Demons in khaki suits
Stand with baited breath,
Smoked glasses held high,
As God shows us all
What He means by death.
Disintegration
By starlight.
A fire of heaven.
Oh, bow before his might;
Blasted by wings of angels
Back and forth,
Left ablaze in the wrath of the sword,
Until your atoms are shriven
Of their bonds to this earth.

The demons clap and cheer,
Red eyes grinning as they smoke.
We grovel in your glory,
Piteous wails stopped in silence;
Choked.
A spherical void
To turn our tainted air to traces,
And leave a newly cleared path
Of charred stone and empty spaces.
The vacuum fills to receive
Guests with the promise of your blessing;
A half-life prayer,
Good for a thousand years
Of deformed children
And cancer tears.

Blood splatter
Brain matter
Arms crossed
Children lost
You shouldn’t get
To look away

Cold metal slabs
Filled with bad
Rooms brimming
Ready to burst
With the sad
You shouldn’t get
To look away

Bone fragment
Metal shards
Bombed out buildings
Scarred the yard
Flowers crushed
Before their time
You shouldn’t get
To look away

Open wounds
Pacifier soaked in blood
Children in school
With nowhere to run
Can’t hide from
A bomb
Can’t find a tunnel to sanity
While this goes on
You shouldn’t get to look away


Madmen don’t live in asylums
They wear suits and ties
Eat power lunches
While bombs fly
Turn a blind eye
For profit
No matter what it costs
You may try to hide
Let others decide
Who lives and dies
But no one should get to look away


See what’s left
Feel their pain
Give me your reasons
Try to explain
But as long as it happens
Again and again
No one should get to look away

The photo burns
Charcoal baby doll
Man and woman screams
Holding up
That incinerated thing
But it’s just a doll

Black flakes fall
Baby dolls clothing
Turning to dust
I cough it in and out
Choking on the musk
Stark stench of death
Yet they cradle their broken doll

Eyes closer ears ringing
Fears bringing me to edge of insanity
Her screaming seems strange
Her eyes look deranged
The dolls legs have little bones
Calcium protrusion
But it’s just a doll

Scorched skin
Not some porcelain
But it’s just a doll
Please let it be just a doll

Someone left a black leather briefcase
at the bus station sometime earlier this week.
They called in a bomb squad
from over in Springfield
after the thing sat there for hours
emitting an aura of chilled sweat;
it took them just as long to get their
from what I've been hearing.
They blew the thing up.
Right there in the bus station,
they blew that ****** briefcase
to Hell and back after an X-ray
found wires and a circuitry board.
This is not a big city,
it's not a small town either,
but here we have a place
that I arrive at twice daily
getting pseudo-bombed
and I can hardly scrape up
the dollar for bus fare at times.
A warehouse over on Jasper street
caught on fire a few days later;
an inferno in close quarters,
so they knocked the old Bess over
so the flames didn't spread.
There is still a giant pile of rubble
at the site; bricks with masonry companies
imprint on the sides, rusty bars that were either
too heavy, or too stuck for scrapping fiends,
and a hell of a lot of odorous char.  
This is a winter of fire in Decatur,
but the bones still chill.

The starter is going out
in the 91' Cutlass
that sits in my driveway
braving the winds.
I can hear that grinding noise;
the expensive one.
The one that says,
"Your savings is low!"
every time you think
you're going to have
a stable ride to work.
The bus is reliable,
the route is what will drive
a sane man off the edge.
You start to get sick
of seeing the same ****** places,
the same ****** turns,
the same ****** bumps, and
the same ****** passengers.
Plus, the radio makes Monday
just a little more tolerable
when you get the option
of stopping for breakfast.
I like that car.

Friday seems like a back brace right now,
and I've had just enough caffeine
to where I don't think I can stand a nap.
I'm just glad to have my shoes off, and
the reassuring calm of an uncashed check.
I'm starving.

There was once a guy named Tom
who dropped an hydrogen bomb
and all went ka-bam
that broke all the dams and he swam
where he eventually ended up in Guam.

(Inspired by Ethan Smith's poem of the same title.)

You’ve taken so many different pieces
of others’ personalities
and put them together to form me
that I don’t even know who the real me is anymore…
Let alone knowing that I am still partially you,
as much as I hate it,
I have to recognise it…
and what’s more
As much as I hate it,
I don’t hate you
don’t hate the way you still bore a hole
into my heart,
Remember that.
Sarah…
I haven’t said your name in so long
because I’ve spent years trying to convince everyone-
myself included-
that you were gone,
that you are nothing but a distant, fallacious,
distorted memory,
that the thought of you drowns out my reality
and leaves me shaking and broken
and that at the same time,
I haven’t changed a ******* thing about myself,
but we both know that
that’s complete *******.
We are two completely different people,
you made me feel like a prisoner within myself,
but I suppose you were only doing
what you thought needed to do
to survive.
It’s a shame it didn’t work,
I’m sorry, that we ran out of time.
When grandma said her baby girl had died,
that the light had gone from her eyes
she was wrong,
I told her so
but she’d be incorrect to assume that you
are still living inside of me,
instead you are ticking inside of me,
ticking like a bomb waiting to explode,
Sarah.
The name sounds foreign
your eyes are terrifying me
your old friends are boring the hell out of me;
your voice is one I don’t recognise.
Hell, I barely recognise myself anymore
and I guess I have you to thank for that
But remember
as much as I hate the fact
that you still exist inside of me…
I have to recognise that
I can’t hate someone who was me for so long.