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May 2010 · 904
Headless Honky Tonk
Charles Berlin May 2010
This head on a spike
Well it's turning blue
Talking 'bout why I'd like
The splendor of his view
"From up on high"
he says to me
"All thing under the sky are mine to see"
And long and hard I sat and thought
of things for me my body got
and then I stood with my decree
and hoped he'd make good company
Charles Berlin May 2010
Introspection is cheaper than a horror film and its nightmares will chase you long after Freddy's hands are arthritic and the blades they operate are rusty and impotent. Here I am in this roach den with musty sheets and carpet stains. The place I retreat to in blind panic without considering escape. Here it is, peeling wallpaper and cigarette burns are the hems of skirts you tug and cry to, PICK ME UP PICK ME UP! Inside it is empty, truly empty, no trace of a whispering current in the draft or its cryptic revelations woven under the surface, no beetles scrambling around the corpse to tell its secrets. There is truly nothing and I don't know who called this vacancy "inner peace". It's a motel room with empty drawers and the water is some shade of red and every page has been torn from the Gideon's Bible to roll joints and make origami cranes and  free throws into wastebaskets filled with scribbled poetry and compulsively written lists.
May 2010 · 1.4k
Pickpocket
Charles Berlin May 2010
Your backseat,
that backward pickpocket,
that schemer taking cell phones and jackets and wallets
the pilfered seeds sewn, like lighthouses when they sprout
guiding me back again
back to you
back to that ******* backseat
May 2010 · 823
Green as a rye mold, baby
Charles Berlin May 2010
I'm an infant
crawling with unformed senses from arm to arm
ready to be mystified if I knew the meaning of the word
Feeling the curves and dimensions of the world
of its curious things with lips and fumbling fingers
Green as a rye mold
and my dreams are hallucinations brought on by its consumption
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
A showdown on Sunset
At sundown the two met
A breakdown of Corvettes
Cellphones drawn by execs
From holsters, my wild west
On speed dial is the best
Lawyers to slow down, lay to rest
This showdown of suits neatly pressed
Mar 2010 · 1.7k
Barstool Philosopher
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Oh, the ineffectual deluded intellectual
Cream of the crop barstool philosopher
Yes, you are included
Potential does not excuse the fool
Nor does a place at the top
In debates at coffeeshops
Indicate a prowess that places beyond school
Unbound by reality is your perception
Of yourself as some exception
Some paragon of cool
Please proceed with your perspective
Surely there is no source better respected
Mar 2010 · 1.2k
Insanity
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
My mind it's bent and sanity spent
To stay I must pay rent each day
Too deep in debt I must invent
The tenents who president and sway
They're here and clearly won't relent
Grown fond of say in the events
They steer me into foggy gray
Veer from the sun, its every ray
Mar 2010 · 1.0k
Cataracts
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
A pale clouded gaze betrays his depression
To observers of his pained expression
The cast of ghosts in his stories
Are joined in morbid succession
By faceless names that tangle
In webs indecipherabley knotted
Seldom unraveled are histories
Of faces so wrinkled and rotted
The tragedy of burrowed dreams
The eye's gleam down below
When they've already spotted
A grave before it's body's has been plotted.
Mar 2010 · 3.0k
Neverland
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Refuge from reality
Neverland's necessity
Chasing the whims of Shadow
Crowing at the moon's sad glow

Freedom from monotony
A childhood philosophy
Perseveres in light of fears
Long adheres in spite of years

Flee the world of decision
Distance mistake's incision
A brash heart's circumcision
Nulls care of peer's derision.

"You gotta let go and crow!"
Mar 2010 · 845
Untitled 2
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Lonely wrath flows undaunted.
Solitude grows intentions, haunted.
Warped by wayward wanting.
Cruelty sharpens savage impulse,
A call forever taunting.
Twisting, hardly resisting action,
Dark fantasies consume factions,
Of a psyche ripped in fractions.
Mar 2010 · 1.1k
Mirrored Blackness
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
I am swimming in my coffin,
A plush cage of silk and satin.
Hollow housing what's gone rotten
Cold vacuum of the forgotten.

Backfired plan, ran from a quagmire.
"Departure" from unquenched desire.
A notionless naivetty,
Breeds ambitionless apathy.

I'm placid, pallid, on the floor,
In yearning dreams from days of yore.
An idyllic end depicted,
To deep rooted pain inflicted.

Yet...

Curtains' fall is ill-begotten,
By memory I am sought in,
A cacophony, my casket.
No sanity can outlast it.
Mar 2010 · 642
Be Silent
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Eat my heart like a sideshow geek
Taste the blandness of the meek
Make pulp of every last piece
Of the hot, quivering, meat
In your blackened teeth and eat
Without cease and never speak
Mar 2010 · 972
The Safe Bet
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Mechanical suicide it's the way of the future
We slice and dice for a nominal price
Too deep for any suture
Drop a dime it's worth your time
In pieces you'll find peace of mind
The last to succumb
Are the numb and blind
In the twilight of mankind.
Mar 2010 · 958
Immaculate Confection
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Immaculate confection
In the market stands.
A sign touts it's perfection,
It wont melt in your hands.
A sacrament for your protection
Back by popular demand.
No less than a Chocolate Jesus
My tender little lambs.
Inspired by Chocolate Jesus by Tom Waits
Mar 2010 · 1.2k
Quality Programming
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Childhood trauma turns to teenage stigmata,
The **** hit the fan and I'm banned from nirvana.
Paradise is out of sight, that's the basic gist
Despite the broadcast of the sadist televangelists.
The fables of premium cable, channel six hundred sixty six.
Gone are Heaven and Hell to quell the existential fix.
There is no moral right, my solitary gaurantee
Bliss is a smoke and mirror trick, there'll always be a fee.
Mar 2010 · 1.4k
Minimum Wage
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Flaccid smiles
On placid servile men
Tending to linoleaum aisles
A worthwhile ending
For men beyond mending
Name tag exile
Collecting dust
For every tile
The soul rusts
With each paced mile
Mar 2010 · 861
Blink
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
I blink, a wrinkled fold of skin
Holding back and damming in
What's betrayed in my brown gaze.
A thoughtless instance, this womb-light instant
Punctuates the days
And the autumn ringed origins of two parallel rays.
Mar 2010 · 849
Strange Therapy
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
The chaffed red thighs of the streetwalker
And darting yellowed eyes of the nervous talker
Do not meet in this celibate exchange
This strange therapy in a musty room
No thrusting hips or sweaty faces loom
Niether dips down or drips above the other
With weight of body or intent that smothers
No sound of slapping skin
She punches in the clock
Sits, looks, listens
He licks his chewed lips
And in the light they glisten
Mar 2010 · 1.2k
Early Morning strolls
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Winter-welded hands to pockets
Midnight suburban Davey Crockets
Shuffling feets, thoughts on gold lockets
Meet nodders, speeders, window peekers
Out and about, we candid seekers
Mar 2010 · 1.2k
Temptress Spark
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Hearts of flint spark when collided
Bright bursts of light illuminate
Two paths finite convergance
Its a splayed line frayed where divided
Then returned to darkness winding blinded
Temptress spark degenerate
Into a throb of blunted thunder
Doomed to resonate
Their cataclysmic blunder
Permanence, a word unraveled
Illusions torn and thrown assunder
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
The arms and legs of Atlas will atrophy
Buckling under the starry dome
The sky will crush our cities
Of concrete and of chrome
Riding a wave of Mother's screams
We crash ashore and into orbit
Into this malicious circuit
With hair-trigger so delicate
No mercy and no cares
Another round of musical electric chairs
Mar 2010 · 804
Untitled
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
My lover's words become the buzzing of humming bird wings
A painted mouth miming a stream of saccharine nothings
Supple limbs at the whim of marrionette strings
Her fingers trail ice on my chest
Weaving knots of unrest
That strumpet
That puppet caress
Nestled in this undressed
Stained box-set mattress
Mar 2010 · 738
Vice
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Its the caffiene, Its the nicotine
Its the everything
I smoke, drink, and cling to
Its my habitat
It must be cleaned too
Its the search for stronger, longer
Its the scent that can't be laundered
Its the smell of ***** from my pores
Whats there to use and off for more
Its the whole **** thing
So dance and puke and sing
Mar 2010 · 1.4k
Window Show
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
A bedroom window
Is at night
Lit as if
By stage lights
Unbeknownst show of depravity
Starring a duo with audacity
Fierce bravado
Sillouhettes in perverse pantomime
Like moths drawn to its eerie glow
Passionate dance makes a window
Prone to peering
Fascination with the reviled
Certain sins with secret fans endearing
Mar 2010 · 2.5k
Hippocracy
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
TELL TELL TELL
Me about the hell of sin
While I can
SMELL SMELL SMELL
The love-stink of your next of kin
I'll
BURN BURN BURN
My blood is made of gin
It drips down
Sticks to
Stains your chin
Lascivious and lurid is your predator grin
When with vicious curling rictus
You inflict this, you begin
DECIEVER ****** LEADER
My devout Sunday morning tweaker
Set us up in rows of pews
We sit and listen, you spout and spew
Don't presume us to be in virtue weaker
Than you, my fire and brimstone preacher.
Charles Berlin Mar 2010
Indigo is the gaunt damp face of the still-born messiah.
With crude-oil cappillary flush like mottled blush
On Treblinka cheek bones.
On cold steel autopsy table, It's topsy turvy shrine,
A halogen lamp halo hums and sways
Over It's holy rolling head.
Unsavory savior, the pundit spared It's pageant.
With blackhole pupils pierced and seeping
Vitreol fluid like the weeping ******'s tears,
Carving termite trails in their wake.
It trembles, gasps, and quakes
With the knowledge of futility.
All that was and all that will
Successively unsuccessfully.
A parade of steel tables on blood spattered conveyer belt,
Pulled to the symphony of six billion bellowed pleas for salvation,
Through tattered curtains to uncertainty.

— The End —