They call me a fighter,
But...


I'm tired of fighting.

COME WITH ME

It is my lonely journey, on a trail that is dark
I leave no fingerprints, I promise to leave no mark
It is my prayers unheard, that are howls in the air
No longer looking for a love, nor for a someone who would care
A dark soul I am, on a travel to the pits of hell
There are no buyers at all, for the trinkets that I sell
Cold is in my heart, and in my veins is ice
I took to wind and the waters, and destroyed all that was nice

(M. N. R.)
3 APRIL 2018

I wanted nothing to do
with the Light.
It stung.
It permeated.
It was far too invasive.
I fell in love with the midnight
of my Soul.
I self-medicated
with the familiar pain.
The Light was far too Holy,
for someone as lowly as me.
But, she was tender.
Her voice was inviting.
So, reluctantly,
I allowed her in.
And I welcomed her
to this dark void
I’ve made Home.

architectural mollusks
    are falloping through
                              my brain
                        squeezing past the
                         instincts that
        have kept me down
My instincts,
              once brittle sea stars
                          that splintered
                                    into cracked
                                 peppercorns,
                 are now mixed with
           the breathy liquid
        of squid,
lubrication for
the spiny paths ahead
They blow their ink
between my
inverted vertebrae
      injecting Jello into bone
                           busting through
                        fiber and tissue like
                          fresh-skimmed
                    lavacream
and all my muck
rises to the top
in a neon rawness
that I find beautiful

Soon
my burning crevices
will be cooled
fossils will turn to flesh
and, as sure as knowledge
springs into action
I will make
for the shoreline
like a cephalopod rocket
silky smooth
my fins spun into wings
touching magic
as they glide

No one stays long
in the house of the bereaved

The hounds are lonely tonight
but not the priest

I dream I am still
in Tennessee grieving

Drinking moonshine
and branch water
looking for a fight

The undertaker creeps out
of the farmer's daughter's room

His wife beats a spider
with a broom then sweeps

When Death beats his child
nobody listens to her weep

My mother used to beg,
Son, don't write about Death,
We'll cross that ditch soon enough

I have nothing but respect
for the dead, I said

But there is no doubt in my mind
Death is a bad dog, a real *****.

When that blood flowed green
And trees were red
Skin was bark all hard
weathered showing
The marks of hurricanes
The dearths of rain
Skies glowed orange in night
And gray each day
The lakes all turned inside
Out where blues were down
And brown silt atop
The roots of things grew up
And flowers down
Bodies dead were above ground
People like moles once did
When the sun was yellow
And not her now deathly gray
People went underground
To live
Where dirt was white and grass
Was the ceiling
And not a day was recorded since
The day the
Colours
Turned around.

Most times,
I wished these fragments...
These fractions of a whole
would come together...

Forming the most astute of thoughts.
Illuminating the darkest of corners.
Piecing together and revealing the grandest of pictures.

But such is the nature
of a convoluted mind
because often times
they do not.