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Derail your anxious train of thought

Open your inner spirit

And enter the dream corridor
like a leaf from a tree in its dying season

Coma come quiet
Airless linger delight

Sacrificial pasts
give you the power
to leave places

The world won't get better
but you will
~
Think Tank (noun):

A place where thought and reason
Go down the drain...


See septic tank.
~
Sep 26 · 399
The New Queen
Carlo C Gomez Sep 26
An arranged marriage
A love that never was

So many secrets
And untouched lands

The burdens she carries
In pursuit of happiness

From God's forest
Of dusk line hills

The plainstones palace
Is the necklace she wears
To commence the descent

A soft jubilant rain
Promises borealis
And offers of peace

She prays silently for each
As they lower the crown
In a flourish of confetti

It's all about pageantry
It's all about possession

And the way she sits
On her throne
Like she sits
On the King's face
Sep 18 · 1.1k
Every Mournful Breath
Carlo C Gomez Sep 18
calm seas, restless lungs

breathe it in
the mournful breath is out there

skin is numb

the words are too

holding still
hidden under the tongue

holding
hidden

one more dies before he gets there
(what did the letter say...?)

holding
hidden

what did it say...?
Sep 14 · 303
Landlocked
Carlo C Gomez Sep 14
~
The method is slow
And probably dangerous

From your telescope
Fewer and fewer places
No advancing horizon

Are you rendering again?

Two miles of uncertainty
Too much undergloom
You don't remember his face

It's war of attrition
A home for you
No place to run
No place to hide
To live is to die slowly

~
Sep 3 · 475
Careful Now
The holding place / The tablets of your memory / Little slivers of death / We can keep finding ways to go further
Sep 2 · 230
Area 41
It's not your fault

the lines on your face

are familiar seismic places

some are lakes

some are caves

some have seen their better days

but the thought of you

hiding a hundred years

of advanced technology

from your ovaries

and letting them wither away

keeps paranoia from lowering its

drawbridge
Aug 24 · 423
I Came to See the Wreck
Carlo C Gomez Aug 24
~
The ballpark is on fire

And there's a man

In a hospital gown

Directing traffic

~
Aug 16 · 423
Period Rooms
Carlo C Gomez Aug 16
It always happens
with the sunset for him;
marital love
at sixes and nines

Memories are now
missing parasols;
canticles of bliss
--emotional screening devices

Chimneys smoke
as a way of laying claim to serendipity;
it's a marriage of conveyance

And their daughters lie in empty fields;
early to the party,
seeking the sun
like a lover

Across his chin
sit scars of the crusade
--the first pain to linger,
the last kiss to haunt

The evocation of his betrothed:
mending her gown
and how she wore the forest
on their wedding day,
but peeled it all off
at his request
that one singular evening

To be naked and shiver;
to be naked and shiver
at the anticipation in his arms

The master of the house
now enters the secret chamber;
and in the throes
of glory-light, he adores
his wife in the carnal means
she likes best
~
How did a dead man in Reno
come to be a field of ink
in the Martian salt flats-?

It only took a whisper

An addicted civilian
driving the metaphor machine
the last man to voluntarily fly
asleep and well hidden
writing about his life
without survival techniques

Autopsy report says
he slipped at the hand rail
blemishing his planet
in riding time's escalator
a longing to see the stars up close
and give them new names
it's the future grim repasts
of cullen shores
from a cancelled earth

That silently floating figure
was a human all along

~
Aug 1 · 532
If Children
~
A mouth to feed
A lawn to mow
I don't feel young anymore
If children were wishes
If their smiles, the family glue
Aureate light would reflect
From the ceiling of my heart
If children were wishes
What would become of you and me?

~
Jul 25 · 518
NC-17
Carlo C Gomez Jul 25
~
Sun drips
on leaves

not the backyard variety
but the trembling kind

the kind
that welds night-time
intermissions to
the roof of the mouth

sonnet-filled
evaporation
reveals
the timely concealment of
a very, weary
inanimate object
at the brink

just enough hip
to be woman

just enough wild
to be frontier

~
Jul 14 · 903
Space & Awareness
Carlo C Gomez Jul 14
~
"Why is there only one chair in this room?"

"This once was an island." She replied.

"You favor this place then, I take it?"

"How can I not," said she. "The dawn here is quiet."

"Not on this floor, you are much mistaken! The stairs are like an avalanche."

Looking down at herself, she quickly changed the subject. "There are barcodes on each breast now."

"I see. Were you nervous?"

"Only when focusing on the morning break," She confessed. "Otherwise I was much like you--killing what keeps us alive."

"Is that so bad?"

"I wonder. Sometimes I still feel the bruises." She stated. "But I am told this is normal."

"What else did they tell you?"

"To quit worrying about not being built to scale," she stated in displeasure.

"...and?"

"For me to prepare to fall again for the apocalyptic things written in the sky," She admitted with a wicked smile.

"What's so funny?"

"I recognized your handwriting long ago," She uttered into the centrifuge.
~
~
faded mauve
butterflies
fluttering along
defeated
selenitic walks
the sound of
abandoned ship bells
in the far
parlor north
but the guilt of
wind is silent
like Venetian whispers
from motionless lips

us, then
inward and upward
one step too far
a house of strangers
tipping like boats
seaworthy as sleep
oars divide
the ocean
but framed pictures
and love letters
unite the walls
to this unstable floor
then, us
always, us

~
Jun 23 · 399
San Andreas Fault
Carlo C Gomez Jun 23
The line in the sand

is at such incredible depth

but suddenly obtainable

through unspoken tragic demarcation

whatever the outcome

the 91st floor comes from underneath

they say today is happening

outside of me

and from a window

along the stress fracture

it's falling decidedly at your feet
Jun 20 · 732
We Are Narratives
Carlo C Gomez Jun 20
letter by letter,
     some of great lust,
     some of espionage,
     and secret meetings.

part film,
part theatre,
part fever dream.

we were woven together somehow,
      like we were characters in a book
      being read out-loud somewhere.
Jun 13 · 619
Distress Signal
Carlo C Gomez Jun 13
~
she's thunderstorms.
she's asphodel meadows.

I fall outside of her
into the suburbs of askew,
where she hides behind
happy occident, where she
lives with the afterlife of a man,
but is in love with a scientist.

a jaded thing, she likes
to drop anvils on her
husband's head and blame
her fragile scaffolding,
she wears the wreckage
on her face, it's far easier
than admit her own fallacies.

before the children came along
she was able to pour some
of her own frustrations
into these knotty tussles.

now the midwives have left.
now misadventures in her
own backyard commence.

no hiding place down
the front of her,
the remaining secrets
come from underneath.

but if you trust her
and go along, she knows exactly
where to lay her hands.

~
Jun 6 · 544
The Lacemaker
Into sky
Synthetic sky
Into cloudless recesses of
Artificial sun

Help me lift it up

Tubercular layers
And acetylene light
Below I sleep in a spiderweb
Where scavenger's reign

By design
Delicate
Intricate
Singularity
Worn for a vow
Worn as a shroud
Our night is falling

I come and stand
At every door
Next to manufactured girls

Hoping to lift you up

The ghosts they draw
On my back
Want no light to shine

And so I must
Leave it behind
For the man coming after me
Carlo C Gomez May 24
~
Ladies-in-waiting
reflecting on
a fragile state of mind

precarious creatures, these
hunters of coal
that outlines both
eyes and words

black paint for blue girls,
they pray in a circle
for their queen's wedding night
to be one of celebratory rapture

deep into the looking glass
they peer for a sign,
a soul, a stigma,
but cannot see
beyond their own glib faces

a universe ago they
caparisoned as pixies
in sunflower corsets,
twirling in a centrifugal forest

tonight in eclipse,
in their all-together,
they merely wear masks
of their former selves

the firelight dramatically shifts
in bacchanalia pratfall
--the oblong menace
of their smiles, fingers and navels
dancing to the age of Sideria

~
Carlo C Gomez May 21
~
Shoreline sorrow
In the light of grey
Deep water, snowy day
As you tuck your children
Safely in bed, remember
Lake Chelan has a reputation of
Never yielding its dead

~
May 17 · 446
The Monolith
Carlo C Gomez May 17
~
Climbing the chemtrail

But subject to the ladder

Our one hour empire

Stark as a skyscraper

Built to fly then fall

Has bled into a church of

Abandoned factories

And polluted rivers

~
Carlo C Gomez May 13
~
A scribbled note passed
from one insider to the next.

The day she runs out of people
she'll conference with birds,
fall asleep a child
and wake up a woman,
broadcasting from home
on the night in question.

A hundred years from today,
she'll hold on to dead flowers
from the fairground encounter.

She will avoid the bridge,
circle instead around
the walls of Jericho.

She'll write upon the wall
like it was her heart.

~
May 6 · 294
Improvement #3
Euthenics is the slender reed of hope or recovery. Pretty visitors adept at taking what should be morose and converting it into something resplendent.
May 3 · 369
Playing Cleopatra
~
Bangle jangle
Strings of Mitra beads
Ankle-length sheath

Suzanna Hoffs
Painted lips
Shifting hips

Testing the poisons
Of her dance steps
Directly into the camera

~
Apr 29 · 1.1k
Vaccination No. 2
Carlo C Gomez Apr 29
Different
lines on the thermometer,
when it happens,
it moves all by itself.

Deliberately
random restless waters,
terrestrials standing on their banks,
recidivists having deposits
and withdrawals
at an inflated rate.

Dungeoneering
--the amplified gesture
means a convenience charge,
elevate me later.

Defibrillation,
I'm on the existential end
of viral paradise,
"the files you have on me"
are a trail of stolen pebbles,
sure to inoculate my final
walk into the sea.
Apr 24 · 687
Tunnel 13
Carlo C Gomez Apr 24
It must be dark
out here in the cold penumbra,
where mile after mile
no one smiles,

dots and loops,
dots and loops,
a kind of blissful nullity,
beautiful and pointless,

wearing at the edges
it almost stings,
seclusion unraveling
at the underground in us all,

aubade aberrations abound,
challenging the orthodoxy
of the troublesome
morning road,

but should this near-life experience
hydroplane toward
another mineshaft, it helps to know
less is less, not more.
Apr 21 · 684
Plot Zero
Carlo C Gomez Apr 21
~
It's all about
to become reimagined
along a foreign coast

Embattled shorelines
an archer on the beach
girl in a sling
facing the other way
playground martyrs

Random acts
of senseless violence
the warm taste of human failure

~
Apr 17 · 781
Line of Beauty
Carlo C Gomez Apr 17
~
Cotton duck canvas
on careful days
in a closed room,
intersecting tension,
energy and interest
for strangers to interpret

Three bashful belles
and lovers of art
undressed as a figure study,
cloistered together
in a line of beauty
for moral support

Their congregation assembled
in glorification of
angelic landscapes,
tempered by the mysteries
within convexity's arboretum

In unequivocal parts and gradation,
where good posture
and graceful presentation
count in equal measure,
to create Hogarth's
line continuous
--the Analysis of Beauty,
bended at the waist
to spread light through the canopy

During such exhibition
the belles whisper
under the rose,
of war and shopping lists,
they seem to avert eye contact,
gazes fixed to
the eternal sphere
ticking on the far wall,
never directly into the eyes
of those who come to
paint their *******
with sandalwood

~
Apr 15 · 748
Walls of Jericho
Carlo C Gomez Apr 15
~
It feels like the anesthetic is wearing off

This circus of machines

From coin-operated hostility

To wholesale apathy refineries

They tell us it's winter down in the subdermal

They tell us the foundation has grown weak

Dislocation is a incoming storm

Mirrors are distorted screens

Placeholders really

In a city without children

Even the statues weep

Snow upon the ground that was once blood

Now an empire without heirs

Even the trees hate us

~
Apr 11 · 1.4k
Bikini Bottoms 👙
Carlo C Gomez Apr 11
Sand witches, solar sisters, they are the
west coast in this part of the cosmos,
tied to the hip with American thighs
and Brazilian otherwise, donning
catamaran bottoms the color of
red liquorice and snuggly
they sit at their
international
dateline
as if by
magic
The American dream
had a tough childhood
and is developing symptoms
of a sinkhole personality

I take back everything
I said about the Panama Canal
there's nothing wrong
about being artificial
so long as it brings others together

If we bring it down to eye level
Mr. Paranoia feels outnumbered
the fruits of his labor
are all store bought

There are no more
drive-in movies within
walking distance
'cause Cinderella's dead
says the cult leader
Apr 5 · 777
Grafting Eureka
Star pupils, interstellar eyes,

gazing across the frozen nebula

at stick figures in radiation suits,

lovers intertwined with reactant valves,

planted into unearthly soil,

a distant light from over our shoulder,

the good comet returns,

there might be an escape pod

for intangibles after all,

and once inside, images of moonbase love

and alien encounters,

that neither mocks the comically misjudged

visions of yellowed science fiction,

nor longs for some utopian future,

an environment that begs escapism

without denying humanity
Apr 2 · 1.3k
Night Bus
outskirts of
Seagull-Sunday
tethered
in darkness
the road
is moving
at the perfect
speed

intermediary
spaces
like peaceful
trees
blend into
the fog
of circling
insects

brittle
nocturnes
an overnight
journey
spent
staring out
the window

forming
itself
entirely out
of the interstitial
moments
that make
for a sort of
homecoming
Mar 29 · 658
Invitation of Books
Carlo C Gomez Mar 29
~
Who can circumnavigate Avalon's depository and the palpable swoop down toward earthier terrain?

Yet, here I am.

Where is your gravity taking me, Kahn?

This building is an invitation, and I am humbled in this sense of arrival. The books are stored away from the light. So a man with a book goes to the light, the serenity of light.

And therein lies the hidden meaning.

But you won't let it become just a building; you want it to remain much a ruin; it's all somehow sinister in its celebration.

Occasional distraction is as important in reading as concentration.

And I'm reading between the lines in a corner carrel, looking out at academic crop circles; I grapple with each texture: it's this combination of imposing austerity and weathered familiarity that you seize upon to make your current landscape hospitable.

This building is an instrument, creates a sound in my head akin to music; and this music remains a glowing source of solitude, all driven by a desire to be hidden but sought after—a celebration of all things lost and unnamed.

Here I find closure by opening a book.
~
An ode to architect Louis Kahn's Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire. It is the largest secondary school library in the world.
Mar 26 · 1.4k
Ikebana
Carlo C Gomez Mar 26
~
Belonging to Eden,
the garden of
inescapable pleasure.

Prepare to fall again
for the pretty things.

The desire to preserve life
lies at the root.

The way of flowers
--let them beckon and bloom--
sincerely upright,
vessels for memories,
methods of communicating
with distant versions of yourself,
a conversation that could
drift into tears or laughter,
personal revelation
or total silence,
depending on the mood.

If only time and thought
could be as perfectly
arranged as flowers.

~
Mar 23 · 645
Fade Into Latin
Carlo C Gomez Mar 23
~
So where did you go?
Where in daydream tarnation are we?
     If only you could see my exodus
     and relent

Where are you now?
Matters of blood and connection
forming at the mouth
we are the fabrication
      --an image apart from ourselves

To break is something sacred
in the Morse code of brake lights
     through time stained windows
     through a thousand contractions
the dead are getting younger

If only you could see me
walk into the blackness
not to build a fire
       but melt, wander, disappear
       and relent
       relent
       relent

~
Mar 21 · 1.2k
Cecilia and the Satellite
Carlo C Gomez Mar 21
~
Absorption lines

Lagrange points

interstellar fingerprints

she played with time, variable starfield's constitution

the reply from space
as light through the canopy
heard in upward glissandos:

"Tonight I'm only made of moonlight..."

~
Mar 18 · 1.0k
Poem For An Ordinary Day
Carlo C Gomez Mar 18
soap and water
          dishes
          laundry
          or shower

brick from mortar
boys against girls

urban velvet smog
city vapors clog

this train -- there is a line
        beginners
        quitters

this parking lot -- there is a line
        shoppers
        influencers

open bar pharmacy, bottled water

                  no pity
                  no guarantees

dragon chasers
chin music
        
          lapsed short term memory loss

opening mail for grandmother
                the obituaries
                that ****** fly

a discussion among men
about a woman's voice
           come sit and listen

one last cigarette couple
walking home through the park
               driving alone in the dark
                             on the heels of
                             a reflection
                             of Christ
                             or an hourglass
                             in remission

them or not them
       just arrived
       just married
too many stairs
not enough elevators
worry about it later

them, definitely them
sharing beds
      under the leotard
      under the candlelight

a helping hand
finely manicured fingers
one stationary
        then two in missionary

word upon words need aspirin
            orchestrate
            headache
                            pillow is the threshold
                            tomorrow...soap and water
Mar 15 · 517
Ventures With Vultures
Carlo C Gomez Mar 15
~
His latest greatest film,
Spa Days Before Life Support,
welcomes back misanthropy,
ventures with vultures
--tasteless exchange--
a depraved ideology
that drains the heaven inside
his lead actress.

Straw men,
watching the storm clock
on opening night,
praise its framework
even if hollow within.

Visits to the ***** carnival
next to the reconstruction site,
leave the pamphleteer
with no options other than
filling silk pockets.

And his trophy wife,
good for the press conference,
bad for the environment.

Let the ladies know
empowerment
is another name for
imprisonment.

~
Mar 13 · 327
Mosquito Joe
Carlo C Gomez Mar 13
Rarebit fiend

with an insatiable appetite

zapped internally

******* off wi-fi

looking for hideouts

and new gold wings

the brilliant glow

through a transom window

summons him

feeds on the sleeping man

programming him

into a pathogen
Mar 10 · 1.7k
Euporie Tide
Carlo C Gomez Mar 10
~
In the days of Jupiter
during the age of
lovely intimate things

the abundant rain giving life
to a lactating mother

bloodletting
cloudburst

her magic ocean
and incipient seabright moon
together at the center of creation

~
Mar 6 · 408
Kathy Bates Motel
Not this neck of the woods again.
They say Annie Wilkes found you
and brought you here.

You know the face,
but not the name.

Leaving so soon?
You just checked in.

Death is not a parallel move.
Neither is living at the
Love will terrace apartments.

Eye of the needle and thread.
If wolf is at the door,
Guess who's in bed?
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker?
Or is it simply Norman?
~
I.
Killing Mary Poppins
with a spoonful of sugar,
the sugar from the medicine
on the other side of town,
the town called Silent Hedges
And A Bit Of Fluff.


II.
Only a display model,
her name is Marmalade;
skin white like the moon,
she wears her ****** stranger dress;
one of her sisters is dying,
the other never lived;
God is a far off concept,
the fuchsia colored ball on
an overhead power grid
points her way to salvation.


III.
Morning became something else:
bright decline,
cold things start to burn,
tragic saxophone
among the beckoning,
everything's a symptom:
tax exiles, imperialists,
girls talking nitrous
--mouths full of soil,
Virginia Reel around the fountain
(do-si-do),
ready to buy up impossibles
as the dominoes fall.


IV.
Memory is a chemical
to the girl who cried champagne,
like ceiling stars
during the prodigal summer,
she played the game
on all fours,
and found a drawer
full of quarantine polaroids,
some with blood in her mouth,
others, of rain on her birthday.

~
Carlo C Gomez Feb 28
~
Dead channel skies
Segregation in the flat fields
A hole in the silver lining
Where the fence is low

~
They fell from the moon last night
Caught in a strange
Chapter of fear
The land is inhospitable
And so are we
Wipe them from your mind
We must preserve what is left

~
Feb 25 · 749
Distance to Asylum
Carlo C Gomez Feb 25
Life is war,
my hands are hypnagogic,
so far from refuge.

The purgatory salesman,
an enemy with antlers,
speaks in hostile slogans:
create, destroy, rebuild, repeat.

My friend coma,
blunted and paranoid,
has lost her vital signs.

But Television says differently,
calls this an elegant demise,
you touch the screen
like you're touching God.

The immortal world
I'm hoping to collide with
is beautiful and closed to resistance.

But there are cracks in everything,
the snowglobe army
granular and brittle,
the constant uncertainty
of your universe
becomes a hiding game.

Take me with you
my halation angel,
to migration salvation.

We made our history
into mythology,
a mass of disconnected facts,
the stars may be dead,
yet, we're here
and we've stopped time.

Tonight I'm breaking
through the gates,
tonight I can see around corners,
suddenly, forever makes sense.
Carlo C Gomez Feb 23
Image
autumn
womb

sunset chant

a feathered fog, isle of wight

we all have places that we miss

lie still, sleep long
panoramic dream
snippets
bathed in seldomness

lie still, sleep long
the gentle hum of eunoia
holding their absence

like balloon days
when delightful little occupants
holding adventure
in their very hands

keep them
from floating away
Feb 19 · 608
Gasoline Rainbows
Carlo C Gomez Feb 19
~
Dressed for purgatory
But early to the party
So many bodies in the house next door
A living dance upon dead minds

A grocery store sunset
Thru the windshield of an SUV
Gets you distorted colors in
Gasoline rainbows
From those precise lines
Of the turning lane
Love ends at a traffic light

We do this to ourselves
All in the pursuit of happiness

Church of questionable things
Descending like vultures
Where idols once stood
For individual suffering

A pageantry of jackals
Quiet like sirens
Picking at parts of bad contestants
Playing a game called 'poisoned trees'
Fallen soldiers in strange negotiations
With meantime brides
Riding on the train of irresponsibility
For no apparent reason

We do this to ourselves
All in the pursuit of happiness

~
Feb 13 · 737
Choir Of Blessed Youth
Carlo C Gomez Feb 13
~
Once upon a timid willow

The sweetest songs of

A hyacinth girl

Floated on waterlilies

Had a sleepwalking lyric

The moorings of her heart

Overlooking undercurrent

As she dared all things

Gently down the stream

~
Feb 12 · 1.1k
Alone in Kyoto
Carlo C Gomez Feb 12
~
She is not our shrine,
she prays differently
with eyes wide open,
fingers on votive offerings,
preferring her solitude
in the Tea Garden, drinking light

Tomorrow on the tarmac
one flowered suitcase,
stamped for the city of neon people,
will travel to her song,
the pilgrimage of anemic lovers

Her hoisting from water,
(ampullae in hand),
and the unique boutique
growing out of
an alabaster chamber
bring monks out of hiding

The center line of her,
where the flower blooms forth
and learns by observation,
is still an unvisited temple

Until in season of calligraphy,
when she releases the Kogai
from her hair and sits with friendly toes
outstretched in the warm intimacy of
shared water

~
~
You're an island in the anodyne brisk.

You're a holm of lonesomeness.

Your divers in deep diorama
sink like boats.

There's coins and clothing
and troubling notes
left by a female passenger
imprisoned on watery shore.

Run aground,
you harbor regret,
and speak in tongues of folklore.

If I had an ocean I'd give you to it.

~
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