With my growth I leave behind a shell.
A casing of the world I used to thrive in.
The past is no longer inhabitable, but still usable.
I use my memories as a flotation device in the abyss that is recurring.
I rise above my past and transcend into the new crevice that is my present.
I cannot change the past as it is set in bone.
But I can make my future fit me.
I can form my own protection
layer by layer
until all my supplies of DNA paper Mache will no longer stick.
Their glue dried up, exhausted by the length of time I've spent on earth, oppressed by the pressure of the tumulting, black sea.
Waves may break on me.
My knowledge of living my shield against depression, anxiety.
My bone hard shield saves me.
I am the chambered nautilus. I am awake.
But dream I will of times beyond 36.
What lies ahead may only hurt me on the edge because to the core my skeleton is steady.
Its weight growing heavy
Can be lifted with my spirits as if before a feast.
And dragged down to the ocean floor when realized I'm a beast.
No princess in her castle, nor farm boy in his barn
Unique to who I am, and in my niche I fit.
I may blow up.
And fall down.
And spurt salty tears.
You'd never know, my loves, my dreams, my fears.
Upon first glance I am the epitome of my life.
Upon second, as confusing.
Upon third, as painful and funny.
And as irrelevant to others as I am important to myself.
Another rock in the ocean. Another pebble. Another pearl.
Not found
Not searched for
Not hidden.

tossing and turning
in that chambered space
between
wakefulness and sleep

exhaustion
moving like molasses
in my veins

no way out

We have engendered   them.

Our   babies.
Our annelids. 
Facsimiles of Us.
A gushing warm viscous  fluid
And  a conglomerate of meat
From the womb pods of our hive
Rush out into your  oxygen.
Our mass will grow indeed.
And,
Our perfect mitosis will repeat -
More beautiful
Babies.
Our perfect mitosis will repeat -
More beautiful
Babies.
8 become 16; 16 become 32
You (solo)
Must know by now; no  doubt
Individuality is a cold, broken loop
An anachronism of a bygone era

Pass through  Our membrane , insect.
And be born infinitely back through it.
We will have you spread-out in our warmth
Under our skins; apart of our million-chambered heart

Join Us.

You are the systole to the diastole
Of my four-chambered cavity
You are the pulmonary rhythmic control
That fills air to my capillary.

You are the Pituitary Gland
That drowns my bloodstream in dopamine
You take my brain to a wonderland
Drunk and overdosed in Seratonin.

You are the only Mitochondrion
That powers all cellular activity
My Cytoplasms are in motion
For the sexiest Golgi Body.

You are the ultimate synapse
In my every granule of neuron
That gives an involuntary prolapse
To both my dendrite and axon.

this swifter's grift -
lifting loosely
fitted accoutrement

lourden fruit
carelessly held
silkened, gimlet lit
shamelessly rivened
to a paler shade
of need.

solitude's
enchanting seed
may confer
a grander banquet’s call
but, this tug of
grandiloquent oblige
and politesse . . .

master and slave consort
black and scarlet
swift of tongue and fingertip
unbound so neatly
and leather blind



tell me muse of the anger flesh on fire
is there really dignity in defeat
that eludes the victor

tell me muse of the truth in nature
ill-graced tail-lamp broken
is destiny all ways ordained in contradiction

tell me muse do hearts all times submit
to the beacon call
shyness long forgotten
narrative so harshly written

as ne'er before
with an insistence
ageless yearnings bellow  
as but glazened shadow


if reason sleeps
there will be no learning
no refuge
only to each
for their crimes
a four-chambered riddle



All Rights Reserved
James R. Morse, NYC  2013.

Unforgiving heat
Cool drink
Giraffe,
Hippo,
Wildebeest,
Gazelle
Sip muddy water hole
Crouching low.

Unforgiving heat
Cool drink
Texans
Sip fridge-cooled Camelbacks
Crouching low.

Light breeze
Eggplant skies
Tall savannah grass
Sways
Masking movement.
Predators travel
Unseen.

Guns ready
trophies sighted
Giraffe
Hippo
Wildebeest
Gazelle

Bullet chambered
Trigger finger
trophies....

Running?

Cheetahs pouncing
Texans screaming
Law of Nature
End of Story.

There's a beautiful gun in my hand.
Flawless.
                     The nightshift sun gleams off the barrel like a swan on a lake
     At home against the humid sweaty dark pressing against everything yet awesomely singular

     The clock stopped a long time ago and gunshots took over in place of the ticks and tocks…

     (I'm chewing on something soft)

                        … and I never noticed.

It seemed natural.
Every bullet chambered was just another hour passing

       And though it feels like forever I know its been half a day
      

        Blood laces the treads of my shoes
     Hugging the rubber and drawing patterns that I'm less aware of than I am of...

     (What is this? It's good.)

... myself

         Everyone I know is sitting in a pile.
        No more alive than the gun itself.
Still they talk. Memories are shared and advice is given. I don't care to know if its real.

        Everyone talks. It makes sense.
   Even the dead.
  
           The ceiling fan noisily labors diligently if not futilely against the unspeakable heat. It's the only sound I can be sure of. The motion helps.

     Nothing else is moving except...

    
(Chewchewchewithinkicanithinkican)
    
        ...My jaw. Steadily gnashing through…

     (Everyone talks)

            My tongue. I don't care about the blood at my feet or the fact that its coming from my mouth.

      *What worries me is that now everyone is staring at me and I dont have any gun at all

I can remember my 9 year old hands scrapping macabre words on top those tortured blue lines that pitied my gated head.  
I can remember my down the street friends, lips turned purple, from the snow temperature, glistening watered creek in my yard.
I can remember the quivering muscles in my stomach begging me not upchuck a landslide of overflowing butterflies on that summer night when he took my hand.
I can remember shutting out the lights on that one night while the cross hanging on my wall starred me down to fall to my knees and pray for the rotten wood in my heart to be repaired.
I can remember turning over away from that cross and find comfort in the damp pillow trailing a broken path to my withered eyes.
I can remember the thrown away unopened lunches falling free from my fingertips and throat.
I can remember my stomach hating me and my mind thinking in happy confetti-like gestures with a piñata full of echo’s, because candy insides are the devil.
I can remember abandoned dinners when spiders that took my place to cobweb my chair, and my food in the trashcan.
I can remember remnants of silver, sharp-toothed squares being injected on my skin and used as crayons.
I can remember the tree’s with broken arms smiling at me as I sat under the black leaves sharing their loneliness with me and I never did mind.
I can remember my lullaby had the same frequency as the jumpy breathes fluttering from my sunken lips harmonizing with the drops of my tears and blood.
I can remember the creature starring back at me in my bedroom and we had matching scars.
I can remember I hated her.
I can remember she hated me.
I can remember the young, immature boys with sharpened tongues quick with words that constricted the evil accumulating my skeleton as if I did not already know what needed to disappear.
I can remember my lips faking exposure of my tarnished, ***** teeth with the corners of my mouth turned up and the reflection of my cross blurred in the two windows on my body.
I can remember his voice on the other end of the phone line as he confessed his love at the same time while he was the tracing paper on my skin and I was that paper’s captain with a sharp, shiny penknife.
I can remember skipping the blue skies outside my chambered bed failing to search for the keys, but I was the guard and they were hanging on my cross.
I can remember falling to my bathroom floor, cold and sweaty begging for forgiveness as I gave my body and soul away to the undertaker when I checked off sin number “too many”.
I can remember God’s smile at me from the heavens and my heart being split open but not the bad kind of split, the kind that burst in the presence of grace.
I can remember the growling of my stomach scaring me away into night terrors, every night but they soon became my home.
I can remember sitting on the floor as my older sister, with her packed bags, walking out my house into her adult world and I was not at her car door waving goodbye.
I can remember my older brother leaving for college and I ignored the door shut.
I can remember my selfishness floating in the hands of Satan for he is the record sin keeper.
I can remember church pews darkening as I sat up from them because my sins squeezed inside and left scars, but that golden, stained glass alter at the front kept them in line all nice and tidy, and I would smile back.
I can remember that beige bread chiseled heavenly by the hands of God resting in the little golden doors behind God’s chair sprinting down my throat and planted seeds of glory in my withered and dry garden.
I can remember the holy water raining in my stomach praying for minerals of bits of food.
I can remember the blood in my veins fighting the layers of my skin rebuilding crooked patches that did match my normal skin color because I was the chemical warfare throwing rusted razors and bow and arrows penetrating the fortress just above my veins.  
I can remember needles and stitching living in the doctor’s drawer untouched by my skin even though my name has been reserved on them 47 times.
I can remember breathing.
I can remember praying.
I can remember living.
I can remember remembering this when I am 100 years old.

i
a wee shaft of beam
across
a sea of chilly darkness:
dashing on, dashing long
a chain
of disturbing crispy waves.
a haunting pitch
of sirens, of winging gulls.
…then
a whistle in the dark

                    ii
i have bled.
and ever bleeding
is resurgence.
the stones are stained now
not all are stained yet.
but i can hold no more.
no more.

                    iii
to listen would have been enough
but spoke i
to deaf-mutes, clayey forms.
and every uttered little word
faded like receding undertone.
and then
conspiracy of silence,
misquotations,
sharing of once
too friendly shoulders.
a nod would have been enough,
or a pat,
or any like gesture;
they turned askance
and i fled… fled away.

                    iv
back to my chambered shell
back to my cradle
where there are many whispers.
and every fateful swing
of the pendulum
i reel and ride the wheel of fancy,
embrace false idols
like one fearful of his god
if only to escape the haunts
of conscience;
tremble at approaching footsteps,
shriek at every shadow.

                    v
i shall walk barefoot again
past leafless stumps
windborn, heated, and bowed,
‘cross an oasis grown desert dry,
past anthills now dunghills,
‘neath rapid flutter
of widespread murky wings,
past cliff edges
where resound pampered echoes,
while arched in deceitful hues
a rainbow.
…i scan the blue… i pause…

                   vi
i await a lily-white stork
or there shall be no curtain speech.