There is a creek that runs through my neighborhood
It is *****
It is shallow
In the spring it overflows
Thrashing Spilling
Filling each clean corners’ crack and crevices
Stagnation stains the air
Wafting into each household

I like to think of when I was a child

I stood in the water
In all of its inconsequentiality
And looked longingly at the sun
As it swept me away from the sounds of mechanical inefficiencies grinding against the asphalt  
As I felt the soles of my shoes soak in filth
Seeping in-between the spaces dividing my toes

I fooled myself into believing this is what other children saw

Something pastoral

Where their rolling hills weren’t so different than my own

Where the stars bled through the skyline’s purple hue

But
I had the sun
The rushing salivation of water surrounding my ankles
The feeling of something gained and lost
A sanctuary
An appreciation amongst
All of that something
All of that nothing

There is a Creek that runs through my neighborhood
It is *****
It is Shallow
It is Mine

Brick.
It was always a brick,
Nothing more, nothing less.

Although he always wanted it to be more, often he fantasized
About feeling reeds between his fingers or the mud between his toes.
However, there were only bricks.
        Bricks on top of bricks,
              Vertical and horizontal,
                   Wide and thick,
                         For miles and miles.

He indulged casually,
As his fingertips would seldom graze the slick condensation of the outside,
Bleeding through the cracks in the mortar.
         Those moments let him drift,


From time to time, as if he existed outside this cage.


The room was always the same,
When the door closed it was dark and sterile,
devoid of light and sound pollution just like they wanted it.
Everything around him remained shrouded in darkness,
Save
   For one
          Solitary sliver of light
Under the door that hinted a feint existence of the outside world.

A world often forgotten about.

His fingers once again found themselves caressing the face of the four walls.
Desperately searching for some kind of recourse.
There would be those moments, there always were.
When he would find himself lost in deep thought.
As a brick slowly shift under his touch and into the curves of her body,
Cold to the touch
Yet still beautiful as the day he met her.  
Idle in his thoughts he would soon realize that’s why he was here in solidarity.
He had made her just frigid to the bone,

                         And so there he will lie,
                         In darkness,
                         Cramped in confinement.

                         Enclosed in Brick.

As I turned to a familiar canine eared mark,
a sense of warmth stifled my breathing.

The skin on my thumbs became raw
Pulsated with the beat of my heart,
While rubbing against the worn paper.

The raised ink of each letter
Smoothed out softly
Underneath the pressure of my fingers.

The smell of old rain clinging to the dying foliage:

Intoxication.

The sounding of thunder drew my senses to attention.

Hairs and synapses standing, saluting at the ready all in neat formation

Memories and narrative flooded my mind with delusions of love, anger, and sorrow;

As only it could.

A crimson kiss left stained softly upon her lips,
as her palms cold, clasped tightly around bone.
In dire heat within the moment,
talons entrenched deep within tattered flesh,
belonging to a facade of a man now fodder for the feeding.

A sacrifice necessary to appease,
The period of bloodlust.

I prostrated in front of her
Kissing gently
The rises and fissures
Upon the back of her hand

There I rose
Late into the night,
By her bedside
I stared into her eyes

As she inched backward gingerly
I did not blink while whispering
Etching a promise into her bones
“I will not relent in my pursuit”

As I inched backwards into the sooty sordid mist of her mind
Lost forever into the dusk of time.

Carry on, Carry on,
He died, nothing more to say.

His body stiff and white as petrified bone,
His bones sullen with sad experience.
Strife filled his day
As many sorrows as his hairs are grey
His late thoughts mired with remembrance
He did not talk as much as whisper and bemoan

“Carry on, Carry on,
Another Christian soul without a way.”

Think to other things, save death for tomorrow,
The player of the stage, or so I have read.
This man, a beggar for more, or for less
To worry of his life is meaningless.
The days will follow the night and he will remain dead,
And the earth continues to turn and there will be another tomorrow.

Carry on, Carry on,
I will continue my day.
Carrion, Carrion,
Tear this wretch away.

I rise to face the fanfare

forged from the instruments of those who watched conquest warfare and famine ride Dictating the rites of god flaunting the colors of their father’s land in scarlet night and burning white crushed in the talons of an eagle I from those who stood in the face of conquest for one moment the beauty of constellations and the strength of iron stood in unity

I stand apart the mountain of those who conceded in the presence of the silken pale rider and his entreating caress

My father watched as his own draped lifelessly suspended like a cruel marionette

I who stood at his feet as he was ushered into the fire home now he keeps a widow company within a ceramic cylinder

I listened intently to the failings of the present the fallen are dwarfed by the towers of man eyes of sullen milk yearning for the fire and brimstone of the yester year to course through cracked and long soured veins

I rise to face the fanfare

here I will stand unwavering in the midst of the roads lit aflame with the bodies of the crucified the persecuted the banished the punished the misfortunate the proud the many the weak the blind the meek the legends the infamous the ill-fated the youth the experiences the living and the undead

here in the palms of giants I will face the accuser as he gnashes upon the bodies of the traitorous there in the center of the unholy realm of ice and tundra he will demand of me to fall upon my knees

there I will resound:

No

Here in the serenity
The Chorus of stars
Intertwined in tranquility
Our earth
Alone in perfect harmony
Eternally ensnared in the sway
Triumphantly resound in him
Misery and Famine
Mi Fa Mi
Fa Mi

Enshrined in the veil of twilight
Hues ribbon across space
Before the dawn
I taste and see the sounds
And the singularity within
Dances Entranced falling into sway
Triumph and resound the hymn
Famine
Misery
Mi Fa Mi
Fa Mi

Continue to lie to him
And to lie with me
For it is love not lust which is so bittersweet
By and by come
You who would allow
My poison to condemn everything you shall ever love
Then you and I can prostrate upon
The altar you hold so dear and that I know so well

At least for a moment
I will then trudge in to the horizon scorned by the sun
Leaving you in solidarity

So like the others I can be catalogued—
Stocked upon your shelf a token
Your conquered warrior king
Victim to your feral grin and unbound locks
Now fodder for your written emotions

For every night you close your eyes
You will remember the night where
Our chests heaved in synchronicity
And your cries were silenced
By the beating of your heart

There I will become the best piece of literature you will ever write
And you will become my most beloved sin

My dear friend who loved nature dearly
He toasted to the waning and waxing of the moon
And to the rising and setting sun
Alas my dear friend loved nature too much
As he died toasting the tide
Embracing a bed of sand

I stood tall and proud
As oaks and pine
Planted by the huntress
As she rifled the woods
In search of game

Yet it was the axes of her children
That laid me next to my brethren
As we were stacked for their houses
Two by two by two

He wished her ill the sweet Frenchman
As he descended the stair in fury
Leaving the rose embroidery of the carpet to
Extend its thorny clutch to ravage
The ruching of her dress

Later how it would unravel strand by strand along with her to the floor
The frailest of ladies that the Frenchman had adored

“How dare you refute me that which is not yours?”
He implored in anger as he locked her two front doors

Oh yes
I have known loves many in number and place
I could become complacent and dote on your grace
Or even still the beauty of your flesh

Alas your lips are no more awe striking
As the moss on stilled boulders
Unremarkable like soma drenched kisses
On some listless evening long ago

No you are all unremarkably the same
You pray for the kind lyrics of song
But dear loves your beauty will wither
Will you wail when the lyrics are gone?

So I will not sing of your kisses
Like soft winter sun caressing my sinuous skin
For dear love your beauty has weathered
Yet I still know loves many in number and place

I in my sophomoric splendor saw you as singular
Now as I ponder truly you are no more than
The caress of linoleum
The sunburn from sky light on my back
Or the grains of age on a headboard

Yes I have known love
Numerous yet they are one
“Sing a song for me my dove”
I suppose for you I shall rise like the Son

Dark dwelling deep in it's own despair marred meaninglessly in its essence
Cold coarse fleshed tiles spanning upwards into struts of splintered weathered wood
Smelling of stale sap and oak seeping into sullen sweat-stained sheets concealing constellations Within You
And I—
Intertwined within
Amongst the stars
Our words lost somewhere between the rhythm of our heart
The synapses of our mind
And the nature of our nerves
To touch

Struggling against a swift current eventually you give in
Realizing you are simply a man out of time
Just an auger boring forward in a gyre forever turning
Yet moving nowhere

In a place where you are no longer living nor dead
Neither past nor present meaningful nor meaningless
You just are frozen in time and space
Where there are no awe-inspiring last words
No enlightenment
No decree stating what your impact on this reality has been

It is just you dwindling until there’s no more fight left
The pugilist in your soul concedes
The lost souls of those lost before you
Coaxing you to justly give in and concede

The final battle has been fought and scripted long before conception
The burning wick sputters and suffocates rhythmically until it flickers
No more
All Uniqueness begets soon insignificance
And like the swimmer in the mists of the midnight sea
You disappear

Is the lawn, which scrapes the horizon
And the hose waters where it may
Fissuring long the earth where morning glory rises
To strangle the gutters and ravage the fences
Alone there is a woman in the doorway
With blue eyes long since grayed
Her fairness speckled with brutish black and blue

For her husband is drunk
And when he is he does what he pleases
She screams, “You have no right”
He replies, “That my dear is why I strike with my left”

The Woman of the World

Who declares that
On her journey to London
She realized how disgusted she is
With America
And
Our misgivings
As she orders
Cheeseburgers and Beer
While men throw
Around the horn

She sat contained in the all-encompassing embrace
His arms a welcome warmth
as they sat under the smoldering fires of dead days past
They drank and spoke wildly as sanguine freely flowed forth from the glass
As it swirled upon the inside of their mouths
Puckering stained puce lips and drawing mandalas in the clouds
Rich with color and endless ingenuity as the tall grass softly swayed
Carrying music to their ears
From time to time exchanging glances
Witnessing the last salvos burst in the dusk
Heralding daybreak

She knew there with the breath of dawn caressing her face laying against the heaving of his heart that she would never see him again

Shouting slurred meaningless obscenities falling corrosively
On the impressionable ears of all of those unlucky enough to hear
A snapshot of a generation within a soulless storefront of some new age coffee shop
That used to be a pawn shop next to an old hole in the wall jook joint called Cool Joe’s
While twirling her shiny silk strung platinum hair that used to bounce in brunette curls
She’s smiling as she’s telling her room full of new lovers
About her even atom tan