Tilts and toughenings.

A fort under siege,
A surge upon itself,
Embattled. Imperiled
Within.

What days have past
With some peace,
In nothing but a song?

Fortified with mud,
And fools penetrate.

A break.

The breaking of late,
Warts entwined with blood.

Their stems growing long
And won't cease,
Given their past

Within.
In battle, in peril,
The reach of the self
Can't fashion a bridge.

Toughenings are tilting.

So much for practice, for dexterity, for emulation, for process.

For processing is king
Now. And from now,
Until.

Allure in the all-powerful
Power-station,
All at my disposal
Though I despise more and more

The vastness of the virtual,
The sonic truth it damns
For the sake of convenience,
For the calling of fools.

The art is poached,
Bagged, and butchered
To nourish the moronic masses,
Relying on their base nature

To consume, to feed,
To gulp it down
Til their senses dull
To anything different,

Anything profound.

Take your zeroes, your ones,
Find your fortune.

I'd rather strum around
Those telling embers
With a clumsy choir
And miss.

Trifles.
Bits of bone
Cleaned and picked over
By your insatiable eyes
And your ever-irritated ears.

The fall was evident, I think,
In the mutilation within,
My own knife in my rib,
Aimed at an atrium

That seemed so aloof
In the deals we had made
For what it would take
To make it okay.

It's not okay.

But scavengers take
Whatever they find
Despite what the shape,
or the form, or the kind.

I ask that you wait
For some semblance of truth
To slay these suspicions
That I've made for you.

Burst.
Blush.
Bail.

Battling know-better
And taking nods from memory
To feel better.
But where are you now?

Satisfaction is fleeting,
Full of delusions
Of the story of how
It's supposed to be.

It's not that.

But what would it take for you
To see,
To feel,
That?

Take what's she's given
In this ***-ridden demise
Of desire,
Of details,
Of days

You might have spent
With her
If you weren't such
A product of your
Past.

Someone once spoke of high windows
And begged that I should explore.
I gazed, on high, the "historical likeness,"
Then made my way toward the door.

Your wonder is mine, their minds so mistook
For the fire they so think impends.
But the wonder of waiting, what keeps us from baiting
The Wholly bamboozled within.

This dubious nature will surely suffice
Through this hop, skip and jump to Next Door.
While they haven't quite crumbled, you need never grumble
For the dead that are gathering more...and more...and more...

and more.

Well, here's god alas,
in this bottom of glass.

Blank slate: To triumph or tarnish? Chalk lines prove curious.

Whose streets these are I think I know
Under concrete canopy covered in snow.
The street-light trees hold blackened bulbs
Under ice-thick night the world just feels so old.

So cold.

Could I be the only one
Not trying to reach out to the Sun?

Fending frost and fighting folds,
Averting glances from a world so sold.

So cold.

We're in the cold.
The cold.
We've bargained souls.
The cold.
You'll pay the toll?
The cold.
You'll play your role

In the cold.