Seeking moisture,
Eyes are
Earthen creatures.
Broken stalks stumble on
barren earth,
good earth, but barren
earth that shelters
Fourteen
Thousand ants under the space of a single
spades-worth.
Dust-wind blows
a tearful melody on the necks of laborers,
Omniscient, yet naïve-
A spades-worth of tilling,
A single day in an eon,
A negation in a wave of self-doubt,
A grudge of a thousand foes against the shadows of
Fourteen
Thousand ants under the space of a single
Thud.

Symphonic
My fist was first five fingers
Flowing Favonian into the palm of my radiant mother
As cheeky as a sprite, soon I revelled in the
Crisp light of the fridge and all its chilled visitors,

A skin-deep draft last week, a raging harmattan yesterday,
Barren among the fruitless lands of Mesopotamia.
Crawling, my sergeants and I led the way through our childhood fantasies.
Ali Baba's fortress, the ruins of Babylon, and up to the lately perturbed Euphrates.
I dropped my automatic rifle,
hurriedly snatched it up in the unforgiving desolate,
just in time to
narrowly dodge the absent onslaught of enemy gunfire
Only to witness a serpentine strike and an explosive splash
Of metal violating my infantile hand, a hand that was trusted and was caressed
Now merely a bludgeon to satisfy the steel-clawed slash of the shrapnel
A buffer to the skin of my wide-eyed physiognomy.

Waking up in the loose sheets of a completely unremarkable beige bed,
With the deoxygenated breath of the novice surgeon liquidizing in my veins,
It was almost too much to handle (if you'll pardon my pun).

These days it is
The good hand with which I
Uncork, pour, and serve.
It's with the utilizable limb with which I
Ignite, shift, and steer.
It's with my brain that I
seethe
And it's with my stump
That I knock.

A drab drop drips
Downed casualty
Down casually.

A sulfuric gust cycles
In three fly-by nights.
A gust hoping,
A breeze yearning to dab a wet tear off a moistened spring cheek.
Floating by on a wisp of breath,
Breathed once by the blessed. Now irreparably tainted, then incomprehensible anew:
Treated by the respirations of the perspiring, expending breath on czarist ears, aspiring;
Cured by the tongues of the insatiably dying
And by those primary soothe-ers, invisibly crying.
Alveoli gripping that sine qua non of civilization
Until they must release the once-oxygen into the hills of Kyivan Rus.

A first breath and second
As much as a penultimate and final.
And witness to the chronology that led to such a
Bloodbath-blessed blast
As this.

A periwinkle snap of the fingers
A glazed-over, ungazed-at afterthought of a dimwitted maker
Allowing only specks of atmosphere to puncture through for gasps of air
An assassination without capacity for reflection or modesty.
Broadening my horizons, my eyes adjusting to the sun's sheddings,
I notice the satin ribbons of the west, trotting over the hills, blood-lusting,
Roaring in anticipation of the persecution of the dry, dusty chandelier to the north
Forcing the lumination,
Breaking open the porous night-covering threatening to its final breath
The self-mutilation to bring it and its 3 navigational acquaintances to the bone-encrusted, sadistic
Hell of the humans, modern-day Terra, the disease-laced, frayed blanket of Gaea.
And as I viciously avert my eyes as the first blow finds a weak exposed abdomen,
I pray to God that I might participate in this brawl,
And I curse high heaven that it is so fateful a dusk.

A stable, a stable!
Something stable for this horse!
Master trots in with a syringe...
Amphetamines have been known to work on these beasts.

Captured young, raised a pawn,
Played and sacrificed as an august maiden in spring.
Master jerks the horse this-a-way,
down the narrow alleys.

The scene of Italy:
Passionate for romance-
Warm, kindled as Master's desire,
Icy, calculated as Master's gaze.

Stately Master carries head
In such a way that Master's future queen
Might recognize Master
And find truly obvious romantics.

But lo! No gaze returned and
Dashed! Master abruptly halts
And begins his pauper-ly descent from me,
His high horse.

The cry
of the barrel screams
Screams resound across the earth's
Great Expanse
Expands from the lowlands of Vail to
the valleys of Los Angeles to
the depths of Oceania to
the oceans of death and,
after incessantly increasing,
incredulously stops.

Except not really.

Really, to most Valians,
he was just a name in passing,
fluttering past consciousness just long enough
to get a "poor thing" or a "shame."
Really, his body hit the cement a full
7 hours, 6 minutes before his parents came work
from home, not the other way round,
Saw the alien body of their offspring, then the corpse,
and threw themselves
at lawyers, counselors, and more lawyers
as each professional debated which lover
he wanted as his teammate in the opening of
The Blame Games.
Really, the cessation of Adam's heart
didn't open the gates in exuberant expectation of
The true savior.
His beats stopped when
the world began
The lost change in between his seat cushions
never had just one meaning.
Really, he never thought he would
ever amount to more than a dollar.
Really, the only question that matters,
the only entreatment with gravity,
is, Was he right?

Apply yourself,
Apply yourself,
Or you’ll sleep on the streets all by yourself.
Don’t ask silly questions; don’t try to scrape by,
Apply yourself this time.

Try yourself,
Try yourself,
No matter the hurdles inside yourself.
Forget the drinking, the hunger, the pain,
Try yourself again.

Push yourself,
Push yourself,
We think the stress won’t **** yourself.
Just go to a college outside of your league,
Through a stifling program to get your degree.
But if you fail, you must be lazy;
Push yourself like crazy.

Stay strong!
Stay strong!
Let go of your thoughts that, “This system is wrong,”
Or, “9 months is too long,”
Or, “Crack makes me King Kong,”
Or, “Should I use needle or stick with the ****?”
Silly, such thoughts, with no motivation,
People today have no innovation.

Help yourself,
Help yourself,
When you’re in the church all by yourself,
Your mom’s in a coffin, your dad’s in a grave,
Your sister and mister both passed away.
And then a man (more hardworking than you),
Comes in and kills you, right in the pew,
Blood seeps out and you sleep evermore…
Listen to us or be one with the poor.

Abstract, cohesive,
Invigorating, sobering
Hypothetical absolutes.

They begin purifying the ground,
Wearing not black, nor the noisy character of day, but the ambiance of the rising of the moon,
Stealing through the enclosure, lit as at a dark twilight.
Not robbers nor beggars; skilled and cunning they fertilize unholy ground,
as idolaters often do.
Riddled with holes, they take the appearance of the corpses of her…
They seem to respond to Him, Him, Him alone.
He yells, “Descend, descend!” and she holds His stare, unable to respond, dazed, feeling as if to have ordered the command herself.

At sea (The Atlantic): Specific in the attempts towards land, firm-browed.
Until Leonardo/Jack/Iscariot runs on and Hope falls (jumps?), over the side, lost to the sea.
Ariel after the witch.
(At least Lost At Sea and The Little Mermaid were nominated for an Oscar! Leo couldn’t come through for Titanic! she smirks.)

That anonymous grin slowly disappears.
The Father steals the chords,
His Son goes for the teeth,
Their Eternal Companion with the lips. Yet

He

Remains.
Cursing heaven and hell with the ****** features she has left, weeping.
Yet she ticks, follows the schedule, knows not of the Divine confirmation with lubricating Oil. (Confirmation of what, she asks.)

And she knows life’s supposed to be joyous and full-formed,
But this play is too complex for her to perform.