Play it slow-
not for romance,
but because the strings are blistered,
and every note splits the sky
with fire.

Stroll through the panic,
it’s routine:
duct tape on the windows,
radio on low,
a list of missing birds
tacked to the wall
like fallen saints.

You said you'd carry me,
but the world’s gone grey,
and the olive tree’s
just smoke now.

There’s no audience left.
Just wind
and its thousand-watt warning.

Still, your spine curves to the rhythm
like a fever dream from Babylon,
hips like warning sirens,
ankles sunk in ash.

I want to understand
what we ruined,
but only at a pace I can stand,
only with eyes closed.

There was a time
we dressed like lovers.
Now it’s mylar blankets
and filtered masks.

We knew the promise;
we broke it anyway,
above it,
beneath it,
inside it.

Someone keeps whispering
about children,
as if hope still blooms
in poisoned soil.

Play it slow,
with bare hands if you must.
But don’t pretend this isn’t a requiem.
Don’t dress it up in velvet or vows.
Just let the music float
and burn,
like everything else.

Be reckless with your words to me;
incite, provoke, use words as lips
and teeth and hands and silk restraints.
Press them deep into my skin –
leave marks, leave late, and come again.

“perhaps the sun is a teacup, spilled by a girl in a skyhouse who laughs in polka dots–”

You wrote like someone
who had been listening
long before speaking,
each poem a hush,
each repost a gentle offering.

This space once held you,
your words, your calm curation,
a gentle steadiness
in a shifting field of voices.

take this small goodbye
not as an end,
but as a door left open,
just in case
you return with your light.

Until then,
may strength find you
in soft moments,
and peace arrive
never needing to be earned.

When nights are dark you’ll never see
the depths of our humanity,
but in the light of desert days
the shades of death will quite amaze.

So if you’ve time to take the trouble
sift just once through wreck and rubble -
ashen bones of tots will rile,
though eyes of rampant killers smile.

While starving at their mama’s breast,
one wonders whom those babes transgressed.
But as the bombs boom, split and splatter,
does it even really matter?

Yes, mothers often pay the price
with holy wartime sacrifice:
in flight, miscarried embryos!
Quite slow as ethnic cleansing goes,
but nonetheless, one must confess,
infanticide’s a great success.

The Chiefs disdain the Rule of Law -
their conscience never seems to gnaw
when dealing peace its last hurrah;
though charged with crime, they never rue it,
persevere and still pursue it,
smile and claim “they made me do it”.

They smoke their own, like cannibals,
with dictates, such as Hannibal's,
erasing also hostages
in so-called rescue carnages.

With bullets flying back and forth
the hungry hordes are driven north,
since promised aid (that’s long gone south)
was empty words from furtive mouth.

Instead of plates of pita bread
the meals are served with plated lead,
and those expiring at their hands
will sleep neath sheets of silent sands.

On fallow fields where kids once played
you’ll find a random hand grenade,
the only one that didn’t explode
the last time that the lawn was mowed.

As prancing children cross the roads
sometimes a tampered phone explodes.
One wonders what the future bodes -
perhaps some elegiac odes!

Where are those boys that threw a stone?
Well, some were shot; and some were not,
but whisked away to place unknown
and in the meantime... left to rot.

Within dark tunnels, bad guys hide,
beneath the clinics, far and wide,
so missiles raze them to the ground -
no bodies of the bad guys found,
but upstairs in debris, instead,
lie doctors in the ER... dead.

Twelve bombers flattened Ah-tross City
showing no remorse or pity;
now survivors hide in tents
in fear of further ‘accidents’.

But where are those with screams that gags?
Brought often back in body bags!
No need for sorrow for the slain,
since after death they feel no pain.

Today are waged uncivil wars
which burst the dams and breach the shores      
to empty vital reservoirs;
with water less than hitherto,
(and lacking coke from Timbuktu),
they’re left to lap the sewage brew.

This glance at barren battlefields
reveals the peace that killing yields,
evoking shadows time transcends
when man’s  existence finally ends.

EPITAPH

While Jungle Jim the Jingoist
embroils the world, and wars persist,
pale Peter Pan the Pacifist
pleads “Can’t we somehow coexist?”

When I’m not tapped into a music stream.

I like quiet
no - let’s be exact,
I like silence
ear plugs in - deafening quiet
or better yet, noise cancelled anti-sound
That’s relatively new technology
My mom mentioned new studies suggest it may rewire things
gray matter wise, you know, behind the eyes
like the patterns sound forms in sand.

But if you’re going to scramble my mind
your going to have to wait in line behind
bland 21-year-old issues like:
sleep deprivation
hormonal fluctuations
romantic fog
case study competitions
business model design games (REALGAME)
deductive logic puzzles
irritability and mood swings
mental bandwidth anxiety
cognitive confusion
information overload
assignment stress
premenstrual syndrome
compulsive coping mechanisms
career anxiety
****** frustration
multitasking shifts (schedule)
canon events (existential dilemmas)
culture shock (new environment)
feeling “scrambled”
family pressures

So, yeah. let’s fn Jettison headphone worries - MOM - shall we??!
.
.
Right Now by The Creatures
A Girl In Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing) by Romeo Void
Your Turn to Run by Malaria!

I walked through many paths,
Hoping that I'd end up with what I wanted to get,
Like a cat running after a rotten rat,
While fate gave its biggest laugh, watching me from above as it sat.

I found myself in the same doorway,
Even after a million decisions and decades worth of actions,
So scared to step in that hallway,
I turned my back on it and walked against the day.

The thickest wall built on earth,
Giving up against the fear of being third,
Perhaps I'm just setting a dam against my destined mirth,
An already written holy fate is dragging me toward a rebirth.

That insistent path could be my saviour, for certain.
I guess it's time for me to change the weather,
And perhaps it's time for me to open new gates, open my eyes or just open the curtains.
I guess I just wanted to hold onto that one I need to burn, that decade old wormy letter.

Locking every door and throwing away the key,
Was all along the necessity for one to be-
Able to bud in the new beginnings in which one needs to be.
That lost one who found a new hive after flying for 40 days, a honeybee
Loyalty, resignation, embracing, and acceptance all are for that holy & aware entity.

Unshaven, old, and nearly spent,
He slouched in his kitchen chair,
Lungs rattling wheezing breath,
Radiation doing little then,
To control the mass within, or
To prevent the Mass he knew
Would soon begin.

Hard to believe a man
So tough as Rubin always was
Sat stubble-faced and wan
In early morning sun.

Two years ago,
At 65,
He and his son
Put a ****** on,
Fought a cop,
Nearly won,
Stayed a week in jail,
Paid a $7000.00 fine,
Then bragged it all
Was worth the time
And memories.

I saw him jump,
At 66,
From a moving van,
Six feet up
Like a younger man,
Hell bent to take his fill,
Shoveling hard, cursing still,
Cigarette hanging loose
Even with a rattling cough
(He shrugged it off)

And then,
At 67,
His last remains crave no nicotine,
No *****, wayward fights,
No carousing old man libertine
Out with his son at night,
And we who watched Old Rubin's days,
Pay our respects and go our ways.