Restless in bed, the stir of warmth blossoming in his heart,
the girl he loved has gone,
drifted from his house to the field of vacant stares.
Rainstorms brew in his mind, shifting from one end to the other,
the current forming into a large sheet of distance damp with disconnection.
He thinks of fire. As he rolls out of bed.
Grabbing a cigarette from his ashtray,
he lights up. Old habits stay kept in the roof of his mouth. Fresh air
permeates through his nostrils as he steps out onto the front porch.
He props his elbows on the balustrade,
brushes against the grainy wood
tarnished from the skywater.
The sun droops below the gray cluster of clouds
hanging over a horizon colored with blues, reds, and yellows.
While he smokes on his cigarette he remembers the girl. Her name is a
wrinkled photograph stored in a dusty shoe box.
She has green eyes and curly red hair.
Her body is shaped in an hourglass figure.
She's tall and gaunt, but her
legs are toned from running several miles on her treadmill
each morning before the dark slips away into the fog of light.
He grounds the cigarette out on the porch. He steps onto the driveway. There's a red
Honda CRV parked across from the two-car garage.
He hops in. The key turns.
Booming engine roars out loud.
The wheels churn backwards. He pulls out of the
cul-de-sac. And he drives, drives,
until he can remember the road map, the one
that she stole from him to follow her dreams, and hopes, the aspirations that he had
once shared with her. A thin, white film of mist
belays across the windshield.
And for a short second he wishes that he were dead.
Dead so that he could have the
perspective of an omniscient narrator to oversee everything, and everyone.
But where is his girl? She's not the one who got away,
she's the one who abandoned him, the
night after he ate the sweet nectar,
the fruit, little drops of dew splashing onto the back of his tongue.
The red Honda CR-V careens down the interstate, windows down, subwoofers pumping
with something similar to apprehension,
tense with overwrought poems.
The substance lacking from trying too hard,
for something that wants nothing to do with him.

I will greet you in silence and tears
my soul wild and open
just for you to devour at pleasure

You distorted my path with songs
songs of promised paradise
yet now I am in you fiery embrace

If tempests have a queen, you hold realm
your voice so tender and sweet
belays your true and callous intent

Now I am your merchant of pain
you do will me that way
I give my heart and you give me pain

So this is my ending, held by you
this is all that is left
detached in silence and tears


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

I will greet you in silence and tears
my soul wild and open
just for you to devourer at pleasure

You distorted my path with songs
songs of promised paradise
yet now I am in you fiery embrace

If tempests have a queen, you hold realm
your voice so tender and sweet
belays your true and callous intent

Now I am your merchant of pain
you do will me that way
I give my heart and you give me pain

So this is my ending, held by you
this is all that is left
detached in silence and tears

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

Dissimilar globes vying for growth -
and understanding , leaning toward -
peace yet sometimes colliding
Bonds controlled with a cellular switch
Integrity belays a most treacherous ridge
Todays indifference is a steel bridge crossing a dry
river bed , a silt laden delta crying for dredge
We forage unbeknownst with an eye for home
For a stick built wooden box in the burbs ,
heavily manicured , mowed , chemically treated
'green space' , the steel contraption at the end of the drive
with writs demanding a piece of our wage , prepared
feed , porcelain apparatus's , plastic cylinders that accept our ****** waste , pressurized water held in a copper tube at our beck and call
We are agents of the fall
A footnote in history , a useless biochemical monstrosity that once attempted to command the Earth , the Creator irradicated by it's
mechanical , computer driven societal cyborg sons and daughters* ...

Sadness is the color of understanding
empathy bores an endless path
at first piercing and ideal, like a flaming arrow
fired into a gelatinous body, it slows
over years and the path before it
twists around realism
a snake wrapped around the heart
in a Gordian Knot, swallowing its own tail
acceptance, defeat, purity
the ideals become gritty
stained with a lens of knowledge
that ultimate, itself, is too perfect to be a trait
grounded in something obtainable, soulless ice reflects
the neglectful capabilities behind the intellect, acknowledging
that meta-metamorphosis that no one is so great
idols are a poisonous cure to this toxic fantasy
the new religious ****** crisis, celebrity in flesh
appreciation, fame, ingratiation, talent and skill
rising above means and station, status and still,
flourishing compassion, a flower bloom on fire
extinguished before it causes trouble, curling lips
biting, the ice manifested on the road oft traveled to mayhem kills
mischief belays this idea, good natured, good intentions
if only, shortcuts through the thicket, frustrations
manipulations, tollbooths rise upon this road,
one a hike by barefoot, through thorn, bramble and gravel
the other all nice blacktop, long and wide, hot and fresh asphalt
progress seems faster, every booth demands more and every exit passed
is farther from the last
while the work it takes to travel the other road, is all the same distance
in all the same time, just harder, what is done to cross a creek leaves a sense
of fulfilled accomplishment
where what is done to get down to the street lives in the past tense
as everything is taken by the inch and replaced with resentment
while everything gained by the mile is unforgettable, unregrettable
to expire on the road is to give everything to a thief within, becoming too tired
to live in these woods, these words, this world is to see truth and find contentment.

Mine eyes have beheld a wanderer, whose ragged breath had left
beneath a beating star, hotter than all the blood behind their heart
and they were haggard, lost in the latter years of a bitter and angry life
that they often contemplated the benefits of living against themself,
for those that wanted them around, their blistered and raw feet
torn to shreds from many miles stripped of skin inch by inch on the ground
learned lessons in lamentation, far too hard headed to relent their suffering
in silence, even wailing to the world, to deaf ears and numb touch
they let birds fly away with beaks full of their flesh, fresh off their back
for that was repentance in their mind, to feed the bugs that crawled up
asking for a meal, in this dire, final hour, let the roadkill return a penance
a buffet for the hungry, this was not too much, theirs was a shared road
they were the only ones who cared, their reasoning was such,
for a helping hand so often had bitten hunks out of this skeleton
now eroding on the road, whose tears were little more than glistening salt
in the sand, dry as its motivations, to deny itself while continuing in misery
a path it knew would end in complete isolation,
a blink and these eyes withdrew the vision, shuffling feet away
the promise of change is always before, and empty until fulfilled
as the spires of a lonely city called Alienation, dare the mouth to say
"I will not follow the footsteps of my future-self, I will change today."

The thing of pathology and roads,
there is a demon named ******,
who exists to lead us astray
ideally, in your world of empathy  
who can resist a stray?

out back behind the convenience-grocery is a house. it is in a row of
other houses. they are older than the town’s inception. with gnarled tiles and weathered stucco, they wait as the valley reaches up to hug their narrow bases. it will reclaim them. one day.

out back behind the convenience-grocery is a kid. he has curly hair that frames his gaunt complexion. he has a smile that belays nausea. he has a little sister who begs him to stop. he does not. he will not until he has killed the moon.

out back behind the convenience-grocery is a forest. it is older than the valley’s naming. there are houses with crumbling chain-link fences that the forest guards. there are peach trees, and cherry clearings, and walnuts bathing in patches of nettle. there is yarrow and goldenrod and wild carrot. there is chickweed and horehound and the blood of a planet. there is celandine and thistle and the skeleton of a long deceased celestial body.

out back behind the convenience-grocery is a popsicle. it melts in the evening sun. sugar dripping onto moss. there is a little sister that it melts into. it runs down her forearms and onto the bones of a moon. she does not mind. she tosses the wooden stick over the fence. she makes a wish as it flies into the arms of a corpse.