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270 · Nov 2014
echoes
SN Mrax Nov 2014
the theme of this love is ghosts
as it shivers by the sill.

what keeps us here, our grey shadows,
but our torn souls from the air.

loss echoes back for the ghost is lost
because of all the ghost lost and lost

sometimes one emerges and visits,
shifting from the emptiness, bringing thrilling chills

and sometimes I find I am the one
disappearing into the grey.
268 · Jul 2019
How does anyone sleep?
SN Mrax Jul 2019
The city thunders, groans, drones, whizzes and whirrs, squeaks, honks, gusts, rumbles, wheezes and rattles.

The light leaks through, not just light,
presence, all the windows coming in through your window.

The others snore, talk in their sleep, ("Take off your shoes!") take up the bed. Join them again and you might wake them and then they will want what they want--always thirsty.

The bed creaks. Mattress springs sproing. The pillows are hard, or squishy.

It's just a little too warm.

Dinner was a chemistry experiment.
It's still bubbling. Foul barbecue sauce--
So much for comfort food.
Mouth tastes like medicine.

A plane flies overhead...

Soon the birds will start singing.
Yes, there they go.
I have traded my dreams for these unsettled nights.
I watch over him, back to the world, having lost so much of myself, within and without,
satisfied still that I made out well.
264 · Jul 2014
hungry flowers
SN Mrax Jul 2014
hungry flowers bloom at night
wide and ripe as milk.
255 · Sep 2014
point
SN Mrax Sep 2014
call me, I'm nowhere
and you might
draw me out of the white
into a point of light

call me, lay out the path
what seems small to you
is a new universe to me
247 · Aug 2014
us two
SN Mrax Aug 2014
I'm always played out,
now, pulsing in my hard shell,
hungry hopeful thighs,
unstoppable but sometimes very slow
mind.

I've no one to
address these to, come to
the window and see.

Give me a reason
to let it all go, come and
make it make sense
and I swear I

have wings as wide as the world
to show you,
colorful,
penetrable,
hungry,
we will

rewrite the world

us two
245 · Aug 2014
up high
SN Mrax Aug 2014
kindness is the sky vault.
up high, stormless, all-seeing,
powerful, empty.
kindness is hidden here.
storms pass through it,
sun passes through it.
kindness is not of the storm.
it is still, and vast.
243 · Jun 2014
given
SN Mrax Jun 2014
step, step on the path
back to simplicity, nothingness
you have nothing to give that is yours
take a simple set of actions
that foster clarity and simplicity
and accept the confounding chaos
with a simple heart,
a simple presence,
simple acceptance.
243 · Jul 2014
vague memory of words
SN Mrax Jul 2014
It's hard to read
even a simple poem.
It waits
like a net--
full of wide gaps,
dangling strands.
It's meant
to be spare
but it's so
easy to sail
through the holes
and miss it completely;
only to have
some vague memory of words.

Sometimes you turn and think
I should have paid closer attention
but the moment won't come back
and the holes remain
even from behind
just so wide
as in all consciousness.
237 · Sep 2014
Just as I said
SN Mrax Sep 2014
It was just as I said, cut flowers
making a mess.
Should have let it die on the vine.
No kiss. Just a book
possessed but not read.
Just as I said.
231 · Aug 2014
To be--for real
SN Mrax Aug 2014
Let us love,
hope,
hear me.
Let us drink
and forget
everything
besides you
numb
to the world
around us.
Let us love,
whatever that means,
surrounded by old men
and their pennies
of despair
worth about
what rumors are worth
in the journals of
cowards who lust
for our pleasure which we
don't have for we stand
over beds, seeping and
bleeding strange
substances each
expressing part of the
universe as we
are part of the
story to which no one
else has access but us
in our bedrooms so
violated and
alone,
alone
alone.
229 · Aug 2014
The Story's A Trap
SN Mrax Aug 2014
It's quite simple: you are trapped.
And every trap is just like in the
story. Sit there for awhile and try
not to be too tormented. Don't let
the walls get you down--or the
moat and the crowd. Not even their
pennies and peanuts.

And just like in the story, once
you settle down, you'll find that
secret passageway.

Then the plot thickens.

Don't worry.
It's the same every time.
227 · Jul 2019
Giant
SN Mrax Jul 2019
I'm a giant tonight,
stretched out in a chair from the 70s (and one feels it)
ribbons of red, flies can smell it,
white face and ankles,
closed eyes, a droopy expression.

Universe, I breathe you.

You have exhausted me, extracted from me
at last; now, at last
you will let me
sleep.
226 · Sep 2014
in the dark
SN Mrax Sep 2014
somewhere at the bottom of the sky
is the promise of divine indifference
and I go jumping after it
desperate for the blackness
226 · Jun 2014
Whatever Goes On
SN Mrax Jun 2014
Whatever goes on between us,
no matter how small and subtle,
I am afraid you might miss it
completely.

That would be a loss,
no matter how small and subtle,
for even in the heart and mind
we can watch the force of nature at work
and it is as much a rapture
as to watch great storms unfold,
and then to turn and watch one slender strand of grass
shaking, weaving in the winds.
223 · Nov 2014
passing down the hall
SN Mrax Nov 2014
let me bare my soul
if I can find it
it was just here
last year
then it sank
back down
in the folds
I think you saw it last
passing down the hall
you said you saw a ghost
and so you introduced yourself to me
did you see which way she went
218 · Sep 2014
what love
SN Mrax Sep 2014
This isn't the poem I came here to write.
I'm circling round it, and will circle
for years.
Not to write a good poem.
Just to find the truth.
So very many facts
yet truth so rare.
I'm circling round it,
and will circle for years.
Circling, soft circling.
Gravity calling, hungrily, for a pair
for another part.
That pull feels true,
but I don't know.
What does it ask in the glass?
Ask, night after night?
For what does it cry?
What

(love)
is enough?
SN Mrax Sep 2014
I'll stand here and carve out a place
for myself in this dark mass, a womb in the wax
into which I can climb, warm it up
until it's fragrant of factory.

And inside I'll carve out a place
in my chest for this dark mass,
a wax in the womb to plug
the ache with an imitation of obscurity.
212 · Jul 2014
the edge of the night
SN Mrax Jul 2014
I've found the edge of the night.

As it turns out it's a lot like the middle.

Only more tired.

And you're not there.

Only the satisfaction of your absence is here.

Infinite absences

make the night so peaceful.
205 · Oct 2014
there is no
SN Mrax Oct 2014
one, no
way, no
wall.
there is no
well, no
we, no
within.
there is no
will, no
with, no
wild.
there is no
would, no
wind, no
wonder.
204 · Aug 2014
The End
SN Mrax Aug 2014
You thought it was the beginning
but it was the end.
and then it was the end again.
And then again.

And then you thought it was the end
but it was the beginning.
And so it went on,
pummeling and muddling
and the less sense you made
the more sense you made of it all.
202 · Jul 2014
Night
SN Mrax Jul 2014
I ran wild in ecstasy through the night, leaping, tumbling, swinging;
but when I woke up, it was as if from a nightmare.
202 · Oct 2014
What to think
SN Mrax Oct 2014
You've kept me awake another night,
meanwhile you slept soundly another night.
I really must
find something else
to think about.
Someone that thinks me back.
199 · Sep 2014
where it goes
SN Mrax Sep 2014
your side of the bed is filled with books now, though I don't read them
and as for the day when the bottom gives out, it's just a matter of when
and then, and then, we'll see where it goes, this hole
181 · Sep 2014
Untitled
SN Mrax Sep 2014
make no mistake
we look for what's funny
when it's not funny.
we look for the humor
on the edge of despair.
it's always there.
alone, we struggle to survive
though we're fine.
and that endless loneliness
is humorous.
156 · Jul 2014
the
SN Mrax Jul 2014
the
ship
sank
silently
in
a
silent
sea
152 · Jul 2019
soundless
SN Mrax Jul 2019
In this night, I'm not alone.

I feel the crowd pressing around me, shoulder to shoulder,
back to back, squeezing.

I feel the discomfort, the dread, the hope: "Maybe
it won't be what I sense it will
be. Maybe it won't be that."

Others may be sleeping, but we're moving together, conscious or not.
It might not be so bad.

It's dark and some are sleeping. We shift and move together.

Like it or not, we have some destination, together.

You sought to protect your children, but you brought them with you
into this crowd.

We many dread, but we don't know what, for sure.

And yet we know too much--we see the outlines from here,
silhouetted against a faded dawn.

The past and future come toward us,

inexorably slow,

almost in stillness,   soundless,

abstractly,

— The End —