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I'm a monster | an abberation.
A sightless loon | a desecration.
What do you want from me?

I live in a fantasy concentration.
A constant mental demonstration.
What do you want with me?

I'm sick.
I fail.
I quit.
I whine.
I want nothing but to make things mine.

I avoid.
I covet.
I'm paranoid.
I pine.
I want nothing but to make you mine.

I own your every move.
Control your mind and lease your soul.
You're amusement | there's no other way.
I swallow life | there's no other way.

"Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?"
Lie to me.
Lie with me.
Lie right through your teeth.
Tell me of the joy.
The light.
The sweetness.
Underneath.

Here I am
Tell me I'm lying | and hide
Your pain beneath your skin.
Tell me that you're pleased | grin

Let everyone else go.
No one.
Can know you like I know you.
No one.
Cares | cares to care | can care.
I see you laid bare.
Open | for me.

I know you | you are serpentine
Lie to me.
Lie to me.
Afford me a second look.
You are serpentine | simian.
A match | a head | a book.
Beautiful and useless | brazen and prey.
A word and a mind is all it took.

You are serpentine.
Coiled into knots.
Breathing like a drum | coming undone
Turning poison [cannots]
Into years of history-

Realms | orbs.
Spheres of stunning beauty.
"Digest a world of interest."
I eat your eyes.
You are serpentine.
I was approached long ago in the Red Star Lounge.
"I offer you personal lessons on the art of detection,"
the stranger said. Now, my disbelief has been on suspension
ever since I arrived,
but I knew that accepting this offer would be less than wise.
I asked, "What do you mean?"
He answered, "Do you notice this ring on my finger?"
I nodded, he continued-
"Now this..." the last syllable lingered
in the air as he paused,
wishing I grasped the suspense he hoped to cause.
"...is a ring, but it is not ordinary." He stared at me-
Too intent to be a glare-
"Than what is it?" I queried.
As if I even cared-
"Its power extends beyond this mortal realm,
and if you are ready, to you I bequeath it."
"If I were ready?" I stared back-
"How can one tell?" I had had about enough of this, I was exhausted.
"I'd deduce if you were prepared,
but I know already you are-
the look in your eyes,
I've not seen in decades,
in my travels near and far-"
This wandering loon, this destitute pariah,
and it was I that captivated his attention.
His attention was rapt, though wrapped too tightly he was not.
It was Orpheus I thought of, and his lyre,
as he removed his ring and offered it.
"Wear this, assume my role-"
Burned was my wit-
I accepted his gift,
and as I gazed at it foggy-eyed, he told me-
"You must comply! Put it on and do as it commands!"
I was in a daze, too confused to flee-
"Do it!"
So I did-
And nothing happened-
He stared at me as if I were a ghost-
"Well? What does it tell you?"
My face went sanguine with rage as I answered virulently-
"Nothing! I hear nothing! You are a fool!"
He looked dejected, grey as a ghoul-
I was mad at myself for buying into this nonsense,
though I felt guilty for being so cruel-
"Are you..." He paused as he considered my eyes. "...sure?"
"Yes."
"Then give it back, you aren't the one I was looking for."
That offended me-
"Wait, wait! I implore you to wait!"
I concentrated on the ring, I will make myself this one.
"Just give it back," He held out his hand-
"Maybe it just isn't going exactly to plan," I conceded.
He still looked defeated,
but his eyes were the eyes of a tormented man.
"No! Return it at once!" He seized my wrist.
Instantly I made a fist-
"I feel something! I swear it is true!
I know now exactly what it is I'm to do!"
He struggled to open my hand as I clenched it ferociously-
"I must travel this land, gifting all with my wisdom!"
He sneered at me and bit my thumb-
"Why won't you believe me?"
"Because you're a liar!" He said, as I bled into my palm-
"You can't possibly know that!" I shoved him away-
He pushed me back and I fell from my feet-
He pounced on my chest and as he spoke I felt the heat
from his words-
"I made it all up!" His spit specked my cheeks-
"I stole it from a doctor, I've tried to sell it for weeks!"
I couldn't understand-
"You were supposed to wear it,
like it,
keep it,
then pay me to thank me!"
He rose and I rose, and I dabbed my face with his shirt-front.
I felt betrayed from my head right down to my toes-
"But I don't have any money-"
From the look I received,
I don't think he considered that funny-
"I know what to do..." I said meekly and smiled.
"...the ring speaks to me, I must be the one,
the chosen,
the golden child..."
He hung his head and shrugged
and I thought of the doctor he mugged,
and then I thought of my hatred for doctors-
"But keeping it I don't think would be proper."
There was a gleam in his eye as my hands came together,
but as hard as I pulled, the ring stayed right on-
"I think it's stuck," I said-
He stood as if his bones were made entirely of lead-
Frustrated beyond speech.
I kept trying to remove it,
but it wouldn't even budge-
"Maybe you should get some soap and water,
maybe that'd get it off-"
He scoffed-
Turned, and walked away-
I waited awhile, but he never came back-
So I still wear that ring to this day,
though it has yet to utter another mention of my duty-
Then I went to city park
to feed breadcrumbs to pretty larks.
I brought my niece Elise
and my nephew Patrice.
Well we stayed 'til after dark.
My brother's wife, she called me,
so I waived the dollar-nine fee.
She wants her kids.
So I closed my lids,
and I told her that that won't be.
Sorry, I'm taking them now, they're mine.
I'm not wantin' to listen to her whine,
so I hung up the phone,
let out a moan,
said it's time to go, it's after nine.
The children asked when they're going home.
"Well, we're hittin' the road, going to roam."
After 77 miles of driving,
they both got to crying'
and I told 'em to SHUT THEIR ******' MOUTHS.
I pulled over the car at Oregon Shortine,
took the W. Michigan Cross to Madison
merged to Blancheflower Ave.
Wait!

I said stay right ******' there.
I opened the trunk.
And with a THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
I bashed out their brains on the seats.




How are you, my friends?
I miss you, I was hanging out with some unsavory joggers,
and they always wanted to see some buffalo.



So I cleaned the seats.


I love a machine, I love a machine. I love a machine. How can this be, how can I feel so eruditely unclean? Is this the ends to my ill-gotten means? So how are you?


Then I left them lying there, across from the Lebanon Computer Cafe.
So I left them-


Advise me...


It was after all getting late.


My life is a net, my life is a net. I swirl and unfurl and stone the design, I curse myself, my heartstring facsimile. I played piano to forget, but my mind needs 89 keys to remember how to do that, and all I had was 88.


So I went to bed.

It was tea time.
This truest love, triumphantly
   is a bird of prey
marauding 'twain these grayest skies and tenured gain
dine with blessed distinction,
feathered queen!
And any mice caught in between-
   For does my love in summer's rain
prey on the solace of my nightly dreams

Do gauge my love as span of wings
   the distance 'tween each finger
Her wings are spread and through the sky
she soars in arcs and swirls
Each and every blissless night,
   she passes coyly o'erhead,
The curtain in my blood unfurls
and this presence ever lingers-

Perched aloof and tauntingly in a bending oak
she says: "These stars that hover
             above the sky I disbelieve-
           Their palaver, quaint and lasting,
             I disbelieve-
They grip and guide my flutters as an ever-tightn'ng yoke."
Each hand I place o'er the other,
'til each branch is a rung, ladder to the moon.
Said: "And coldly does this horrib' moon smile,
        she laughs 'til my tail is the dust
        each stroke of hours and minutes speak to me
        this cunning moon pours in our hearts this lust-
           How could these shambles any trust?"
This sky, though blacken'd,
cannot rend apart what's happened,
and all it sees with terrible eyes
can prevent not this love fore'er mend-

She glode politely out o' reach,
To soar delightly by me-
Said: "I see the jilted morning glory
           bowing to the moon.
       Each stalk twines traitoriously
           a capsulating swoon-
       Each fruit it bears bequeathes 'nto me
       callous forms of elliptic bracts,
       eats as nothing more than flax-"

For every morning glory's betray'l
I'll harvest ten thousand Orchids from the meadow's fringe,
plucked from the margins of the bog-
This love is not a passing arc
that follows does that jealous moon-
I'll trek the acid, foy an' dinge,
and, if those mice do not erstwhile dine on this orchid's seeds,
that which lays dormant, 'neath the leaves
will send up freshly blooming stalks.
He's King Louis.
I went to school with the regency.
He's superfluous, and
he taught me grammatical consistency.

Since the first day of education,
he showed me cultural emancipation
behind the bleachers in the gymnasium,
between three and six on Wednesday afternoons.

He wore a crown of indignation
to guide him in his transmigration
of lines no boy should cross.

He takes the bait from all the teachers
and all the handshakes from the preachers
until it's not just the heat that makes King Louis swoon.
The priests, they tell him in their French,
"**** de Monarque se viendra repentir!"
Much, much too late, the little wretch.

King Louis knows arithmetic, and
he listens to The Smiths with it
and thinks the rumors just aren't fair.

He knows the kids are uncouth gits
and all their sweaters are too loosely knit
and they don't spend nearly enough time on their hair.

Because he was King Louis,
time spend wading through the past is not a fling,
but a testament to getting up and staying there.
This is not atrocity
This is the basement
This is the sea receding like lips to reveal tooth-like shells
  
Amongst the bullet casings and corpses felled leaving the boats
This is the sand like an inverted moat around the
Kingdom at sea, and this is the Remainder.
   Yet they remain jubilantly-

Is this what being jubilant means?
Chamomile anklets adorning a hanged child.

This is not atrocity,
Ignorance wielding pitchforks and fire.
Anger alight and hostility riled
This is not atrocity.
This is not far from this reality;
Remember this child-
  
And the mob piled like tinder on themselves
Convincing carrion feeders
And unimpeded breeders that
Halt the march of science that
This is not atrocity.

The certain hot song by which Earth is greeted
Has an immediately recognizable tune.
And
This is not atrocity;
It sounds more like ******, ******.

But I can't hear it
And I have no fear anymore
I open my eyes to another routine killing, and I know-
      
This is atrocity-

But a necessary one.
It's hardly enough to stay alive
And as I and we strive for
Money and coffee and love,
I and we let
atrocity
enter us.
Climb into us like a hand does a glove,
or a puppet.
It is not nature;
Nor fate;
And one needn't be dead
to appreciate the ability to open the senses
and actually sense.

And this,
I am certain,
   Is not an atrocity
You handed me your heart and I held it
felt it, squeezed it through my fingers
staring lingers, that's the ringer
it kept time once, pendulum swinging
in metric, you were electric
ten ticks for every tock
it was a shock to see you waste away
tumbling like a lock, in decay
gave it up on Christmas Day
filled my stockings with trinkets
then meshed with the machines
that beeped and kept your time
ten ticks for every tock
I sat beside your bed,
ate vanilla bean ice cream and
stared at the sea foam green ceiling
and counted the time between beeps
ten, ten, then eleven, slowing down
it wasn't in my head, the nurses
said it was routine, a regression to the mean
but it was your heart that was routine
keeping time safe
but then your eyes were empty
and I could see interplanetary space
in between the accordion regulating
your breathing's pace
then the beeping ceased
and where once I was with a man in a bed
in a room with machines and statues of saints
peering down with stoic grace,
I was then alone.
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