I

However the image enters
its force remains within
my eyes
rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve
wild for life, relentless and acquisitive
learning to survive
where there is no food
my eyes are always hungry
and remembering
however the image enters
its force remains.
A white woman stands bereft and empty
a black boy hacked into a murderous lesson
recalled in me forever
like a lurch of earth on the edge of sleep
etched into my visions
food for dragonfish that learn
to live upon whatever they must eat
fused images beneath my pain.

II

The Pearl River floods through the streets of Jackson
A Mississippi summer televised.
Trapped houses kneel like sinners in the rain
a white woman climbs from her roof to a passing boat
her fingers tarry for a moment on the chimney
tearless and no longer young, she holds
a tattered baby's blanket in her arms.
In a flickering afterimage of the nightmare rain
a microphone
****** up against her flat bewildered words
"we jest come from the bank yestiddy
borrowing money to pay the income tax
now everything's gone. I never knew
it could be so hard."
Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud
caked around the edges
her pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation
unanswered
she shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed
"hard, but not this hard."
Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her
hanging upon her coat like mirrors
until a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside
snarling "She ain't got nothing more to say!"
and that lie hangs in his mouth
like a shred of rotting meat.

III

I inherited Jackson, Mississippi.
For my majority it gave me Emmett Till
his 15 years puffed out like bruises
on plump boy-cheeks
his only Mississippi summer
whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie
as a white girl passed him in the street
and he was baptized my son forever
in the midnight waters of the Pearl.

His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year
when I walked through a northern summer
my eyes averted
from each corner's photographies
newspapers protest posters magazines
Police Story, Confidential, True
the avid insistence of detail
pretending insight or information
the length of **** across the dead boy's *****
his grieving mother's lamentation
the severed lips, how many burns
his gouged out eyes
sewed shut upon the screaming covers
louder than life
all over
the veiled warning, the secret relish
of a black child's mutilated body
fingered by street-corner eyes
bruise upon livid bruise
and wherever I looked that summer
I learned to be at home with children's blood
with savored violence
with pictures of black broken flesh
used, crumpled, and discarded
lying amid the sidewalk refuse
like a ***** woman's face.

A black boy from Chicago
whistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi
testing what he'd been taught was a manly thing to do
his teachers
ripped his eyes out his *** his tongue
and flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone
in th e name of white womanhood
they took their aroused honor
back to Jackson
and celebrated in a *******
the double ritual of white manhood
confirmed.

IV

"If earth and air and water do not judge them who are
we to refuse a crust of bread?"

Emmett Till rides the crest of the Pearl, whistling
24 years his ghost lay like the shade of a ***** woman
and a white girl has grown older in costly honor
(what did she pay to never know its price?)
now the Pearl River speaks its muddy judgment
and I can withhold my pity and my bread.

"Hard, but not this hard."
Her face is flat with resignation and despair
with ancient and familiar sorrows
a woman surveying her crumpled future
as the white girl besmirched by Emmett's whistle
never allowed her own tongue
without power or conclusion
unvoiced
she stands adrift in the ruins of her honor
and a man with an executioner's face
pulls her away.

Within my eyes
the flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain
a woman wrings her hands
beneath the weight of agonies remembered
I wade through summer ghosts
betrayed by vision
hers and my own
becoming dragonfish to survive
the horrors we are living
with tortured lungs
adapting to breathe blood.

A woman measures her life's damage
my eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock
tied to the ghost of a black boy
whistling
crying and frightened
her tow-headed children cluster
like little mirrors of despair
their father's hands upon them
and soundlessly
a woman begins to weep.

engulfed in viridescent
i suffocate,
there’s no way my existence only live in one color!
at this rate, i will only absorb monochromatic colors-
boring, black and white colors-
my life isn’t an empty chess board!
my life is supposed to be a prism after sunlight, reflecting the colors of the rainbow rays after heavy rainstorm.
my life is supposed to be a clear cheerful lights that invite happy beams from every eyes that saw me!

where are those beams now?
there are,
but all of them are
impish
smiles.

it can’t be.
it can’t be.
now it’s only one solid color,
a color that allows me to be invisible.
perhaps
it’s better this way.
i would die rather than letting my morose colors transparent.

until when?
will i hide my colors forever?
but then, i will never witness the rays of the sun.
how will i refract rainbows, if i only let myself hide in the color of the night?

the sun.
the sun won’t come out.
but the clouds are here.
gray, heavy clouds leaking of water.

ah.
maybe i should wash my colors.
wash, wash, until i’m cleanse.
wash, wash,
the loud sounds of thunderstorm.
wash, wash, rain,
volatile sky projecting a vicious achromatic light.
let my colors melt in rain.

until my vicinity is filled with fluorescent bulbs,
‘til the sky is pastel,
'til holographic air diminish,
'til then,
i can see others beams,
and my own cheerful color
is the best one i could display so far.

tattoos are permanent
thats how it used to be
just like how my love used to be for you
now its just a afterimage of what used to be
tattoos are permanent
they hurt, they mean something, and —
tattoos are permanent
thats how it used to be
just like how my love used to be for you
now its just a afterimage of what used to be
tattoos were permanent
thats how it is now
just like my love for you
not present tense but the past
were
just like how you were playing with those
other girls
were
just like how you played with me
my heart and my feelings are up to date
presently, the past is the past
tattoos are permanent
thats how it used to be
just like how my love used to be for you
now its just a afterimage of what used to be
tattoos are permanent
they hurt, they mean something, and —
i mean that’s how it was for me

Purple flower—
lonesome afterimage;
a fighter with a purple eye.

Personal Perspective Poem (Spoken Word)
5/30/2014

To the women who say they do not need feminism,
for fear of being seen as whiny or sensitive,
or for whatever reasons I may not comprehend as a mere male ally.
Please have it in you to look beyond your personal perspective.

To recognize that eye to eye, you do not see other women.
That there are those who cannot see,
acid dripped down their eyelids,
like a tear that burns their skin as much as the insides swell,
all just for wanting to reject a stranger's ****** advances.

To recognize the backs bruised,
bloodied buddies removed from bodies.
That little life extensions not allowed to live,
just for being born girls or maybe boys,
or somewhere in between sometimes.

Please, to recognize that no matter how inner your beauty is,
no matter how many months you spend spinning a cocoon,
so that you may emerge an empowered butterfly,
there will be evil spiders who prey and wish to restrain your flying wings,
in the entanglement of their webs.  
Spinning **** like it is the finest of silks.

To recognize a young female's suicide pressured by her peers,
either called fat, considered undesirable as a volcanic eruption of ash,
and coal, as dark as the hearts of those who have rejected her.
Or she was of dark skin which you might consider just as bad,
because your personal perspective probably left behind women of color.

To recognize that *** should be a sweet something,
not a spontaneously evoked sitting or standing or shouting and screaming,
inside silently, but knowing nobody will hear because you fear,
how they might react in the middle of a frat party,
where **** culture runs rampant,
ripping open limbs to toss in the trash with ****** wrappers,
but blame it on the ******* empty beer bottles.

To recognize that discussions about female TV characters,
and video games, are not about the pixels on the screen,
but the pixels ingrained in young girls' minds, an afterimage.
Left as if women who don't feel they have a place in this world,
do not deserve the avatars they want to represent their digital escape.
Such a simple request, please give her character armor suitable for battle,
her ******* need not be exposed to archers' arrows,
or a swordsman's stab, plunging carelessly into cleavage.

To recognize that commercial prostitution isn't something to sneer at,
when our society prostitutes women in commercials.  
Selling burgers that look like toxic bombs,
you are actually being advertised a buffet of *******.  
Selling beer with a wet white t-shirt contest,
drinks shouldn't be poured on anyone other than a **** at a bar.  
-
Climbing views in ****** slip videos trending on YouTube,
for a moment not worth the notice of any hash tag other than #YesAllWomen.
All of this shameless showing of the human anatomy,
as though it were a product.
Yet we can't seem to get behind feeding a baby the nutrients it needs,
anywhere in public other than an unsanitary bathroom stall!

To recognize the pioneers of past and present,
whose names now whispered in the footnotes of history textbooks,
can't be screamed loud enough at you!  
Shouting, Nellie Bly cannot save you if you voluntarily are a lunatic.  
Shouting, Mary Wollstonecraft cannot avert,
the monstrous male gaze you feel on your *** as you meander,
if you do not join her tribe as an Amazon Warrior of the Pen.  
-
Shouting, Betty Friedan cannot persuade you to liberate yourself,
if you do not think there is anything mystical about feminine mystique.  
Shouting, Laura Bates' 2012 Everyday Sexism Project,
in this modern fourth wave of feminism will become useless.
If you let it wash over you like another small wave,
in an ocean of daily sexist struggles you deny exist,
and blame on anomalies like the mental health of a certain shooter.  
-
Shouting, Kitty Genovese who screamed at everyone.
They watched but they didn't help. 
They watched but they didn't help.  
They watched but they didn't help.
And now shouting at you,
you are watching, but not helping.

Most importantly, to recognize the up and coming feminists,
of the future, with whom you do not identify,
because you think you don't need feminism.
To recognize those who will have to fight so **** hard,
to give you the privilege to be such an *******.
But that's just my personal perspective.

read this aloud, mind the punctuation,
and, finally,
enjoy.


amethyst eyes alight with nighttime lightning, clapping lashes spark ruminations rumbling across the savannah of memory imprinting in me the afterimage of Now.   Now, Now makes me hers -- though i’m more willing a captive than she imagines: imprisoned in the present, tasting the electricity resounding in this soundless cell () deafeningly solid --
she grooves before me.
slowly rolls me
me rolls slowly  
molasses boiling tongues twisting towards me
ba-da doom ba-doom doom doom.

i don’t know if it’s the fireflies caught in midnight-amber jars suspended by strands of suicidal curls tumbling down the pitch of your back,
or
your touch, come tentatively, but nonetheless titillating, for it softly pleas me to get grounded, stay a while in the timbre of warm fireside conversation and cocoa,
or
your teacup of a navel compelling i to lift laughter, fish up reminiscences, and transcend time,
or
when you lean close and lick me with your eyelash, as if a butterfly’s kiss,
or
your soft voice smoothly singing songs of four-lettered blues .   .     .

.     .   . my god you’re gorgeous.

dance with me, Now     for two more turns of the moon let’s defy posterity and traverse the curves of each other’s words and purge our selves of self     let’s anesthetize Now, marinate in the moment, savor the silence and become sap-trapped fossils left for the future     let’s live a lifetime together in two more turns of the moon, Now,     so that I may memorize every quark of every electron of every neutron of every proton of every atom of every ion of every molecule of every cell of every sinew of every tissue of every ***** and every system of all your beauty, Now, you are perfect because you are am is and will never be anywhere else but here and nothing else but Now.

feel me?
   feel her?

      feel here?


Now.

she was a quick pencil sketch
nothing more than a moments
hurried hand
her perfume and brushed hair
an echo in the worlds soundtrack
she was a quick pencil sketch
in a world of masterpieces in motion
but thouse few dark lines
were spent here in the walls of this silent room
sketched in the afterimage of her presence
sketched in the lingering words of her farewell
each line cast down to page with a quickness
but drawn out in the mind
to slow abandon
to slow capitulation to a lesser dream
one of crying
one of loss
her perfumed brushed hair
catching the light
as the door closed
a masterpiece of motion to the world
a sketch of dire love to me

i. there’s a girl. narrow-*****, wild hair like a lion’s mane, sprawled underneath the shade of a looming fig tree. her teeth are all that’s sharp about her. soft curves, soft lips, a soft paradox in the Garden. in this lost land, there she is, subtle and tinged with the same stardust you once believed could save us all.

angelic, you’d call her, if she looked more grotesque. more like the cherubim of ol’, dressed in flames, impaled on swords, screeching the name “hosanna, hosanna” without mouths. but there are no wings, no heavenly trumpets, just the afterimage of divinity– something laced with hope, but already rotting. she spits out seven seeds and you don’t know if this is a land of God or gods anymore.

ii. she smiles and it feels like death.

you are unable to solve the riddle sprung from the lion’s ribcage– but the roof of your mouth tastes like honey and blood and you don’t mind. there’s no linearity, no familiar whine of a donkey, nor the sound of sand against gravel or sandaled feet marred by sunburns and blisters.

there is simply you and her and an eternity of possibilities that whisper in a forked tongue, “adam, oh adam,” and your heart drops. is this the end? but it tastes so sweet and you are alright to die like this, cradled between what was once in your womb and a creature of scales.

you do not expect the guilt that drips down your chin with each rivulet of juice.

iii. they call it love.
you call it divine absolution.
she calls it the beginning of humanity.

~
"Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement."
~
A mixture
of sinister and sweet,
smoking gun at your feet.
Reclining dead
in a meadow,
or wishing you were
as you gaze out your window.

Bottling undecided dark,
catching keyed-up light,
in random, misleading angles.
The uniform hour
holds Grace, Grant,
and the mystery
it entangles.

Don't look directly
at the camera,
icy blonde afterimage.
Everything you need
is written on the page.
Number 13,
Mrs. Peabody?
Don't you know
all contemporary
escapist entertainment
begins by turning your back?
Lingering on what
suspicious minds track.

The migrating voyeurism
sits as the crow,
wired and unfriendly.
The method is an organism,
an implication, a crossbow,
thought, but unseen.
He will push the girl,
until you succumb
to dream sequences.
It's snowing humiliation
at Winter's Grace,
for out of the male gaze,
invading your space,
you become gifted
at doing nothing well,
in sheer
under-things,

(for inner circles & triangles of fur
are all the rage in Europe).

Yes, he hates pregnant women,
because then they have children.
So leave him
to his work,
to analyze your handwriting,
and build that ramp
directly into your trailer.

His larger than life silhouette
will fill the silver screen
with tension,
trip wire,
and a ****** ambivalence,
that ends with
the violent sound
of someone
packing a suitcase.

He enters by virtue of this door,
and you leave through another,
and another,
and another,
until the final scene
alters your state of mind.

Your pretty little feet
dangling precariously
over the edge...

This constant rain and thunder
never ceases, makes me wonder
why lightning looks like shutterflash
taking pictures of my life...
Afterimage and epic photonegative
redroom and redsky, black and white
antiqued and superimposed
into a dull square picture frame
display this moment of my life for eternity.
i'm blinded by flash after flash
of lightning before my eyes
as i'm carried off by gale winds
into the clouds and i'm never seen again...

My hands have become raw.
The constant digging has made me complacent.
The tools have been scattered.
Just as the thoughts I sift through.
Glory to those that have found the treasure.
Trinkets of blight and misfortune is all that is left.
Do I cherish what remains..
Consume those that are truly nameless.
Faceless.
The definition is lost on me.
Yet I find solitude in the despair it brings.
A constant that always keeps its promise.
The lighting strike has found its mark.
For just as fast as it has come.
Lighting up my eyes.
I am left with only the afterimage.
A burn that is slowly fading.
And soon.
It to will be that of my imagination.
Hinting at a past with static charge.
Will this Phoenix rise.
Or has the fire finally been extinguished.

In the heart of the fire a temple burns higher
Call me a liar
Do you believe the same as they deceive?
Instinct over spirit recieved
bested by the animalistic quality to falter from taking charge of the fallacy or to clear a path for the bard that beckons to be more than an aspect of frivolity
diminished by ecclesiastical polity
Thine ego spreads like a **** among the flowers growing faster with an unquenchable thirst for power devoted to consumption and the benefit of itself til sour and nothing else
Thus creating an afterimage that resembles all that we desire with all that we pretend to be
Half the ecstasy wired, that we could actually free higher from what comes naturally, divine to masters who wield compassion and invulnerable humility
as a weapon of civility
Surpass the masses' ability
Grasp the clasp of immortal nobility
Endire and outlast the harassment willingly to channel all the blessings of grace it will carry thee

good for
not much-

dear father I am your son the lesser of two unreliable narrators-

(do continue)

good for
a shadow’s
shade

and for your mother
who wanted this

haunted
by you

bird

I still
kind of
have…

Scott took a slug of his beer, reached
deep into the breast pocket of his coat, and
pulled out an empty pack of marlboros.
He flipped the top and was distraught
when he saw the empty space where
his addiction should've been hiding.

As he shrugged his way into that coat,
which has warmed him for years, he thought:
Jeez, these sleeves are ******* cold!
He told Vince, the immortal barkeep, that he'd
return ever so briefly as he stepped out into
the weighted rains and ceaseless winds.

Making his way down the road towards the
inevitable gas station while counting his
dollars and cents, Scott is blinded to the world.
But a seventh sense strikes him suddenly
and he hears his neck creak as he looks up,
over, and across the busy street.

Wait, he thinks, how did she get here?
yet there she stands alone on the corner.
I'm drunk, the thoughts roar, she's no more..
Cars and trucks cut through his vision and
she is but an afterimage, her dripping hair
blowing in the unforgetting winds.

She's gone man, his mind screams to him,
but it's his eyes that deter potential lies.
He actually sees her over there, even meeting
her own eyes in an endless moment of futility.
Whispering incomprehensibly to himself
he steps towards her, onto the street.

That's when life becomes shrouded in
screeching tires and burning brakes,
and Scott forgets all about his smoke break.
That's when life becomes darkness,
and she fades away into the rain as
a bus paints the road with his brain.

I

-dulcimer clatter opens the sun, first fruit-

timber fathoms/crystal veils
on all steps, crossing all human borders

untethering wood
from forest, until only the green element remains
to purify the soul

   an alpine afterimage, shadow-display
(creature of Earth, moss-backed & yowling thru the chaotic sleep
of October, you see it's symbology in your tea, sharpening its
obsidian hands against the seastones,
imprinting loveliness into the rock, to be worn by tides,
replaced by death absolute)

The fabled Black Horse (shadow-self) waiting solitary at a
gas station, an imprisoned dreamer inside
its gaping jaw/saturnine, coldness
of daybreak, clouds at their Atelier, my head
feels a pressure, been awake too long,
breathing in through the nose/out through
mouth, monastery of the mind in need of clearing.

II

Soft/soft/skin/fury
embrace, catharsis, collision of
two individual energies
pent-up and cast/release
like a skeleton net::onfire
(kissed, consumed
elated, recurrance)

closeted eternities
cycling back into the
wind (hanging willow)
calling to the seeker, gold,
purification & lightness/mouthcurl washed in silence
(your own body, rising tide)

welcomed crucible of chilling air
& my black and
white vessel,
  electricity spirit-
whispers
        “valley swimmer, elude me”
FLASH OF LIGHT


III

…. The widewaking world
unspun-
                            theatric elucidation,
emergence of a great snake
a wisened flower, sprouted from exile

blissful rejuvination of
the ivory leaves, at once!

I wrap my throat in a Munich scarf
(pattern-blue)
   walking upon the softness of
Grötzingen (angel's eyes speaking)
an orchard, where the last gardener's tireless
work lay like a dreaming ossuary

Books of word in shaded writes not as other
Reading was penned. where wrote but black
Pages of nothing, words claustrophobic in tight
Proximity but never viewed on sights unseen
In either dusk or light. Gathered upon nameless
Shelves, dust gathered where words left unspoken.

Many fought the paradox of never reading these
Pages that pulsated In mystical thought.This library
Of books with neither word, but pages took the
Lives of many never a mark. But now their bones
Lie in waiting anticipation, now eyes hollow of
Needed words only grasping torn parchment.

Along she came silken gloves, garbs that cut upon
Fine curves, she walked with a look of cautious pleasure
As if  seeing but knowing what was beyond her sight.
Her only companion was a stick old yet shimmered
In a mirage of confusions light. For after she was beyond
Glares, her memory an afterimage upon others cares.

She had heard of this place of pages as dark as night,
Heeded upon thoughts of countless others who had
Pilgrimaged to this place, all faded from memories
Sight. "I wonder if a book can be read in darkness,
She sighed; and she came across this Old redwood
Door, in a redwood trunk as it stretched upon high.

Old door was neither of key or grip. She stood patiently
As rain shivered bones as night turned to day.
Thinking of how a door would be opened, Then a
Thought smiled upon her lips."Knock, Knock,
And that which was closed now let her in. The air
Smelt of old paper and the air was static and sweet.

She gathered her surroundings and where wood
Had greeted her, now there was but a view of the
Plentiful forest that stood outside. She reunited her
Thoughts of consumed panic and breathed.
Her stick she grasped and in words whispered, it
Shrunk to but a branch in griped tightly in her hand.

Noticing those that had stumbled or sneaked in this place.
Each a book or page in white closed palms, they were
Silent but told her stories of there fate. each page black
As if night had set upon them and sleep was like sinking
Sand drowning never to ever awake.

Once again words spoke upon a branch and light did  like
Firefly playing against this enlightened place. She scrolled
On pages of onyx black and where once a void of nothing
Her light gained access to the darkest palace and words
Shone in echo's of time. Bestowed on this beauty was
The key to words unspoken now glanced upon in sight.

"I will learn your words,
"Never revealing what others might,

The library now hidden, but a tree can be found in
This wood, and on certain nights fireflies dance around
It and play in moonlit fun. All the while a woman
Looks after words that heed great power. But in
The hands of light, words dance upon air into the night.

How did you wear it so easily,
make your head hang so naturally?
Perhaps it's one of those things
for only some people. For some,  
mourning suits. I'm not one of them.

Tell me, how did you cut your grief
so clean in half, just like a smile I saw
caught in the gleam of sun
on a swimming pool, shimmering
in a mirage or a lifetime ago,
when the summer heat knew us
and was simmering around us,
lifetimes ago.

It cut the world in half,
divided then from now,
divided moonlight,
split open decay to allow for more decay.
We've been doing that since May.

Now it's autumn,
meaning cold feet and a pile of laundry
losing heat, and inconsolable sky
and a train pulls into the platform,
empties itself, and on a sixth floor balcony,
evening dewdrops cling
to the railing, trembling, shy.

The thud of old telephone books,
thrashing in the wind. Our bones shook,
as we went on running on, ruining
one another for anybody else.
Everybody else.

Broken leaves, gold and russet.
Seasons leave us more than people do
so why is it we don't mourn the fallen
from trees as well as wars and cars and
wars and wars and  wars.

The 11th of the 11th month at 11
they called for peace. Rest in peace.
At 11:11 I wished that someone
somewhere will soon kiss away
my idiosyncrasies
and my memories
until they sigh,
bye, bye, and you're gone
as if never here. They always say
earth is a place you didn't belong.

Cold and birdsong, chuckling
at the window. You are always there- yes you,
at the edge of that photograph
in lecture halls. in guitar chords,
in nothing-at-alls, in hospital wards.

Your face, slow-burning,
an afterimage,
across fields of morning light,
under the lapels of mourning suits.

to dream of flight would be betrayal
of the promise I made spurred by memory
that can never forget your afterimage
burned behind my sleeping eyes

faint fears have begun to make a tremble
in this mind weakened by such pain
that if again caution is thrown to the wind
it would forever vanish into the sky

I have given you light in our darkness
a voice to follow in our violent wake
but should this fate befall us once more
in those dreams I fear I will begin to dwell

I beg us give no reason to find fault within
and keep us in reach of the sun's warmth
that if there comes a day when caution leaves
I won't regret that I did not give chase

I need to go to a burning man. I need to lose myself in the woods for a year. I need to make my threshold and enter through. I heard my call a long time ago but I just never...
   I can't stand myself any longer! I must lose who I am to find what I am to become. And I can't do that in a world where I exist in everyone around me. I need a place with none of me and plenty of else. So much that I can spread myself out to one thought thick. Finally be raw, enough to see myself clearly.

   I shouldn't worry about forevers, because forevers are simply composed of nows.

   I want quiet place to sit against the tree, look out over a lake, and read until my eyes bleed pleasure, my brain secretes knowledge, and my heart wisdom.
   A place to harbor a gentle haze of mind, a place to leave myself behind. Just and think and think some more, until and passed the point of being head sore.
   I want to place with plenty of glasses, and plenty of cracks, plenty of muses and no ways back.
   A place full of forevernows and nevermores, where people are stupid enough to cross the desert because of a recurring dream. A place of pink purple sunsets and endless shores.

   How mirrors have learned to lie I will never know, because I don't recognize the person they show. I have to turn them around because even my own eyes try to deceive me.

  If I don't I will always want to. If I do I won't enjoy every step, but I will a few.
   The hands that shaped this road are now, older.
   I don't know how I will, and a not even sure I understand why I will. All I know for certain is I MUST.

   Because I can't stay here. If I do I will fall in love with possibilities, and not realities. I will fall in making people out to be more than a person. I will lose my heart to and afterimage of a dream, and even if I do I would never have pursued it anyways. I want to leave the field, sell my flock, and start my full circle, or square.
   Wherever I go I have no plan know method know fall backs, but the beautiful hair of uncut graves. With only the Spektor inside my books to hold me.
   I want to hear the symphony of stars each night and have the wind tell me its stories of its travels that day.
   I want to sleep knowing the poppies stand guard.
  
   I know nothing, and I'm ready to listen, but first I must get out of my hand made prison, burn the map smashed of compass. Put my feet anywhere besides in front of the other that way I'm going nowhere fast and never looking back.

   I want to teach myself the song of my soul, so that I can hum every bar by heart, but I can't do that here. Not in this place of paper people and towns who live their lives never getting wet.

   It says if I can ever catch my breath, that I'm strangle lading in the stench of mold and excitement of leaving and never coming back.

   Mark here this day, as I lie awake at night as the last moment I spent outside the labyrinth. I need, no, I must leave find a place where I can listen to my heart and drink and its wisdom. But that place is not here I don't know where to, but I must start.
   Thomas Edison last words were " its very beautiful over there, I don't know where they're is, but I believe it somewhere, & I hope it's beautiful"

                                                     ­     ~Crow

The last streams of daylight fade away,
Like the frail afterimage
Of melancholic memories;
Drifting quietly like seaglass,
Submerged in an unfamiliar world.

I've been fed with
Alphabet
& crocodile tears
Chicken soup

For the soul
His love inside me
Took
All my human sweat
Tackling
Climbs
Greatest is Everest's
Pinnacle peak

Touching Zen
& Zanadu
Shangri La
At the foot of heaven,
A door to Shambala

The forbidden kingdoms
Spirit realm

In Between
Infinite
The Abslute

Inside is light
A place named perfection
All
Mornings
Forever new

I recall
Being fed upon
A sluice
Draining out the poetry
Of being
Before it is

Spoken
Word
Paints Music :
The emotions' rain
Coloring the pain
A window of thunder

Upon the heart reigns
divinity
Honoring
Life
Far more
Dignified

The eye
Carrying the soul

To where the blue
skies
Upon
oceans' breath

Temperatures
Tuscany temperate
Close to pristine
Before
It's
Go'ne Green

No pollution
& global warming.

And thru baby blue
Windows
Of the soul

Soft comes the clouds
Yet
To be made loud
With thunder
There

Might
Lead to stairs
Upwards

Yon pearly gates
& Nirvana's
Everlasting peace

A grace

The light at first sight
All perfect love
(Upon every face)

Like Smiles from glowing parents
"Welcome to the world"
I promise you, baby
The future of us
Cherished
offspring

You'll not know that sort
Of suffering,
Or dying
Of hunger
Pangs the same as pain
Or hurt that won't go away
Lonely and loveless
More mean than meaning

Promise love child
We live to raise you / up
Happy...

I've been fed with much

The poets'
Mystic soup

A beautiful joy
To learn to slurp it all up
Because Life is
Delicious
& Vicious goes playing coy

I spell my mind
with a why
Without a doubt

Brighter visions
Telling threadbare eyes
Of needles
To Storms / twisters
Not licorice
Twizzler Cylindrical

But cyclone spiral
Of ennui tearful
Otherness

The afterimage of life
Is heaven
next

And she said
"Love me as the earth
Or as the sky
With awakenings
Birth
A mind
No fear of nothing"

For nothing is impossible
Now Then everything
Is more probable

See for yourself
With light
of truth
Seeing you
newly / beginning

Sight farther seeing
With heart made
Doubtless
For believing

In you
Love / soul

ever illumine.

Death goes flesh
When the soul gots leave

The brilliant cries
Spinning
The distant stars
Look
beyond blind
Life & such beliefs

The Tree
The Ladder
The Sun
The Eye
The One

Feed me shine
Our Life
full of Love...
The kind
That shaped me
Into a poet

Spoken word
The poem flies

When the heart opens
Honest as the sun
The dark did not know it

The breath of evergreen poems
The kiss of liquid
Water
Fall
Lagoons

Drinking wisdom
Au naturale

River like the soul
Soul River to have drank

Eternal love's
Je suis

Poetry.

Our alphabet
soup
Awe Life,
Oh cup!
Drink up the hours
Rain for tears
All
waterfall
Showers.

Oh poem of love,
You've got the power!

Elapsing into cognitive repercussions,
               a thought never one to fade.

Always an afterimage
  burnt on to the psyche
           of delicate dewdrops clinging.

Within a consciousness
              that never  evaporates
just lingers in a reflection of it hanging

Like its waiting to suffocate
           but the breath of reality
                              gives it respite.

It's strange hearing her like this
Words filled with the warm glow of golden honey
There's a smile behind her words and something unidentifiable
In the darkness she's all but invisible
Picture her as big as a mountain with fists like anvils
Strong enough to bend steel and a mind like a trap

Heard her talking through the door
No other breaths, no others in the house
She was always the most comfortable alone
I was done with the world and she knew this
But her words still colored the night between us.
Memories poured from her lips,
Impossible to comprheand and impossible to be.

She talked of flowers and grey corriders
Shifting places that where never the same again
Of fighting to save her own skin
No one's ever owned her or held her down
Every scar's a medal she says
A token of the breath still in her lungs

Silence falls after those weighty words
And I know she's looking up, to that one spot her eyes always fall.
"But what I rember the most are the flowers."
Those little bits of living light in a grayscale world
Her words are sweet with sadness and worn-down with time
And I wonder how long she's been singing these words in her mind.

Time stretches out like rubber band taffy,
A millennia becomes an eye blink and a year becomes a second
She says she's been there from the start.
Seen civilizations rise and fall with the tides.
Restless ruin, unending loss and bitter regret.
Impossible story strung out like star-shine in the darkness between us

She's trying to save me in her own way,
Reaching out to the heavens with her unreal past
The sun on a strong back and a child she once new
Faces that come and go like dust motes
Soap bubbles, gnats to a flame
Gone so fast it leaves an afterimage on your eyelids

And then I realize,
She's giving me a choice
Not trying to hold me back.
The God has always wanted an end,
But I have the chance at life.

The glint of steel, so sharp and smooth,
beneath my fragile fingers.
Delicate inlaid patterns reflect
an afterimage that lingers.

As a child I’d hide beneath cotton sheets
feigning death, that I could deceive.
Then risking a peep from beneath my shield,
oh, how my poor young heart grieved.

For in the corner of my eye
and with a silent cry,
it was watching.

Who might it be and what does it want,
this eternally elusive guest?
A featureless face on the fleeting form,
silence is all I can wrest.

For many long hours and countless years,
I pondered its persistent gaze.
I sense no malice; no dark intent
and yet, it remains, unfazed.

In the corner of my eye,
and with a silent cry,
just watching.

And now as I drown in the depths of despair,
it reflects in the cold steel’s knell.
Has it waited for the day that I kiss the bold blade
and bid my torment farewell?

Come, silent stranger, you need no longer hide
as my time is finally here.
Have you nothing to say, will you lead the way,
for, as I, you have nothing to fear?

With no cutting remark,
it stays there, in the dark.

Just waiting?

*


Written by Darren Scanlon, 15th June 2015.
©2015 Darren Scanlon. All rights reserved.

Like a puddle of conciseness I gazed within, I saw something,
not of reality, was this a nightmare in a teacup of reflections?
But as it evaporated I saw that wondering gaze among the
blind effigies that looked into nothingness.

I wondered my view upon the multitudes of shaded white,
what I hadn't seen as my overlook of what was inner most
close to my perceiving. Then I saw it, how did I not envision
this before? Was my gaze swollen with the shallow husks of
those clambering around me. Like an afterimage fleeting.

It was as if it was jumping in shallow puddles, for just a time
not to make waves in a sea of nothingness. For even the slightest
motions collected on the shores of others perceiving.
I was in a chess match, in a board of rookies..
Where those before me once me? I collected myself.

                  "Was I a pawn or another player in a field
                                                  of knights who had fallen,


I was weaving like spider silk, afterimages of where I
had once been. I had become accustom to the intricate
notions of what could and could not be grasped upon.
The blank ones even though of momentary emotions,
when it or they perjured upon them.

Then I noticed, they became more than just chandeliers of  
static light. Emotions were collecting in the corners of what
were vacant sockets of vision. I was no longer alone in this
place of shaded memories. Knowing that they were not of
the purring kitten collections, more of the great white playing
in a kinder garden of seals.

I watched as they consumed each pool, that which was
vacant now fell dissolving into tears of memories fading
beyond there contemplation. But as each painting of
memories was dissolved they were smirking as if they
or it knew I was watching the destruction of their actions.

Knowing what I had seen, I was the knight on a field of
pawns. They were innocence in playground of land mines.
Each step was unconditionally their continuation or the
inevitable disillusion to extinction. My morals were as in
life as in death, never to let harm befall those of needing.

**To Continued in the final part 4