rats
run through the walls
scratching and chewing
and fighting over my crumbs.

i know your there...
i see your tails and hear your nails
skittering across the broken tiles

a inch or two of plaster
between you and me.
you chewing through
right by my tossing and turning head.

the sticky traps catch dust
the poison would **** the dog
so we are left to the
old rusty snaps
the blood stained
guillotine
sticky with caked blood and hair
of your fallen brothers
and sisters
and god knows
how many other relations.

i hate the snap
i hate the painful squeals in the night
i hate the ones that catch
but dont die.

i hate all that
but not as much
as
i
hate
rats.

Quit singing your sad bluebird blues
Eyes filled with broken record tears
I'll never understand
Your empty tortured heart
The sick satisfaction
That comes with watching,
Those visually striking images
They lure you in
****** you up
Swallow you whole
Like the snake that wallows
Through your green gate garden
You should never battle,
Battle for love
I turned on the light
In that corner
Where you kept your secrets
I showed you the words
That fell from the sky
I laid them out,
In black and white
No need to hide away,
In your little square bubble alone
I know the air is thin
I have a bubble of my own
Jump off your tangled cord television,
That you stare away your problems into
It is all a lie
The closeness
The flame
The suppressing feeling,
They call love
The greyness of the back seat,
Should tell you what you need to know
Even though the bubble is getting smaller
Seeming like a constricting slithering nigthmare
Your heart is growing,
Like the skyline that you see,
When you wake up,
And realize you are no longer alone

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”*
-1 Corinthians 13:12

The half-light pale- a shroud
And light by cones is dimmed.
Let rods take slack against
The pall in onerous work.

There is no glass, darkly-
Nothing so brittle for the bare
Birthed of Eden land-
There is smoke and doubt.

Glass is sand and bonds.
No, more than this is cloud
To man, to hamper man.
Something moving, surely:

Length of grasping arm
And force of fiber, lew,
Is lame to pull this shade
That sets upon our sense.

Nyx, the *****, is suspect:
Her fruit conceed to Achlys-
Geras gives her work-
To ink the lens of Man.

The Great Goddess Night,
Her spawn as Stygian wraiths,
Take Solomon's grace and view
From even mighty Argus.

Granted, God has tools
For glass, but who has might
Enough to pull the mask
From Achlys, born of Night?

                    -c. c. Condry

Hello, I've seen you here more than a few times
It must be telling something about you,
I know this place too well myself
It gathers pain and miserable despair.

Must warn you now, before its way too late,
About this place you visit now so often,
The ones who dwell here for too long
Neglect the life and give in to the darkness.

Please run away, if you can feel your own feet,
Dont think too much and learn from my mistakes.
The light has left this place, some say for many years now
And I dont think its coming back.

Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air,
And all our rarer, better, truer self
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better, -- saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love, --
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever. This is life to come, --
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, -- be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

I am a liar or
A storyteller,
Which I prefer.
You can’t find me
In my photo albums;
A different girl
Every year.
I paint many masks
And spin many tales
Just so I can
Finally
Hear anything
I can call my own.
Here is my heart
In essence,
Which isn’t necessarily
In truth,
Though I try
To fit the image.
So many
Separate
Profiles;
All less than a
Fraction
Of a whole.
But who’s to judge
Reality,
Or truth?
Call it equation;
Boil it down to
Numbers, but
Everything
Has variables.

So I’m a liar -
So is the sun,
Shining cold and
Distant
In winter;
So are you,
Pretending.
Calculate the image
Lest you leave
A jumble of
Meaningless
Numbers, just so
Many digits and
Too few faces.

I see you.
I look at your face and remember the place that you're from.
I hear you.
It's your heart keeping pace with the love and the grace that you're used to.
And you come, with those brown yearning eyes and lord knows I try not to disappoint you.  
But I tell you, that back there is a dream of a time that was seen through ****** eyes.
Your eyes, still as young as I remember, still as wide and still so tender with youth.
In my eyes, which are old like the sea, which are cold yet are keen I see, I see.

she has wound
mental stitches through
her oesophagus so her bones call
to her skin,
reel it in. ten million krill
trapped in the suction
of the line of a fisherman.