Honestly I feel as though this entire time I've been pacing back and forth, accruing images of two ice caps slowly breaking themselves apart into tiny fragments of burning pitch that hurls itself onwards into the night, leaving bleeding trails of light as reminders, notes with coffee stains on the edges, written late at night without much light except for what scraps pour out from under the door from the reading light. You want to breathe normally but the bag won't inflate and it's so hard to calm down when everyone else is shaking and crying and prostrating themselves as though they'll consecrate the middle aisle with their cheap pleas for salvation, for their young childrens' lives, and for all the time they wasted ******* quietly in the dark after the reading light went off and even though they had a headache. They sing a song of mutual slump, of tacit awareness of the grandiose ******* of 75 years spent in too quiet comfort concerned with small victories and unconcerned with massive regrets. Then daylight breaks and you have to look your coffee stains straight in the eye and pretend they're just blemishes when they're sores and wounds and abscesses. And before long the paper disintegrates into brown pulp and you hate that you hate yourself because surely someone is more ****** than you. But that's just one moment out of the day, and you live them endlessly, you love them endlessly, overthinking, underthinking, drinking till you can't feel your extremities and then toying with a knife because you know you couldn't otherwise. Then you nick your pinky and realize how ******* stupid you must look, trapped in your own kitchen hearing your wife down the hall resent you more and more, her distaste, stained the color of sea foam off the coast of Cyprus, her frown fixed forever forward toward your back, and her face makes you sigh, and it's the same sound as before, sure, but now you know what is happening when these tiny admissions of regret escape from anyone else's lips. Then the plane picks up out of its nosedive and people cry and hold each other and you feel more dead than if your body had just ended up tangled in the wreckage of a turbine engine, your intestines laced between the blades like the back of a corset that gets tighter and tighter until you can't feel it anymore because you're numb.

The petulant embrace of a middle aged man
Signals my return from the bombardment
As the ramparts crumble, spraying choking fragments of
Grecian influence ‘round the temple grounds
He looks behind our momentary tenderness
To see the ruined state of the state
And as if spurred by some horrid god, cries
In the voice of his daughters,
“But from where did you amass such a guilt?
From whom did you learn to bundle your clothes up
All haywire and royal like that? What purpose
Is garnered from the dereliction of duty?
The rash abandonment of the grueling caste?
It prickles my skin, leaving boils and coils
Of wasted epiderms, who sit and wonder
About the condition.”
My tears welled with eyes,
Fresh droplets of sight dripping
With every twist of my neckpiece.
But from this point I must return
My liquefaction awaits eagerly
To hear news of the front
The bombardment must keep itself from reticence
Lest we lose our footing in the paradigm parade.

out to the shore, where he saw
|The pier|
rocked gently as moist folds in the ocean swept
|Onto the shore|
floated the consciousness of a thousand men,
|Waterlogged,|
we struggled with our clinging vestments in
|The hours of twilight|
brought with them clarity, along with the tiny, celestial fragments of
|Glassy, marbled light|
dropped, crashing on the table,
|Now broken|
from their moorings, the lanterns floated softly
|On the breeze|
they watched him just as they had a thousand times before, while
|We walked|

Topped in decadent
Impermanence,
Fleeting, ephemeral truths
As to composition, weight,
Significance of aromas
Precision and remain
La clé du succès

And yet, Middling amongst these
Quantities of victory, the variable,
The individual, whose own mark
Shall define that meticulously crafted
Breeze of leaves, mosses, and tree bark

Based in such mutability, Shelley himself
Might wonder why it is
These artistes de parfum
Create as they do.

I

A Genesis! The Exodus, the Exodus!
A departure from all terrestiality
Always immoral and depraved, bathed in filth, in self-loathing
Abattoir of our souls, it entrenches us

Also, we too must be of the same make
And bear with our corpses the same proceedings, the same caliber
Allowed to their subversive candor,
All that broke the Carthaginians upon their own passage
Across the peninsular pathways

S'il in our conquest we find, however, that the pachyderms have run aground,
Vous must aggregate our conscious thought
Plaitcate the ravenousness within the heart of victory.

II

Bring victory, the winged harbinger of the conquest,
Beg for tyrannical proclamations: the end of man, the end of men,
By now, the greater of the concepts is lost to its own devices, devices,
Belching out smoke, that bend the corpses upon their backs.
By wrenching from their life a sense of purpose,
Byproductively, they feed heroic romanticisms of combat.

Brought yet upon these fields, there lies no stranger enemy
But that of the tide
Being self-effacing, masochistic,
Belittling, She breaks herself upon the shore, ravaging the bodies of
Both, Playing as ******* and as subservient

III

Come! Wave upon Wave upon Frothing
Crest, to shores of golden enfrenzied ******
Calmed by the liquid of our ***** *****
Charging forth as we
Charge forth armies upon the field of slaughter
Callously, for you, our gilded monarch
Can you see? They cannot see, and we hope to elucidate your presence, they
Cannot comprehend or fathom what they
Cannot see.

IV

Ceaseless now the charges
Come further upon the front
Crashing 'gainst the openings of each
Clangor and madness
Coalesce to form death

Dripping anew with sanguine libations
Drawn fresh from naked lambs, freshly cut for their country
Dionysian warriors return,
Desire forming their mental undulations

Effortlessly they overtake their feminine fortunes
Effacing their identities, removing from them with their clothing, the
Entirety of their selves.

V

From carnal conquest they rejoice,
Flaunting the destruction they wrought
Flinging husks of women about the room,
Foisting these shells on other patriarchs

Given no choice, they return to fields of battle
Godspeed, gods' will, and god-granted
Gaian soil is retreaded by their sodden flesh.

VI

Hellish, infernal is their presence
Having lost no measure to revelry or rest, neither
Halting nor slowed, the march quickens in time with their lustful bellows
Hastened to madness by infinity
Harkened back to prisons of mental anguish by their creators
How proud they are, the Old Gods,
Hacking away the pounds of flesh to reveal the
Haphazard construction to their instruments of torture.

VII

Into the bloodshed, into the fiery cavernous opening of the crusade
Ignited by righteous scraps of cloth and metal
Ignobly formed into crudely significant, textured shapes
Iconoclasts to their own ideals
Idyllic in their self-mockery.

Jabbering like hellbeasts, the warriors drive into the flesh of the conflict
Jettisoning armaments in the process, their
Joie de vivre having been lessened by mechanical limits.
Jocular slaughter synthesized with demonic cries.

Kapellmeisters to the symphony of death,
Keeping in the rhythm of mutilation, counterpoints of steel clashing against breastplates, giving shape to a
Kleptocracy of life.

VIII

Languishing now in the refuse of the struggle,
Laden with corpses, the warriors remain restrained by fatigue
Lurching through the mud, calling out feebly with voices
Long since bellowed to pulpy masses of throat tissue.

Masses of flesh crawling across the fields of strife,
Macerated ground, weak and shifting, struggles to support the
Multitude of half-corpses now in eternal respite upon the bloodied pasture.

IX

Now broken with regret and shame they collapse
Nestled into the marrow of the fallow earth,
Needing only rest in the cooling tendrils of dirt and blood that trickle across them.
Né de nouveau, their trek leads them towards the grave
Necrosis having taken hold in their limbs,
Nascent corpses, they subside with grave finality into a dead collective.

X

Opaque irises await those who uncover the un-burial mound
Oafish sockets containing them like marbles
Open to the elements, decaying with their corporeal encasement, shaded by
Oaken leaves that remain unfallen, while
Obsequious maggots go about their task of cleansing the remains

Paralyzed in the final moments of their mortal coil, the bodies lay stagnant,
Pacified only by the removal of sentience.
Pagan rituals surround such corpses, and the intrepid discovers
Patiently await the arrival of some necromantic spirit.

Quasi-instinctively, the pioneers of the superterranean mausoleum
Quell their fears and remove the bodies from their conclusive locale,
Quantifying their deaths by the armaments and metal carapaces upon them.

XI

Reeling across the path, weighted by the bodies,
Returning, the archaeological presence brings a pall over society, which
Remained reticent despite the presence of such suffocating solemnity
Repressed by its own intent

Solitude is given no quarter, and the bodies
Strung up like scattered marionettes
Silently serenade the town with a deafening cacophony.

XII

To Hell their souls desperately charge, frothing about the shackles of undeath
Torn from corporeal existence, yet unable to
Transgress the mortal plane
Torturous paradox!
Torment the fallen of Carthage's vestigal might no more
Traducer of the human condition
Tragedy is loosed at thy whim
Try not the patience of demi-gods of wrath and bloodshed.

XIII

Undulating by the beckoning of the wind,
Un-beautiful, un-ironed, the shrouds of the coffins
Under grey sky hang softly like leaden sheets
Unaware of the gravity beneath the few inches of oak
Un-aesthetically masking the dead warriors' forms

Visceral is the movement of the procession,
Vermicular, they wind a course to the peak of the foothill
Vehemently the priest urges them onwards, although he is
Visibly ill on this occasion of the anti-hero.

Warlike, the battle up the ***** claims the lives of those already claimed
Wastrels left to rot in the carcass of a long-dead conflict,
Wanting nothing more than solace eternal.

XIV

Xenophobes of the Inferno fear the inevitable presence of these
Xoana, false representations of humanity.
Xanthic is their fear, for inside the malebolges themselves
Xanadu is sought for those of the fallen soldiery.

Yet funerary proceedings dictate descent for these souls, and the coffins
Yaw slightly in the wind, disturbed by the
Yanks of the ****** rabble who bear their weight.

XV

Zeus himself presides over the ferrying of these souls,
Zion awaits them, their final collective fate at hand,

Yet slowly it turns its back upon them,
Xenophanes mocks from his post,
Wailing, they fall
Velocity increasing infinitely,
Until they see no more the lustrous light
Trapped eternally in dark
Stabbed with betrayal and fear, their souls
Run amok, fleeing from the source of their anguish
Questioning existence.
Periodically in the abyss, the helpless aggregate conscious is
Overwhelmed with memory of Paradise
Now to them denied for eternity.
Mephisto remains, their only companion,
Leeching from them the final vestiges of hope now left within, once
Kept hidden to protect the warriors, now
Jabbed and pummeled to death.
In this state of perpetual umbra
Heaven so distant, now only faded, as if on parchment,
Gained by the souls is a sense of locality, once
Forgotten but now reattained, and
En masse, the group instantly
Derives that they have returned from beyond the mortal plane, the terra once again
Collates beneath their soles, and the collective decides they must return
Before the open sun, to bear themselves
Against the gods, against sanctity itself, and thus they cry:

Zeus himself presides over the ferrying of these souls,
Zion awaits them, their final collective fate at hand,

Yet slowly it turns its back upon them,
Xenophanes mocks from his post,
Wailing, they fall
Velocity increasing infinitely,
Until they see no more the lustrous light
Trapped eternally in dark
Stabbed with betrayal and fear, their souls
Run amok, fleeing from the source of their anguish
Questioning existence.
Periodically in the abyss, the helpless aggregate conscious is
Overwhelmed with memory of Paradise
Now to them denied for eternity.
Mephisto remains, their only companion,
Leeching from them the final vestiges of hope now left within, once
Kept hidden to protect the warriors, now
Jabbed and pummeled to death.
In this state of perpetual umbra
Heaven so distant, now only faded, as if on parchment,
Gained by the souls is a sense of locality, once
Forgotten but now reattained, and
En masse, the group instantly
Derives that they have returned from beyond the mortal plane, the terra once again
Collates beneath their soles, and the collective decides they must return
Before the open sun, to bear themselves
Against the gods, against sanctity itself, and thus they cry:

Xenophobes of the Inferno fear the inevitable presence of these
Xoana, false representations of humanity.
Xanthic is their fear, for inside the malebolges themselves
Xanadu is sought for those of the fallen soldiery.

Yet funerary proceedings dictate descent for these souls, and the coffins
Yaw slightly in the wind, disturbed by the
Yanks of the ****** rabble who bear their weight.

Undulating by the beckoning of the wind,
Un-beautiful, un-ironed, the shrouds of the coffins
Under grey sky hang softly like leaden sheets
Unaware of the gravity beneath the few inches of oak
Un-aesthetically masking the dead warriors' forms

Visceral is the movement of the procession,
Vermicular, they wind a course to the peak of the foothill
Vehemently the priest urges them onwards, although he is
Visibly ill on this occasion of the anti-hero.

Warlike, the battle up the ***** claims the lives of those already claimed
Wastrels left to rot in the carcass of a long-dead conflict,
Wanting nothing more than solace eternal.

Now broken with regret and shame they collapse
Nestled into the marrow of the fallow earth,
Needing only rest in the cooling tendrils of dirt and blood that trickle across them.
Né de nouveau, their trek leads them towards the grave
Necrosis having taken hold in their limbs,
Nascent corpses, they subside with grave finality into a dead collective.

Languishing now in the refuse of the struggle,
Laden with corpses, the warriors remain restrained by fatigue
Lurching through the mud, calling out feebly with voices
Long since bellowed to pulpy masses of throat tissue.

Masses of flesh crawling across the fields of strife,
Macerated ground, weak and shifting, struggles to support the
Multitude of half-corpses now in eternal respite upon the bloodied pasture.

Into the bloodshed, into the fiery cavernous opening of the crusade
Ignited by righteous scraps of cloth and metal
Ignobly formed into crudely significant, textured shapes
Iconoclasts to their own ideals
Idyllic in their self-mockery.

Jabbering like hellbeasts, the warriors drive into the flesh of the conflict
Jettisoning armaments in the process, their
Joie de vivre having been lessened by mechanical limits.
Jocular slaughter synthesized with demonic cries.

Kapellmeisters to the symphony of death,
Keeping in the rhythm of mutilation, counterpoints of steel clashing against breastplates, giving shape to a
Kleptocracy of life.

Come! Wave upon Wave upon Frothing
Crest, to shores of golden enfrenzied ******
Calmed by the liquid of our ***** *****
Charging forth as we
Charge forth armies upon the field of slaughter
Callously, for you, our gilded monarch
Can you see? They cannot see, and we hope to elucidate your presence, they
Cannot comprehend or fathom what they
Cannot see.

Bring victory, the winged harbinger of the conquest,
Beg for tyrannical proclamations: the end of man, the end of men,
By now, the greater of the concepts is lost to its own devices, devices,
Belching out smoke, that bend the corpses upon their backs.
By wrenching from their life a sense of purpose,
Byproductively, they feed heroic romanticisms of combat.

Brought yet upon these fields, there lies no stranger enemy
But that of the tide
Being self-effacing, masochistic,
Belittling, She breaks herself upon the shore, ravaging the bodies of
Both, Playing as ******* and as subservient

A genesis, the exodus, the exodus,
A departure from all terrestiality
Always immoral and depraved, bathed in filth, in self-loathing
Abbatoir of our souls, it entrenches us

Also, we too must be of the same make
And bear with our corpses the same proceedings, the same caliber
Allowed to their subversive candor,
All that broke the Carthiginians upon their own passage
Across the peninsular pathways

S'il in our conquest we find, however, that the pachyderms have run aground,
Vous must aggregate our conscious thought
Plaitcate the ravenousness within the heart of victory.

Throwing themselves beneath the mechanized yard-work goliath,
Salvia flowers bow their heads, heralding my passing
Stooping to remove their violet hats,
Thrown to the ground, trampled underfoot by passing metal,
A muddled **** of
half-death, half-birth
Floral genitalia broken into fragments, shards of color
Yet always they bow
Stooping, self-subjugating, submissive, servile, stretched
to their absolute maximum, fibrous tendrils ripping from the bed of grass

Until they flutter gently
Half-mocking their half-living counterparts
Still rooted firmly in the mulchy beds.

The flicker of a bulb lights the rearview mirror.
A car stands motionless behind the laundromat.
The occupants make hollow love,
Searching for what is lost in the sea of humanity
And the localized cloud of buildings.
Their bodies curl in the back seat
And the streetlamp continues,
A silent metronome, blinking on
And off.

Swift winds run through the park, at dusk
Carried on legs of leaves
Temporary, as they blow from the path
Onto the verdant sheet of blades
Laid beside the pavement.

The contestants occasionally collide,
And tiny whirlwinds
Untether their foliage feet from the terrain
As they fall onto the track
Whistling merrily as they bounce upon the ground
And rebounce into their lane
To commence the runnings again.

No pace is kept
And each man is one moment a sprinter
And the next a marathon chaser
The disciplines remain inexorably tangled
In their fleeting eyes.

Their faces blank,
They quietly study her features,
Bathed in the fluorescent glow.
In **** she is copied
With brush stroke and oil on canvas
Meticulous hands emblazon her
Onto the surface of mediocre masterpieces.

And she stands, shivering
Her body slightly tensed
Under the oscillations of the ceiling fan.