fighting
like a parasite, eating my retinas, I was blind
I turned my view back, further back inside, and I saw the guilt as plain as day that you were right, I was gaslighting!
Before I even knew what it was, what was wrong with me, I was a poison pill that collided with your life like an oil spill
and I could have left so many times, but I oozed back in to make you sicker still through sheer force of will
there's no forgiveness in my future, I am staring at a jury of myself
I have been on trial for so many wasted nights
chewing through brain tissue, nobody is home, but I left on these dull, blue lights
the worst part of me knows I didn't want to see
it took so long to come face to face with your meaning,
despite the clarity, my anger is a part of me
I accept your judgement for I am guilty
I named him and changed him, shuffled my actions under trickery
and played with the notion I didn't know my own identity
but it is no different than the explosive rage that lives in all the men in my family
I am a genetic failure, with the same predispositions
too late now, I know better than to extend another apology
my conscience is a dying machine, I have no naturally good inclinations
only self-interest and this numb and mundane suburban life of defeat!
I am in a luxurious, all-expenses-paid grave, watching my life go to waste from the most comfortable seat.

I had escaped that way of seeing
truths and mistruths, so long ago
the pests of manipulation are teeming
in every piece of dialogue, everything I know
unwritten words and actions ripple with affect
and unsettle the world, dread alone can't stop tomorrow
I've seen the strings of prediction
influence and control, foresight is a frightening rein to forego
carried off by the affliction, let it all rot in dereliction
this snow globe is hot enough, preservation of your life is tough, the idea of hope is an alluring attraction
that draws life over time, the fatal equation
arriving at peace is the only solution

Corrosive as the skulls gives
to rust and self-perpetuated acid
this wasteland, where no man lives
chaotic, driftwood thoughts flow downstream amid
a riverbed of sleeping titans, who's hatred
like their tools is a weapon, the bolts hold the head together, their wrenches only tighten
they snore thunder, migraines, and whole months pass
sulking, shoulders bent, a cloud over me, can't even be saved by the bell at mass
a preacher, a rabbi, a pastor, failure as a teacher, lower eyes and walk past her
anyone can praise the strength of resistance to anxiety and depression
but nobody views rage as a power, you own up to it and pray it away at confession
because burying your anger, letting it out in fits and hiding for years, it only opens the window a hair to leave a full-bodied impression

We've always had to push that down and make it drown in our blood and guts, no ifs, ands, or buts, it's the topic referred to as your "you know who's" and "you know whats"
chronic, always over the shoulder like a kite tied to a noose,
balance uphill in the fight all the time, it can be let loose
I've seen people of integrity and the upmost decency get roped in by the pain
for it blinds me to the punishment I mete out and deserve, being so **** vain
I have taken freedom from soaring birds in my life, brought them down to my storm cloud level and held their faces in puddles of rain
it is hard to see anymore if I have swallowed the bottle or the bottle swallowed me, I choke on hot iron and I can't feel where the neck ends
even if it's bottled up, how do I pour it out by the cup when I know that with it I can ruin my whole life in less than fifteen seconds?

Rust on the throat bone
Unsheathes the summoning cry
For this ill omen
When the moon is so close and the light so sick
It is as if the earth is trying to whisper to it in hospice
A faucet leaking off the knuckles of a weakling
A testament to that inherit the meek thing
Echoes in the dark throughout the hillside
Attentive beasts break to stand on hind legs
Inverted towers all shake the owners from the windows
The emperor bows to the beggar
Death barks and begs
Close as the world will ever get to Luna
Seas crash to show sadness with the petulant expulsion of grief
Oceans roar and storms wash away centuries to great forebearer's relief
All salt in the water will wash away
Take time for the eroding spirit tied to the beach today
While these elements wear the skin out and down with each appearance
Driving the illusory blind meat believer mad
Take solace in the slaughterhouse line
Animals all meant for one barrel of trimmings
Set to make the same compost when the razor beneath starts to grind
Let the tier drops splash the surface above
And all those on the precipice of the Luna seas be crushed by their sadness
Take with you a balled up fist inside the chest and air of bitterness and go forth into an indifferent space
Let us put an end to this.

All your gold can buy the world
if you divvy it up and pass it out to everyone
within this generation the concept of poverty
would dissipate as does volcanic gas
this endlessly desirable fantasy
let in a djinn overnight; all the wishes granted
no problem, happily ever after marriage of morality
mortality, meaning suckling at the matriarchal dependency
on vapid materialism, provide insipid commentary
insert ownership over what you work for
earned, ignore the desperation of hunger
if you're born rich do you ever fear that you'll die poor?

If you're born poor it's this disadvantage, locked windows
closed doors, a drawn line, below those who have more
frowned upon for clawing, illegality in relief, margins in these textbooks
statistics washed away cleansed suspension of disbelief
invisibility, hide their faces to hide from the blame of the broken grief
harder to face is that if everyone had a check for a billion dollars
feeling like the flame tongue burned its mouth in biting off more than it could chew
accounting for those who don't cash in, money would cease to mean anything
the powers that be would either stop it to save the global economy
and call for crisis, reflection, as great tyrannical wings within us all unfold
all-consuming, there is one universal pain every living thing has known
that is how it feels to be cold, to be hungry, to be unclean, judged by status
outcast and made alone, in theory understood that everything can be lost
when the hoard goes out, shining coins incite a revolutionary vision in ignited eyes
that vibrate, quivering excite, inhuman shiver, silver sparkling in the night
all institutions get topsy, turvy, tossed, Saturnalian days until the end of days

There is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to envy
hatred is so easily assigned to flaunting fools for their behavior
whose importance is overinflated with their egos, in turn their stocks rise and fall
the chest of the dragon as it sleeps, all of us a dream, let them be
controlled, the prayers long whispered, cried, muttered, otherwise uttered to the stars
the heavens and the so-called Stars, is all revealing of the wishful nature
true power is all mankind under these wings of gold
being as at peace as one kind man, unbothered, unburdened, unfettered by the definition of health, a rat, clinging to the foot of a hanging dead ideal, consumerism, capitalism, communism, perfect Marxism; the hoarding of wealth.

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.

Oh, child
you look so disheartened
your hair in knots and eyes full of dreams unrealized
all the space in your head is burning kindling, all smoke and sadness, all rooms occupied

Be like water
which is a key to life, free and fulfilling
never breaking, ever-bending, the ashes you clean from your nails
when you stand again and face the world, knowing your will is never ending

All people are an ocean unto themselves
their depths and intensity as severe
every bit as full of life, ever flowing
and they break off into rivers and streams and falls
which change the land forever, often never knowing
that no one is so dark, so shallow and alone

I want to drown beneath the surface of a human
and love them for what they are, imperfect and dishonest
teeming with faults and bubbles
but I am a troubled wave, crashing and rolling
content to wander the vastness at best
while passing all these glimpses into my own sinking abyss
I follow a star and hope it's enough to lead the weary to rest
oh, child you would have such a different life than this.

I am so angry that I slip away from a recognizable persona in my rage
in my younger days I called this temper by a name, mistaken
for a personality all its own, I called him Thomas
I hated him, myself, separated from my actions
to claim responsibility for wicked mischief, misdeeds
amoral, apathetic and unconscionable misdoings
that by burying him I only cried wolf to seem safe
to those who loved me, as even years might pass
and I would be so well-behaved and never slip
but the bitterness is repressed, bottled
it is the Irish, my grandfather dancing a jig on my heart
and my father before, who withdraws into remorseful isolation
from standing over me with his belt and seething,
who works away for weeks,
it is the curse of all the men in my family
the predisposition to heart attacks
we who die of broken hearts; explosive
ignoble, ignorant and all the damning damage we do
only the very best of men grow beyond themselves in this regard
as my father did, though in his shadow I cool my heels
content for this poison to run its course
that I might die in touch with an honest merging
of two sides
of one dead snake.

If you're reading this from the end
stanching the unfathomable river bend
please unclamp your hands, the fae is a friend
to all life of all the lands

Her royalty is only signifying
the fairy princess; her tears are drying
they worship their loss-born deity
a majestic tree of negativity
upside down, roots penetrate sheer stone,
to grow into another world entirely
as dark as a ghost in a graveyard on a new moon, alone
as vibrant as ****** glee, jubilation and rejuvenation in proximity
her people glimpse this foreign past with awe
they revere their dear mistress, a phantom love
her people run and play alongside her in the visions they saw
they are equal and share alike, life is lived laterally, none below or above
they bow and pray for her to appear, to hear her speak
she is captured and enslaved, forced to grant wishes
she is a goddess among them, her attunement made her weak

The dark fairy, both ancestress, sister and corpse of the fairy princess of yore,
summoned to another time and world, where magick is inverted in a way she has never seen before
worship at the tree that grows on all planes calls out and gives back her form
a cold butterfly flitters back to life, leaving its cage and smiling warm
and the stump that it died on grows back to a forest, as all the stones and steam engines turn to deer and foxes
little bunnies and mushrooms and logs, hounds and cats, fish and frogs, bees and bears and dogs
all the people stop fretting about all their material needs and stop thinking of places to be
and slowly forget of wishes and kingdoms, dragons and gold and even the fairy
they experience true care-freeness in the ecstasy of joy, o, true bliss
that only the pure love of a powerful heart can plant such seeds with a kiss
as they are so content they don't need to eat, or sleep or drink
the people forget to live, they are overwhelmed at her return and thus forget to think
and all of those, the little girl who caught her and everybody who used her to make a wish
die one by one, as her heart breaks into pieces, crying, while every human succumbs to a final, ecstatic paralysis

Without people, the forest overtakes the continent  
idyllic to a fault, over abundant animals and insects, predators and prey
generations passed, the dark fairy becomes a leader, quite prominent,
before the fairy princess is lost in her own entanglement of power, unbalanced nature, unjustly you might say she once again fades away.

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.