My tired, broken stone pounds away
on the anvil of life.
Too much time, too much to do, my forge
is filled with strife.
Your heart beats, but I’m buried too far down
to hear it.

In this house of madness, a factory for
glory and fame,
the smith works a mechanical work, hammering
away his shame.
His arms sweat blood, his veins are lead-filled,
but he does not tire.

Yet I can tire, I do tire, and that is the nature
of a life in the making.
Chained to the altar, fed prayer after swollen prayer,
ripe for the taking.
My robe is dirtied, stained and worn, but not
wrinkled nearly enough.

The priest, the smith, the lady is wrong.
I shall not give up.
I shall not die.
‘Tho I may tire and faint,
dizzy and stumbling,
they shall hear no complaint.
For I am ablaze
in my heavy labor.

Death encroaching
up the road well-traveled, toeing the
yellow lines, kicking dust from its boots.
It knows not where it heads, but
blindly follows the weary speech of travelers
long gone.

An old shack, rotting wood and splintered
bone, through the door it walks, shivering
the hinges an early winter. Boards creak
underfoot, and pleading eyes look up
from a face wrinkled enough to know.

Through dusty towns it walks, drawing
eyes shining with life and age towards the
beaked mask black against horror and hope.
Pebbles ground underfoot, but with precision,
each one chosen by the shadowed heel.

Boys run across roads, chasing careless *****
with thoughts between moments.
A dark stranger passes, shoulders knocked
and apologies thrown. The ground littered,
amidst rock and dust, but the boots pass on,
ignored but to be remembered.

Time passes by, cutting a swathe through worlds.
Empires fall, mountains crumble, and the San Andreas fault gapes open.
Bodies decay, graves sink into earth, the Sun glares down,
and the Moon creeps closer.
The Burning Man watches, silent, unmoved and present.

He stares at the world as it rusts over.
He walks its dead deserts, its barren oceans,
through the skeletons of buildings and over sagging highways.
He watches the vast dirt plains of the American metropolis,
and the dustbowl of Russia over the burial grounds of the Orient.

He is solitude, and does not wonder why.

The dogs chew at my flesh,
**** my bones dry, and leave the pickings
for the pigs.

Heavens explode and render planets
asunder. Stellar paint sprays my body,
a canvas for an irradiated rainbow.

A flower blossoms. Shall it grow in the
acid rain? In the humid heat of the tomb?
Before the blood bees come?

Oh if only I knew, if you knew, what was
happening in this body of mine. A prison of
flesh, or is it freedom?

Freud says it’s mama-love, but I say that’s
crap. Bologne. Beach-fried spaghetti.
Too bad that tells me nothing.

These images, thoughts, urges fly through
my head, one violating the next like some
sick funhouse ride.

Will it stop? No it won’t. Yes it will. I hope
not, but that would be boring. Like a
corpse in its grave. Rotting.


I think I’ll live a little,
won’t I?

Maybe a little, just a little, til
this wave of pain subsides and turns
back into pleasure.

To pursue it would be folly, and to
walk away would be worse. A choice
of die or dive. Shall I?

Into a sea of maggots, a tornado of
blood and flesh and god-knows-what.
But that’s okay with me.

Once I figure out what the **** I’m doing.