A strand of your hair borders
my ocean of tears.
Grains of sand mold together
forming mud.
You stand nonchalantly on the berm
staring over the vast nothingness
of the waterway nether.
Ocean floor follicles utilize
microscopic cilia.
Tiny motile tendrils propel me
along rock bottom.
Octopi submerged in sand banks
wait, coiled callously.
Ambush tentacles envelope me while
pulling me into the bell.
My depths always seem
darker than yours.
Claustrophobic.
Suffocating.
Narrow.
Caverns and coves collapse, caving
in before I ever find them.
I'm tied to tumultuous tentacles tangling,
blocking my butterfly stroke to the beach
where your hair washes upon the shore
like seastruck flotsam building barricades.

I'm a machine-
gun wielding ******-
path of destruction
scorched by hatred
plumes of resentment
billow into the air above me.

Kidnapped
at an early age.
Given straps
and a surly rage.

I have a vicious commander
who wants to get even
so I find it odd
I should call him God
but that's the law.
My arms
an extension of his will.
My mind
an extension of his mouth.

I see my life chiseled in stone before me
it's defined by a maniac's brutal orders.
So in order to avoid misery
I embrace it.
My value is in violence
so I say carpe diem
and RPG them.

I mitigate my murderous misery
through ****** and methamphetamines.
Saccharine civilians deal with life
through hope and faith.
I resent them
for the life they've lived
for the hope they've maintained.
I wonder if their hope and faith will survive
after being ***** by a child.

We are at the mercy of blood alchemists. They turn lead into gold and war into paper. Their sacrifice based sorcery transmutes our possessions into theirs. They just need death in the equation as well as our placation.

The blood alchemists defeated the defensive zealots to establish a new leader. Their new leader had devised a formula for turning bigotry into power at the expense of sanity. He crafted a potion to control the minds of the malleable that poisoned his brain with paranoid fantasies.

In the fascist alchemist's perception, all protesters become demons in need of exorcism. Transformers and electromagnetic waves carry his insane demands to Ukraine. He demands the death of a statesman expressing contention. This is the formula for turning dissent into fear. This is the concoction that turns power into silence, he seeks to suffocate his enemies in dirt.

Followers of the fascist alchemist believe he's a god who can do no wrong. Townspeople see through this facade trying to explain he's flawed to mind controlled dogs. His spell is stubborn so citizens start sticking to strife after he obfuscates what's wrong and right while a politician's life hangs in the balance.

Conflict is conformed into cover as he uses fear of the other so subjects won't see his gunners killing our Yemeni brothers. He buries our problems in dust, that once unsettled, erupts into a noise so loud we can't call him corrupt. Ignoring the will of man he'll even **** his clan if they still his plans. His henchmen drenched in blood are as expendable as the foes he shoves. Summoning a power vacuum, a portal to autonomy, all the cronies crammed in his chaos cabinet are ****** out one by one.

So this attempted assassination is the final straw once the magistrate catches wind of his shockwave sins. The blood alchemist must attend a hearing where enemies and allies alike adjudicate his egregious actions. The hearing will be dictated by what seers see for our future. The verdict will be determined by the brain washed judging the brain washer. Before dissent could materialize into resistance, the blood alchemists slowly eroded justice until a force field formed to protect the trickster's horns.

imagine a calloused doubt.
cracked, chipped, clicking
like warped wooden floorboards.
soft from overuse
but still overrides willpower
in one palpitating breath.
grimy yet illusive
like your teeth after a day’s work,
collecting gunk that sidles up
to calcium companions,
crunching down on things
that become
so bland in the end.
doubt is offbeat,
monstrous footsteps hidden deep
off beaten paths,
its thudding is clammy and hurried,
aligned to the discordant jazz of
your alarmed body.
it tastes like
coppery heartbeats,
rising bile,
salt and mucus in the back of your throat.
it is a truly uncomfortable thing.
it stacks sweetly like buttercream pancakes
but crumbles you
with such a sour taste on your tongue.
imagine an agony that loves you.

Gaslight
Deanna Sabou

My sanity was denied when I remained truthful,
And so was my intelligence.
The scars wreak havoc on my body in endlessness.
The bruises were difficult to hide, and so were the tears;
My identity withered away and all that was left were my fears.
The mirror on my wall could not recognize the pale skeletal image,
Because she was so far away and the once golden girl was now conquering a deep scrimmage.
Against all odds, in the end I won;
The roses finally grew from my thorns, and my future has just begun.
For now, you are locked in your own isolated cell;
My scars have recovered and I now wish you well.
You being embarrassed of yourself was quite the rare site,
But now I finally took your opportunity, to ignite the gaslight.

Sands traverse oceans to envelop me
within the coercion of a dream of Egypt
as I search the turquoise of the medallion in my hands
to match the gray-blue of his eyes.

Too long have I willed for him
to sail the Atlantic,
stride through the door,
and sweep me from haunting this view of London.
But for now I am left
to my own image and a pane,
so I muster the meat of my palm
within this sleeve of lace
to brush it across the glass for a clearer look,
yet my efforts have revealed
no more than engorged eyelids reflected…
manacles of me.

Behest of self,
maniacal I am slated
to perform involuntary tedium,
hopeful to unlock deeper meaning
within each hieroglyph,
once so purposefully etched in a semblance of bronze.

I long to surrender
to the warmth of the taste of iron
caught in his sights over a tomb blanketed in gold.

I will come for you, Daughter of Heaven and Earth.

Spontaneous peristalsis of phrase
connects with the drop
gurgling through the candid quiet
and I wonder
if the image that now reflects would indulge him,
or if he might ****** the lock of dark hair
that he cropped from my neck with the skill of an assassin
when our paths first crossed in Cairo.

Time has softened the image I hold of him;
his eyes are satin,
burning like a flag still waving
as his army advances over our forbidden dig.

There is something
sensation-like in downfall…
copious saline embodies the fractal curve.

I found no scrolls of the Book of the Dead.

Here in my olive skin I rot like a peach
that’s been left in a satchel
forgotten to dust of the ages
disturbed by picks and axes
that strike with the determination of discovery.
A peach, never to be savored;
never to nourish or to pleasure,
or be trampled by insects
and carried off in pieces
to the hollow of the ant queen.

My eyelids are hard to turn like wet pages
forced to envision a river that is not the Nile
where I am held within the binds of propriety,
corsetted, bustled, and locked out of Egypt
dammed from the salvation
of even an intermittent Dutchman’s finger
by dunes and shores and footfalls
to find words that stream in liquid resonance
where firm succumbs to self and
I can feel passion writhing through my intangibles.

Thusly, clouds form over a city that blackens and distorts
the way a river's reflection of my face
would ripple from the plunging body of a dove,
belly-up, encased in wings,
and two thousand miles from him.

Arousal is a moccasin seethed in spasms
of peristalsis and musculature
toward the beckoning pulse of breast.

Any hope for contact collapses into flesh,
venom sheathes each corpuscle,
and a woken neck flails in judgment
before the truth in his eyes
under the shadow of the Great Pyramid
where Ramses II lies supine
across the Turin Papyrus.

I imagine the other side of me
and where she might reflect when
all that there is in such a study
contributes to my wanting
to wreak my bellied freedom
beneath crevices that sink as crevices do
in downward angled layers
to withstand the ages.

Dark hair gleams in contrast,
more for strip of scalp
than the trickle of red down my back.

Breached like sugar that candid—
starburst wings of Monarchs dripping ancient like sunsets
over magenta and milky mauve in the reeds—
my ankles revealed and inverted to the sky they glean, yet...

his arrival is delayed
when the pistol ***** three times.
The still of my breast compounds
with the steady union of the dark, and
somewhere denial flows with the sands.

So cycles change, like a fable for Eternal.

“Daughter of Heaven and Earth,” written by Dionne Charlet, appears in print in Cairo by Gaslight, the second anthology in the By Gaslight Series from New Orleans small press Black Tome Books.  Books in the series include New Orleans by Gaslight (ISBN 9780615801186) and Cairo by Gaslight (ISBN 9781516961528).  Both collections feature poetry by Charlet, under the pseudonym Dionne Cherie. Look for the upcoming anthology Paris by Gaslight, which will feature a poem of the same title by Dionne.

I wasn't always so easily discouraged.
I used to bristle with enthusiasm.
I glowed with it.
It didn't matter if the task was simple, or tedious, or daunting, or boring.
As though on rails, I slammed into each and every task with terrific force.

But I got older.
Things that used to come easily grew slippery.
What I used to do without thinking twice, I found myself over-thinking.
I threw the brake. I ground to a halt.
Finally, I became idle. A left-over husk of a kernel that's already been popped.
I drowned myself with doubts. Hypothetical situations that might never happen.
I lived in fear of what might go wrong.

So I began to watch everything go wrong, as though I was helpless.
I was no less able. I was no less compassionate.
But I had grown wary. Of what?
What was it that, out of nowhere, caused me to slow down?

I guess I looked down and realized that if I fell, I would not be getting back up.

When you're young, you have no worries, because nothing is relying on your success.
So you mess up a math problem. You'll get it eventually.
So you botch things with that cute girl who sits across from you. You're young, you'll get it.
Re-assurance, faithfully, unwaveringly. A safety line should I fall.
But I never really fell, did I? So why am I laying down like I have?

Get up.

Get up.

I worry about everything. I worry that I will fail.

I dread what comes, what I can't avoid. But time, and time, again, it comes, and I miraculously don't die when it hits, because I've been bracing for a train-wreck impact, a force that will really, truly, finally, definitely lay me flat for good.

I close my eyes, and brace. But the crash never comes. The silence that was continued to be.

I turn behind me, but there's no train there.

I'm starting to realize, with relief, (with horror), that maybe all I needed to do was step off the track.

I look down, and realize, with a first-creeping then-howling laughter that I was never on the track to begin with.

I look off where the track is. There's no train there, either. Maybe there never was.

Maybe there never will be.

My mind is in conflict
My mind is lost
I am losing sanity of choices
Not too sure what is ahead
And why do strange thoughts keep coming back.

In moments of clarity, it all looks fine and rational thinking it IS fine.

In moments of irrational and blurry imaginative state I am confuse and unsure.

I hope I can make the right ones.