If I seem distant it's
because I am.
I abandon this city
like rain down gutters
trying to get back
to a home, a field, a shore,
no traffic, no smoke
where air is pure
& lungs breathe deep,
in a rhythm
untarnished by
tarmac & brick;
modernity's grip
that looks for life
& buries it, forgets
Earth has a pulse
a heart that beats
beneath us.

i wish to touch the bits of you that endure my dirt.
i wish
more than ever the shape of your face in the curve of my long and twisted fingers.
there's something about it that make my hands
okay to look at again.
like they may have a found a fitful purpose, caressing the demon mouth
that kisses my angel teeth,
residing underneath
my loved lips
that send trips
to your words.
they encase your bright
eyes
and devour the confidence left in them.
but what i meant
to say was, i see your bright
eyes
showing fight to the fence
that you build so high.
i can see the lies shine
like a light was tied ,
just for me to breach them.
just so i could teach them,
you are one to beat them.
even though its you who seeds them.

emitting the aroma of tainted goodness and its all
okay
because of the eutony of this all.
these words can break my fall.
if i make the call,
and summon the space,
my soul
will come and take the place
of the weak face
i can no longer
sonder,
anymore in the background of your filled up recognitions.

there's
no
space
for
my
sad
face.
there's
no
place
for
my
heart
ache.

sent into solivagance.

this is a dark red redamancy,
one of a curse.
the birth
of our breakage
started at the first
touch of a sacred
unto a scarred soul.
and she cried
finding nothing but an empty black hole,
in return. forever churned
in a lustuous magnetism.
a
love prison.

its something that buries itself
beneath all the logic in my heart,
creeping from underneath my sins.
its some kind of wonder,
beckoning the birth rights
of every death in my future.

[ it's some kind of mutual case of kalopsia. ]

Of all the questions that beg my being,
why do my fingers still only look straight
when they're resting on your rigid face ?

There’s a dark grotto
Under the sea
With shelves and shelves
Of bottles
Clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets

A carefully watched castle
The middle of a concentric series of impassable walls
Surrounded by a forest of kelp
With razor-sharp teeth
And then the narwhals
The narwhal guards
Armed to the teeth with halibut-slicing knives
Their three-meter horns
Gleaming in the moonlight
Guarding
All of my secrets

Skeletons, trespassers of yore,
Strewn about the seafloor
Bones picked clean
By the scavenging *****
No one can enter
No one can leave
The grotto with the shelves
Shelves and shelves of clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets

But as for the *****
For the first time in centuries
The sunlight warms the waters
Melts the kelp
Kisses the narwhals
Buries the bones and torments the scavengers
Clearing away the darkness
A nonstop route through the castle
Protecting
All of my secrets

The tendrils of photons creep along
Wary
Ready for a fight
The grotto growls menacingly
Unguarded
For the first time in centuries
But upon the first touch -
Light meets stone -
The sea shudders
Ecstasy
And in repayment for salvation
Out come the bottles
Floating to the surface
Bathing in the light
All of my secrets

In Autumn,
as in Spring,
the sap flows,
the sap wishes to race
against heartbeats
before the winter,
before the winter
buries us
in her usual shroud of ice.

I turn to you
knowing that
unrequited love
is good
for poetry,
knowing that pain
will nudge the muse
as well as anything,
knowing that you
are afraid, fettered
to a life
you do not love,
& so unfree
that freedom seems
more fearful even
than the familiar
business
of being
a grumbling slave.

I lived
that way
once,
& I know
that freedom
is its own reward,
that it propagates
itself
by means
of runners,

that nobody
gives it to you,
not even me
to you,

but that you
must seize it
with your own
two quaking hands
& pluck
the strawberry
it bears
in the green
ungrumbling

Spring.

How meadows
   cannot green or divide hills
How lakes
   cannot ripple or remain flat
How tears
   cannot dry in time for another
How wounds
   cannot heal or blood clot
How truth
   buries its lies in unmarked graves
How revenge
   fears justice will turn its back
How reckoning
   fails to pay its debts
How love
   becomes hate by war
How children
   are born old by poverty
How dignity
   cannot calm itself
How eyes
   see knowing their crime
How memories
   only crack mirrors
How confessions
   ask only for mercy
How shame
   walks pretended of grace
How forgiveness
   needed to tell the truth first
How black men
   turn the other cheek

It is a light, that the wind has extinguished.
It is a pub on the heath, that a drunk departs in the afternoon.
It is a vineyard, charred and black with holes full of spiders.
It is a space, that they have white-limed with milk.
The madman has died. It is a South Sea island,
Receiving the Sun-God. One makes the drums roar.
The men perform warlike dances.
The women sway their hips in creeping vines and fire-flowers,
Whenever the ocean sings. O our lost Paradise.

The nymphs have departed the golden woods.
One buries the stranger. Then arises a flicker-rain.
The son of Pan appears in the form of an earth-laborer,
Who sleeps away the meridian at the edge of the glowing asphalt.
It is little girls in a courtyard, in little dresses full of heart-rending poverty!
It is rooms, filled with Accords and Sonatas.
It is shadows, which embrace each other before a blinded mirror.
At the windows of the hospital, the healing warm themselves.
A white steamer carries ****** contagia up the canal.

The strange sister appears again in someone's evil dreams.
Resting in the hazelbush, she plays with his stars.
The student, perhaps a doppelganger, stares long after her from the window.
Behind him stands his dead brother, or he comes down the old spiral stairs.
In the darkness of brown chestnuts, the figure of the young novice.
The garden is in evening. The bats flit around inside the walls of the monastery.
The children of the caretaker cease their playing and seek the gold of the heavens.
Closing accords of a quartet. The little blind girl runs trembling through the tree-lined street.
And later touches her shadow along cold walls, surrounded by fairy tales and holy legends.

It is an empty boat, that drives at evening down the black canal.
In the bleakness of the old asylum, human ruins come apart.
The dead orphans lie at the garden wall.
From gray rooms tread angels with ****-spattered wings.
Worms drip from their yellowed eyelids.
The square before the church is obscure and silent, as in the days of childhood.
Earlier lives glide past upon silvery soles
And the shadows of the ****** climb down to the sighing waters.
In his grave, the white-magician plays with his snakes.

Silent above the place of the skull, open God's golden eyes.

there's something about you
that buries itself in my chest
growing its roots somewhere deep inside
blooming and blossoming
reaching and tangling around my veins
wrapping its vines around my bones
spreading its pollen through my bloodstream with every gentle heartbeat
seeping through my fingers and toes
crawling up my spine and flowering in my thoughts
I carry you everywhere
and as I fall asleep at night,
I think about the way it feels
to have you next to me

She was walking alone in the rain.
All of life was just so full of pain.
She smiles throughout the day.
No one asks, so there is nothing to say.
That's the funny thing, about walking in the rain..
No one can see the tears falling endlessly down your cheeks, no one can see the pain.

She wakes up and she starves herself, trying to be perfect in someones eyes.
No one notices all the pain, or how often she cries.
Depression overtaking her mind.
All she feels is pain, never love; nothing kind.
There is a secret she buries deep within..
And if anyone knew, they would say suicide is a sin..

She is going to let the smile fall, she is going to succumb to the pain.
Nothing more to say as she walks through the rain.
She walks to the place she will say goodbye..
Somewhere beautiful so no one will cry.
She smiles as the blade slides across her wrist.
Darkness has tainted her soul, demons kissed.

She lays down, looking up at the skies.
The most beautiful thing in her eyes.
She starts to close her eyes, the blood flowing free.
She whispers, im coming home, to fly with the angels, can't you see?
Soon her vision fades to black.
She knows, it's to late no going back..

In the rain, she lay there dying.
Everyone thinking she was happy, never seeing her crying..
She hid it well, but you should have seen.
How could you not hear, the nightmare, it made her scream..
You ignored the signs, they were all clearly there..
So, she knew, no one would care.

She took her life, and you sit and wonder why..?
You have no right, because she was begging you every time she would cry.
You ignored her pain, because you were scared..
You showed her, no one cared..
She was a broken heart in a shattered world, she would spend hours in the rain, crying..
When inside, she was already dying..

Famous last words, Im fine, and out came that smile.
When in reality she was begging, look, please save me, go the extra mile..
But you took her word, and that sealed her fate.
She was living in a dying state..
Her eyes could not lie.
So why did you listen, when the tears were always there, about to cry..

You will never know the reasons why.
So don't torture yourself with the questions, because no matter what she was gonna die..
You could have looked and seen, always going for a walk in the rain.
The only time she could clearly express her pain.
She will live in our hearts, a memory..
But what she needed was you to see...

Green tea equations and cigarettes and
a distinct lack of food and
dark night lovely lonely walks and
maybe tomorrow
she will wake in a life
where she can love all parts of herself.

Can you feel that?
What a wondrous sensation.
She takes cold hands and
questions and buries them
in that empty stomach that
sings loudest when she fails
at sleeping. This girl with worn patches
and an overwhelming sense of
irony; there's too much to her
but still she is not enough.

I pluck you a crocus
and all life becomes
a legend of the body

a torch-whipped storm
pastel in its fire
buries me in you

when I hand you the stem
a shake
and the yellow stamen

loses its dust

lady lady
forgets its bug
when I place the flower

in your vase

spots wiped black-less
insect no more
lady lady

the inspection of autumn
bulb-less growth
and a string of red

***** and betting its stripes

a tiny mound of dirt
obscured by rotting leaves

the last of you reaching for my hand

earth boy.
air conditioned and living.
/or
following the light of something far from home.
begin:

old town and lovely she.
loved she.
love she like there is no other she.
the one and only she.
she dumps him.
finds a new he.
has *** with the new he in a far corner apartment complex peak
beyond the tracks. train.
troubles;
like screeching howls of love spit and ****, city
at midnight.

he buries his hopes and face in pie
at the café
volta.

new her,
wiping the counter calm yet tired yet cute and soon to close shop.
she tells him -
about the keys of lost lovers.
the doors to remain open for the sake of dreams and all possibility.
she tells him -
of the pies at the end of the night.
the cheesecake and the apple pie
/entirely gone.
the peach cobbler and the chocolate mousse
/almost gone.
but the blueberry pie, always
/untouched.

he’ll have that.
some sort of broken in the heart have that/love that/eat that/pie.
they talk for hours.
he rests his head on the counter and sleeps
icecream on his lips.
she almost kisses him right there.

and she remembers him.
attempts to call him while he’s in memphis
/or
some other southern city.
he's on somekind of journey.
he works kitchens for more money to motion further west.
westward sweat and burgers. see/saw.
little money, little love, little city
and onto the next.

she remembers him.
attempts to call him while he’s deeper into the glowing desert dome
/or vegas.
/or, you see the stars above?

she writes him letters.
and he writes her back, and in return, they fall
toward a thought, a light, a lit-up little idea of life full
on good something.

return.
to new york and old scents. old town.
corner apartment complex peak window and memories of a once-was
girl.
beyond the tracks. train.
troubles no more.
return/
to pie.

to café and concept
of sweet-tooth, sweet real something, sweet blueberry nights
and icecream.
and there she is.
with warmer winter/spring smiles than even dreamt.
and her words for hours.
she almost kisses him, but kisses him.

something perpetual
is love.

I fill the void with hunger,
I fill the void with getting lost with people by my side who’s faces i recognize
but who’s souls i do not know.

i fill the void with you.
i fill the void with you because even though i know that we do not fit together like the perfect puzzle pieces that i wish we could be
at least
i’m not
alone.

i fill the void with consumption
i fill the void with cigarettes
i fill the void with inhale after inhale
until my belly is full with the heaviest of thoughts
and my nightmares circle around and around my skull until they come to rest exactly where you always said that i had that golden crown,
the one that i could never see.

i fill the void with madness
i fill the void with pointless anger,
seeping from my throat and drowning my tongue
tasting bitter like a rotten lemon
but the bitterness is better than tasting nothing at all
and it sticks to my chapped lips like an old friend.


i fill the void with endless calculations
meticulously measuring my emptiness clinging onto my insides
with a measuring stick
and even though i measure with repetitive precision,
it never measures up to my own highest standards

and I fill the void by hurling insults at your face
and even after you’ve closed the door, like a poignant period finally occurring at the end of a infinite infinite run on sentence.
i continue to spit, spit fiery slurs that in reality fall more like water droplets that ultimately accumulate mid air
and last a little while,
but never outlast the darkness that is fiercely stuck to the soles of my shoes.

And I breathe it back in
and I breathe it back in
just to feel a little bit more full.

I fill the void with a look of contentment that i plaster on my face because
i
i
can feel when you are looking
i fill the void with confidence
i fill the void with courage
i fill the void by carrying fear across my chest and over my shoulder like i’m going into battle and never
coming
back.

i fill the void with the hope that i can hope hard enough to fill myself up again
but no matter how much i fill

i can feel my insides draining
faster than a bottomless kitchen sink.

and regardless of how hard i clasp my hands against the gaping hole where i used to gently hold a relentless summer,

i can feel that the coldest winter has begun to replace it.
and i can almost still feel its warmth
just like I used to when i used to..
when you used to say you could feel it too.

my frigid fingers lock around my neck as i finally release that empty feeling that buries my deepest desires

and i feel my wild beating beating heart finally submitting to resolve.

and i realize
that i can never be full.
I realize
that I will never be full.

And so i float away
like an abandoned ballon

just like my mother said the others did
and when i join them there
they remind me that at least i’m not alone.
and they tell me that perhaps in the end
the point
was not to be full anyway.

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature.  For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality.  She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me.  We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

Mother

you didn’t warn me about the boys who would take my body and claim it as theirs.

Mother, did I not hear you when you told me about boys who would put their bones on my bones and tell me that they owned me?

Mother,

I must have missed it, must have turned my ear away

the day you told me about the darkness.

Mother,

I have found it.

Mother, years ago I found it. Found that gaping hole in the air that ***** you right in, takes all your light away, takes all your good away.

I found that still sea air, the doldrums,

found that place where nothing moves,

but only shifts endlessly,

rocking back and forth, reminding you of

your wet solitude.

Mother, I know you try to shut the world out. I have seen the way your eyes glaze over

lukewarm

the stacks of magazines in the hallway,

my entire childhood in your bedroom.

I have found my dollhouses in the garage, the animal cages,

the rust.

I found the bell to my bicycle, I found the streamers.

Mother, I have watched you watch me and see something other than yourself. Mother, I know that you see me. How I watch the waves of possession overtake this house.

How money has given us too much,

how we shook our pockets to fill the void,

how we filled the barn with boxes.

Mother, I have watched you buy more boxes.

You have shut away

so much, you have heard me beg you to cut your hair,

to get rid of the dead,

to stop burying things that aren’t.

Mother, stop buying.

Mother, start seeing.

Mother, how many books can you read before you realize that you should just

write your own?

Mother, I have asked you to let me live and you have kept me close. I have asked you the questions that I already know the answers to. Mother I have watched you waste this house, cut holes in the walls and move from bed to bed like a withering animal,

I have watched you stack your clothes and still buy more,

I have watched you carve paths in the mountains of this home.

I have let you let the kitchen mold. I have watched you let the sink fill with a musk and a stench, I have let you fall in your own dust.

Mother, I am sorry.

Mother, we didn’t ask each other the questions that needed answering, we didn’t sail this wind at all. We only ever shifted, rocked and swayed in this house, let the gutters collect the trees, let the wasps inhabit the rafters. Mother, watch me build a new house. I will not let anyone in, I will not let them see how bare it gets when you have to keep moving. When you let your sails go and need to make yourself lighter and you

throw yourself out of that black hole.

Mother, watch me watch you as I try to do more than I can.

Mother, sell your books. You’ve already read them. Mother, eat the food in the kitchen. Your body is wasting away and your hair grows long. Mother,

do you see the way I have let my hair collect itself? How I have stopped cutting it? Did you hear me when I said I will comb it out and slice it off?

Mother, feel this rain. Feel how it is filling this dry earth, how it buries itself in the cracks of the dead silt, how it breathes, easy and weightless.

Feel this rain. It will swallow the ground, it will raise the sea and your sails will soak and I want to push you away. Mother,

find yourself an anchor, but don’t use it so often.

Mother, we need to start asking each other questions.

Mother, sail.

I haven’t written anything in a long long long time.

I feel so old.  I feel like an old woman whenever im crashing. Or thinking, actually.

I don’t even know where to begin.

i haven’t even written anything yet and my eyes are welling up.  Its so ******* hard, everything is so ******* hard.

I remember when I wrote that speed makes everything easy.  And it does, but only for a little while.   Now, everything is broken.  Nothing feels right.  Actually, nothing feels like anything anymore.

Now, I need it.  So. *******. Badly.

24 hours.  Exactly 24 hours.  That’s when the withdrawals start every single time.  Sometimes I’ll withdraw by accident.  I’m so caught up in my life I forget that I’m a sorry ******* speed freak, I’ll forget I’m an addict.  I’ll forget I’m a low-life pill head and I won’t feed the growing monster inside me.  But it doesn’t give up that easily.

I’ll feel it in my head.  It starts with this blossoming pressure headache, right between my eyes, on that bone between my eyebrows.  It feels hot, stabbing, relentless, constant.  It feels like my skull is bleeding.  I can’t see, I can’t look at light.  I wear dark glasses to hide my eyes, haunted by demons and ***** chemical desires.  My limbs shake, my head spins, I feel like I’m about to pass out, throw up, not really sure, maybe even ******* die.

But they have pills to fix headaches.  Excedrin became my best friend.  

Then started the manic depression.  Unpredictable, wild bi-polar mood swings that drove me insane.  I got so low once, I didn’t leave my bed for 36 hours.  Didn’t brush my hair, my teeth, nothing.  Just lay there crying.  Cried about the life I was ruining, my beautiful family I was letting down, the friends I couldn’t bare to see anymore.  I was so emotionally fragile, one wrong comment and I burst into tears.  I felt lost, I felt alone, somewhere dark, deep, deep down in a cold well by myself, shivering, afraid.  But I didn’t know how to word it, I only knew how to cry.  

My only escape was sleep.  Until it wasn’t.  Speed was greedy, it took that from me.

I started having crazy narcoleptic sleep-paralysis night terror episodes.  I can only describe them as slightly schizophrenic.  I wouldn’t remember falling asleep, and something normal would happen.  I’d be sitting in my bed, and then I’d fall and slam my face in a floor full of glass.  I would try and move, but I would be paralyzed.  Then I’d blink and I’d be awake, confused, as to what was happening to my sanity.  Dreams and reality cross, and I cannot longer differentiate between the real world and my imagination, ridden with monsters.  I started to hallucinate, spiders coming to get me.  I’d sob because suddenly I had nowhere to run to, I was no longer safe even in my dreams.  I am a slave to my poisoned mind.  The lack of sleep made me further depressed, dangerously suicidal.  When I slept, I would sob and yell out horrible things.  I’d cry and say I wished I would die.

I’m too sad to eat, too diseased to sleep.  I have no motivation in my life anymore to do anything.  My problem ruined my life.

I never feel happy anymore.  Now I yearn to just feel normal, or at least rid enough depression to not be suicidal.  And I miss feeling happy.  I used to be so ******* happy, and I abused it.  I took advantage of my gushing dopamine, never imagined a life without it.  I never thought one day I would need a substance to feel “okay”.  

The only thing that makes me happy now is a lot and lot and lot of speed.  But I know it’s only temporary, and only further buries me in this awful cold place I inhabit now.  

No one can help me, there is no comfort, no warmth, nothing that makes me feel less isolated, less ****** up.  I am ashamed.  I hide from the people I love, and cry from homesickness and loneliness.  But I can’t let them see what I did to myself.  Even now my fingers shake from the tears I’m fighting back as I think about my triplets, my little brothers, my kitten, my best friends, all so far away in the past, in beautiful sunny memories I keep tucked away in notebooks and pictures.  I think about my grandma, my mom, my godmother, and I whimper in shame.  I miss them all so much. I just want to go back and fix everything, but I can’t.

I can’t tell them.  They wouldn’t understand.  They would hate me, disown me, never speak to me again.  I’m so delicate right now, that rejection would push me over the edge, finally **** me.  I’d rather have them all think I’m a selfish, lazy idiot than a drug addict.  

It all just makes me cry.  I’m so lost in this awful mess.  So alone.  I miss my old life, I just want to reverse it.  But its not that easy.  

Why is it that after all this, I sit here now, fighting the urge to put another pill up my nose? WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH ME?

Why do I still want them? WHY? It is 2 in the ******* morning, why can’t I just come down and stay there?

I guess I’m scared. Scared to face what I have to.  Negative emotions, withdrawals, the inevitable.

But why must I binge? Why can’t I regulate? I guess that’s the definition of an addiction, a lack of self control.
Ah, the inner turmoil, the war raging inside me is slowly destroying me.

I can’t stand it. I’m sure soon I will die.

Your lips are like a southern lily red,
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night,
In which the brown bee buries deep its head,
When still the dawn's a silver sea of light.

Your lips betray the secret of your soul,
The dark delicious essence that is you,
A mystery of life, the flaming goal
I seek through mazy pathways strange and new.

Your lips are the red symbol of a dream,
What visions of warm lilies they impart,
That line the green bank of a fair blue stream,
With butterflies and bees close to each heart!

Brown bees that murmur sounds of music rare,
That softly fall upon the langourous breeze,
Wafting them gently on the quiet air
Among untended avenues of trees.

O were I hovering, a bee, to probe
Deep down within your scented heart, fair flower,
Enfolded by your soft vermilion robe,
Amorous of sweets, for but one perfect hour!

snow shoe challenge
trekking untouched expanse
cracking beneath


rock climbing boots
eyeing open summit
crevaase shifts


lifetime chances
snowbound slide buries all
expanse untouched

he wraps you in the seams of his quilted fleece jacket
only for you to tumble towards teetering ground with a
myriad of other dissipated items
a dollar bill
a cough drop wrapper
and breakfast bar crumbs.

his face backlit, the stained windows of the church
in which you have learned
that the weight of the world cracked adam's ribs
and made woman
the product of his suffering
but, eve
repeat:
you are not made from the vestige of this man nor the absence of him

you do not owe this to him
you do not owe him the gnawing on your fingernails
you do not owe him your skin, he buries himself under
creates a crater in your chest and uses your heart as his cave

you say he payed for dinner (the one that you couldn't eat: your stomach pulled inside out from worry)
that he
doesn't love you
or worse
you don't love him
speak not softly nor fading
do not let him lick tears off your face
and tell you they taste like sugar:
rip that piece of paper that he wrote his
number on
slipped his hand in your pocket at the club

for
he does not deserve you.

They have become defiled
They have defiled the land

"It's so unfair," she said. "Is this a loving God
Who sanctions genocide?
Who commands His people to slay man, woman and child?
A nation condemned, not the first
An entire planet submerged
Heaven snatched away for disobedience
No, I will not tolerate such a Deity."

In dark caves the Canaanite altars drip with the blood of children
The stench of feces and foul ***** taints the air
Yellow pools glisten in torch light
**** drips from the walls, piles up in mounds scattered on the floor
Animals mill about, sniffing the carcasses of other beasts
Each one kept for a purpose, dead and alive
No golden calves here, only warm flesh unyielding
Worthless for breeding, unneeded
For the Canaanites feed on the carrion of their own battlefields
The meat of their own brothers
Sisters, Fathers, Mothers
The feast devoured, bellies full, sated
The leftovers packed in salt for another day

Night falls, soon the stone that seals the altar tomb
Will be rolled away
The strongest of the peoples will enter the huge cavern
To claim their rightful reward
Until then...

The sounds of grunting women and children
None resisting, none even caring
Most feel nothing
The women should be crying, the children screaming
Only the infants' wails stand out against the cacophony
The noise of mindless rutting, the tears drawn by innocence crushed
Man and woman so desensitized
They barely feel anything anymore
But they remember the sensation
They strive to get it back
The Canaanites have become too ignorant to realize
They never will
So they've turned it into a God
Given it life, passed it on, infecting their enemies
Every bit as lethal as the diseases they've unwittingly cultivated
Passed on to open hearts and open minds
And to their infants and children
A malaise that blossoms into deformity, leprosy or worse

On a dais in the center of the cave
Are seven corpses
The Strong Men know them well

A Canaanite woman squats in a field on the edge of the village
She heaves and groans, face red from effort
With a final push she feels relief
The tiny thud of a newborn hitting the ground distracts her
To her it is nothing more than another form of defecation
She wraps the umbilical cord around her right hand
With her left she grasps the slimy casing
With a quick, purposeful **** she tears it in two
Rips, wanting nothing more to do with the burden she's carried for nine months
A final glance at the condemned child
The sand around it's body blotted with blood and issue
It's airless plea unheeded
She turns and walks away, apathetic
She's done this before
Many, many times before

The cave echoes with an ungodly sound
The Strong Men harness the beasts
The noise is maddening
The Strong Men dominate
Their laughter is insane
The creatures, they believe, are their prize
After all, they are the Strong Men
They are the leaders of the land

Friendship is dead
Compassion is dead
Fear is dead
Hope is dead
Desire is dead
Reason is dead
Logic is dead
Understanding is dead
Joy is dead
Peace is dead
Patience is dead
Kindness is dead
Self-control is dead
Faithfulness is dead
Gentleness is dead
Goodness is dead
Love is dead
Dead as the corpses on the altar
Dumb as the animals in the cages
If those creatures were sentient beings
They would beg for the slaughter
If the Canaanites had not so long been numb
They would pray for the same

The Strong Men
Are ready
Now
For the
Corpses

****

A loving God puts a crippled horse out of it's misery
A loving God buries it deep underground

A loving God does not condemn without reason
Without good reason

A loving God does not sanction genocide
But He will clear a field full of rabid skunks

the clouds storm and stir the horizon
and swoon like a sorrowful bird,

the sun sinks the same way once risen
and deafening the fires of his word,


a lover waits hopeless and dreary,
and hopeless and dreary departs

for love not returned leaves her weary
and breathful her heart.


a vision as clear as the ages,
that reach to the soul or the heart

the storm of the clouds broken cages
long gone those soft clouds that depart


and the sea strides to shore like a viking,
and rages eternal like cloud,

for the storm now is spent and surrenders,
that once stood so proud.


the sea she will wrap me in flowers
and drown me in ivies and wine,

as the sharp winter wind blows wild showers,
that bury the aches of the pines,


and the sea i found tender with rapture
blew me back where the ages relent,

and the sea gave me back all its flowers,
for the love never meant.


desire is no pastry or pudding,
it is death, it is life, it is naught,

in its rages it cries like a blossom
that bursts from the bough and is caught,


no lover could rule or control me,
but they begged and they begged
for my love,

and the love that i gave soon destroyed me,
a lion to the dove.


yet the sea dries my eyes from my weeping,
rejuvinates like vinaigrette,

and love never once won or departing
soon buries its soul in regret,


and the sea sings like a stereotyped lover,
too broody to throw out a rose

and the rose would be tearful my lover,
seas sea e'en froze.


for the sea is a viking of passion,
strange ghost of the wind and the wave,

and knows nothing of love or compassion,
but will leave you with the dark that can't save,


i see her in the **** frost, her blossom,
the waves that still billow like sails

the foam the blue foam near the flotsam,
her song a soft silvery scale.

His eyes grew dark and distant
absolutely nothing wrong
He smiled without his eyes
how are you feeling?
nothing, numb, bored

Bracing each other, pushing
                                             out

Fearing the flatline, we find
one another, in the dark

Rubbing the blood back into his palms
he buries his breath in my clean hair
Counting down the seconds, we remember

Leaving the cold room, he asks
is it over now?

The Spring spreads one green lap of flowers
  Which Autumn buries at the fall,
No chilling showers of Autumn hours
  Can stay them or recall;
Winds sing a dirge, while earth lays out of sight
Her garment of delight.

The cloven East brings forth the sun,
  The cloven West doth bury him
What time his gorgeous race is run
  And all the world grows dim;
A funeral moon is lit in heaven's hollow,
And pale the star-lights follow.

In flashes,
her face dances
on top of a
broomstick body.

She refills
coffee cups and
her stomach with
butter pecan ice cream
and lovers' saliva.

But her lovers are
strangers
and her mouth is a
place
where secrets are locked
behind smoke stained teeth.

In flashes,
her ambitions escape
into the jet black night.
Cigarettes dropping like
sputtering fruit flies.

A size seven New Balance
buries a Marlboro corpse,
burning out like the light
in her kiwi eyes.

She returns to the diner.
What echoes reign free.

Vast, empty, midnight hour,
hunchbacked lampposts glaring over parasitic black earth
choking its host.

A parking lot,
an ecosystem’s blemish—
hot tar seeping into the pores of the earth
like a stubborn blackhead in a lip line.

When no cars burrow into the blackened hide
like lice
the great absence of life
is an atrocity.

I imagine myself skateboarding across the tier
as the small town cops
watch languidly with vague interest—

A skateboarder’s paradise
where wheels and accomplice minds roll across celestial barriers
blasting infinite pulses
into the microcosm.

What greasy punks have their mother’s van parked here,
huddling by the heat vents
and jerking off into a Pringle’s can?

Empty parking lot
looks like a cemetery
filled to the brim
where headstones meld
over a mass grave—

delineated by white lines,
the apparitions of vehicles and their hosts
haunt the frozen space.

Another horrible excuse
to waste land,
a wasteland in and of itself
where Tom Eliot saunters aimlessly
and buries the dead.

The saddest sight to behold,
this vacuous parking lot
littered with stray shopping carts,
phantasmal plastic bags,
gum splotches,
***** stains,
candy wrappers,
cigarette butts,
used condoms,
lonely cops
and patient drug dealers,
ambulant skaters,
tired punks,
bored teenagers,
somnambulists,
stumbling drunks,
hunchbacked ***** lights
prying for life beneath its sallow gaze—

The air encapsulated within the perdition
stifling,
the pavement below stifling,
a constriction only visible
when emptied of its contents.

A cop wakes from their choking nightmare gasping
to find themselves trapped,
****** in this parking lot
where the walkie-talkie buzzes
with the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The warehouse store
looming above the waiting room
lifeless, silent, dark countenance—
Big Brother sees all in the gaping maw.

Cascading before me,
stretching towards the highway passing by,
waiting for the panorama to finish scrolling,
the treadmill to cease its cycle—
all the while lamenting life’s absence
and reveling in the potentiality it possesses.

dad is in the garage.
days into spark-light and piles of polyethylene
etched.
soon, he says.
as grandaddy laughs,
rattling the icebox for more beer.

dad’s homemade android:
  the thing.
like a doll polished
& grinning, it
dances for us in the kitchen.

the dog barks, chained in the backyard.

the thing,
do-si-dos for a laugh, catches a glimpse
of the trees beyond the yard,
overheats,
circuits popping into a limp heap of pieces.
  dead.
left to mold-over in the garage.

the days.
the rain.
the cats tiptoeing along the edge of fences
across the street.
the dog barking, chained, &
snapped.
  dead
beneath a truck.

dad is in hysterics.
dad is in the garage,
weeks in and his soaked red knuckles.
mom is drinking with grandaddy.
they rattle the icebox.
  the dog.

the dog dances for us in the kitchen,
reboots and sits.
it digs a pit all night and buries three cats there.
it sleeps on the mound.
it never barks.
it waits there in the backyard, still
& staring into the trees.
  the trees.

Completely befuddled
We fake it as muggles
The abuse we face alone
Buries confusion in our bones

The siren places fear in our hearts
She can be ours
If she wants the part
We can get ahead
By abusing those who would give their bread

In this we are all the same
Many silent murderers with unimportant names
Psychopaths on angry paths
Hell bent on *******

Would you let them continue to dictate the conditions?
Do you trust the statisticians?
We are the result of the easy decision
The sagging construction of constant derision

Another man's home subject to intrusion
A stance is required to end the delusion

They're not here to protect you

It's all an illusion!

Here the horse munches the grass
little knowing the trots of yore
for time when lays the bricks with curse
unhinges the strongest door.

Here the horse is tethered to feed
little hearing the neighs of past
for time when crumbles sows a seed
grows new order from soil of dust.

Here the horse lazes in sun
little seeing the shadow's growth
for time when ends a period's run
buries in the walls a lover's oath.

Here the horse walks in a round
little feeling the earth's spin
for time when shrinks the highest to ground
kingdoms fall in heaps of ruin.

"i miss you."

your beautiful, soft fairy-like features.
the soft, pale skin kissed with blemishes.
your small hands holding mine- holding together the broken pieces of my heart.

"i miss you."

the innocent, puppy like eyes staring back at me.
the feelings running through my mind gazing into your honey-dipped eyes.
the gorgeous flowing brown locks- dancing in the wind- the ones i love to run my fingers through.
your soft smile- melting all of my coldness surrounding my soul.

"it's all winter here, even in August."

my heart breaks when you're not with me. the snow buries my thoughts in cold misery.
the darkness surrounds my senses.

"how long do i have to wait, and how many sleepless nights do i have to spend to see you-to meet you."

i can't wait to see your eyes crinkle as you laugh at my jokes.
the warmth in your smile that brings out so much joy in me.
the soft feeling of your hands on my body.
the sweet vanilla scent of you-residing within my clothes.
the sweet taste of your strawberry-tinted lips.

"i try to exhale you in pain, like smoke- like white smoke. i say that i'll erase you, but i can't really let you go yet."

you're on my mind all day and night.
you're the voice that keeps me up at night.
the parasite infecting my brain.
it hurts. but i can't let it go. im addicted.

"the morning will come again. no darkness, no season is eternal."

"wait a little bit, just a few more nights. i'll be there to see you. i'll come for you."

"please stay, please stay there a little longer."

we'll meet again my love.
just like we did before.
please. wait for me a bit longer.
until i see you one

spring day.


-RB

I exhale.
As I fade from this life, I’ll float into the next and to eternity. I am so deeply enveloped in this world that I dissolve into all the others. My body will decompose, and I will exist again as a new collection of atoms.
I suppose through delusional, philosophical excuse I am connected to this world. And I suppose that stardust constellates and buries themselves in my bones. So I must grow in dimensions greater than height, width, and length.
But the veins of this new world are thin wires of cables and in complex codes and formulas are sent to and received by another motherless machine. Although, I’d rather break these wires and create a spark that can be felt rather than seen.
Let me ignite a craving under the continents and satisfy a spark that cannot be replicated by plastic or manipulated into energy. Let me feel the pressure of the world and the thick atmosphere that caves my posture. Let me once more feel by the fibers of kings and commoners that lace through my veins.
The world is deteriorating and has been left so deprived of life’s ecstasy that it is now hollow and I can only hear my own echoes.

Dear heart. I am the one in charge here. Neuroscience has long taken the responsibility of handling emotions from you. I am in charge of everything in this body, dear heart, I tell you what to do, and you do it. I think we both know I'm the better thinker here.

So why must you ache, why must you suffer for what I do? For every scalding thought you recoil in your cage and pound on the bars of your prison, wishing to be worn on someone's sleeve, dear heart, you've been hidden for too long. You don't know how this world works, and I do, so you must obey me when I tell you what to do. I know it hurts to keep beating despite of how the chemical reactions in my mind may affect you. For every feeling I take as a thought, every thought you mistake as a feeling, we both protest. For a long, long time we refuse to communicate with each other and I know you are tempted to rest, to stop beating because you're the one aching. It's not me, dear heart, that clenches like a fist, crumples inward like a useless scrap of paper, collapses on itself like a star on the brink of a supernova, it is not me, dear heart, that gets hurt.

Why do I only ache when I'm facing a mathematical problem, a complex theory, a questionable logic, a memory-loss crisis, why do I only suffer when I think really hard, even though I am the one in charge of emotions and feelings? Why is it you, not me, that a knife buries itself in when there is emotional pain? Why is it you that has be shredded into blood strings and crimson feathers of sinew, as if you were plucked from an angel's bleeding wings while heaven screeched its protest? Why are you the only one that is punished?

Dear heart, I am sorry. I didn't know why the body is made this way, that you have to be the one on the edge of a cliff while I sit somewhere safely plucking your strings. You are the one facing the endless plummet into a chasm of fangs and jagged rock, and it is up to me to make sure you stay alive, why, dearest, dearest heart do you have to be shackled to me with a silken collar? I can control you, but you have the freedom to fall, and if you do, I will be the one to grab at a protruding edge somewhere on the face of the cliff, and I will pull hard to get us back up.
Because if I don't, we will both die, and I'm the thinker here, I'm the one responsible for both of us, dear heart, I am the one in charge here!

You won't survive on your own. That's why I'm here to take care of us, because neither of us would exist without the other, without me you will be dead, without you, I will be worse than dead, so dear heart. Dearest heart, let me take the reins, let me hold the strings, let me tell you what to do, I'm sorry you can't be free. I'm sorry I hurt you with the thoughts and the memories inside me.

Let me control you. Let them call me abusive, let them call me terrible, let them call me cold and cunning, let them tell the world I am foul and violent, I don’t care!
I am here for you. I will take care of you. And when all you wish is to cease the wearying repetition of living, I will give you reason to keep breathing.

Walking for miles.
A long and lonely road ahead.
I'm not sure how long it's been.
Or where I'm headed.

I look to my left to see a girl facing towards me.
Her movements mimic my own.

Her face full of imperfections.
Her skin so outrageously thin.
Her eyes full of tears.
The pale look of sadness.

She's hideous.

As I wave to her, she waves back.
I open my mouth to say a few words,
She opens her own.
As puzzled as she looks, she seems quite broken and insecure.

She's trembling now as I am too.
She buries her hands into her face.
And starts to weep.

She's realized what she's become.
She feels the impulse.
Only becoming a reflection of her well-being.

Harsh unyielding sunset, buries me against the page.
I won't be lazing on a couch, left to rot and waste away.
Wormy plush Berber carpet soft against the afternoon.
Debts are pile high and the company picnic is this June.

The pages are vellum paper covered in ancient Egyptian script.
I've loved you methodically ever since we met inside that crypt.
The dregs brings me solemn hope that one day we'll breakthrough.
Works calling in on Sunday for some overtime that's overdue.

Its a 5 past 4 the glass lays arrhythmic, shattered at my feet.
We found each other down beside the casket of the diseased.
Heartfelt words never came out of a mouth that were so pure.
How could you take me for interesting, in life I'm just a bore.

Down. I've already ruined the letter meant from me to you.
Life is not a fairy tale to broker marriage for us two.
Bloodletting's an aphrodisiac to keep me at the brink.
Why'd I write this silly thing when I spilled my drink.

He catches me in lovin--
liking
him
and it's always striking
how my body acts on whim.
He always looks the best
not wearing any clothes,
makes my ***** point west
with their ***** woes.
He makes me think in lovely
and dresses me in kisses:
purple,
black,
red and bruised up
kisses
(he never misses).
I have a necklace ringing
all around my skinny neck,
I wear his love
like a trophy,
do I look a-wreck?
I make him wreck my body
night after night after night
because I want his gaudy,
pale and beautiful might
to come down all at once
and bury me in flesh;
to fill my ears with grunts
and turn my soil threshed.
Thresh me, thresh me hard,
my beautiful man,
my body's prettier marred
with your harmattan
breezes blowing on my sands;
how I really,
really,
really
like
my
man
because he buries me in hugging
and hides me in his warmth;
he always has me shrugging
the yeses from up north
in the epicenter of all pleasure
rooted in my mind;
it's the greatest measure
of our loving time.
He spanks me 'til I moan,
I **** him 'til he's dry,
his touch turns me to stone and
his stroking makes me cry.
Though it may be sore
after a day or so
my heart is always hurting
from the constant flow
of his body's beautiful fluids,
white and clear and true;
who needs a beautiful blue
when I have my like,
my really,
really,
really
like;
it's better than number two.




(I really,
really,
really like you)