I love the city at night

I like when the waves start rumbling
And the city lights turn on
I like the beautiful sights
Of the twilight sky
And the mountains all dressed in black

I like when it's hidden away

When everything the daylight shows
Disappears
All the beauty that's destroyed
All that's been taken away is concealed

Because when I look on and on
When my eyes gaze upon...
The darkness

I don't see all the disaster

The city lights, the waves and the sky
Draped in violets and pinks
As the airplanes fly

And I think, what a beauty!
What a city of dreams
When the visible is made to be unseen
Unseen...

I see the cars passing
With their beaming lights
But they all seem somehow much sweeter
And closer to starlight

I see the palm trees standing proud
In a place where they do belong
But there's so few around

And even the people seem much brighter
When the nights come to hide
the effects of human disaster

A comfort blanket

Listen to the waves

And forget the sounds of the traffic
That I can't stand anymore

Found my comfort in the night
Found my solace at this time
Found the beauty of life
In the city
At night

Millions of years before you and I and us and all of this…noise
Smog-laden cities and
Urgency spoken between mothers and daughters
And lovers in candlelit cafes on the backstreets of New York
and the arrondissements of Paris.

Long before entangled masses of roads and seaways and Boundaries imagined in the sky
Birthed kingdoms and countries and fidelities,
People kneeling under colored flags lifted high and prominent
Above a world created only by the insatiable torrent of the human Mind.

Long before us.

Before any man
Measured time.

Back

In the quiet

Moons before a single footstep of monster or man trod
In the primeval night,
Deep in the silence of fire and ice,
Of primordial tundra frozen and burned.

There;

They emerged,
Languid and light in the depths of the sea.
Tentacles twisting  
Through the untainted currents of endless and pristine
Precambrian oceans.

And there they pushed through the waters of time
And waited.

And there they were satiated on the ebb and flow of the tides
And the cries of ancient sea birds across
The open waves.

Long the earth’s first and peaceful creations
Abided down below.

But we have fed them our venom
Born of angst and rage
Leached from our endless need for control of all things
And they have grown fat on the chemicals spawned
From our own greed
Trash thrown across the meadows of the deep.

And they feasted on our poison and grew mammoth and strong
And one bright day broke high above the surface of the waters
And reached down with tentacles bright as the sun’s rays
To illuminate all that we had done
And left us strewn across the land

Stung

Humbled,

And vanquished.

His crown sat bent -
    and it looked quite odd
          on the shady side
          of his sparse baldhead

His ego reigned
     while his daughter sweet
          could not make the move
          to get past her dread

His aproned slave
     dared not make a sound
          to defy the rules
          'til he made her dead

His cranium
     suffered sudden blows
          when an illness struck
          with the news ahead

He spat in barks
     telling all who came
          they should breathe their last
          and he died instead

Summer fell in pale midnight
With ice crystals answering the nomads plight
When silence fell on deafened ears
A heart was impaled by ruby spears

A kingdom of dust with castles of bone
Risen amidst ruins of blackened stone
Demons falling from heavens high
Weeping at their brother's sight

Then golden blood streamed and flowed
In rivers where kings fearfully bowed
A giant struck by lightning's blaze
Glimmering in his flaming haze

Burning, burning, he slowly dances away
And a knight in the armour of dragons to slay
Hunted by wolves with greenish gaze
Is desperately searching for a safe place

Fairies of burns float through the air
Surrounding the phoenix's heir
Golden diamonds grow out the trees
And scatter in the ashy black breeze.

A king atop his throne of wood
Laughing madly about his brotherhood
Oblivious of the strange smoke
Rising from his burning choke

His nose burns away, he no longer smells
So he doesn't know about his hollow shell.
War after war ravages his beautiful lands
Waged by his corpse's stiff, dead hands

A bird flies in the mountain's halls
Trapped by it's stony walls
A cage, a cage, his voice bides
A cage safe from the demonic tides

The serpent's fang bitten in a hero's knee
Who lost his valour and tried to flee
Justice is carried out only by death
And in this world, there's no longer breath

Amidst it all, a young man stands
Looking at his icy flames
A smile stealing upon his face
Behold!, This is the madman's grace

And she sat with knees clutched tight to her chest on what was once their couch, looking at what once was their home, what once was their lives, and felt her body begin to shake. Felt the tears well up behind painted pretty eyes, and a scream bubble up behind painted pretty lips. She watched as she set fire to memories in her minds eye, destroying a future now gone.

There is a plot of land near my home which once housed an abundance of flora and fauna.

Turtles, birds, rabbits, snakes, wild dogfennel, pines, periwinkles, alamandas and southern river sage thrived in this space which now boasts only an open plot of beige mounds, cement cylinders, and monstrous machines.

I grimace at its "progress" daily.

Across the street, a large patch of wildflowers sit up and gaze upon this scene.

Day after day,
Erupting from the blue-eyed grass,
A family of spanish needle
and Mexican petunias
turn their blooms toward the beeping and the clunking of machines.

White peacock butterflies and red-tipped dragonflies dance around the feeding bees. I'd like to be like the flowers. To bloom rebelliously in the face of greed and destruction. Even though soon, they will be gone too.

The object of an eye
is dire to entrap my love towards,
An orb filled with desire, but as the life too—
of those suffering, and desiring to die. The figure
with his long dark coat, keeps the world in a right pocket.
His eyes red as the blood they curl. The sky is black wherever
he walks. His breath is heavy, and a black cloud of smoke.
One word swallows all, and as so—he destroyed the world.

The Devil, Man, or perhaps both.

I knew we were in trouble
when they taught the machines to talk

parliament of artificial owls
nocturnal park line pirates

watch and learn
these conspirators
abduct the listening chair
and strap deniability to
another infernal device

so some hotwired pilgriming woman
possesses superior ****** abilities
and a skill with
the violin, the pointy end

camera is king

yet all the negatives
have been destroyed
still somewhere out there
remains a flash card
and a hybrid set of eyes
watching all the people fall to pieces

we're perambulations around
collapsed buildings,
rather than the collapsing buildings themselves

me and the machine
of contradictions
sick as our secrets
with all kinds of shenanigans going on

welcome to the age of copying minds
onto hard drives and cellphones

a future too heavy to carry
and so we plant it deep into the soil
letting the cables sleep
like fading city lights, receding
like strange fractured reactors
at the edge of the world

in lieu of flowers send hope

Midas turned what he loved to gold
I wish I could do the same
Instead my touch brings destruction

No matter what I hold
I find it always ends the same
Lovers, friends, any other

My destruction knows no bounds
I often wonder, did Midas feel this way?