Fear makes our rational minds corrode
Empty, paralysed and in shock
Our sense of hope starts to erode

Plane-bombed towers stretch and implode
Bone dust smothers a city block
Fear makes our rational minds corrode

Suicide bombs start to explode
None live to stand in courtroom dock
Our sense of hope starts to erode

Buses are blown up in the road
Red heart of a city they mock
Fear makes our rational minds corrode

Another gruesome episode
We’re held in a violent deadlock
Our sense of hope starts to erode

Where is the truth that we are owed?
Death’s time is set on Terror’s clock
Fear makes our rational minds corrode
Our sense of hope starts to erode

“leave at your own chosen speed”

always,
Dylan inserts a phrase that haunts,
indestructible permafrost,
played in slow and ever slower reverb all life long,
for it’s intuitive and you recognize it too well
as the best companion to the sour ending of another love affair

(but! this one differs; called love yourself)

the sad of a dying love, remembering the steady drift away,
capped by a casual remark that doesn’t sting but
cuts a Y on your chest, a lover’s coroner courtesy,
the bad humours permitted to at long last healthy escape

you’re staggered but say nothing for
speed
is a changeable elf, a mischievous devil,
requiring constant monitoring cause you moving,
but the speed limit alway a reflection of the road you’re on

speed is a tag along to show the overall fit still works,
though now far from the obvious and familiar
and the inspiration modifies,
so you retrofit untill the parts are incapable of
bending to new demands, contours unfamiliar, old plans no good

“leave at your own chosen speed”

for I am leaving you as I leave myself,
beaches erode,  lighthouses corrode, the salt cannot be refused,
the earth demands your return as the lease is deemed
non-renewable and the space where the date shall be inserted,
is parcel of the contract and though blank, certain to be fulfilled

the body erodes, the ***** parts corrode,
and this season of the new year^ comes with the usual disclaimer
recited on the tenth day from today

‘who will live, who will die,’^^

taught to you as a young-in, a child who can comprehend
even before manhood arrives, comprehend that life ends,
all good things and it ain’t no use, born compromised, but
“don’t think twice, it’s alright”

the slate you have written overdue for a prudent clean wet erasure,
so you begin to leave at your own chosen speed,
which is kind of nice, even cool, organizing your papers,
write with contented softness that so long eluded,
now come easy heady peasy

after a life of reciting poetry, good bad and always too long,
the pressure is on and off, side by side, even a dimming bulb
sheds some light, revealing what yet needs revealing

that Day of Atonement annual visitor,^^^ he/she of impish humors,
makes Pandora play a new station,
‘dimming of the day,’
reminder that it gave you a piece of an unowned heart to hold,
leased temporarily but the temp is roaring,
who, boo hoo, for you?

life and love is all about leaving,
the pen in penitent gone dry, no refills in this new world,
wish that **** rooster would stop crowing at
the break of sundown,^^^^  when I'll be gone
I'll be travelling on, for when the new day begins,
that’s my own signature personal gravestone marker,
the sundown poet
------------------------------------------------------------­-------



~the first day of the new year on the Jewish calendar
  Mon, 10 September 2018 =  1st of Tishrei, 5779

  Rosh Hashana 5779

Currently there are:
Thousands of cars zooming down the highway at breakneck speeds,
Millions of lights illuminating the dreary road,
With the power of a hundred valiant steeds,
Causing the cement to corrode and erode,
Thousands of fossil fuels burnt merely to transport other fossil fuels,
Pollutants filling the air and altering our environment,
But these are the worlds most precious jewels,
All to feel the capitalist tyrant.
But hey... At least I have air conditioning in my F150 while heading to set off Chinese fireworks while celebrating the 4th of July.
The American Dream.

Relaxing peacefully on her lap
Her fingers ran through his hair,
And,speaking soft, soothing words
Waves of calm caressed him there.

Delilah used her feminine wiles,
Honeyed words dripped from her lips,
A sense of serenity enveloped his soul
From her tender fingertips.

The secret of his amazing strength
Was reluctantly revealed to her ears
Leading to open the floodgates
Of times of sorrow and tears.

On her lap he continued to rest,
Unawares of her subtle scheming;
Carefully his luxuriant locks were cut
With scissors sharp and gleaming.

Little could Samson have known
The intentions of her black heart,
Her cunning and overpowering charm
Hit him as with a poisoned dart.

Samson’s strength suddenly left him,
As weak as a kitten he became,
Delilah had truly duped him,
Although it seemed to her a game.

As hard as granite was her heart,
No true feelings of love were there
Else, why would she hurt him
With no chance of any repair?

His life had a very sad ending,
Of this most people have heard,
It’s recorded for our perusal
Within the pages of God’s Word.

The lesson to be learned
From this ghastly episode
Is that disloyalty is as acid
That the heart can corrode.

Like a wilting yellow lily
Under the sun’s searing heat,
Samson’s strength melted
Into a pool of utter defeat.

Remember this we should
And be careful how we act
Lest our deceptive hearts
This drama we re-enact…

I pose high my chest of ragged ribbons
And unravel a fist to stretch out fingers in search
Of a hand glimmering pale like a lantern
throughout this grey
        empty space. Once a pavement, now as good as

Cloud. Frozen lake. Dust. Boiling ashes. Skeletons.

I am walking on the slashed frames of waves
As jesus once must have. Propelled to a miracle unwitnessned
To anyone but myself. I am impelled to corrode
Into a statue; to remain a rigamortic rotting jade jewel in the sun
Until I no longer can.
Until they found me...

Perhaps they'd dust me off, thaw the ice from my shoulders,
Rehydrate me and gorge me,
Restart the blinking light in my brain
And refrain me evermore from having to seek.

But seek I must, for the lonliness weighs me down
Further by the day. I take half as many steps now as when I began my voyage.
My memories are like ghosts of flames that play
Snakes and ladders and hide and seek.
I am the lighthouse man and I sail drunken--
A rubicund mishape of bone and scuffed thoughts,
I can feel every soul which once embodied and huddled this place.

It's like they are trying so hard to posses me but even
Their souls have been smouldered to whispers
So thin they ring as mutely as the surrounding mist,
So soft they vibrate akin to an infant’s pulse
Throughout these walls, these scrapyards, these crumbling arcades, this sandbox grey that begs for a scream.
The spirit of a tarantula trembles along my back and grazes it teeth against my shoulderblade,
Preying that I turn to confirm it's being –but it's a game I’ve long grown sick of–


I am the lighthouse man and I ceased having a face long ago.
What I recall of my reflection was a child so young and so sure
Of a different life that

I cannot be sure it's even me.

I am the lighthouse man; a puckered bulb balancing on too-big shoulders, that walked
  through barren flat closes and exited empty handed, the lonely poltergeist,
a bitter flab of skin.

I am the lighthouse man and I am the final Aspen leaf in the pond of the universe,
I see myself reflected in a sole star twirling underfoot and overhead
rowing my ears so thick with disfigured silence so that I wish I was born deaf.
I am the lighthouse man and my mind is a spinning fragment
    my eyes can merely follow and my floating steps merely trail.

It never changes tone here, I can only vaguely trace the time
By the occasional moon. Tonight it shines half chewed,
  Befitting the levelled star a sideways crown.
It is beautiful but I mustn't stop to admire, lest a survivor
Scavenger loses patience withholding the last of their scran.

I am the lighthouse man and I haven't eaten in years.

I am the lighthouse man and I bled for the first time yestardy.
I am the lighthouse man and my bulb ricocheted off the base of my skull
In a telling fairy tale dream. I felt static in my head
And my light's ink spilled across my hands and for a minute I thought
My light had gone out. I tasted blood,
Trickled down from my stinging nose and I had never been so scared.

I am the lighthouse man and I never knew I could die.

I am the lighthouse man. Once the world danced with magic and I was
A walking satellite that grew to want to dissapear.
I am the lighthouse man and my decrepitude is casted in my hands:
Black as the night from the dirt collected over the years.
The few slashes of skin clear enough to see look rust-like and obtrusive, outdone only by
My veins like wonky bruises that vine across the silhouetted bone;
Bridging gear to gear, clinking shivering knuckles
         That want nothing more than to surrender.

But I am only frostbit, not frozen.
Life was and thus must still be.
I am a raindrop, not the whole ocean.

I am a walking lighthouse inspecting and guiding empty seas,
A form without virtue
That ceased feeling it's metallic steps too long ago to recall.
A cubist teardrop falling down a grey giant's cheek,
Waiting to be captured and swallowed.

Or perhaps I am climbing uphill, slowly along the circumference of his forehead.
So slowly I cannot notice the rise. Perhaps I was destined to amble in hypnosis,
En route on this colourless limboid curve until I forget the concept of
             a destination, a soul, a matryr jester to rouse me awake...
             and perhaps it is then that I will be blessed with the heavenly bulb

Of the weeping giant on whom's flesh I disturb.
I am the lighthouse man and I dream of purpose.

I am the the lighthouse man with a penchance to levitate
I am the lighthouse man and I am a God without tool or reason.
I am the lighthouse man and I'll walk this limbo until my feet dissapear.

I am the lighthouse man and I am cursed.
I am the lighthouse man transitioning between lives and never knowing
Causality nor the answer. There are no questions to have;

I am the lighthouse man and I must have been a murderer in my past life.
I am the lighthouse man and I can feel my inner fuses twist,
Falling fainter and fainter by the second.
I am the lighthouse man and I will not make it another night.
I am the lighthouse man and I am a memory-bank full of nothing remarkable.
If I felt this months ago then perhaps I would make due with the my sojourn of an empty house, atop a parked car, and perhaps I would be contempt with rotting.

But now the moon shines so luminously bright and full and close! So very close!
I am the lighthouse man and I chase the moon.
I am the lighthouse man and I vaguely recall my mother saying 'do not eat the moon,
It will give you nightmares!’ and it all suddenly makes sense now.

The stars are all out tonight and they await my company. I am the lighthouse man and now I run.
I run run run run for the sky in ode to the rest of the bodies that abandoned this place.

I’d hazard a guess there aren’t many folk who don’t know the tales of Harry, Hermione and Ron
and how with a cast of a multitude of friends they defeated Voldemort with aplomb,
rightly these heroic adventures are held in the highest regard,
and will be told forever by musicians, singers and bards,
these stories will be remembered, people will talk of those courageous and brave
and how they turned the evil tide of The Dark Lord with everything they gave,
how they dispelled the magic of horror with the strength of the Gryffindor lion,
but less well known than this wonder is the fable of Tayrn and her Ryan.
R and T arrived to Hogwarts  10  years after He Who Can Not Be Named was vanquished in the great struggle,
Tayrn was pure wizard born whereas Ryan was pure muggle,
both took to wizarding school easily and did well in all their classes,
of course Tayrn was a hit with the lads and Ryan a swoon with the lasses,
but it didn’t matter they gave all folk in their year at Hogwarts an involuntary love shudder
because ace Tayrn and Ryan only had eyes for each other!
Their wonderful sweet love was easy and went without a hitch,
spent Saturdays gazing at each other when they should have been watching Quidditch,
hand in hand they skipped around The Forbidden Forest, their romance knowing no rift,
saying hello to a friendly centur or a flying hippogriff,
they galloped around Diagon Alley, their souls full of cheer,
or sat relaxed and tranquil in The Leaky Cauldron sipping butter beer.
T and R were ace at spells, Tayrn’s best was with a wand swish creating healing
and Ryan’s wonderful arty prowess was painting The Sistine Chapel on any ceiling;
yes they were each other’s equal in the way they weaved the magic from above
and this is one of the reasons they were very much in love.
One night T and R were going on one of their romantic walks
and decided to have a jaunt to a wonderful clearing just near Hogwarts,
they sauntered through the darkening evening with a song on their lips,
swaggered along the green with the music of love on their hips,
as they got to the secluded clearing they were anticipating with glee each other’s hold
but then all of a sudden they started feeling very cold.
They both noticed that the summer grass was covered in a blanket of frost,
the trees were looking pale, freezing, withdrawn and lost,
the air was filled with frigidity and held the hints of scare,
the flowers were wilting with chilled terror, bloom given way to despair,
as Tayrn and Ryan wondered what was the cause of such floral bad health
just a few yards away  the answer revealed itself;
over a hill came a hooded figure that immediately brought fright to the fore
as Tayrn and Ryan paid attention in Defence Against The Dark Arts they instantly recognised it as a dementor,
but they noticed something different about this one, it was nearly trebled in size,
and had a deeper blackness where should have been it’s eyes.
Being skilled at magic they knew what they had to do to avoid any harm
so both quickly fired off their best Patronus Charm,
but these spells had no effect, the huge dementor merely shrugged them off
and they could have sworn beneath it’s hood it let out a derisive scoff.
The enormous dementor hovered over Tayrn and Ryan and from its mouth emerged a hiss,
as it prepared to give the two lovers their final goodbye kiss,
but as it stooped over them with it’s awful deathly hue
T and R looked into each other’s eyes and figured out what they were going to do;
they remembered in one class learning about the bravest man Hogwarts had ever knew
and how he was able to hoodwink The Dark Lord with a love strong, solid and true,
how Snape drew on his love of Lilly to ride through any storm,
even on his darkest night it was what kept him warm,
so Tayrn and Ryan pushed their wands together and thought of beautiful Severus
and how they both too shared the romantic love buzz,
and channelling the wonder of that special feeling thus
they both pointed their wands in unison and screamed Expelliarmus!
Emitted from the tip of each wand was the half of a love heart projected from each soul
that both came together to create the fantastic whole,
in the shine of such love the vast dementor instantly recoiled,
knowing that it’s draining wish was in no doubt foiled,
it writhed around and in the glare of joy did it’s nefarious purpose erode,
every bleak and blank about it started to corrode,
the dementor slowly ebbed away until all of it did go
and in it’s place was left a striking brown young doe,
it bowed it’s head to Tayrn and Ryan and then it flew into the trees,
gliding with majesty on the sweet night breeze.
Awed by what had happened Ryan and Tayrn turned and started to walk back to the dorm,
aware of what occurred was special and not the norm,
but then they stopped in their tracks and at the same time both did say,
“oh my beautiful love, I know  I’m going to marry you someday!”

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 14, 2019)

To lead is to be light and fluid
like a pied piper.

But often they are like lead,
silver and immovable.

They sanction in times of mercy
like when your parakeet died
and you’re late to work.

They don’t remediate with punishments
of docked pay for your inability
to get over it.

They buckle it together:
strategic plan and daily ops,
team to team to team.

They never buckle under
like King Lear
or a bad knee.

The overlook the floor.
They know everyone by name.

They never overlook a widget,
flaw or warning signal.

They are stakeholders.
They hold a stake.

They are never proxies,
holding stakes for other leaders.

The are transparent, obvious.
Never out of sight.

They weather the downturn, withstand the force.
They do not corrode.

The seed. They put down seeds.
They do not rob the fruit.

i cannot face a day without acknowledging a loss.
i cannot fathom such a wilderness grew so close to my place,
my society-free, impositionless place
a tepid forest inhabited
by the requiems of the agnostically murdered
and the cogged wheels of the deceased's clocks.
sometimes they stick and the clockmaster unsticks them,
but they stop up again ever so quickly.
there is nobody who has the time or effort to continually watch the clocks.
and they return to ticking an eldritch song
which may cause pain.
it has not abolished mine, nor shall forth be disseminated to do so.
i am an ascetic mastermind, abiding in my messy pool
of thought, without my womb, without my brood, without my broom
to tidy the mishmash of unruly cobwebs and such.
the fumes cause me to wonder “where is my world,
which i’ve fondled so dearly?”
i detox and recycle memories, it’s to no worth of you
a venomous whisper on a silver lining of a dream tells you everything:
a fanatic’s agenda degrading urbane,
a plummeting depth to deep impact,
i drift away on a molten lava lilypad, and fantasize that...
i am god
but i haven’t found time to juggle your sect
reissuing lessons to mind the sheriff
and i cannot bear to lead me, to my own cultural death.
i cannot receive your moral disease, a signal on my knees
con e preghiere sbiancante. can’t you understand it?
my life is spent with hope placed
on each pair of snake eyes i roll
chance is the meter for everything.
dare i dare go back to my fantasizing,
i am god
ashamed by the lack of hope, and regret
disgraced by the hate and intolerance of man
and i see now their perfect world, is everything i detest.
and the tears produced
form new embryos of emotions
crystalline structures of psychological proportions
which develop into mature,
sentient, and emotion-proof organisms.
which become i.
and i respond vehemently yet come to my senses in a diplomatic tone,
because i am a diplomat.
and i have learned to nail my destiny to an altar each night,
an altar which can sacrifice my pensive motives
and my self-incriminating philosophy
that i should be able to write my destiny, and not
have it planned and read aloud,
read out loud, out in the air, outside.
i try myself.
i tempt myself.
and i return to supplicated suffering about my own mortality
and the atoms i will never see
and the universe i will never span
and the people i will never meet
and the times i will never live.
what if i rivered thirty silver-coins:
◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌
◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌
◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌
what if i
didn’t
?
i might be ****** for this: but i’ll still set fire to the catacombs.
i might be scourged for this: but i’ll still hold on,
hoping there’s skin on my bones.
ecclesia, – a common, a sanctuary, a vanguard from the darkness in the world.
i know what i should do but never ever get it done;
i know what i have been and what i will become.
not defined by a dimension nor reputed by a benchmark
but shaded by the passion and dissuaded by the lashes.
i’ll do anything you want me to,
if you **** the self-inflicted psalms i plead!
the ulcer grows
that sweet cologne
i ***** it into the unknown.
i won’t tax your soul, i won’t stick a price to it:
coins ◌◌◌◌◌ won’t fill the hole -in a business deal (assets corrode)
i won’t tax your soul (i won’t buy it with blood money ◌◌◌◌◌, no)
it’s yours alone (but in business deals,
deficit is prone)
and there’s an aspect {a static} of forever and the inescapable gap
between the conscious
and the desired.
i sit here, ever so comfy and lustrous,
and habitually wait the day
they merge.
my invitations stand clear.
if you cannot come, i’ll wait for you. hidden
in the grillework of my past. but if you cannot come,
i’ll be waiting. hidden in the warmth of our teepee haus,
i’ll wait for you.

if X Marx the spot then why Kant i Locke it up?
*could living hand-to-mouth so long make me so Jung?

i spent a year as a ghost and when the equinox came i choked on every sunset i had seen and passed out in your attic, i'll just wait here until you realize the chains don't rattle anymore and maybe you'll wonder what happened to that unwanted guest or maybe you'll just be thankful it's gone, maybe my ectoplasm will drip through the attic floor and into your bed and with  a passenger in your dreams they'll be even lonelier than before i'm sorry i keep corroding a hole in your heart but i can't help the way my ghost-self falls and when it's gone altogether you'll be a ghost of your former self, walking in the shell of your life glazed eyes glazed words glazed world a ghost with a body is the worst kind of all cause they never fade away to heaven they just linger and linger and linger until they ROT and you can't forget that a ghost was there not with that body on the floor and could you have helped them it's hard to tell you never were an exorcist but maybe if you tried hard enough you could have put some of your life in that body or just ripped the ghost free and ended the misery, heart corroded through and i in my ectoplasm will wait in your bed wait for your shell-body to give up the charade each night and with my arms holding you you'll be lonelier than before - i spent a year as a ghost and cried over your bright eyes every night, i spent a year as a ghost but now, i the ghost of a ghost and you the living ghost in a breathing corpse, we're a modern romance horror story of the eternal kind, and when your heart's corroded through i'll hold you so tight but for now i will wait in your attic, putrefying ectoplasm and bitter sunsets, i never felt this much when i breathed and now it's caught up with a vengeance out for blood when i have none to spill i'll just lie here and choke and wait for this to pass this will pass this will pass this too shall pass, you move below and gam zeh ya'avor i pray this for you that your bitter life shall too pass, i spent a year as a ghost and watched you moan every night i spent a year as a ghost and watched you curled up on linoleum the only thing i could do was sink inside and try to absorb some of what you felt but i think all i did was corrode you further, i'm sorry i'm so sorry that my body is acid and my arms just eat you through, i tried to be your friend but i just made you lonelier your dreams are so empty when you're held by a ghost, they say you only dream of people you know so it's no wonder you dreamt of nothing everyone disappeared so fast it was hard to believe they'd been there at all, a mirage a puff of smoke you never really knew and that fled when it got ***** and dressed in all the white clothing you owned you laid on the bathroom floor and breathed smoke you laid on the floor and ground your knuckles into your eyelids as my ectoplasm dripped into your open eyes and cupid was a demon that ripped at your chest and laughed cupid was a demon and you brought that demon to your bed again again i cried i cried and you bled from all the scratches in your chest and s i g h e d, cupid hissed snarled bit but you know everybody has their flaws closer so much closer you held and cupid ripped though to the other side i told you i told you so but you just sit on your bed with your back against the wall and your hollow torso bleeds you sit on your bed eyes blank eyes glazed and bleed and i drip in your chest, i tried to warn you i tried but now i'll just lay in your attic and wait because the chains don't clank anymore to give you some kind of company in your empty house empty life, maybe you'll notice and here you can find me - the floor of your attic was always the closest i could get to heaven.

My home is made of grit and dirt

The taps run sweat,

the windows are shattered,

their glass clinging to frames

like broken teeth to gums in the mouth of a boxer.

My town is a fighter,

built of scrap metal and machines.

The streets are steel

and the river nuts and bolts,

its gears turn through rust

and parts corrode away.

Time turns it green, orange,

black with oil and grime,

but my city is a fighter,

made of grit and dirt,

and it lives.