I remember the screams of the children out on the Common that night. I remember the deafening sounds, as sparks flew past my eyes. I remember the canister landing and pouring it’s smoke to the sky. I remember the look in that man’s eyes, with his hands stretched to the night. As he walked toward the chaos and knew he was ready to die for what’s right.

Chanting, “no justice, no peace”
Forced to live up to the promise

“No justice, no peace”
Turning the masses to prophets

There is neither justice nor peace

As they walk from their cells as free men

“No justice, no peace”

And must we live up to this promise?

I know I'm only who I think you are
I think you're gasses burning in a star
I think your pain has never fully scarred
I think you're sweet

And if you're only who you think I am
I'll be the gold dust in a sea of sand
I'll raise my voice so you can take a stand
I'll be complete

Steel grey mars the sky of a dead world

A specter stares at a stained glass rendering of a dead story he read about in a dead book on a dead religion in a dead language.

He sits on a dead tree and kneels on its dead kin.

A revenant sings

Smoke pours from the burning remains of dead plants turned incense - dying

He walks toward the pulpit

Carved and engraved by a dead artist from a dead town named after a dead slave owner

He grabs the pulpit

Dead skin of his fingernails gripping twisted filigree molded from dead vines

He speaks of life

Of Sunday morning soirées dancing in the summer heat laughing through the harsh winter laying under covers hiding from their nightmares board games on the floor of the living room of the new house on a rainy Tuesday afternoon the smell of pancakes every Saturday morning driving thriving twisting writing breathing bleeding beating

Living

And he almost forgets

She is dead

And his stories

Are ghost stories

I pulled my lighter out of my pocket

And dropped it on the floor

Surely accidental

I bent over to pick it up

And thought, “Does this imitate art?”

In doing so, I can say conclusively:

“It might.”

The eyes of my corpse are a shattered mirror.

I see in their reflection a hundred blue lipped hollow eyed refractions of the same moment.

This is it

Here - Now

The moment where timelines converge, forcing the universe to observe itself through me

Here,

Now splayed out lifeless and limp contorted to wrap around the patterns in the carpet whose million fibers reach out to embrace me as if to say

This is ok,

This is only here, now.

I am pulled through the floor into darkness.

I remember to breathe

And I awake.

The irony of spending a lifetime chasing oblivion only to cower in fear when confronted with its most pure form is not lost on me. I am a coward. I was always a coward searching blindly for something that makes sense, only to become lost on the far reaches of the inexplicable. Raging wildly against the mundane, only to to walk this same path that has so many times been trodden.

I tried to write a poem
But it was rambling and pointless
And now I find myself

Rambling

Pointlessly

About a poem that doesn’t exist

We were smoking molly off of tin foil through a plastic straw made from a pen in the public housing complex of a small town. It tasted like black licorice and the kind of bug-spray flavor that I’ve always associated with being poisoned. I was jammed. I couldn’t not be anymore. He took his hit and stared blankly at me. He fell sideways, shaking violently and jumped up as soon as he hit the floor. I almost panicked for a second thinking about walking into the hospital. Pin-***** pupils staring a medical professional in the face, trying to keep my head up from between my knees in the waiting room. He laughed. I laughed. We carried on this way. For some time, actually.

Deeper reaches
Other meaning
Choked demons
Random bleeding
Drawing traces
Displaced braces
In my mind

Fluids dripping through cracks in my scar tissue congeal microscopic bridges connecting permanent mistakes waiting to decay in my mind

Grim strafing
Wheat chafing
Smoke flaying
Dreamscaping
Loose laces
Short chases
Run races
Baseless
In my mind

Faint pulses jolt me awake and the street light shines in my eyes and the thought of my life streaming endlessly by leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside and dying leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside and living leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside and breathing leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside and knowing leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside there is nothing leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside leaves me panicked inside I can do

Every month or so he would stray from his narrow path, carrying a shovel. He would wander back into the forest--far enough to forget his path but not so far that he couldn't find this place again. He would take his shovel and dig up one single clump of dirt. When asked about this peculiar habit, he would profess his love for worms and filth but we all saw the bigger picture. His hole is big now. He climbs deep to the center of the earth for every pitch of dirt he claims, and I'm a little tired of climbing in after him.

Now Billy was OG down D Street
Where Joey got dead beat
Caught mean heat down D Street
Where Billy was OG
Cop beats beat pig feet when Billy was OG
But Billy run quick flee
When Joey caught mean heat down D Street where Billy was OG

Now Billy got mad beef
Got kids feed
Their mother’s got DTs
But Billy run quick flee from D street where cops don’t beat pig feet since Joey got dead beat caught mean heat

Now Billy caught clean chrome to dome piece
Got kids feed
Their mother’s got DTs
And Billy caught clean chrome to dome piece from mad beef down D street where Billy was OG but Billy run quick flee from mean heat that Joey caught dead beat

You see
There’s things in life we lose that can not be found

There’s things in life we lose that can not be found

Not be found

Not be found

As gravity is the boundary between the ocean and the shore.

As the eye is the boundary between light and darkness.

As a book is the boundary between religion and the religious.

As ideology is the boundary between the nationalists and the foreigners.

As weapons are the boundaries between the politician and his politics.

So these words are the boundary between you and I.

What light through yonder closéd window breaks

It is the east

And red is the sun

And liquid amber

Sinking to its home

What many flowers bloom here and shimmering catch my eye

To die upon my waking or falling to deeper sleep

Spinning mad futile psychoses delusional disorder persecutory follow me follow me follow me

Crucify crucify crucify

The lions are at the gates

The LIONS are at the GATES

Please — please, PANIC

They asked for volunteers and you swore

You SWORE

And here you are exposing the secret belying the deepest chasms of affinity for nothing be nothing be nothing be nothing

Thirty pieces of silver is too much

The LIONS are AT the GATES

You SWORE

They told you it would ****

They told you what it felt like to be dissected on a molecular level — to plummet headlong through a blackhole out from the context of what has been and into the being of all that will ever

YOU SWORE

And here we are — here I am alone

And the LIONS are AT THE GATES

And we’ve lost another solider to cafeteria food and freshly waxed vinyl flooring and the smell of unscented soap and non-alcoholic hand sanitizers and the taste of Bob Barker toothpaste that fills your mouth as you scrape your maw with ironlike hard plastic bristles and the sound of a door propping open as you shower to make sure you’re not hanging from the curtain and the taste you get on the back of your tongue when you feel the air that is so stale from locked windows and doors it makes you feel nauseous thinking about it and the girl in the corner of the room who colors and you know that she swore too you know that she swore too you know that she swore too because you were there

And I am left

HERE
ALONE
EVENTHOUGHYOUSWORE
EVENTHOUGHTHEYTOLDYOUITWOULDS­UCK
EVENTHOUGH
THE LIONS
ARE AT
THE GATE

I should have known.
They told me it would **** when they asked for volunteers.

An empire rises
It is built trading fetters and blood for gold

An empire falls
It is buried by an oilfield inside of a dismantled nuclear chassis

No gold to its name
Only fragments of promises
And lies
Fed to infants and children through play and flags and glowing screens and pledges of allegiance to dead concepts and gods who only love the people who spread their name and poison - literal poison that is the only source of sustenance for slave wage debt prisoners ******* at the **** of late stage consumerism betting every extra penny on fifteen minutes of fame sold to them by a man who built his name out of making things that say only that they are nothing and the raving somatic processes which stem from bleeding every other living being to get on top so you can scream from the top of a twisting metal skyscraper as it succumbs to the earth, “Look at me! I made it.” and the everyone who listens even though nobody really cares

Who grow to hate

Either

Everyone

Or

Themselves

Im the type of ******* that robs his parents front of everybody

Just to cop a couple things, kick some stones and throw a solo party

Most solid dude I ever met just ****** overdosed

**** the doctors think they learn from takin notes up in an overcoat

Walk with me

Through the alleys down the ave where people give all that they have just to stare into an empty sky

Walk with me

Through the shadows in the valley where the gods dont keep their children from the evil that is bounding

Where the holy rod of righteousness was stolen, sold for powder

Where the people lose their lives, not in multiples but powers

Walk with me

“You’re a ******* ugly mug,”she said.

Fragile lace
Draping from the nape of her neck
Fair skin glowing
Preternatural in the waning moonlight

Soft hair framing
Sharp full eyes
Piercing through the bedroom wall
As if to stare at the painting
In the next room

“I’d imagine much of the world is to you,” I reply.

Cloak yourself in the skins of your idols
Dance in the forest under waxing moonlight
Draw your blood over the sacred fire
Weep ecstatic

I saw you trance dance in the moonlight

I was too ****** up to speak

The way the fire light - it danced with you

Made shadows of your seams

If I could go back to that place

I’d tell you all the things I’ve seen

We could dance until the sun belied

The words we can not speak

We could trance dance in the moonlight

Get too ****** up to speak

Stand beside the fire;

Make shadows of our seams

Self obession will be the death of Me.

The spirits of those who came before chase me

The find me on the border of dreams

They haunt me with whispers of things to come

Cities not yet burned
Blood not yet spilled

The history of humanity is a history of war

They tell me I have victory coursing through my veins

That my mind is the storm from whence the Tuatha De descend

That my voice is the flame with which Fafnir conquered

That the Hall is open for me if I choose to take up my blade and walk

The history of humanity is a history of war

Fought for land
For lineage
For freedom

But what of this modern warfare

Fought for the whim of puppeteers

Fought for the ideologies of elitists

Fought to pave new paths of corruption

In hopes that they might relieve us the ******* of the former

How does one know what to stand for when all one knows is corrupt

How does one fight in a war against violence

Take up thy blade

Walk

Watch me - can you see it?
I'm decaying and the streets;
they're decaying
the buildings they’re decaying the poor; they're decaying the rich,
the rich are decaying the streets -
the streets they're decaying the hippies - punks all of them decaying
and the buildings;
your house it's decaying and your money,
your plastic cards the gold it's supposed to represent and the microchips that store the numbers that are supposed to represent how much of it is yours all decaying
and the oil reserves decaying the food supplies decaying
all of it.
Every single piece going back to where it came from but these words are just.
These ideas are just.
Just are.

One day I'll wake up
To a thunderous applause
Then a cackle of laughter
And clacking of claws
And as truths I've not spoken
Are ripped from my jaw
I will see that my whole life
Was nothing at all

But I'm trying to be
Whatever it is you said
While I'm lost in a minefield
Of existential dread

I am slowly fading, contemplating integrating with the sun. Don’t be afraid; I will come back for everyone. In quiet times. In silent minds. Backwoods Massachusetts nights. When snow falls, deafening the light. When snow falls.

Det skjer
Altfor mange ganger
Når letter etter lyssen
Vi finner bare mørke
Går det langsomt
Ut fra den plassen
Vi fant det første
Verken slutter
Eller begynner

I had a dream, yesterday, 3:33 in the morning.
The witches — they play with me — with my mind.
By the river that flows beneath the ash on an island in the sky.
They take me to a place that I have sought but can not find.
Where a river flows beneath the ash on an island in the sky.
They hang me from the tree, stick blades into my side. My blood — it fills the well until all the secrets rise.
Until all unknown I find by the river that flows beneath the ash on an island in the sky.

1:45 PM

My clock falls from the wall

Unacted upon by outside forces

The time reads

1:34

And 33 seconds

Theres black filth congregating in the crevice of every ninety degree angle in this building

The woodgrain in the floor invites me to melt into its stream down the hallway through the cracks into the grimy kitchen below

There are ghosts cooking there

Ghosts pacing the hallway where their corporeal form bade them farewell

Ghosts outside lifting weights and running calisthenic circuits

As though there were any merit in the shape of their supernatural form

As though the taste of chicken tenders and french fries still satiated their desire for self destruction

As though the world was still waiting for them, hand outstretched to

Wakeupeatgotoworkeatbacktoworkeat

Pay your bills

Sleep

This is no life for us ghosts -- we soon-will-have-beens -- we memories-waiting-to-fade -- we destined-to-be-soon-to-be-forgottens -- we clinging-to-what-is-nows

All who will not have ears one day had better listen.

We sat diagonally across from each other at a dinner table full of mutual friends. I heard you cackle, hysterical, at your own self-deprecating joke. I remember how I was moved by the way the smile left your face with the revelation of its relevance.

I think it’s funny, in retrospect, how I thought you dyed your hair.

Before I learned that you were born with a star locked deep within you.

Before I learned of how that star burst forth in supernova and wove the threads that are now sewing glowing sutures on my soul.

I watched you building borders
Riding north on golden tigers

Feeding famished families
All the brass that you could muster

Running rackets round rodeo
Seeping lifeblood from your victims

Until they scrape their tired bones
To feed you marrow

And yet you've come to loathe
The wild children

Who

Through misanthropic misdemeanors
Rage against the dying

Of the systems you have set forth
To feed into their ire

I was driving up I95 -- drinking holy spirits with some recently deceased Jesus freak when I looked away.

I heard glass smash.
I felt every bone in my body crack.
I saw all of the light leave my eyes in the back of an ambulance.
I saw a white light -- it said, "Hang tight, everything will be alright." Then asked me something silly like, "Do you know where you are?"

I woke up in my bed in my parents' basement.
I grabbed a page and a pen and I went.
To writing.

I wrote I swear I heard glass smash.
Swear that I felt every bone in my body crack.
Swear I saw all the light leave my eyes in the back of that ambulance.
Swore I saw a white light that said, "Hang tight, everything will be alright." Then asked me something silly like, "Do you know who you are?"

I lay back in bed, and the room starts to spin and I'm back driving I95 again.

I know what's going to happen soon.
I know what's going to happen.
I know what's going.
I know what.
I know I.

I once exposed myself to another man just to show him he was not alone.

Maybe I'm a prisoner
In a system

But you're a slave
Inside your mind

Spending all your precious time
Talking to mirrors

------------------------------------

Maybe I'm just a player
In some band

But you're a god ******
******* mime

Spending all your precious time
Escaping glass boxes

I tried to tell you just how dark it was inside
But all the lights were on that time
You said I sounded crazy

I tried to teach you just how dark it is inside
You said, "You don't know what you're saying, no, you don't know what you're saying!"

You were right

Loved the way dope moved
Stretched it for his cousin who
Rode bikes out in Lynn for a living

He one two stepped
A couple bundles from a stick
Caught his first finger
Flipped it cuffed a brick

Some boys caught wind
Bucked him right upside the neck
Now his cousin’s in some debt
And he can’t be found

I stand before you a King
A court of gods at my feet
They bow to me in worship
In jest
In mocking of my demise
Self-inflicted
And total

I raise my eyes
A yawning expanse before me
I have become a wisp
In the night
Journeyer to places
Spoken of only in dead tongues
Which will not be named again
Until this tongue itself has died

There I’ve found the beasts
Which wallow in the blackest mire
Scraping
Gnawing
Strafing
Wasting
Frightening
Guarding

The treasures
I came here
First
To seek

I walk with grace
Not gracefully
But alive
And therefore with more grace
Than may be deserved

My life
An affront to itself
A poetic type of irony
Which deconstructs the whole
To find each piece
Microcosmic
Our lives

Kaleidoscopic melding of melting crown moulding mounding

On the floor

Where I lay flat
On my stomach
Waiting for it to form
Into something more exciting
Or at least less
Digestible

A child’s pursuit
Of confounding
To turn around
And confound

To be got
To be able to get

What I’m trying to say is one time I ingested psilocybin mushrooms in the forest and climbed to the top of a tree fort. My friend told me to draw what I saw and handed me a pen. I grabbed the pen and it slipped from my hand to the ground. And I knew. I knew in that moment there was nothing to say. I saw two shadowed figures standing on the ground and one of them pointed up to us.

The wheel is turning
Ever and onward
Rushing at speeds
Incomprehensible
To the acute observer

Obtuse the angles
Of the eye which catches
The periphery
And sees moving
Or shifting

The pavement is veiled in zig-zagging patterns superimposed and waiting to split open revealing the universe

And I lay
Tired and wide-eyed
A stone stabbing the back of my head
Staring at the sky
Wondering how infinite
Infinity

A vain pursuit
To place words
Where there are already
Stars and space

What I’m trying to say is, months later I was in the same forest with the same friend who had given me the pen which taught me to speak. We were doing ******* off of the case of a digital scale by a fire pit lined with fallen trees. It was fall and it was windy and we all had to gather around to lay out lines so it wouldn’t blow away. My friend points to the tree fort and asks if I remember the time we sat there tripping. I remember the shadowed figures and I remember there is nothing to say.

Silence a slippery thing
Not like darkness
Gauged in tone
Simply there
Or not

Seemingly never not
Always a ringing
Almost chirping
If you listen close
To the walls

The stories of dead trees whose lives spanned unspoken aeons and whose roots tasted plowed and plagued soil - felt the crisp rain before we turned it to acid.

I hear this rain
I stand out in it
Feel it on my skin
Listen closely to its story

A stalemate
To say things are known
In opposition to that
Which dictates knowing

What I’m trying to say is, I spent a lot of time going back to that place. There were abandoned storage containers we used to smoke **** and drink beer inside of. I would try to phase through the walls on dextromethorphan, always getting stuck about a foot behind where the wall is. You see it’s not the wall you have to worry about, it’s the underlying concept of a barrier that manifests itself in a wall that I could never seem to get past.

Until that time
Asleep in the next room
I walked to the bathroom

Whispering walls foreboding dark fortunes. Blue reflections of artificial light contorting face and shadows.

I saw it

It placed one finger on its lips

The other hand outstretched
Reaching in to darkness

What I’m trying to ask is,
What I need to know is,
“What were you reaching for?”

Ikke hvit
Men
Den følelsen
Bare etter det

I feel the source of creation inside of me

I expand with every uninhibited inhalation

I contract with every exalted exhalation


The observer -

Ordered masses each doing that which is its prescribed duty

Driving forward and ever expanding -
Exerting dominion over all

Rejoicing the adoration of all who look upon its beauty

Et cetera
Et cetera
Ad infinitum
So mote it be

The birds of the South American jungle carry seeds to Norwegian fjords whose scent floats on wind to Australian plains whose creatures sing songs to which Californian redwoods dance to the admiration of Himalayan peaks who greet the birds on their return from where they came

I see standing before me a visage which I can not comprehend

Benevolent strength - awful power

I feel behind me his guardian - vestige of warriors

Grabbing my right wrist the pillar of justice - immutably unspoken

I hear to my left a roaring thunder which holds secrets none living may speak

I try to say the name and my tongue becomes a dagger

I drink from the waters of the Moroccan coast and they become dry

Pillars of salt rise before me

Irony

The cruel fate of thirst

To come to the place where it may be quelled and find only its first cause

In perpetuity

God is a lie

All is I

Health to those who seek

Health

To those who seek

I don't try to die anymore, and I thought my mother would appreciate that. She's still hung up on hoping I come to know Jesus before i do die, whenever that is. What she doesn't understand is that I know Jesus well. I was Jesus. I remember the faces of the centurions in my mind as they drove sharp objects through my wrist to atone for the sins of my abuser. I remember the days entombed, when I wallowed in the darkness with festering wounds. I remember the ressurection, when the angels removed my ******* and brought me once more into the light. I suppose she has a right to worry, though. I could get in to a car accident or something.

Ikke svart
Men
Den fargen
Bare før det

Sometimes I feel like I am about to figure out the punchline.

Everyone stops and watches.
Waits to see if we can end the charade.

Here—
Let me try—

Infant dies in NICU, never gets to question the nature of its existence.

No—
Wait—

Three year old child chokes on toy labeled not for children under the age of four.

No—
Hold up—

Six year old drowns in pool; parents too ****** up to notice.

No, no—
****—

It doesn’t have that ring of humor to it, that can’t be it.

I can feel it though, the laughter on the tip of my tongue waiting to boil over.

Here—
Let me try again—

Nine year old finds his parent’s candy, suffocates on his own *****.

No, no, no —
I’m close, I can feel it—
How about—

12 year old child plays with power tools, electrocuted.

No, no, no—
No, no—

21 year old man drives drunk, crashes into cemetery.

No, no, no—
No, no—
No, no—

25 year old man gets ******* sick of trying to see what’s on the other side of the painting, takes a bath in his own blood.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—

Wait—
Here—

ENTIRE GENERATION spends their whole lives trying to distract themselves from the fact of their mortality.

None Survive.

It was witching hour three sheets to the wind and a blinding high beam now spinning out of control into a ditch contorting cemetery fencing around the windsheild at windpipe height and I think to myself, "That's almost poetic."

Friedrich Nietzche once wrote that god was dead. It was a fictional death befitting Nietzche's fictional god, but as my eyes scanned the pages his words rang true. I am the world's ugliest intellectual -- stabbing at the eternal witness with shattered fragments of his own reflection.

How many veils must be lifted to see what is true?

Impatience - the curse of the dying
Who wait with bated breath
For it to be taken from them

Expectedly

The promise of eternal life with which to lift these veils itself a curse

Enlightenment

An ancient joke told by those who have seen true darkness

What could be left to ponder in such a context
With no constraints
And time an endless yarn
Not waiting to be cut

What matter the mysteries that might rise from the well
And what sense in waking from passive slumber
To have hand in the inevitable
Which eternal shifts

No,

Fading is the light

And from it’s last dim flicker may expand again

But mourn not the memories lost
The veils placed gently back to shroud things once thought known

For impatience is the curse of the dying
But death the blessing of the eternal

I found something
I can not unsee it
I can not unhear it
Although I never really could see it could never really hear it
I thought it up once
I could not tell you if I wanted to—
It will not go away—

I see it behind every scene
Its presence mocks me
Makes absence of the wonders of the world
How could something be beautiful juxtaposed with such obscene, grotesque clarity?

I can hear it always between every word spoken
It frames them as they roll off the tongue
Encases the vibrations as they make their way through the empty space and into my skull
Forcing connections between defunct neurological pathways trying to understand something—
Anything—

It’s the place where my thoughts come from
The feeling that penetrates deep within me

It is not dark
It is not silent
It is not numb
It is not empty

It is inevitable

It reaches from behind me and pulls at my ribcage
It weighs on my shoulders and gnaws at the base of my skull

Some days, it is a rabbit
It whispers in my ear
You are big
Your bones are strong
Run
Make for green meadows
We are waiting for you there

Others it is a dragon
It whispers in my ear
You are small
Your flesh is weak
Run
Make for dark chasms
My fire will find you

Its breath burns my nostrils
Fills my lungs
Consumes my thought
I am rendered helpless by its sting

How could something be painful juxtaposed with something so calm

So blinding
So deafening

How could something be so dark
So silent
So numb
So empty

How could something be so

Permanent

Please stop.

There are two sides to every painting

Only one of them

Is blank.

In light as dim as truth I sit
A space where I can not exist
For fear of being that which lies
'Twixt color and the canvas.

In light as dim as truth I'm bliss
A space where you can not exist
For I am here and you are tricks
Just colors on the canvas

I once heard of a man named Pascal who wagered that my soul was better off in the hands of a myth than left to my own devices, and as I lay here chained to my bed with my demons pulling at my ribcage I'm starting to think he was right.