Terrified... no... not terrified
Mad?  Of course I am mad!
Stircken with madness!

My every emotion heightened
I can hear and feel every sound from heaven, earth, and hell

Impossible to describe when or  how she started to haunt me so.
All day and night in dreams she walked with me.  
Something in her voice... something dancing there in her words
And those eyes, eyes more endless than the oceans
Yes, her eyes!

Yes, her eyes drove me into this insanity.
Her eyes, heavy in dark storms, dancing with demons,
Hiding beauty not meant for mortals to gaze upon
And in their darkness hides something more
Something covered by such black grace
Guarded and tormented by devil and beast

Her   HEART

I dare say this
In no napping nor no dreaming
Will you find
No treasure, no paradise, no living creature
Could be as lovely
As her heart
And her poor heart trapped there
In this private hell


What was I to do?
She hardly knew my name but already
I found myself desperate for her affection...


I awoke in the middle of the night
My soul on fire
My body drenched in longings warmth
My chest ready to burst with madness
The devil sitting at the end of my bed
Politely sipping tea
"Bad dream?" He said with a snicker in his teeth
"No...no... I know..."
He inhaled deeply,
"I can smell it on you."
His teeth growing wider with his smile.
"Love...that's it, isn't it?"
I answered not...
Nothing good would come of it...
He had murdered my heart and soul before
More than once or twice
"Come, come now, son... you know I mean no harm."
The devil continued
"What a beautiful sight, this dream of yours.  Oh... those eyes... You poor boy, you never had a chance"
He laughed and sipped and sipped and laughed.

"Love sweet love... Is there nothing more sickly heavenly than love.  You fools will do everything and anything for it...
Lie, cheat, steal, ******...
Anything that is, accept,... treat it well"

And ****
He was gone

He was right though
My own heart
Dead and buried beneath the floor boards of my soul
Hidden in the darkness
Safe from the ills and pains and beauty of  

LOVE

And it was my own hands
And sinister villainous laughter
That had murdered and buried it there
So long ago
Never never
Wanting to feel its beat again
Its foolish beating

Beat beat
Beating

Too high and too quick
Had it flown
Loving and then breaking
Leaving me alone to
Its heartache and woe
Too many times
Too many times to bare
So I hid in the dark from it
Standing still for many days
So still for many nights
Until it knew not where I was
It trembled to think itself alone
It cried there and I nearly laughed
Frozen I remained
Listening to it beat and cry and cry and beat
Then quickly I leapt upon it
And grasped it with both hands
Suffocating the life from it
Holding it down waiting
For its beating

Its beat beat
Beating to stop

And it slowed
And slowed and slowed
Until at last
It stopped
And I knew, oh I smiled to know
I knew I was forever more
Safe from the ills and pain and beauty of

LOVE


I wept, oh how I wept
Why is a heart so magnificent
So lost and troubled in despair
Her heart, so weary
So dreary
Such painful beating

Beat, beat
Beating

Right outside
My dreaming

Dream, dream
Dreaming

What could I do
Other than sit and watch
The horror of this show
My hands no more than ghosts
My voice ached to silent screams
If I could only help
If I could only love

LOVE
Her  HEART


And then I heard it...
Softly
Slowly
My dead heart

My dead
Dead heart

Pounding gently beneath the floor boards
Lost in the darkness of my soul
It grew louder
It grows louder still
I must be hearing its ghost
It cannot be

My dead
Dead heart

But louder and louder
It rang in my ears
My soul trembled from the sound of its beating

Its beat beat
Beating

For the ills and pains
Of love
This could not be
I paced the darkness
In nervous strides
My heart
Was to forever
Remain lifeless and lost
Beneath forgotten floorboards
Deep deep down
In the bowels
Of my lonely soul
I felt its death
Felt it give its last breath and beat
In mine own murderous hands

The ills and pains of love
Macking ridicule of my past deed
No! No... it mustn't be...
Louder... louder... it rang
Sound reverberating from
The hollow of

My dead
Dead heart

Faster and harder and louder
It pounded relentlessly
Pounding like the wings of a mad black bird
Echoing laughter from its beak made of devils horn
I heard... I knew...

That beat
Beat beating

Death had released my heart
Unable to hold and hide and keep it safe from
The ills and pains...
And most of all...
The beauty of

LOVE

No slower than lightning
My heart burst forth
Shattering the hidden floorboards
Splintering the depths
Of my soul
With new ills and pains and beauty of

LOVE

Off it flew
Such foolish flight
Drunk with courage
Oh that stupid stupid heart

Beat beat
Beating

A fools quest
A knights death
Off it went
Beating its black wings
Off toward devil and beast and despair
Guided by the sound
Of her heart
The painful

Beat beat
Beating

That beautiful sound
Right outside my

Dream, dream
Dreaming

Loping down at Winter
the raven
ravishes the light,
broad black beating wings spread
feeding on
tiny hidden corpses-its beak
hades' daggers pummelling the frost.

She has a calm lips,
Full of stitched wounds,
Yet she can narrate the most powerful stories in the world,
But when she’s alone,
All stories faded from her mind,
And regret swallows her’
Into tragedy stories,
Only the ravens know.

By: Nida Mahmoed.

How we marvel at possessions, think they make the best impressions;
For with material things we establish a close rapport.
Can’t you see we are infected by this false truth we’ve injected
Into the minds we’ve neglected, directed by commercial lore.
"These things will make you happy,” says the preacher of commercial lore,
Only this and nothing more.

There are nights we sit there spying, through our computer screens buying
Bourbon, books, and onyx watches, razor blades and house décor,
Bright scarfs in brilliant vermilion, cowboy boots coated reptilian,
Stroll through any mall pavilion, civilians went in every store.
Like clockwork we comeback again, millions spent in every store;
We always want something more.

Like in monopoly we aspire, the best estates to acquire,
So other players can look in envy at our great high score.
With the money we’ve been savin’, we want a home in New Haven,
So we sought a market Maven, craving a house on the shore,
A vintage house with wooden dock sitting calmly on the shore.
Can we find one that’s worth more?

Queerly we lust for assets, keep on buying have no regrets.
Are we dumb or blind or numb to keep doing what we abhor?
Statues shackled to cubicles, doped up on pharmaceuticals
****** fingers raw cuticles, we’re bulls for the matador.
He dances us round in circles, pulls the sword the matador
Is the one we all fall for.

But the Maven respectfully will encourage us helpfully,
“Follow your path of senseless sorrow, leave your qualms at the door,
Carry on with inhibition, keep working for that commission,
Please don’t mind your intuition, fruition comes from spending more.”
But like layered lies there’s a pea of truth on the mattress floor;
A princess would wake up sore.

We must move past our gluttony, and join the better company
Of men meek in spirit who act humbly like the days of yore.
Realize that joy stems from passion, not this sorry thing called fashion;
Embrace others with compassion to truly make our hearts soar;
And our souls from out the shadows can truly begin to soar.
Let’s be greedy – nevermore.

---

quoth the raven...
                NEVER MORE
and the wind replied ...
                restore.... restore.

a waterbird
on a lonely lake
cried... whip-poor-will.....
and the wind said... take.

a snowy owl
in a gnarled tree
cried... who? who?
and the wind replied... THEE.


SoulSurvivor
(C) 12/13/2015

i keep my soul hidden now beneath scattered tattered notebook paper pieces in outdated shoe boxes & deep between the covers of books, crisply underlined & strong- strong there, only there, with those words. most days i wake praying for rain; that tender soft world which it provides me with, drowns out the ever constant hum of traffic, arguing, the war on television, the growing sigh of humanity.

here i am.

I’m driving down some typical road all the roads look exactly the same here the streetlights passing by one by one by one. counting patterns in the road & I’m watching the swarm of black birds hanging over the highway; they’re swimming in their own way; kissing the sky & diving back down. that comfortable feeling of breaking skin
my blood may be the most priceless thing i own & maybe it’s for that reason i want to ruin it.

Read the pages of ancient lore,
Where a creature lives in days of yore.
With violet, black, and silent wings
In the dark, a wretched thing.

Over bloodstained fields of dead men's flesh, 
Bringing forth the sting of death,
Silently soaring, with talons sharp
Quickly tearing the weak apart.

Who can stop it, strong and wise,
Seeing everything, with it's watchful eyes.
Never sastified, wanting more,
It's greed rotting it to the core.

Among the shadows it spends it's time
Plotting carefully within his mind
For the next time you come around,
 You'll try to scream, but won't make a sound.

He'll take what you have, to the very last straw,
Quickly and quietly as you watch in awe.
In the depths of your soul he deeply stares
You should be thankful if your life he spares 

He sees himself as full of power
Not knowing there will come an hour
At the time when no one else can hear
And the shadows he himself should fear.

For long ago, in days of yore, 
Within the pages of ancient lore
The dark became his haven, 
And he called himself The Raven

4/15/14