my heart is tucked away
under the floorboards
in the back of your brain.

out of sight,
out of mind.

because you couldn't look me in the eye.

but i still haunt you,
don't i?

do you hear me?
does the sound of me
remind you?
does the guilt follow you?

am I driving you insane?
do i make you want to scream?

are you going to confess your sin?

will you tell anyone of the crime
you know you committed?

is my heart beating loud enough
for you to peel back the floorboards once more,
and find the pieces of me,
torn apart by you?

Oh, weep for Adonais—he's undead!
    And hath been, lo! these interstitial years!
Yellow and black and pale and hectic red,
    His cockney mood consumptively careers.
Upon a bubbling Hippocrene he's drunk
    And dreaming, standing tiptoe on the brink
Of the wide world that sinks, and will have sunk,
    As love and fame to nothingness do sink.
An anguished autumn wind doth howl a HOWL
    Of abject grief that sweeps the graveyard's stones.
The sickle moon observes the downy owl
    That eats a mouse from tail to skull and bones.
Zombie Allan Poe, who's green and obscene,
Is sobbing, "Happy Birthday Halloween!"

A dark clay raven hung at a windowpane
to ward off bright songbirds from glass.
It never spoke a word, nor did it feign
to know of a departed late lass.

I asked it my questions, expecting more
conversation than it had on offer,
but plainly it found me a tedious bore
for it stayed quiet. Not much of a talker.

The brief encounter left me po-faced
as I’d been led to expect more from him.
So I turned away, belying a trace
of disappointment weighing within.

Then I heard the wind, and nothing much else
except the song of birds who’d survived
thanks to the clay raven who hung by a belt
in front of a window to keep it disguised.

Edgar Allan Poe
Never wrote a poem about a crow,
But he did write a poem about a misbehavin'
Raven.

Alot o ****
spe akstot
hehe art
**** hi sh
ere poe
m hwisp
ers sweetno
things to
thee lbo
w.

There once was a man from Nantucket
          Named Pym:
          That one lim
          Eric?k is about him.
                                                   **** it!

Edgar Alan Poe is dead. Seriously, I read it.
He died in October 1849 - or did he?
Do we really know?

Poe wrote about death a lot,
he teased with it, it was his favorite tool.
He kept death close and twisted it like a knife.

His profession was the macabre, the shadow,
the summoned dread and the gruesome aftermath.

He was a writer and a critic - what’s more dreadful than a critic?

They say he died from “unknown causes”
- how absolutely perfect.

In death's dream kingdom
           These do not appear:


                     I

They're handing out maroon balloons
And saying they are free
But grasping children grip them fast
And the monks amidst them disagree
Dispassionately, but en masse
While they liberate the children
With obliterating oms.

A nearby Byron expiates
And mildly reiterates
The soporific broken ode
He bellows over holy oms
To the smitten women who approach
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
Dispensing with disinterest
Crimson bliss amidst the women
Who ignore the sinful image he bestows.

He hands them out like red balloons
To grasping girls all afternoon
Imploring them to trust their nose
Insisting they are free
And so continues to propose
To the smitten women in the street
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
As if the word could smell as sweet
As the perennials he grows.

And in the corner – Romeo
Who greenly mourning understands
The worth of poison in his hands
Imagining a life of night
Where roses wither without light
And only stars through windows break
Through all the countless nights of fate
and every breath's an endless wake...

Meanwhile Byron's distant yells
Prevail over the choral swell
And plant a seed in grasping ears:
Salvation can be engineered!
Which Romeo soon understands
As kissing death, he takes her hand
Thoughts germinating into schemes
If a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
...then a dream is a dream is a dream.


                     II

A griffin, a hippogriff, and a wyvern
Admitting me and
Gripping crimson
Dripping strings
So none of them will fly away.

Inside, Cain is killing Abel  
(How few! yet how they creep)
killing Abel
(Through my fingers to the deep)
killing Abel
(While I weep — while I weep!)
killing Abel.
(O God! Can I not grasp)
It is the first story:
(Them with a tighter clasp?)
A samsara of carnage and drama.

Somewhere above
On a city street
Desire's handing out balloons
He clips their thorns
And trims them neat
He says they're free
And just as sweet
As the women he impugnes
He belies his guidance on repeat:
That love is the light is the sun is the moon.

A widower laments and moves the world
That has such people in it:
A snake, a guard, a god, a dog
A wife by no other name
A faltering of faith, a peek
A pillar of salt, a severed head
Adrift on a river
Singing:

I'd transcend five hundred miles
And I'd transcend five hundred more
Just to be the man who transcends trials
Sprawled out on your floor
(Thy drugs are quick.)
Searching for a souvenir
To prove to you our world was here

Isaac, bound, blank and free
Bleating, looking for meaning
(All that we see or seem)
In his father's violent eye,
And finding it.
(Thus with a kiss I die.)
Abraham swings his knife.
A son is a sin is a ram is a rose.

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
(LET THERE BE LIGHT)
Every day, and then it rolls down again
And then an eagle eats his liver.
(I am the resurrection and the life.)
One must imagine Prometheus happy
The alternative is dark

The moon, by any other name, would—
But do not swear by the moon!
For she changes constantly
(Then said Jesus unto them plainly:
Lazarus is dead.)
Everything changes
But nothing is truly lost.

(at times
the fact of her absence
will hit you like a blow to the chest
and you will weep.
but this will happen less and less
as time goes on.
she is dead.
you are alive.
so live.)

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
A day is a year is a life is a death.

One must imagine Orpheus happy.


                     III

In dreams, the sun resumes her loving glow
I'm reunited with my silhouette
I glue myself with soap to my shadow
And find myself beside my Juliet

No longer a balloon without a hand
I'm rooted to the earth where she grips me
With purpose guiding us through life's demands
I push my boulders uphill happily

I build a world with Juliet my wife
Where roses are all roses and smell sweet
We live a loving happy magic life
Together til our journey is complete.

[Enter, at the other end of the churchyard,
FRIAR LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and *****.]

In union Eve and Adam are redeemed,
Not in a rose but in a living dream.

Snowday, too, on top of the Monday Fed Holiday.

Nations are minds made up. Agreements, elders made
with all they made believe.

Let's pretend, after seven decades, we are children,
let us spout off about absolutes and insoluble angst,

natural, in unconstitutional retyings of the national
spirit,
we
the
people most exceptionalistly educated and ---

Confuse, confuse muse and music?
Magnification and magic, majesty and jest, me?

My first thought on waking, or reaction acknowledging,
science, if any thing is sharp, it was made to become so.

Crystal vision, any reader in this medium has,
an attainment,
merit worn
by knowing
words hold
thoughts and thoughts occur in superstringy gnosisnot.