They say that you are the lung of the world
An umbrella for the street light.
I know you can, and this I trust
Turn my bad habit into something of use
Unlike dear reflection, contemplation under
The stars.

At the concourse of many lives,
How much spite you must have caught,
I ‘hale a generation’s lot
Could I ask cleanliness that follows me
Into silence? Surely in the summer of its
Passionate body—
Surer towards its autumn.

Two-daughters succession go astride
One hunched in apathy
The other in defeat
I could have seen beauty in progeny
Before it was
Crushed
By artificial gravity
Smelling of blood-stained pittances
And a taker’s philosophy,
Their lunch-box notions
And plastic dreams
Rattled the bars on a shopping cart.
Do they, I wonder,
Feel their ease at pain? Or luxury, woe?
Though their smiling faces
Were promised, now reach
To Paradise,
I can seem them
Crushed
Beneath them, too:
Updated, upgraded, brand-spanking new
All they ever hoped to be,
Customized
Head-to-*******-toe.

They came into this world
Starving, pathetic, and in need of work
Computer beings seeking profit,
We called them millennials and,
Like bacilli to honey,
They will eat themselves to death;
I’ll be waiting with an open casket.
When the time comes,
Issued as both punishment and reward,
Fitted just for lazy things,
And it shall be translucent,
As all human desires are
An empty display
Of material just as ubiquitous.
I’ll be the funeral director,
Engorged by suffering,
When the time comes
I’ll be waiting with an open casket.
The skin that does not bleed
When struck, requires only a few
Strikes more,
The arms which do not tire
When pushed, require only a few
More loads,
The will that does not break
When overburdened, requires only a few
Lashes more—
When the time comes
I’ll be waiting with an open casket
And let the ocean, in pacificity
Carry them to the collective
Dead of this world, to churn in anonymity
For eternity; a true hell to the ego,
I’ll be waiting with an open casket
Just to send it off with a nudge.

A coffee shop afternoon can say it looms significant
In the steamer’s sweet humidity
And the idle legs pace for more
I hear the whispers of world-changers and gossip mix
Local color of a quiet little town.

Sit humble and lean, a fixture ‘till showtime
And ask lines around just we’ve they’ve been
And who they’ve seen.

There’s a poetry in the patron, come
My gaze permits and intervenes
Its narrative and scheme, in lover’s hand enweaved.

Graphite plays its frustrate part the writer
Seated far, far in a blissful nadir
Bristles in his pony tail like drawers end to no avail.

Nihilism
=
≠
&
?

“Amanda,” she said, in a bold assertion
“We really are the same
Person.” Limp in the dew and
Wise like a sage, no wound cut
No blood shed, yet,
There was something this
Bandage shut,
Something yawning, gaping
But I don’t know what…
How sad! She’s crying, that Amanda,
Shrugging ‘gainst the colic rain
And almost lost in the copes-y veranda,
Weeping softly on
Those concrete flats, wearing “Red Tom’s
And” both “Dating Matts” while
I saw her fear in that moment, appalling, stalling
With soroitous heart, “and fear of falling!”
Binding them tightly: “That’s US haha!”

How many laughs does a limp spirit draw?
—(a disparaged few or none at all…)
Still, she writes, “I am so glad” (a huff annoyed
From Amanda, distant and sad, that I
Can’t tell why “you” ever “joined.”)
But this is not my place, a passerby,
To pick up trash, inane and lonely,
To cast my judgments and inquire—why?

To heal the unbroken with words unspoken
But scratched on refuse, she may
“[heart] you” but refuse you, too
The spirit of [heart] in Amanda awoken
—(But she refused it, too!)
And then be a token
Some stranger takes home.

1
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was
Now placed upon the wetted soil
Transfigured, blessed in holy oils scented with cinnamon.
#2
I grasp at the compass that Donne reassured,
Tragic to find it etched in notes
Of the Song of Swans:
It may commune beneath a firmament of birds
Yet, it seems divided in this steely sky—the color of wrathful swords—
I sniff: it smells of cinnamon.
#3
I am drawn by the scented bliss, anointed in general
That is, with the rest,
But somehow, cologned, it’s too sweet, too new
Now a criminal to laws of ancient Hebrew.
To the iron clouds, the necks will bend,
To turn from he who smells of
Cinnamon
That is, with the rest.
#4
Yet, they do not smell
Nor peel back its bark lest it poison the oil
As rain poisons soil,
And ignore, as they do, when rain is to come,
The oil is fragranced evil with cinnamon.
#5
And though I complain, clack to the mud
It, too, smells of cinnamon,
And so we’re the same.
#6
“****” is my cry. “**** them to their hell,”
Burn the concrete buildings, tear away social offal
That, with some entreaty, seems to plague us all! Why so much Injustice?
Who are you? A God? What makes one lump of clay
A clod, the other a home? Upon the heads of refused beings
How do you stand so tall? You can’t lest your empire fails
While the seesaw of suffering hoist up the side of wails
And smoke the vital oxygen,
Scowls, the first impression
Worried not about advancing goals but living day to day,
The things that move metabolisms, world-wide, subject to pay,
Wasting our lives not in 9-to-5s but looking
And failing to find
And toting excess and praising their holders
While blaming the others born from behind
Partitions drawn in world wars started for oil
For money, for wealth, both so glutted and glutting pride a nation wide
While its cells are tinged with cancer,
Both sides of false dichotomy claiming they have the answer, to answer the question
Of recidivism, the poor and they are to live or get along, dangling the carrot so high
It goes above their dreams, and it’s so blurry that it’s hard to tell
What exactly one pursues,
Or race, religion,
Of a woman’s place in the is to see how absurd such a question should be,
Here is a question that seems appropriate: why are differences discouraged,
Who says what is better but the powers that be
Lenses shaped for us to see only those things specifically made
To make the made untouchable,
And they do it, and will not stop, we’re left with no hope
But from where pleasure is wrought: drugs and sedatives that
Blunt the mind that worries, sober, replacing them until they’re over
But without any solution; a bandage to a bandage
Since a sober mind that cognizes problems can’t possibly solve them in the same state
Of mind.
A lust for love with no genuine conception,
*******, deflowering with cold, stony hearts
Fostered in a day and age where manipulation is more inescapable means
And less insidious art,
So broken by our broken dreams and forced to walk without contention
Compromising on who we are
No struggle to help make us strong
A simple shrug to carry on,
While the most powerful blood, the fire in our veins is given, given, given
To those we think we love,
While we sit dreaming and falling in love with love
Always coddling the scars, where the blood and sinew were streaming
Until they are closed and pink, taut and empty like a drum
Still yearning to beat the same rhythm again,
Needing to learn before synchrony may happen
And two drums may beat to the other’s tune,
Feeling some pulse that holds us feet from decay
All the warmth and butterflies
Come in a zephyr smelling of fetid, carrion meat
That makes true affection
Feel like maggots in the skin
And we leave to new horizons, akin in their process:
Where they end, where they begin.
And yet we’re so weak in every regard, being the forge of our own fortress’ petard
Sade-masochists that run, run, run away
Feeling as though we’re cast to sea, waiting for the problem to deal with itself
A shining light house on a miserable horn
Hides by our back, the shore receding out, and even in the darkness
The vastness of the sea, there’s still the light cast ‘cross the sky
With the same, though fleeting, periodicity.
And I can do nothing, least, nothing of worth
Being as I am, a whiny little white boy with middle class struggles,
Well-fed, well-cared for, and some domestic unrest
But I am minor, mediocre at best,
And have never had the muscles, the mettle, put truly to the test.
So I can only complain beneath the anthill of my worries
And all my attempts to make any change are thwarted by my failings, my comfort
My life,
Doing drugs, self-medicating because it’s the best I can come up with
Spiraling beyond uncontrollable until it is no longer
Me whose spinning down to destruction,
That was something of the past
Now, I truly have nothing to grasp
And I kick and I scream and I try and I try and I try
But look in dismay at any hope I may have for people to change, yet their conduct belies
A sense or desire to be anointed enspiced
Since the general oil has seemed to suffice, and that’s not enough, but I just want some change
Some honesty, but I can’t find it, I know not what I feel
All this angst piling up, like a chapter in the life of Holden Caulfield:
He’s my ******* idol since I pressed with all this
Stupidity with no venue but complaints
And this is doing nothing, this ******* poetry, neither solving nor affording comfort
Back to me. It is art and no one cares
It has no voice, save the face-value point
And I want meaning, and so I try to make it knowing full well
The intention is demeaning, but not in my writing
Its filthy fingers touching on everything that I’d like to achieve
Legitimately, but it’s all conditioned
It’s breakdown is imminent  
If only I knew how accept
Oils scented with cinnamon.
I wish I was different, or acted upon it, instead of just ******* in the lines
Of a sonnet,
Or that others may smell of their own fragranced oils
Then trifles, then problems may seem something
Of little toil
But, but, but, where am I to go, where do I begin?
I’ve gone in circles, where I stopped I’ll start again
And I’ll never escape because…
#7
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was.
In due time the sun will do as it does:
Show us what is, is soon to be what was.
The nature of me, with little consistency, is grasping for a dawn
I see it coming up
Now that I’ve smelled the breeze
Of cinnamon.

Swoon to a tearful night, unknown to its grief
Dialogue of peace, and those of plight
Ringing of morphology, raindrops on the roof.
Such things heard from the peasants’ seat
In the many wet heads sopping
In the sonorous waves, upright in the city clime
Untending to their beds.
At the bottom of that something
All told are destined they will find
Be pliable to the ills they’ve dealt
To carry on, to work, admonishments
Said once to justify these red romances
That in every rain storm melt
As pity through the night, forever unclasped
From shackles of their blame
Since life and ideology somehow are the same.
‘Tis destiny for abating storms
As some will rose from their thickened thorns
These nights deliver their gentle morns
All the same as hemlock grows as poison
And is best to be avoided.
How—this, I fear only rain my know—
Can we still bathe in fraternal glow
When some still heal from Death himself
Each breath that enters is quickly prayed to leave
High on seated thrones
Those mean so quick to thieving, the poor
The lazy deserve no quarter
Those dusty pockets afford not one
So steal the heart upon his sleeve.
May we help man wrought our kin and kind
By common tongue, free, as we are ought?
Since another may make my world
He is mine to protect, not throw to bytes
So ludicrous and feeding back upon themselves
For destiny can be remade
If hatred weren’t so blind.

Two frowns wait for the other to speak:
One long and melancholy,
The other expectant, so fraught and weak.
The boy looks to his dog as though to his lover:
“I wish I could give you everything you wanted;
Life only interferes.”
His mate saunters on, lays low
So he fears, in resignation,
“What is it that keeps your devotion so clear?”
She, silent, in anticipation
“I do not know,” he responded. “But it is not here.”
So the blank canvas continued to be:
His mate continued sniffling unknowingly.

Sweeten, let’s, a coast of dun
Therefrom which, the tides erode,
A castle to blind the mighty sun
Affront to that Poseidon, and others
On the beach.
***** the walls and battlements
Fair crystal arm the turrets
The audience of the hermit *****
Pay silent homage to the throne
Intricate are its libraries, etched
Our history inside the tomes.
Only grains of perfect stock
From which antiquity, in full credit,
Will revere the lot
And poetry of human might
Shaped and forged to kiss the day of light
Only  that may suffice.
In this endeavor, no ancients will tenet
Its salty beams but the children of the morn
For we shall build the universe
From when progenitors are born.

Before it began, we were dismayed
Our future, castle, by waves waylaid
Aspirations sink, now, from shape.
But, Gods, I curse you!
Let my destiny rise free!
Look now before you:
A stone in ocean of mediocrity!
All these that build up forts
Lack in that spirit to fight, retort
**** you, **** you, waters of my doubt
Turn false the shades of realism
Which I thought it all about
**** you, **** you sands of time
For now all that founds my dreams
Is erosion of the shoreline sand.

The question is
Where to begin?
Why, with honest heart
And boldly sin!
And sin I must
Against myself
Pinning the inkwell
A bespoken purpose
--The poetic confession
Since speech commands silence
And advances regression.
My courage it falters
And guts turn all queer
Neither could reckon
With our distances near
And confessing this outright
Is just plain absurd,
I hope I have made
My cowardice clear.
True, this is petty
And prideful at best
Poem’s the proper vehicle lest
My weakness runs wild
As ornery thoughts
And binds up my tongue
And stomach in knots.
But onward! I bore you!
My pen spitting gibb'rish
Thinking sense and writing none  
I’m too far to turn back
And the day is yet won!
But can I be blamed
For nerves all on end
When the single string in every thought
Goes day’s beginning to its end
And all around and back again?
This whole semester
I’ve felt a fool
Beside this mind of eloquence
Of enervating sensation
Like, I, a simple candle
And auroras’ collocation
On the clearest luminescent night
With incensing breeze blown left and right,
Coupled with creative flair
And womanly chic, short, brown hair
I’m distracted, diverted stupidly
A boy's been made
Of the man in me.
I’m a mustard seed among
Religious men,
And profanation blossoms
Brought to transcendent, if divine heights
My words reaching an Elysian place
Touching new Heavens
With (excuse the pun) Grace.
Please don’t hold daft obligation
That you must reciprocate
The sentiments, here, laid before you
And mushiness innate
But the purpose is here
Not to woo
Nay, to salve this tiny,
Yet consumptive flu
So for stoic, normal me
This is something radically new.
So excuse the upheaval
And heavily borne load
It’s just perseverance
Through pessimistic mode,
I know this is weighty
And clichéd and trite
But I've been made weary
(And that’s creepy a mite)
Through countless embattled days
And resultant restless nights
With no intention to do so.
I hope this has struck you
Not perturbed or amused
Because right now I’m trembling
Sclerotic and bruised
And will follow, oh follow
This to its end;
To see this message
Read in your hands.
But until then, condemned
To sleep sad and wake gaily
To think only one thought
And think that thought daily
And thought is of you
Of you,
–.

Has one ever known
The therapy of cutting fruit?
To pare a pear
Its skin left bare
And cleaned of its coarse green suit?
Underneath
The white meat
With knife parts so easily
That, in my grief
Blade unsheathed
Slice here and here and here.
Sweet relief! The nectars pour
In the sink and on the floor,
Its ****** sheen
--The loveliest I’ve seen!—
So I cut more and more.
I’ll cut the fruit, just like I said
One can't **** what's already dead.

A nectar lingers in the midnight,
Empty is the forum for all thought akin
Confused, reflected, or bade to come in
Or to come out.
With loose time the moonlight was bought
Playing with the chatter I hear desiring me:
To write a love poem with all its proper irony.
A thing of gold, I fantasy it
Though blurred and warm as lighted wick
Midst the darkness tall, timbers thick
The lenses, its vital antecedents
Are cracked or compelled by the acts of man.
Yet, so good the tools, these fragments of
Ears, eyes, and nose,
They produce all the power behind poetry
And find all I need, like a handless compass
Forcing me to follow the moss
That warns two strangers must first meet their paths
Before they may cross.

A crack up the wall
And the house is broken
A cloud in the sky
And the world is grey
And my faults are many
Even if they’re bridged
Even if they’re far gone
Cracks don’t go away.
Maybe all the bad things
We millennials possess
Is a gritty reminder
Of what’s in the rest.
The human condition can’t be that strong
Perhaps Gen. Y,
Just got it all wrong,
And we’re not new victims
In this generational war
We just bear darker versions
Of our parents’ sores.
But we’re young and stupid
We just don’t get it
It’s suppression versus reality
And we’re getting all the ****.
If we were laid brick
In a nice, big wall
The bricks, true, before us
Made us nice and tall
But when we look down
We only see cracks
Big cracks in the wall.

You
Literati
I want you to know
I’m writing to you drunk
With a sober mind that thinks in its own
One that is independent
One that is great and strong-willed
To know
You are not pursuing a life of greatness
Merely of pettiness
Of worthless endeavors that requisition an
Agenda of procreation
Of Darwinism
****,
I may be drunk or beneath the tyranny of the ALMIHGTY BEZOS
But I am consistent in my beliefs
And all destroyers of
Existence
And freedom are
Bound for
Destruction.
SO KEEP FIGHTING BECAUSE
i AM A BEING BORN OF REBELLION
AND SO ARE you.

What of exactly is a friendship lost?
Over minute trifles so easily tossed?
Or one that disbands in the cataract of Time?
Something worth pain and blood? Which is absolute and wonderful?
And so, too, can it be asked,
To which man is authority given,
Of such astute austerity endowed,
The man to pass such judgment in good faith and conscience,
Is none other than the crowd.
But, irrelevancies, I totter!
The worst is to be discussed,
For far beyond the scope of reason,
Have these travesties been concussed.
For here, I give to you the corpse of this bond,
This once turgid child of innocence
So, perhaps, its unadulterated substance may quickly manifest
Yet, I pray, I hope, I wonder, its marred and tattered mien profess
The noxious tonic it did consume,
Of ancient spleen and venomous ardor,
To rend its former pulchritude, to hands of untouched fury placed,
It suffered the most insufferable fate to befall upon any beast:
To reanimate, to thrive, to live once more,
In the hands of a tyrant and aimlessly exist
Necrotic at its very core.
This beast, this creature of hated stock,
Was my burden, my cross, to bear,
One, I weep to recollect, of part and parcel of my own flock.
But, I did this, I bore this, along with many others,
In spite of righted timbers,
In spite of rationale,
In spite of my fiber and moral code, that kept us forcibly constrained
For the sake of you, authority
For the sake of tranquil minds
I stood obstinate at the lineaments, between those contrasting foes,
In the self-imposed, childish Purgatory,
Completely indisposed.
Between the shining, gleaming face of holiness, and precipice of spite
For manner of serenity and cowardice perpetual,
Confronted this creature, I did not,
For the sake of you, dear authority, for the sake of stable place.
Children we were, yes, but no less severe the gravity,
For the winnowing of unity, at the yoke of caprice, is to blame.
A real friendship will endure, endure through the boreal,
Endure through the malice, the vitriol,
Will breathe new and longing appetite for breadth, for universality,
Of which all parts must maintain accountability.
It must stand resolute no matter how formidable the ballast,
It must be calm, objective, and outlast the harrowing feelings change may accompany,
Will sacrifice and encourage wellbeing,
It must imbue recollection, a past so beautiful,
Be a comfort in the presence of shame and humility,
Its essence, a friend itself.
But I can no longer pay, at the cost of sanity,
I can no longer give what little remnant humanity to forge another bond,
One made of dead and long-forgotten parts,
I can not, I will not,
I am sick, I am weary for all of the injustices I have done
To watch as the seed of hatred continues to bloom,
The veil of falsehood walk without shame,
To see her stride of perverting intent, tainting the world with touch,
Is a miserable folly to me,
A crime which I let permit,
A coward I was to not stop this, to not lay this matter to rest,
No,
My beleaguered hands put this evil in the ground, and left it to the tides of fate,
It grew, beyond my capture, beyond my strength to control,
Into this horrid ****, this miserable plant,
Which, still!, it grows sans disannul
To take responsibility to this, on me, I cannot err
But, naturally, none to the plant, it seems,
And this is only fair.

I watched through tears
--That streamed like the one out back
And the scattered clouds
--The ones that floated overhead for years
A twilit ridge inurn the sun.
It was one of those rising hills of my youth,
One my infant eyes always thought
Gave birth to the moon
Time and again.
With its innocent face smiling
That worldly crispness is lost
And the foggy past is far more defined.
Who are these forms I've lost?
They are but phantoms,
(I tell myself)
And now intangible, those memories
Acidic and dusted with sugar
Held suspended and taunting, like
Feet at the mouth of an open casket.
The cold, bitter knives of impersonal
Reunion
And rejuvenated promises
--Only now remembered, only now forgotten—
Illuminated once again
In the dark.
Passing onward and through
--Like our time together—
Exactly like wind through these **** dead branches
And this grave: winter-bare.
I remember the vivacity
How enlivened the sky, that I
Each day for granted took
And how so much smaller, in my youth,
The mountains afar looked.
But there is no home,
It died when I left.
The poison I fought
Has become the blood which pumps the heart,
Now corrupt,
Antithetical.
Nothing is more colorless, not sky,
Nor hill, nor moon,
Or ever more formless
Than what I once called home.
Now that only exists is deteriorated
A rotting house:
Four walls and a roof to keep
Hatred dry,
Windows and lamps, so
Hatred has eyes,
And all the people that
Hatred hates most.
How cozy it must be to sleep in
One’s own bed, no?
To have some stable place,
And an ounce of certainty?
As for me, that will never be
Again.
Though the house is open,
Lock, room, and all
The home is closed forever
Without a proper epitaph.
Vain death.
Vain,
Vain,
Death.
Now all I can only turn back
And flirt with shadows
Just outside my arms
Walk with images
Shifting, growling, and oh, so dark
--mere abstraction
--future so stark--
With no companion but defeat.
I can’t hug a memory,
Nor cry on recollection’s shoulder,
Nor can my mother or sibling console me,
And I cry alone.
Maturation is merely widening a distance, so
I should let them go,
Bid them adieu
Because, I can't be homesick
For a home
I can't go back to.

Tinderbox pt.1—Magic
At first,
I caught its eye
In the rolling smoke of fire
I ****** my hands
To pull it out
And speak with lighted words,
In light of brilliance,
A vital warmth,
But in the end just ashes.
And then,
The curve of silk waters
Which rushed upon and through the rocks
Wrote to me
A rich and liquid poetry
Not in bursts but subtle waves
I cupped my hands to catch its words,
But even then,
I could only hold so much
And only for so long.
               Tinderbox pt. 2—the Artist
Entranced in the world
Here and beneath the moment,
In the spaces and each letter
I saw the fire, the waves of silk
Each play in their environs,
I’d grieve
At their perfection,
Running my eyes over their hilly peaks
And dreaming mine had been there.
My worlds were ugly, incomplete
Extinguished at very moment
That the two would meet
The tinderbox was fire to my hands,
My cup was rife with holes
And there, I’d thought the artist dead
Or never even alive.
In my sleep I’d hear a voice
Like Milton, Coleridge, or Shelley
A babble arresting and forcing pity
From its infantile lucidity...
I knew this thing, but killed it.
Perhaps even now, I believe in magic
Though, to pluck rain from a furied storm
Or converse with tiny sparks
That become
Something of brilliance and solemn silk
That groves were wrought from tiny seeds
Long after mere chaos
That, from it, comes a universe
and white paper is all it needs.
What awoke me was not
That there was art
But that the words had tried to say something,
Something the heart could not speak
Nor the mind would dare to reason;
It was not as much the words that made it up
But the worlds in between them.

A sickness, the fear
And trembling on my lips
A bearing now oh, so baffling
All these maladies seem to be wearing
Still I hear,
To abate my scaring
Wind chimes chiming
And children laughing.

The sun, so lover-like, ran her fingers
Through the glistening leaves,
Movements soft, so full of intention
Their waxy dew, shuttered in response,
A low moan played in the breeze,
The light of sonority contrasts the electric
Disharmonies in the stormy afternoon.

Though I could feel a forest now eased
The river that runs through
Carried the blood of a plural heart
Beating with a passion akin in power, though enemy in fashion,
As its waves beat the banks
Eroding them into, eating up the aridness
As though slaking were its due, muddying the sky’s blue
From its surface, piercing the eyes from its reflection
Discouraging, this turbid froth, from worth of further inspection.

It rages and rages over rocks so violently
Picking at its slimming walls, making and claiming
Detritus along the path so that all the beauty a river is
Crashes, collides, and disfigures—a chaos growing
Bigger and bigger—the speed of its wrath
Bespeaks of its wake, blasting the earth (Watch it dissipate!)
Out of my sight it runs its due course south
Spitting the detritus that arrives
At the mouth.

1
Faerie, fey, in a windless stride
Along the verdant wood and wild
Beasts, so are, here do abide
Yet this urban life, maxims beguile.
So true, the only beast is man
Though he’s born of claw, the tooth
By birth it’s of the haft
Dagger, gun, and perfidious craft.
Apart, I see only one
Together, sparks to bring, undone
Me, for this, I dare not stand.
Such impropriety, a fellow’s creed
Rich are all in my mother tongue
Speak volumes for their egotism,
And seemingly endless greed,
Divest from it, with righteousness,
With acts they before shun.
Bah! To clean air and streams to follow
Network of the aimless vein
Blood for the vindicated!
Whilst they proceed to their empty smog
And free wills ever truncated
Marching headlong and abreast
To Hell they step in tow.
Never mind those evils done
My cure is in anathema, unchained
The inner man, the wild!
Autonomy, dumb, and pure!
I am the center of starry pull
I’m the individual, in me all is whole
I am the blot, the rebel, and the Wife of Lot!
A mark upon the cosmichead
My material exists, destined to rot
But, this death, it shall be free
Unlatched from this society.
No more shall these orchestras
Be condemned to prune as sighs
Now to high monastic chants
To venerate this life of mine.
Every corner of this brick and mortar
Keep us penned, like cattle adorned
In slacks and ties, agendas several miles high
This Fetish-Messiah, Banality
Makes sweet the cuds of humanity
None of this impurity can exist beneath
The canopy, foundation’s wrought of Ego’s dust
Pretense, a star, of foundry of the Heaven’s cusp.
#2
**** this, i have returned
the scwl of the citi
So litle and worthless
Huge slabs of grey metal
--failed of my conviction
i’m knowing in the sense
of Tao (dao), mute and confused
Tying to remove it
farce and utopia!
This cow is really low
Munching on—now, I know
As the faeries said
“At cross, betuta, moss”
What mean, all nonsense. All!
#3
The city was always upon my soft palms
That chaffed when I struck for a flame
The vanity hung in loose little threads
When my sleeves fell tattered, the same
It was through my teeth, my fellows did breathe
Strangers upon the tongue
I saw in the water the face of them
And heard them in my curses  
A stranger voice said “we” and “them”
Had genesis’d these verses.
It was those about me who birthed the world
As I had done for them
Momentum! Be quick! For fellow man!
As I am
As you are
The other’s cosmic order
I’ve built the structure I can deny
But with undeniable mortar.

These ides have kept me thus far
Sustained, am I, eternal
By their food of self-sacrifice
The jester’s tasty wine
Imbibing insults wrought by fool’ry
Again, reciting the dirge for pride
But the ides have kept me thus far.
Despite the ru’nation
Hoist! Ye ru’nous hands
My repute in mortification
A fool by their and my demands
I see my shame, long shadow cast
In light of sobriety
Ignominy and truth of me
Divorc’d n’er they be
Still taste of cheap liquors, distilled society
But the ides have kept me thus far.
Full knowledge, have I
The disservice I do
Only time will heal the wound
To shy away, acceptance is
A lovely balm on par
My image in tatters, though brazen I be
The ides have kept me thus far
Let them laugh, for I know they do
Not to me, but within and among
I am your entertainment
The source of all your jeers
My life, a blund’ring show
I am an actor, my blight for years
A part to play, it’s pleasing though
To thrive upon your mocking and time
Comforting knowledge, that
A fixture, am I, your Thalia
The ides have kept me thus far
Erected austerity, enigmatic walls
Fortifications around me
Charged to keep the chaos in
My heart, it truly calls
I am not so noble
As the sun will attest
Know me as the ascetic,
See the shrieking eccentric,
Know me as the philosopher
See my wit pathetic,
Know what is outside is purely for show
See that is internalized, is
So ******* antithetic
Each and every time
I hide my face in shame
My pride and my name, my actions did thus mar
But I will heal, I always do
The ides have kept me thus far
This is my mantra, an empty cadence
A mist to latch on to
With every refrain of wretched debauchery
Each weekend played anew
Though I stay to bear the howl
Of my dissonant, ugly hymn
I listen to the hardened ones
Their failures but a din
I wish to change the thing I am
At least to those who know
I’ve heaved the chance to the icy mar
Onto the cracking floe
I feel the daggers of humiliation
Plucking at each stitch
I’ll just smile as though I like it
For in effect I do
But it’s becoming unbearable
The walls beginning to bow
Imperceptible, if my resolve she lasts
Though this is nothing new
But I’ll just grin and carry on, for
The ides have kept me hitherto.

The last of the angels’
Castaway nametags
Hung from the plush red edges
Of the art deco interior.
A breeze from the open door
Cast the doctor’s pamphlets to the floor
Advertising his services
For the special remediation program
Since he could not sleep
What with all the voices
From below chanting his name—
How he envied the people he killed:
For they were spoken so little of.
That is, except for on his intake sheet:
After passing over the names,
Seven in all,
Whose lives were, shameless,
Shed over ***,
The latch clicked
And out came the doctor’s hand
Beckoning through the door
A “come hither” gesture.
On the couch he sat,
Neck conforming perfectly to the couch
As he swam a cascade of Rorschachs
Apart the mirror-faced, owl-like man.
Speaking with a heavy Eastern-European accent
He knew exactly why Elliot had come:
Perhaps the intentions were dubious,
Perhaps he was looking
For quick solutions;
Regardless, Mirror-Face was there to help:
Too easily, these days, was it
To determine dysfunction in the masculine—
And this case was rare,
Awash in chatter from below.
So, there must be something deeper
Rooted in fear of perpetual
Romance fetishism
And absence of its referent.
Yes! The penetrative is missing—
The limerant object
Is without form, shapely, and feminine
And would forever escape him,
In part by suicide,
In part by isolation.
The reason you are here
Is the absent-present offspring
Of such missing ***,
A veritable porcupine-dilemma
In the flesh, a show of insufficient ****** capital—
See now in this face of mine.
Yes, now that I’ve diagnosed
What ails
Let us explore what solutions
Could have been:
The living world does offer suitable surrogates
For those lacking—
Recognizing this is the first step
To being forgotten,
To allow you to sleep.
Yes, you recognized then
The gun as the extension of the phallus
And it levels the playing field
Raised up, aroused by power
One feels when operating heavy machinery—
Yes, all flesh which is the metaphorical egg,
The bullet is the *****,
Which penetrates the flesh of the paramour
Impregnating her with life inverted
And creates, in death,
The child of ****** frustration.
While this child is one of children lost,
It is child nonetheless.
Yes, and this gun, the metal *****,
***** not one
But many—in fact, incestuously,
It ***** entire families,
Entire communities,
And leaves their lives gravid
With your legacy.
Yes, it is the only way to create
The ultimate matron, the universal feminine,
The supreme m-Other
For the Supreme Gentleman.
And you, as you see me,
Are the absent-present of this child of death
This union of bullet-***** and the whole-body womb,
With which you, sadly, impregnated yourself.
But, here’s the secret,
Because of this, you can only do damage control:
Your child will prevail.
Yes, the name may be gone, but the child prevails.
Name may be gone, but child prevails.
Name gone, child here.
So, have the voices stopped?
Has the child matured in you?
You are on your way to being forgotten,
But the child lives on:
Yes, the name may be gone, but the child prevails.
Name may be gone, but child prevails.
Name gone, child here.

To exhale
Compresses the chest
And in its place
Some chilblains,
Disgust for its being,
An annihilation
A ferocious hunger for itself,
Like the ouroboros
In every breath
Tempted by a life
For the moment gone.
To inhale
Invites it back,
A dispassionate process, no less.
The life thus stolen away
Impotent to the next breath
That I must exhale.
On this breath there comes a fear
A longing or
The urge
To lift my hands to my throat
And keep the life in my lungs
To quit exhaling
And never feel that way again.

Put this matter with trowel and ***,
Into the dark and fertile ground,
With each hit, he loosed the soil
A once happy man thou condemned to uselessly toil  
His claws, cracked and broken shells
Jaundiced with the duty long days that did require
Lamed by grief and forced to work
Here, till the end of days, within this garden, this mire.
Deep does a ****** live here, past the clay and bedrock
Like the pride and valor and resolute spirit of the domineering ****
Or so her mien, it does beget
Or some other erroneous sentiment
That she, not he, were to bear this labor.
Within the ground, he did remember, in his spritely youth,
He planted, and thought none of, but a seed,
Into this verdant splendor, which bore that infernal ****.
And, thence, thereof came a fruit,
Of malignity infinite,
All the while it poisoned the ******’s white and water’s pure,
As its eerie little spines proceeded to take root.
Her garments poised to emulate white, instead
The ******, to him, had lost her white
Or never had white at all,
The ******, to him, had lost her white,
To him, the ****** was dead.
The fruit and seed, effulgent and pretty, to those who saw them bloom
Attractive were they so to them, irresistible to behold
That they, to him with great chagrin, did immediately consume.
“But the ******,” he cried. “The ****** has poisoned them!”
Yet they continued to eat.
“We do not believe you,” they replied, and slept ceaselessly on their feet.
One by one did they all collapse from the toxin of its juice.
The ****** watched and laughed, of caution was there no use.
Powerless and sullen, he stood, for remedy was far passed.
The ******, now regarded with delight,
Has he, poor, poor man, to tend to his blight.
The garden gone, its cleanliness perverted,
His words were ignored, and thrown wayside,
His admonition he so heatedly asserted,
The ******, her words never to be trusted
Had won over the people, whose homes she sought to entreat,
And with her rite, so treasured, so adored,
They enslaved and force him to his mire, to tend to the rag and filthy lands
Where he would remain with the garden
His words, his skin so like the sands

Stare at the universe for a little while, you’ll see
Something resembling you and me: a quite sobbing vacuity
Draining all pellucid stars of luster and bravery.
I won’t be home for the rest of my life, hard as it is to take in,
Something went missing in what never was
That all the timbers strip away at the passing years
In anger and patience that slapped me in the face
When I said I’d never be happy again. My pockets are full
Of icy penance for crimes distance and apathy revealed.
Shimmer do the walks ways in the missing parts of the night sky
Shaped, somehow, by you and every blazing heart
Is a comet to earth: ******* vibrantly a poorly strung bandage.
And every light to cross the concourse of hopeless prophesy
And my constructs of relative suffering, an oil-light suicide.
History is always-already the behest of malignancy, but it’s sweet
The protection as I’ve weaponized every interaction to be,
We could have been cause-and-effect and danced like
Idols, gods, and fools in the sky of our experience, but
The God of Small Things, I, bear down on dis-eases rejection.
Like surgery, the tiny cells bereft of the cause of blood, the cause
Of complaint, can do nothing but new hearts reject.

Talk, shutter
Cooling babble,
Paddies ‘tween
The bugs swim, paddle
Whispered gush,
Though never hush
There cast soft in the light of ease
Sensual talk
Down the candid rock
A bridge to honor the way
Bemoaned pleasures
Nature’s fetters
Gone as a little mouse
Trickling now,
Walk on wetter
The fall may never stop
And soon all secrets are revealed
Silence—
Heads go to the leaves
Spies returning to the eaves.

Dear...
This haphazard poem was written solely for you
Matterless, what you came garbed in
Fever elicited, passion anew
You’ve graced me, the repetition of ‘could-have-been’
I loved the way you speak
Of knowledge and triumph
And I, bumbling and meek
Tirelessly I sought and now still seek
Your council, your court
For my amusement, for my sport
Conversing over a poisoned well
I listen in genuine
Raise my voice
Sing with my friends amongst the din
Higher on the pillar, you I hoist
Pure skin my well intentioned hands mar
Clumsily, I lean into a similar heart
To discuss life and literature, fantasies these hands take too far
How eloquent the silk you weave, which you impart
Which inveigles and entices, cajole us into the city
On pale page, the street lamps and dim moon, art
Palpitations and liquor test the pity
Of light and fire
I cannot help but explore your shapely form
And yet, without bar
Across miasma, my guide is a cute little hand
Solitude, the pulsations do doggedly solicit
I just want to be close, you grant this
Bewitched by the creamy satin of pale skin
Distantly, warmly, I gaze in those God-given sculptures
Of the richest green and azure hues, bespeak feminine
Engaged in the other’s stare, two drunken apers
The night, black as sin,
The mould of outcome of we are the shapers
And I shape regret that rises with the sun
You come back vividly and lucidly
Distant and opposite, worlds across, you from me
A nondescript ghost in the corner
Who speaks so placidly
I remember with regret
I remember with exultation
I’ve ruined our relationship
Our relationship topical felicitation
I haven’t had time to apologize
I haven’t had enough time with you
If I ever see you again
I’d mend everything
I’d discover the girl behind the name
And cleanse the projection askew.
Love, Me
Dear...                 .

Dawn, o Dawn
Sunlight that spills over a distant hill
Teasing the shadows of wheat and knell
Filling the cracks with a soulful lit
Expose the face, the shining face
The earth that shies from night
Expose the blindness of the earth
Just as blind in the light.
The fury that melts the dew away
Casts me long away from me
I stood outside, the weeping fields
Seeking the escape I need.
Futility, oh misery
It pulled me back, the seed
And forced embrace, to love the day
Despite spurn, implore, or plead.
The coming day, I hate the man
No friend of mine is he
Every day, oh, Dawn, oh Dawn
A disappointment to me.
Ev’ry step of Apollo’s path
Is paved with bitter tears
Each minute, forced to swallow
To see my failure’s leers
Each time the day begins anew
I’m forced into a darker world
One where pieces of the previous day
Are halved, split into
Shreds and shreds Oh, dear, oh, dear
You’d think spirit’d be all but dead
But what kills him more is not his thought
But what my eyes continue to see
When those eyes were drawn to me
The sun shows never was
It existed in the dark
Obscures like barley’s shadow does
And if, of course, it’s fantasy
A book intent with end
I’ll rip and claw the dawn away
And fiction I’ll defend
For if you’ll never grace my field
And reap the fruits that grow
I’ll just raze them, sky and all
The passion the earth will know.
A fictitious world, much more surreal
I love my own creation
The sunlight unveils the bitter truth
They are not food, but cremation.
If I could stop the coming dawn
If even for a moment
Darkness would bathe the far corners
Wasted lives atone it.
But that is bunk, the dawn knows that
Reality is taken in full
Who ever knew a crisp fall morn
Could be so utterly cruel?
Laying here, the sun moves on
Soon we’ll both be dead
To face the face, my misery
Confines me to this bed.

A pick-up case sits in the dirt, a face like muddy children, hence,
All it needs is a pick-me-up; I’m sure you’ve been around and out

Have a cup of coffee and tell me of the times, mutter out and dispense
Of those all miseries; there’s another watching clouds break about

And solitude unmake itself. But I leave it with twigs, quiet and devout
Because this old-soul dispels of clarity without youth or commonsense.

Even if I could, neither of us could say what rises Easter morning
Or to what sun gods, of praise, are most deserving. But, just this one time

Dewy sunlight parched the bold-faced shadows came without much warning,
On warm breezes at our necks was something akin a wish of mine.

We know not where we are and we do not wish to leave behind
This time to count our blessings in the contrails in the sky

For the shoring up of bleak tomorrows can’t demystify a trance
We glimpse and fall to wobbly knees might stay on the off chance.

Left behind us, that questioned absent mise-en-scène
With gods compassionate speaking over me;
Carelessly deliberate staves of notes rise off the pastiche
To push the soul above the throat through to the hubris of Man
And while his brushstroke unpaints the painter, and a lucid camera shutters free.

All things arise from unities as fibers from the music sheet,
A horn of violet magnitude triumphs beyond the bore concrete,
It cuts below the rest, the merit, teasing to the very womb
Of beauty, raw and eager as primitive desire; he shows to us a tomb
A snapshot of myself the author, of us authors, born again and again

And he sits smug to the side, his cigar as long as libido.
Our bodies are substance on which and of which are drawn
From the comely purple man, patient and ******, he bears
For the very law of beast commands a stable mind,
Captains the aesthete unto the intrusive hole from, for which he writes

For which we create: in that, we find the hungry impetus,
Mothers and fathers in the same moment, with abandon
A moral of such empty stuff pulls from me spirit, spirit, spirit
Of the living wager, my life, as the music man, as the purple man
Ensconced by *****, comes to me: thus is proposed, thus is empowered

Poesis brought me close to the thing of God, poetry brought me from
And beyond, and I dedicate myself to escape from the ******* of art
But run back, and back, and back to the sole recourse to be made.
I can only ride, and writhe to feel the ****** of creation
Let it take hold, let it take breath, rise immortal o’er this infinite little death.

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.1
A jaunt through halls of death’s portents
The portraits, the colors the gallr’y transcend
The ceiling, so high, a silv’ry grey
Walkways bathed in that milky ray
Patrons babble their ephem’ral talk
My strides and mind, against their walk

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.2
Stoic thoughts worn without defense
Entwined in fleshy accoutrements
And like the forest, soon to be
I’m wearing down acuity
I can’t enjoy an adverse face;
I’m simply looking for my grace

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.3
With grace on mind, my waltz in knells
My heart, I feel, it heavy swells
With that strange thing, hard-pressed for words
Fleeing, fearing like a flock of birds
I cannot mourn what never lived
My wish, in your heart is that it is

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.4
Never mind, I speak too soon
Your loveliness silent, cool as the Moon
These shadows bespeak a certain doom
Embattled me, in the past I loom
Forgive me, my sophomoric tongue
Forgive this sad song I have sung

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.5
In due time, I shall reveal
What and how I intend to steal
To repay what you stole from me
What I exposed when you spoke to me
I don’t not hope (and yet I do) that you are plighted blind
I truly hope, this awestruck boy, is weighing on your mind

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.6
Ev’ry flow’r in this great land
Could n’er be bless’d by that sweet hand
For I hope that bloom of my own
Could occupy that pale, lissome throne
I’m shut up, locked, I drone
Pure pulp to you, my abounding tome

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.7
Those sweet waters, cursed to dry
My mouth and austerity slated to die
Melting, am I, in boyish infatuation
Your cataract rising on my muddy station
My fruits of mystery, your gaze turned sour
And my exposure, to me, a dower

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.8
Despite my mantra “Be forever alone,”
That short, bobbed hair and cadence bemoaned
A stoic foresight, so brutally sought
Does shy away, that training for naught
This emotion, I fear, the superlative begets
Despite I have not even told you yet

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.9
Give me grace and stability too!
And though our meetings, infrequent and few
I’m undermined by fervency
With just the thought of you and me
I must remember to take it slow
Though through my darkness, it certainly shows

[A jaunt through halls of death’s portents] pt.10
I feel my heart is full to bursting
Yet I still feel a limitless thirsting
My eyes, my cheeks flushed and red
When I think myself inside that head
I see myself within that face,
Humbled, I share their time and place.

Epilogue
The reality is coming quickly
I’m anemic, undone, distracted and sickly
Heart cries out into the leaves
Every time that fair one leaves
Enlivened, at sudden, so make haste
Please, oh, please, grant me your grace!

Patchwork sky beyond the reach
—They breach the alley way
Swimming swathes amidst the blue
—Flash the knives and young curses
Lost for incongruity
—Mere kids, mere savagery
All, now, is coated silver
—Empty packets hunger
We move on toward our night
—Shame young beasts grow old, too.

Oh, Muse, bemused me, no true self have I
Many a-mask have fallen to paint me
My canvas is contrite and still I lie
And, oh, for Fortune you’re denied to see
What foul bristles wash and stroke mien anew
Today was blue, yester a shade gayer,
Tomorrow, expect my art gift to you
Quick, more pastels! New friends, another layer
But, like any piece, Time wills it ‘way fade.
And perfection tainted by the past one,
Please ask yourself, who amongst is not made?
And whose vibrant colors have not mixed dun?
Come, let’s look on at my new piece,
So the patrons of my art ever increase.

I gave the dog a bone
And he gives me God instead
The god, a bone, I gave;
And with that bone, he fled.
Great battle lines were drawn
By infinitives of legion-men
Both skirting around the split and splice.
But, ****, those FANBOYS can’t finish
Anything.

Morning:
My taken place at the faucet, a peer
Staring into eyes, not sworn to me
And I was standing, looking in the mirror
Speaking as my reflection
Spoke back to me.
I was shocked when he took my hand
Starting speaking about identity
I was shocked he knew so much
More of me
Than I.
He talked about my too-long hair
Or how good I looked in green
Or how messy my morning face could be
Or whether I was feeling smart or lean.
He knew it all:
I’d go so far to say more of me than I.

Evening:
Look to the east! A sun set
—Bravo! At least consistent and THEN gone.
Me? I’ve no such liberty
I couldn’t even tell, bereft a mirror,
The thing I like to call me.
Walking the roads, lined with lights
Bustling, living,
Lined with sights
Constituting the parts of me, invisible
—Added to nothing, they’re indivisible
Closed, exposed, fall and drizzle
Without the gall keep hold
From doors and boughs
In the windows—I’m there now
And THEN I’m gone.

Night:
The stone church’s door where
The righteous moor their souls
Piety flows
In its golden veins
And I’m there no more.
Their God does hate me
Without presence in the
Pews; I’m dross
Since the saint I chose
Was Saint Me beatified
Confirmed from the sinner Laity Goss
—So I turn
To the school affording play in my words
And a tact therefore
But rejects
All but their templates in blue shoes
Who sleight my for company
Only when within them
Or drowning in *****.
—So I turn
To the wilderness
Blooming in virginal grapes
Disrobed save the skin
Unfamiliar,
Self-aware but only on a whim
And whirlwinds that blow
Ice and shrapnel and
Exile me to the country
Where not but dearth may grow
In a single season of mine
—So I turn
Too afraid of that winter
So much more the fall
And me in the mirror
Knows it all, knows it plenty
A casual drop in a casual chat
About identity
—So I turn
Back to the mirror
Back to it all
With showers and pictures in its wall
Staring into eyes, sworn not to me
Speaking as my reflection
Speaks back to me
I was not shocked he knew so much
More of me than I,
Since he strides alongside mine
And only in a certain climb
Telling me
It’s almost time, I’m almost there
But it’s not clear in which direction,
Or where.

Icy tangs are all the early morning, budding its flower
The young mother born into the sonata of her own being
That seems so foreign to thick sheltered blood,
My adult notch in this Exquisite Rotation.

Humid skies are as spy glasses to the truth
So says the colossus with our sun for an eye;
She steps out of the illusion beautifully blue
Robed in silks of celestial gold;
The skin hangs taught over the most beautiful
Pair of collarbones you’ve ever seen
The pass of your previous life comes in sublime waves
Of crashing aether and all the souls flee with irreclaimable mirth
Before popping in the atmosphere like spit and wishes
And everyday is the day of rest, a pondering
Of avant-gardens where a savior once walked.
He and his church left the path of the geese
For, he hears not, the pass of prayer on their lips.
But, I do not blame them: their mouths are full
With the sky’s drawstrings, reinvigorated from their disuse,
They’ve no time for the good word.
My family of geese fly for the astral bodies’ abode above
Where the casual speak of poets, philosophers can be hears
Talking about their *** lives, talking about themselves
No longer galvanized by their own recreations.

And as I go to place this thing in the place of pain
Warm rushes in the shifting life-force, the green of
Exuberant joy hits our hydrophobic throats
And we exhale, watching it roll back as the geese fly overhead
With no mind or reason why.

How jealous am I
At poetry?
That simple words make the lovely firm
And compact shadowy abstraction?
Every letter holds a bitter love
A fiction made with zeal,
Drawn from pinpricks, imaginings,
A fiction I made real.
Within them, sit, the cloth I weave
My heroic darling love exists
There, sobriety is leastways bearable
And pen to paper I can’t resist.
I see perfection—her complexion,
Written out in words
But she is so stolid
And doesn’t move
Her features fade when I admit,
Stale enterprise, the poem done
and the page I promptly quit.
Rife with guilt and melancholy
I’ve done impulse injustice:
Concretizing the unknowable,
Left caricatures incomplete.
Despite the sense, here, stacked before me,
The envy for this poem
Because it has a solid grasp
At the prickings of my heart.
And still, what have I
And what have he
But two-side written jealousy?
For more words that breed a love
Of which I, voracious, hunt,
More beauty, more glamour, rosy viscera,
Give poetry that fallacy,
That fallacy I want.

1
It was a past heart ache, and that alone
Set fire to the stake.
On it, a thief in very subtle attire
Two mouths and dressed in smoke,
It may hide its face, inviting my derision
But in allusion and courageous gaze
I knew it was me up there.
#2
Watching and waiting as he did
Before the crime, Time
Told him what was to come;
Still he stole, in misery, the hollowness, giving affection to an excision
(And then he was a saint)
So to faint in throes of his pining ways, bringing this judge
To bitter dismay
And a biting northern frost.
#3
And now I blame him, the othered me,
Condemning with a dissonant grin,
Satisfied, silent and quick to cry
From killing chunks of flesh born out of puppy-dog kid-stuff
Deciding each time:
Enough is never enough is never enough and whine when it is true.
It’s not a thief but ghouls of absolution:
I am the thief
Exist solely as this motif
And alief
It’s the heart that loves in all its strands
Sufficed to ****** innocent, then wash it of my hands
Each time I ignore that anguish
Ushers me on.

Cooling air, the senses assault
Done is the day, I’ve earned my salt.
Daytime light has turned on me
On moonlit streets such trickery
The pleasant splash, those leaves on foot
Make drunk these nostrils, nectarous soot
Pensive mood floods the mind
And of their beauty I’m truly blind
I do not think of Autumn whole
Only alms within my bowl
As you’ll see I’m leaf inspired
Though their rudiments I have mired
Autumn ring, the chilling tenors
Rejoiced and played in earthly manors
That icy rush makes cold the spirits
Yet conflagrates ye adherents
That festive smell, incense the air!
No motive o’yours ever err
And though the day leaves more hastily
These changing leaves get the best o’me
Transient seconds plump and inspir’d
Of your natural portraits I’ll never tire
The mountainside, my most treasur’d mosaic
Whatever great works, it’s more archaic
Falling to the ground, like listless colorful rain
Whether as the nemophilist, or seated behind a pane
These little souls returning to earth
Fill me with the greatest mirth
Though they exemplify an age ended
Verbiage they have transcended
I’d fill my days with gallery mileage
Gladly glut with their splendid sillage
As they flit, the stuff of dreams
In their midst, pure sophrosyne.
Day or night I’m overcome
Eyes wide open and stricken dumb
Overcome with words and tune
Bursting forth, this ideal plume
And like a flower, complex in bloom
Can’t be captured, hemmed and hewn
Vapor these words, though fall inspire’d
No due medium, pen or lyre
Untouchable this golden essence
Wealth of ideas, gone in seconds
Appropriate, it seems to me
My head, my thoughts a leafy tree
Arrives the autumn, gold and dun
Thousands escape when I reach for one
So I’ll just watch in quiet awe
The beauty whole, no hem nor haw
Not try to make that art my own
Won’t reduce it to rhyme and tone
I’ll simply revel their naïve lull
Ephemeral, yes, but never dull
Shout out happily in leafy halls
Marry to words what return my calls
Leave thou ******, in pulchritude pall
And question not what comes of fall.

Crept in the surgeon from the ashen winds
Peaceful, baleful autumn fire
A descent climbing ever higher.

A special case to him it seemed, starched white
His breathy steam corroborated.
The nurses rush ‘tween bed and ****, checking
Vitals of lacking that but the enigma
Curiouser and, oh, the blank screen displayed it.

There, as sight, the network of bones, all disposed
To their center, by blood and vein, all there through.

What caught the eye, a screaming white blot
In the thick of his bare cavity
A cold urn, well wrought
Had in its mouth a thousand streaming shards
Burning, pumping all the same by some miracle
That rigid effaced youth and flesh
Taking its gestalt’s place.

A nurse approach in ample fit to begin,
Crack his stern starch baritone, there he burst
Take him away; nothing is wrong
Amateur at best, irreclaimable at worst.

Predecessor of the morning hour
Bleeding through the gilded fringes that hang aloft in the wood
Breeze withheld its embraced dower
Humid casements held where I stood
The singeing lash did not come
Caged o’er the ridge
Melancholia, and the sky did shun
Ebon armada sent all the cavalry
Halberdiers and lancers, to contend a bitter rivalry
The brooding cataract washed
And I could only run
Towards pale shades and curtain rods
Towards uncertain suns
On the backs of Titans, the shoulder of Atlas my flight took rest
Before I, the ashen dome expands.
As though at my behest
And through the slaughter, the fray(!)
A presence of the light of day
Through the flush pillars
And fell beasts of rain
The bones of its enemies
Could be seen
Naked, exposed by eye so tiny and wan
Dispersed, did they
Frightened by valor of dawn

Wielding one balance before me:
Divine intent, no tool for an evil genius
Levied ‘gainst one jar wrought of glass,
Within fine grains of coal.
My sins may weigh to graphite
Fitting, for no blanket of Heaven
Suits my restlessness.
Cast me on parchment
Where I spell out the pain
Of never capturing truth—no human may.
Enigma, Aestheticus, vibrant, complete
Finished, or full. No, I utter to Venus
A Pygmalion word to know
All as art and beauty so well
As to paint it carnally.
Give me that which is love made manifest
On lithe little toes, walks her
Which, parsed out selectively  
Is revealed in awesome moment, eternal
Subjectivity. Either she steps from a canvas
Strides from a dream, I awaited it, organic
To come into being, to escape my grasp
And make useless poetry.

Just, thought I, to escape a while,
Mundane light in the desk at home
On these splintered, black-tar roads
Marching, festooned in leaf and in rock
Snapping and scattering from underfoot.
My heavy breaths are this odd meter
In-out, in-out on this pavement slap
The knees are strained, down, the stream
Of rheumy little beads—lines! (I sense
Conception of a rare cadence
In which earth finds its synchrony).

‘Round the walls of rustic homes and will
To this walking gallery of the ‘ville
Ancient oaks, they lift their head and grin
To a sky beyond the storm, what with plumes
Unearthly fronds, dark with salmon painted on
Softened, its oil, burnt carnal black
That loose-end feeling holding it back.

Furrowed brow, I run with now
Sweet winds and pirouette
The dancers go amidst the leaves
Hold Hell high ‘bove white hands
Turned in deference and o,’ Arbor!
Your threshold live and saturnine
Entire eternities unfold now, silk scarf on
Goddess Eve, her halo proud
Gold embraced by Pink and now
She strides in by the choral geese
Flown to sing her godhead to sleep
Her rest had blest pain to leave me now
At those gates loud, effervescent
Shimmering, shimmering
In calm disbelief
And on
And on.

Back at the source, that in-between
Bare **** of the Fasick bridge
Magmatic pallets, on faces two
One shared tear drop, a cosmic breadth.
I saw from there the garden of stone
Lonely tombs in blamy play
Fruits sprung in those past lives.
I shared their rest for moment still
And back it goes, the nameless past
Where they exists as dreams, beside me.

Two sides, met then so diverged
I saw their peace where night emerged
Where pink embraced the dark
Went to rest on low horizons.
The world closed its lips and lids
Its eyes and loving heart
Bathed, it all, in low florescence
And lullaby of cicadas.

At a distance, the bland earth is a photo tinged of emerald green
Selfsame cars blow through. Playing in the margins
Forfeits judgment and your peace to the 10,000 shades of envy.

The usual story is re-penned like some perverse guarantee
We’ll all be disappointed some day, and everyone is at large
From a distance, those scowling portraits done with shades of emerald green

Something we’ve come to need and come to hate, against what men levy
Me and what they weigh the lithe little ghost of the human heart in
It seems strange outside light of rippling 10,000 shades of envy.

But where it is heard the gentle thrush say, “bereave, bereave, bereave,”
I’ll be a small voice in the coppice, singing, “breathe, breathe, still breathing”
At length, some small corners of the bland earth take on that emerald green

Thorns may drain burgundy from your hands, to leave your skin sticky sweet
Impressed in those ugly scabs like how you love yourself like sin,
The thorns just fall off like clothing in 10,000 shades of envy,

We lift pain away then, the happiness of the finally free
Hands lifted away from prayer can worship the single day in
And closely hold earth’s photo tinged of emerald green, then there’s no need
For forfeiture, I’ve my 10,000 shades of a different envy.

All the worst things in life
Start with a:
A-social
A-theist
A-******.
A-bominations to be corrected, but,
And although, in the hands of a body
The blame must go
Tight-gripped and freely clasped
A smile hangs like a necklace.
For, they ask, what grows,
On what shore that glance a thirsting road
Where no artisan of wells
Lets run his craft
Burst with life?
What vines may couple, transect dead veins
Still in a bed of salt
But dead and grey shades of the true?
None,
It would seem, can carry the sweet
Of fertile seeds along the water’s edge
It is but passing as its plumpness
Withers and drops
Apart, epistle, a dogma.
This vampiric little heart takes no form
In Narcissus’ pool it does not
Glisten in the waters calm
Despite the furious mouth
And, gone, lost of all that made it whole.
I go back to the source of the
Grey valley flume
Unknown to impetus,
Cannot find its way in the endless roads
And paths in the sun-baked skin,
The wind may blow salt in my eyes though
The music of its basin fills my ears:
Waves breaking and pressing
On soft earthen lines, scrap-book memories
Faded at the edges like Polaroids
Unfold from the waves of purity
In the sand of an empty shore.
I peer idly into the glimmering stream
No red heart beating,
But a grey heart; one simply searching, pining
For a grey love to begin
And the world that I know
They belong in.

Pursue anxieties through the arches
Grand clothes, in all, proscenium
Marks the flesh of fiction of which
We wear in pride and tears, breaking
At whimsy the sacred real. Born in
That repetition, the rebel who rips
With rage and striking tongue solidity
All to null. We hold the soul of the earth
In balance just as we know every second
And intense authority, conscious of the body
To mold the putty of your lives.
Absurd boheme! But this magician
This contradiction with no delusion of self
As close as any man may get therefore
To perfection in our nihil.
Running, running all alongside
The misted face of high Olympus
And greatly gathering elements
And crafting, as any god to waltz
In history and awe, Absolute from
Absolute None.
Meet us when, meet us when
All the words like leaves do die
We’ll leave you with the seed of it
From drama comes drama
To drama it will go.

You are no item to me,
But a specter who winds through the bones
Elusive, frightening
Warm and whitening in a cemetery yard
You’ve returned for a purpose
That is not my own.
My eulogy goes as thus on a stone, waiting
Conjuring a spirited hand and knowing
Earthly words cannot tempt
A soul who rejected Heaven.

Expectation stands in Middlecreek’s waters, it toddles
In curious little hands, in Marylanders only up for the day,
And the snow geese hang like freed shapes of the sky;

This lake comes alive with fluttering wings,
The people around me keep their eyes close to the ground
While a new and weightless thing who walks in fickle grace
Stands in awe from every eye transfixed and terrified
Even the infant child, reborn like of us
Under what little sun 100,000 geese would allow
Through flight, into a world of charcoal.

Something happened in every eye. I don’t know what gods
Revealed themselves to us, or if we walked joy from scorn
But none of us felt human or pain only the swirl of the birds
Dancing inside one another like fire, like passion,
And all the words anyone tried to say were wrong.

Could I say my name anymore and still be right?
Could I call myself so separate when every heart there
Stuck to a single note, and every mouth struck dumb?
Could I speak beauty any longer, or had the geese
Renewed the tongue a fictive beast?
We never were what we thought we were
All but angels afraid of floating there.

Give me another sweetwater afternoon
That tastes of onion grass and birth
And doesn’t care where you take a leak,
Give me the safe and warm provincial air
Coming from the west like a beggar
on a box car,
Give me the humidity that blots out the June-day sun
While we think ***** thoughts
On my couch,
Give me the opportunity to exchange blows with Johnny Rebel up the street
And his grandday’s probably rolling
In his grave,
Give me the hicks I rolled with for laughs before they married too early
So they can ride around on bikes with me
Like we did when the world was ours,
Give me a couple more days in the acrid Juniata
So I can dive in its sloppy green body
With reckless abandon,
Give me fishhooks in my heel
So I can pull them from my nakedness
And get Amish-made whoopee pies after the tears stop,
Give me moss covered roofs and tons of **** in the backyard
And the idle lap of water beneath the trout-boat’s belly
While I tell myself I’m not a redneck to my sunburned chest and my open flannel.