I slip under with a cry
and am lost to the depths,
sinking ever deeper
into the blue
as though bound by
ball and chain

What I pass on my way down
is not glittering schools
of fish
or the benevolent
sea turtle,
but a circling, snarling
mob of responsibilities,
a sight more menacing
than even
the most cadaverous
shark

Cadaverous
is my soul
blanketed
with blackness
freed from itself
only by grace
my organs had
shut down
and my heart
beat slower
slower
slower
til it stopped.
There was an
unexpected resurrection
a divine defibrillator
that revived my lungs
and kept my
dead, ashamed
heart ticking
and ticking
and ticking.

Where were we when you quit the sound?
Caught in distance while you hung around
Encased inside of our own menial pursuit  
Flaunting desperation as a constant survival
As you battled death in your combat boots
There is no glory with fate as your rival

What were you seeing in your distorted mind?
As you ate your last words and ecstaticly dined
At the chemical festival of illusions' absorbtion
How far did your gaze stroll onto the other side?
did you meet with an end or the start of damnation?
In which lonely drawer do your dreams now reside?

Where have the remnants of life made their grave?
Are they in the lingering regret that you've paved?
Through each flash of your face and casket sight
The delusional rebirth of your presence revealing;
Fragments of ended realities giving spark to night
Burning sigils into visions of a broken feeling

Flame lit sketches etched across a charred eulogy
Only a name remains lying in the wake of a memory
Pieces scattered amongst an unfitting resting place
Conflicting beauties molding a divine contrast
A devil laid to rest in the midst of holy space
One shade of diversity on a bland earthly cast

Echoes of descension from this dimming black sky
Adorning each reflection with your hollow eyes
Complexions left searching for an answer to hold
As to how lifes' vigor can so swiftly fall to decay
And,The aging of dignity resembling every tale told
Seems to shine a reality check on this tragic play

A nulling backdrop for this cemetary playground
Where the kings and queens become tediously crowned
With a sickly ailment that reaks of dalipidation
The stench of the end atop an eternal retrospect
Glaring back with the most sincere of validations
That the fallen live on as our recollections resurect

There was a town beyond the woods,
Ne’er there any water stood,
Alas, a Well, of the purest kind,
The aquifer under, is here described,
Beyond a thousand gallons under
The diamond-esque rubble and sunder.
But one bucket, at but one time,
Kind, the town, taking turns of rhyme,
This essence, used to bathe and cook,
To drink, to create, a cozy nook.
-
The happy town, the gorgeous shire,
The crops grown there as green as Ire,
No law exists, they live but civilly,
A fetching, quiet community,
But always there exists a one,
Who would want power, want this undone,
So it was said regretfully,
Poisoned their Well, emotionless he.
-
Now this village was quite secluded,
No one not there born, ne’er intruded,
Deep in the forest, behind a mountain,
Over a peak, under a cloudy curtain,
It existed in secret and abolition,
And one did seek its demolition,
Knowing the only flaw to here exist,
The essence of life, no man resists.
-
He crept at night, while the guard did sleep,
Promising the pure water to weep,
Dropping the genocide with bucket and crane,
Releasing its Demonic Alchemic Strain,
The Well did hiss as the poison moaned,
Recoiling at this unwanted drone,
The assailant then brought to his steady lips,
A cup and was first to take Devil’s Kiss.
-
On the morrow of the mentioned crime,
Busy bodies awoke to start the day’s time,
Queuing at bucket and awaiting turns,
Each family there a portion yearned,
Not one did from the water strafe,
Each then bathed, then drank, unsafe,
No one could tell different taste,
Water is water, but not today.
-
The plague did start like any disease,
Sore throat, fever, stopped nose, displeased,
The people sought the witchdoctor,
But he from bed, would rise no longer,
He caught ill too, and wouldn’t budge,
Afraid for his life, afraid of this grudge,
He knew this sickness, had heard before,
But told no one, the end was sure.
-
In a week, vomiting and nausea,
Nasal passages sealed, no nostalgia
Brought to memory of any like sickness,
The virus brought about decrepit afflictions,
But slowly and steady, worse and worse,
The people became, some saw the course
But kept silent, to avoid alerting,
The so many children in need of comforting.
-
In two weeks’ time, the pathogen,
Had taken wits of sensible men,
At night, they screamed in somber fright,
Their deepest fears, real now, and bright,
The lutes died out, the bards not singing,
An unfortunate time, but this was only beginning.
-
Fingernails rotting off at the cuticle,
Too much blood for any receptacle,
Leprositic, the fingers came next,
One by one, extremities hexed,
Children lost their legs to run,
From mothers’ faces rotted, undone,
In every other step, heard were bones breaking,
Kneecaps cracked open, shins splintering,
Eyes turned cadaverous, awake, but not seeing,
Cataracts formed, blinded from viral being,
In cradles were witnessed toddlers there suffering,
Their mothers watched with empty sockets, but listening
To the cries impossible to stifle,
The pain too much for these tiny disciples.
The dogs normally to their masters zealous,
Became of them mortally jealous.
They bit the hands that fed them well,
For watering them from the cryptic Well.
Men watched their sons dive right under,
The bridge that harnessed a valley of blunder
Hundreds of feet above sharp rocks and stumps,
Their namesakes leaped, impaled in clumps,
For those lucky enough to still have eyes,
Cried tears of acid for images despised
Sickness was spewed upon the walls,
Entrails adorned the Gathering Halls,
Some had turned to mutilation,
Blood-letting for some, abomination,
Some crazed enough to “cure” themselves,
Clawed throat and stomach til flesh dissolved,
Some rich with elixir tried to embezzle,
Upon some of the poor, tired and grizzled,
Riot broke out amongst the walking dead
Fortune or lack of, irrelevant,
Black pustules broke out that looked Bubonic,
But the cure for that failed, how ironic,
That it rather hastened the steadfast curse,
Faster than iambic verse,
Molecules turned to embryo,
Rising like a great Pharaoh,
They became flesh parasites,
Taking internal organs, slow and precise,
They started with the liver and spleen,
So there lasted hours of wretched screams,
The intestines of some would close and then
Becoming septic, they passed, bile in stem,
A few had throats seeming cauterized,
Friends watched friends closest, strangle alive,
There were in fact, some optimists,
Among them, talk of being “rid of this”,
They too died while clutching life,
Endeavoring their eternal flight,
From noses, there dripped blackened murk,
Thicker than combined oil and dirt,
It then secreted as sweat from all pores,
Fatigue then struck those left to the floor.
Upon broken knees some prayed,
Usually the skin under ribs was flayed,
Trying to understand what went wrong,
Dissecting the dead was not headstrong,
It only furthered viral progression,
The open corpses breathing infection,
The cadavers would move still, the fleshbugs active,
The horror of lifeless movement, corrosive,
The minds of the weak, it pure happenstance,
One found eating dead flesh for a cure, no chance.
All in all, this lingering curiosity,
Provided once good people with animosity,
One man turned good people to hate,
Their neighbors in ways that were irate.
-
The chaos was not anarchy,
For, as I said,
It was civilly,
But verily, I do decree,
That no one knew such misery,
The inhabitants of this village,
Did not suspect innocent visage,
Or perhaps, their cherished Well.
To be culprit behind this hell
So they drank and drank to remedy,
To recompense this malady,
To no avail did blood get thicker,
Alas, they got but sicker and sicker.
-
This hell, the townsfolk then realized,
Wouldn’t end til they all were nullified,
Eliminated they were, eradicated at that,
This pathogenic virus had verily spat
In the faces of the people here,
Decimated they were, not quenching their fear,
Murdered they were by a systematic
Suicidal psychopathic,
Inflamed in the mind of darkness thereafter,
Only satisfied by his own laughter.
Not many, til now, know of this town,
From lowly peasant, to “Godly” Crown.
An explorer found the deserted hamlet,
Body parts and questions then found the hermit,
He had heard of a town like this, he wrote:
“It was a new age Roanoke…”
But the village, not a town to cause commotion,
All that was left of them, a tree scratched, “CROATOAN”.

In Yucatan, the Maya sonneteers
Of the Caribbean amphitheatre,
In spite of hawk and falcon, green toucan
And jay, still to the night-bird made their plea,
As if raspberry tanagers in palms,
High up in orange air, were barbarous.
But Crispin was too destitute to find
In any commonplace the sought-for aid.
He was a man made vivid by the sea,
A man come out of luminous traversing,
Much trumpeted, made desperately clear,
Fresh from discoveries of tidal skies,
To whom oracular rockings gave no rest.
Into a savage color he went on.

How greatly had he grown in his demesne,
This auditor of insects! He that saw
The stride of vanishing autumn in a park
By way of decorous melancholy; he
That wrote his couplet yearly to the spring,
As dissertation of profound delight,
Stopping, on voyage, in a land of snakes,
Found his vicissitudes had much enlarged
His apprehension, made him intricate
In moody rucks, and difficult and strange
In all desires, his destitution's mark.
He was in this as other freemen are,
Sonorous nutshells rattling inwardly.
His violence was for aggrandizement
And not for stupor, such as music makes
For sleepers halfway waking. He perceived
That coolness for his heat came suddenly,
And only, in the fables that he scrawled
With his own quill, in its indigenous dew,
Of an aesthetic tough, diverse, untamed,
Incredible to prudes, the mint of dirt,
Green barbarism turning paradigm.
Crispin foresaw a curious promenade
Or, nobler, sensed an elemental fate,
And elemental potencies and pangs,
And beautiful barenesses as yet unseen,
Making the most of savagery of palms,
Of moonlight on the thick, cadaverous bloom
That yuccas breed, and of the panther's tread.
The fabulous and its intrinsic verse
Came like two spirits parlaying, adorned
In radiance from the Atlantic coign,
For Crispin and his quill to catechize.
But they came parlaying of such an earth,
So thick with sides and jagged lops of green,
So intertwined with serpent-kin encoiled
Among the purple tufts, the scarlet crowns,
Scenting the jungle in their refuges,
So streaked with yellow, blue and green and red
In beak and bud and fruity gobbet-skins,
That earth was like a jostling festival
Of seeds grown fat, too juicily opulent,
Expanding in the gold's maternal warmth.
So much for that. The affectionate emigrant found
A new reality in parrot-squawks.
Yet let that trifle pass. Now, as this odd
Discoverer walked through the harbor streets
Inspecting the cabildo, the facade
Of the cathedral, making notes, he heard
A rumbling, west of Mexico, it seemed,
Approaching like a gasconade of drums.
The white cabildo darkened, the facade,
As sullen as the sky, was swallowed up
In swift, successive shadows, dolefully.
The rumbling broadened as it fell. The wind,
Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry,
Came bluntly thundering, more terrible
Than the revenge of music on bassoons.
Gesticulating lightning, mystical,
Made pallid flitter. Crispin, here, took flight.
An annotator has his scruples, too.
He knelt in the cathedral with the rest,
This connoisseur of elemental fate,
Aware of exquisite thought. The storm was one
Of many proclamations of the kind,
Proclaiming something harsher than he learned
From hearing signboards whimper in cold nights
Or seeing the midsummer artifice
Of heat upon his pane. This was the span
Of force, the quintessential fact, the note
Of Vulcan, that a valet seeks to own,
The thing that makes him envious in phrase.

And while the torrent on the roof still droned
He felt the Andean breath. His mind was free
And more than free, elate, intent, profound
And studious of a self possessing him,
That was not in him in the crusty town
From which he sailed. Beyond him, westward, lay
The mountainous ridges, purple balustrades,
In which the thunder, lapsing in its clap,
Let down gigantic quavers of its voice,
For Crispin to vociferate again.

September 1st, 2001.
I woke up to that same annoying alarm clock, 7:03 AM
Morning shower, morning coffee, morning breakfast –
I changed the calendar but I dropped the tack to hold it up.

September 2nd.
I’m thinking about October,
All the trees ablaze with orange and red, pumpkin pie in the season, cinnamon tingling in the air.
The new Spirit Halloween store opened up around the block. Superhero costumes are pretty cool.

September 3rd.
My mom takes me out to dinner because it’s Monday.

September 4th.
Routine

September 5th.
Routine

September 6th
In calculus, 11 is my favorite number.

September 7th.
Routine

September 8th.
Routine

September 9th.
My routine staccato.
Taxis responds after 3 calls,
My favorite professor gave me a hard time,
I wanna go home.
After the hustle of ants we call people,
loud street venders,
that creepy guy on the street corner,
NO, I do not want to try your new raspberry cheesecake Jack In The Box, I just wanna get my **** food and go home.
I arrive and melt into my sofa, falling asleep to the news.

September 10th.
No alarm clocks.
In the evening, my mom and I go out to dinner because today is Monday.
Red Lobster has the BEST seafood and while we’re eating,
she complains about the air conditioning in her new work place.
She works for some business in the twin towers.

September 11th, 2001
Instead of the alarm, sirens wake me.
I find the tack to hold up my calendar. – It’s Tuesday.
My feet, cold and lifeless, wander around the house until they trip over the scent of smoke.
Those sirens must’ve stopped nearby.
My mom is at work.
I want to get some air,
so I grab the keys off my splintered champagne desk,
****** them into ignition,
fingers wrapping around cruise control,
shifting into reverse,
the monotone GPS lady telling me to turn left.

The smoke is denser.
I follow her voice: turn right.
The smoke is solid.
Keep straight.
The smoke is suffocating.
In 3 hundred feet, turn left
The smoke is the sky –
Charlie Chapman gray.

My mom was at work.
Around me were firetrucks sparking with blinding flashes that screamed the word “emergency.”
My mom was at work.
The sight ahead was morbid. Unnerving. Disastrous.
It was like Halloween, except there were no superhero costumes, only firefighters and policemen.
My mom was at work.
The tower had holes punctured into their glass windows,
Smoke rising like leaves stemming out of the stump of skyscraper.
My mom was at work.
People like ants, fleeing, scattering, put on the mask of apocalyptic expression.
The throaty yells of “it was a plane” stuffed my eardrums
It was a plane, they said, it was a plane.
This was not routine.
My mom was at work.
The alarm woke me up.
I had my morning coffee.
It took all the synapses in my brain to deny what was right in front of me.
My senses detected telephone signals exploding with,
"I’m fine honey, don’t worry,”
Airlines confused and cramming.

I parked my car in overwhelming paralysis.
Above me, a screech of a whistle filled what was left of the air,
Followed by a boom that replicated my heart.
Frozen. Milliseconds frozen.
The plane was flying too low
WHAT HAPPENED?
There were people in those towers,
Everything was an epiphany --
Marriages, birthdays, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters,
Now cadaverous bodies antigravitating in rubble of boring office walls, family pictures.
Death in one swift move of terror.

My mom was at work.
We went to dinner yesterday.
My mom was at work.
The seafood tasted amazing.
My mom was at work.
She complained about the air conditioning.
My mom was at work.
She got a new job in the twin towers.
The twin towers are ablaze
The twin towers are spilling orange and red
They are sending ashes tingling through the air
This was not the October I asked for.
I longed for September 1st
I dropped the tack to hold up my calendar.

It’s Wednesday.
September 12th, 2001.
I did not sleep.
The news kept me awake, kept saying terrorist attack, terrorist attack, identified bodies, many mourning.
Because of their god, they lessened faith in mine.
This was the closest the public eye were to see a warzone-
Text messages cluttered with sympathy.
My routine changed for the rest of my life.

10 years later
Alarm clocks ringing, 7:03AM I stay in bed.
It’s Monday. I do not go out to dinner.
Instead, I drive 5 miles out to the cemetery.
People are still ants, pushing and shoving to where they need to go, they walk as if they had forgotten.
I no longer crave the red and orange of fall, cinnamon is foreign to my senses.
I hate the number 11 because it’s etched on your gravestone.
Your gravestone – gray and dense like the smoke
I wish they were not a constant reminder of the future I live in, but you don’t.
Today, there are no exclaiming yells of people or screeching whistles of planes.
Today there is only silence.

There is only silence.

Storms.
I like storms.

Sometimes they start slow
with ominous, cadaverous clouds,
slowly rolling, tumultuous.
A few drops of rain,
frigid and fresh,
speaking in a pattering argot on my roof.
Calm, soft rain.
Rain that lulls me to sleep.

Sometimes they are fast and sweet.
An ephemeral rush of raindrops,
mellow cannonades of thunder,
trees still verdant,
green against gray.

Sometimes they are hot and volatile
with lightning so bright
it hurts my eyes,
thunder that roars
and permeates the quiet.
The wind screams,
rain batters my windows.

These are the nights I do not sleep.
I sit, thrilled,
listening to the primitive barrage,
the aphotic chaos,
remembering that this is how it feels
to be alive.

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wreteched men there.
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
I dug the ell-square pitkin;
Poured we libations unto each the dead,
First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads;
As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best
For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods,
A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep.
Dark blood flowed in the fosse,
Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides
Of youths and of the old who had borne much;
Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender,
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads,
Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms,
These many crowded about me; with shouting,
Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts;
Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze;
Poured ointment, cried to the gods,
To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine;
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in the sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
“Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
“Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping ******?”
        And he in heavy speech:
“Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Crice’s ingle.
“Going down the long ladder unguarded,
“I fell against the buttress,
“Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
“But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
“Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
“A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
“And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.”

And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban,
Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first:
“A second time? why? man of ill star,
“Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region?
“Stand from the fosse, leave me my ****** bever
“For soothsay.”
        And I stepped back,
And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus
“Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
“Lose all companions.” Then Anticlea came.
Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.
And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outwards and away
And unto Crice.
        Venerandam,
In the Cretan’s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, oricalchi, with golden
Girdle and breat bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicidia. So that:

mind stands solemnly in the middle,
with logic and emotion on either side
like devoted sentinels guarding a queen.

"don't think about it,"
emotion says, batting her long lashes.
"just do what feels right
and follow your heart."

"but sometimes,"
logic interjects with his sharp eyebrow cocked,
"what feels right will
hurt us in the long run."

"do you want to try, and know, and fail?"
emotion asks with suprisingly honest conviction.
"or do you want to spend the rest of your
life wondering what could have been?"

"would you rather open your heart,"
logic counters thoughtfully and quickly,
"and have a part of it stolen?
or would you rather protect it all?"

as mind wavers in the middle,
she feels herself rip in two.

half of herself stands upright,
stiffly held under logic's watchful eye.
the other half melts into emotion's warm embrace.

her heart aches and she feels sick.
the idea of following logic's advice
would mean to ignore emotion's advice--
and to follow emotion's advice would
mean ignoring the advice of logic.

she looks back and forth pleadingly.
logic's cadaverous stare seems to tell
mind that only logic will solve this problem.
but emotion smiles softly, and her eyes say
that this way, though it may cause pain,
will be the most rewarding.

"neither choice is the right one,"
mind says finally,
with a little bit of logic and
a little bit of emotion.
"but i must choose now, for soon i will
not be able to make a choice at all.

"then whose advice will you follow?"
emotion questions carefully.
"will you open your heart to love?"

"or will you listen to me and protect
yourself from unnecessary pain?"
logic asks, eyebrow cocked again.

"perhaps you are correct, logic,
and i would do well to seal off my
heart and never let anybody in."

at these words, logic smirks knowingly,
but mind continues anyway.

"as for me, i think i would rather
feel true, burning love and have to
live with the scars than to be
lonely, bitter, angry, and old
and die without ever knowing
how to love myself and somebody else."

emotion does not gloat;
she simply nods softly,
encouraging mind to continue.

"after all, is life not a journey of risks?
how could we ever find peace and
contentment without enduring a
few bad decisions and learning from them?"

I instigated the most soporific cephalic act, An Argonaut sailing within your strange eyes of others pointed retina membranes, An unsaid exodus wishes to browse your meridians sunsets tainted of that meridian, As evening falls back upon you bathed the earthly mud, Nymph Ninfuceanicus sheltering your labours of bird waste in galactic extinction and creation...

For soft aromatic worlds, you went by your house ruined Zodiac
Blurring the lost romance policy profiles, threading peat spinning the metafhysist think of his tabernacle.

The ship in question was the beautiful delicacy of numbness primary Sun, Lost Halo where one day there was countless number age, to get lost in the cold of your trellis resigned and touching your going through the watery landscape of your soul cornered iron., Spark fleeing evaporated...

How many times my Ninfoceanicus very thin you migrated with your frosty, almost scary legs traveling in a foreign-owned bird…?, Where migrating is hard to see his crosses snowy mountain plants.

What if you. Ninfoceánicas lines will plan my rickety Saturn's own trapeze degraded never stood the lofty life of the living present all this happened? Divided scratchy body plowing all unexplored fountain.


Among several of them, thousands of them managed to be among others, but one of them, violated any protocol as beautiful geese and ducks in the window of my sky, coming to ask for my company, just on the threshold of spring, next to the threshold of my window and yours…, adopted eternal brother.

She mimics the snowy Nymph the feet of all the courts of the world freely, Dancing in tight spaces where sounds beautiful my favorite track other stragglers lost images of my beautiful bird of beautiful threshold of my window as timeless dances belfry rusty sounds.
For the dark wall between your gene, which will open the whistle of your detachment, every time your commander demolition subdued light and energy to take my humble mischief…
by the way, your eyes and mine, in the vigor of sepals loved everlasting flowers insults.

Together unfairly they united as dim flowers in the air,
Divided separately exile scattered your garden,
My chronic bad inside my hundred chronically ill
I will see  Nymph hiperoceánicus, hyper rusty
By iron hanging over the mask gestures cold weather martial iron watering soil and branded satin mask stays plebeian worms my ruined face of phases of my face closet and wardrobe.


The upward castle by fierce hillsides, notify more rasterize
Your morning visit.

Among many castles many seas gang signs of femininity,
As a sliding plushy receiving a Nymph Satardia;
The first and most powerful inhabitant of the ascending Ninfuocenicus castle.

When I'm alone,
I am on the side of the broth augury sling,
Holding my application
Almost like a plumber object in the hands of a blind astronomer.

Only three steps income
Where three steps have to meet me on the runaway shadows
Of my ancestors, right neighbor pine crafty,
That hid my totemic animality...
As the blood currents green,
I lost myself…

As a front polygon,
As a front wormy adventure story demolished
In the densest darkness of your house arcane absence ashes
The cadaverous presence of the wind of my roles in pain and ossuary  of that princely that emotional solstice who anchored in your flowery landscape of love,
Spinning wheel to square steps
As contraindication to love, then need you more.


You jump on my doorstep, plain unlicensed...
So the propaedeutic of Ninfaoceánicus begins,
You write my signs and my losses as prescribed
The loneliest adage constantly fading green robes.

I often feel sad as all times outside the elapsed time,
When I feel the absence of your webbed feet oily,
Aligning by walking wearing my sun off you,
With foreign attire migrating my sunshine clothing doze...
As a gale of tulle for the South Seas who died in the wreckage of a pirate ship Pliocene…

And your sea south sorry awakening as between species
Jungle, eater vampire  as the swirl start your being lost in my
Desert be... want to be mummy augur…
Lips worst evils of unrestrained fantasy tribal worse,
They concluded entirely confined irritability.
As the bipolar lost hope,

The graft of your nomadic existence and entrepreneurial ship traveling
settled that the bipolar economy of your means of anti-life,
Closing my eyes... black aniline,
Black lost roads dancing notch watermark,
Of the hypertensive empty string, as the rope pulls and
Solves the crescent of your face depressed ocher rain.


When river, and watch your lips precursors,
I watch the surf offshore devouring my joint,
In search of  nymph Titania, your age who live with me,
My Perfect for you and my image, my imperfect picture of you and me, silky movement shores of my soul looking for you,
When I sit at the knee I bend my knee for you,
I sit on the bank remains with you.
My codex collected from you, only you...

When the cave steppe fear rages,
Tongues of fire gigantic move me by your rivers adventure
I park in your loud voice drawled from the acute bonfire
In the wooded rested than ever, it grew on your side close.

Your life was almost a straight bipolar errors,
I am now businessman making your life nearby,
Hit blowing winds greater...
And at your life in my financial life,
If you think with your hands clasped over your face
know that almost live together with you,
unbecoming my libertarian release of master your flight
hell, beastly dessert.

Most hellish ******* lastly zain,
Of the greatest forces of your body eater the myth king, fabulous race The disabled senior verse confined treaty,
Confined you that is farthest from you **** nymph Ninfuoceánica,
requalification boiling in behaviors you to exist in the relief of your abysmal way but your gooey body resting on you..., rests meditating  Do not get tired, you do not pretend to be the ruin of your prey voice sound muffled, only animals that disturb you bring your pursue days true…

Your lovers sulfur knew your colors and smells of the most pestilential entity, that overshoot and tone your threefold, as a roar of the soul that comes from your soul, do not let mental baseness mimics with anemic,
lower hostile masts your anti angels have to ride on gold gatekeepers... For the spot, if mythomania and your alcoholic schizophrenia infinity, ...

hulks  of alcohol vapors in the pulmonary vessels by butterfly flocks,
They roam the reins of collecting and rasterized your weakness sudden death, As well as the sudden resurrection of my body.
And rebukes the storm, rebuke thy right entity endowed *****'s nerve
That's where I have to pursue your side embraces more hug me,
More than your own warmth, rather than your own bravery, unbridled carriage.


I often repeat a million times,
The times I did not hear your perpendicular attentive pauses, stutters hurry ****** your frequent alcoholism, not to distinguish only slicing nonsensical attitudes sometimes slow thinking agility of a lover, Thinking that ****** and reduces that sinister and discouraging, that scrape thin that limits who want to be and not dominate.


Mapping by hiding places unusual materials,
Brochures polished of the scruffy codex and guide you an  unguided
By the groves close views as telescopic sights that are lost.


I know, my biggest Ninfuoceánica death may not be reborn on the third day…!!, But if it is not to lose lost when the day ends.
Wise ancestry and slavery will govern the pale fronts
Your hidden and mobile lives on an olive orchard,
Hiper meditate funny without feeling any known gene passed ******, nor read past experience in your prodigious map of oblivion.

Satardia; He lit a match just as night fell,
Sea and sky colours compressing regrets that burned their matches

It burned his blessed same figure as the little pair of gifts
That remained on hold as senior Ninfuoceanica,
Only his dark side Petric windmill stone...


Someday reborn to confuse his disciples confused gentlemen,
And their abandoned phrases that he dominates.

Feverish ardor,
Feverish torpor
Every living illusion is extinguished...
Go to your coward stampede
Of gatekeepers on buffalo between bloodthirsty goats...


Jose Luis Carreño Troncoso Copyright 2015
Related  August 2006

A grimoire of nuptials apporting
The implored cadaverous knight
Securing obsequious omens
Stirring the sleeping metals of
Chaste belladonna, glistening
Elf-locks entangled with Hellweed
Vowing until the golden bowl is broken
Clasping the devils paintbrush promising
Before the garrulous black mass
Leering upon Vulcans mirror
Cursing the covenant of faithfulness
With a moonstone band
Evoking a vixens wedding
Sealing with Adams holy ale
Their oath as the belfry rings
Resounding admist white sepulchre.


ELEETE J MUIR.

“cold winter sky—
where will this wandering beggar
grow old?”
— Issa


I. Stories

A ranch north of Spain,
his woman, their child... a dream
painted over, gone.
His... (unrequited)
...own tragedy for himself—
young death in Paris.
Quiet night at nine,
inside a café... gunshots—
being... nothingness...


II. Histories

A cold monochrome,
the winter hue of darkness:
umbra of despair.
Portraits of torment:
beggars, drunkards, prostitutes,
1901—
Lapis lazuli
thinned, turpentined—bleu de France—
ennui of sorrow.


III. Images

Melancholia
—the impotence of the will—
in Barcelona.
Barefoot on the street
corner, sitting on the ground,
he leaned on nothing.
A half-stringed guitar......
Germaine’s ******* distracted him..
he laid his revenge.


IV. Meanings

No can a beggar...
no steel strings a guitarist...
—a friend’s eulogy.
The cadaverous
curves of the bones torqued the flesh—
tedium of old age.
An allegory:
artists, poets, mendicants...
****** or broke oglers?


V. The Painting

His evocation:
the grave of Casagemas—
a guilt exorcised.
A mute’s discontent,
a blind man’s desolation,
an oil masterpiece!
An old guitarist,
blind, begging for an audience—
a blue Picasso.

After all
there was so much to hate
and no one cared
for what there was to love
the least of whom
was himself
and that
was why he drove the cleaver
THWACK
into the wood
right between his fingers
between yes or no
between bedlam and smug satisfaction
knowing he'd missed the mark
on a whim
though
should he have succeeded
he would go on a broken man
no
not because of the mutilated hand
but because of what he would do to himself
should he have abandoned himself
indeed
his tattered body
paled in reflection
to the cavity in his soul
where worlds of dreams had gone to die
and he had pleasure in their deaths
how he marched them on
the dreams
pied piper was he
to the vast
incalculable
sums of fantasy and waylaid plans
beneath him
his scales
his snout and snarl
his wings
a dragon
on a hoard of promised treasures
sure to be expelled
due the ravaging of time
due delinquency and self-wrought disaster
he was an effigy
to the great power of humanity
fallen in grace
subdued by cancerous desires
and poisoned
by fool's love
a rusted bounty
of sham hearts
open and willing
willing his demise
but he loved it
the attention
the destruction
for as it were poured upon him
in him
through him
about him
a pool of toxic ichor
his price for the abuse
was the sacking of the world
the decay of humanity
as they tortured him
they wounded themselves
ever deeper
salt in his wound
was salt in their eyes
rot fed to his belly
became rot in their souls
but they could not stop
they daren't
for they feared his power
they feared
his penchant to rule them
to lay waste to their weakness
mold them
guide them
command them
they feared losing
all their closely coveted lies
that dangled
like snow sequins
about their shivering
cadaverous bodies
malnourished
wanting for respite
from the cold
of their inimical
and unforgiving
reality
from which
escape
is a closed book
empty save for a warning
that what goes up
will surely fall
but what goes down
into the depths of hell
truth itself
where the ****** break upon their wickedness
shall salvation ring in the deep
and awake the beast
who rises to mount the peaks
another dragon
born for battle
destined to be pillaged of its cantankerous wealth
how
it gorged on humanity
letting them wear sequins on their bodies
rather than glory
verve for life
satisfaction in the passing of time
and joy in knowing the coming of the inevitable
they feared to be free
for the cage
they thought
fueled their spirits
but it was a charlatan's ruse
smoke and mirrors
hiding the puppet strings
clouding their judgment
obscuring the ability
to see that He was their shepherd
the pastor of their flock
and with him
all doors would be opened
all minds would be free
all bodies would be whole
and no blood
would be spilt
forever
and on into the waking
of eternity...

I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She threads off the sap and needles, blood and bubble
Casts to the pine roots, raising man like a mountain
Out of the naked entrail.

Beginning with doom in the ghost, and the springing marvels,
Image of images, my metal phantom
Forcing forth through the harebell,
My man of leaves and the bronze root, mortal, unmortal,
I, in my fusion of rose and male motion,
Create this twin miracle.

This is the fortune of manhood: the natural peril,
A steeplejack tower, bonerailed and masterless,
No death more natural;
Thus the shadowless man or ox, and the pictured devil,
In seizure of silence commit the dead nuisance.
The natural parallel.

My images stalk the trees and the slant sap's tunnel,
No tread more perilous, the green steps and spire
Mount on man's footfall,
I with the wooden insect in the tree of nettles,
In the glass bed of grapes with snail and flower,
Hearing the weather fall.

Intricate manhood of ending, the invalid rivals,
Voyaging clockwise off the symboled harbour,
Finding the water final,
On the consumptives' terrace taking their two farewells,
Sail on the level, the departing adventure,
To the sea-blown arrival.

II

They climb the country pinnacle,
Twelve winds encounter by the white host at pasture,
Corner the mounted meadows in the hill corral;
They see the squirrel stumble,
The haring snail go giddily round the flower,
A quarrel of weathers and trees in the windy spiral.

As they dive, the dust settles,
The cadaverous gravels, falls thick and steadily,
The highroad of water where the seabear and mackerel
Turn the long sea arterial
Turning a petrol face blind to the enemy
Turning the riderless dead by the channel wall.

(Death instrumental,
Splitting the long eye open, and the spiral turnkey,
Your corkscrew grave centred in navel and ******,
The neck of the nostril,
Under the mask and the ether, they making ******
The tray of knives, the antiseptic funeral;

Bring out the black patrol,
Your monstrous officers and the decaying army,
The sexton sentinel, garrisoned under thistles,
A ****-on-a-dunghill
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity,
Dust be your saviour under the conjured soil.)

As they drown, the chime travels,
Sweetly the diver's bell in the steeple of spindrift
Rings out the Dead Sea scale;
And, clapped in water till the triton dangles,
Strung by the flaxen whale-****, from the hangman's raft,
Hear they the salt glass breakers and the tongues of burial.

(Turn the sea-spindle lateral,
The grooved land rotating, that the stylus of lightning
Dazzle this face of voices on the moon-turned table,
Let the wax disk babble
Shames and the damp dishonours, the relic scraping.
These are your years' recorders. The circular world stands still.)

III

They suffer the undead water where the turtle nibbles,
Come unto sea-stuck towers, at the fibre scaling,
The flight of the carnal skull
And the cell-stepped thimble;
Suffer, my topsy-turvies, that a double angel
Sprout from the stony lockers like a tree on Aran.

Be by your one ghost pierced, his pointed ferrule,
Brass and the bodiless image, on a stick of folly
Star-set at Jacob's angle,
Smoke hill and hophead's valley,
And the five-fathomed Hamlet on his father's coral
Thrusting the tom-thumb vision up the iron mile.

Suffer the slash of vision by the fin-green stubble,
Be by the ships' sea broken at the manstring anchored
The stoved bones' voyage downward
In the shipwreck of muscle;
Give over, lovers, locking, and the seawax struggle,
Love like a mist or fire through the bed of eels.

And in the pincers of the boiling circle,
The sea and instrument, nicked in the locks of time,
My great blood's iron single
In the pouring town,
I, in a wind on fire, from green Adam's cradle,
No man more magical, clawed out the crocodile.

Man was the scales, the death birds on enamel,
Tail, Nile, and snout, a saddler of the rushes,
Time in the hourless houses
Shaking the sea-hatched skull,
And, as for oils and ointments on the flying grail,
All-hollowed man wept for his white apparel.

Man was Cadaver's masker, the harnessing mantle,
Windily master of man was the rotten fathom,
My ghost in his metal neptune
Forged in man's mineral.
This was the god of beginning in the intricate seawhirl,
And my images roared and rose on heaven's hill.

As I saw mine father,
In that cadverous hospital bed
I saw mineself lying there,

Yet,

Whilst at that same moment
I couldn't help but thinking
Of mine mi amour'
How I hurt her
How I needeth her
How she giveth me life
Shes mine
Mine mi amour'

As I only pray to god
She canst forgive me...

Mine mi amour'

The pulchritudinous aquatic lair,

Of resplendent melancholy depth,

A place damaged beyond repair,

Teeming of glazed ghosts of death.



Hither and yon an offed world lingers,

The alluring charm of the cadaverous expanse,

Where bony-ice settles deep in frigid fingers,

A bloodless shore of gothic romance.



Eyes burning with a copper glance,

Vermilion waves wash over the bare sea-bed,

Waking the argenteous sand lance,

From their hide-out in death's head.



This oceanic God's acre,

Populated by inert remains,

Destroying the soul of a ballad-maker,

Hang-out of many sins and life-banes.



My languid, crippled stony heart,

Floating in this burgundy desert,

In fragments shattered into pieces of ****** art,

Blown away in a riotous explosion of subvert.







A/N: This poem is a tribute to the thousands of forgotten lives lost under the sea.

Night was ruled
by deceit, every moment,
deepening shadows moved
with poisionous intentions,
knives of sharp lights
they hid behind their back.

An  authoritarian owl,
angrily kept threatening its opponents,
by repeatedly stabbing
the silence of the night,
with his shocking  hoots.

When the cadaverous moon
slyly came out of cloud thickets,
trotting foxes hiding
behind gravestones,
made intermittent eerie howls,
lacerating the dark muteness.

A mighty night bird,
off and on, drew its shadow,
across the moon's surface,
but never felt satisfied

The barking dogs
all at once stopped,
and created panic.
Like death knell,
wind made noises,
on the foliage of trees.

A dejected lover,
wrote a melancholy note,
spilling out sad thoughts,
in the faint light
of a dying oil lamp.

An adulterous woman,
impatiently waited
near her half opened window,
looking out for
her midnight paramour,
who never keeps time as promised.

The night stood still,
spreading its serpent hood,
listening to million secret sounds
watching everything,
without batting an eyelid.

You are
a brass framed
feather bed
in the middle of
a dilapidated forest
white
waxen
cadaverous
arms and metacarpals
outstretched
screeching praise to
Father Fumigated Sky
a tie dyed atmosphere
embodying the ambiance
of some apocalyptic rose garden
bled gold, wine,
& liquid ecstasy
and leaked through chemical clouds
or the coagulated tears of
God...

my strange,
creaky comfort.

may we

watch it all
crash down
in peace.

Cadaverous crotchety gouged out eyes.
Scalped trite and malnourished minds.
Where am I? What has this land become?
My vessel is gutted galled and splayed out upon the enflamed remains of our democracy.
I try to embody the equanimity peaceful   qualities of the lulling Gandhi characters before me...
But ****, I am angry, jolted and saturated in shock in fear.
Being an advocate for the people so dismissively marginalized, is what brings substance to my life.
I look into the eyes of my mirthful clients and future students, my heart winces.
How did I allow this to happen to you?  
A man who so boastfully incinerates and debased the citizens of our land with his farcical vitriol, is no man at all but merely an unsightly shrew, cozily cosseted in his world of soot and pooh.
The bosky gorgeous land we inhabit sobs in noxious fright.
To be despoiled and berated as some "natural right" splintered and tainted to allow the green cash river flow into the dubious maw of the man with no dignity to show.
A man who preens such a degenerated mindset is only aptest to a society in shambles.
Our global haimish home yearns for the equilibrium from which it was born.
In such a seeded tumultuous time my heart is seeped in reverberating sorrow.
Let your love and purity coat your vessel, do not let this barbaric man permeate your soul.
Hold steadfast to the testament of our land
True revolution is budded from a web of genuine connection, not devise brandished weapons.
Don't shroud yourself in misery, break free and be prepared to encite love with your authenticity.

Tribute to the fallen
Guardians of the union

Accolade to the warriors
Combatants sworn

Standing straight
Before their Lord

Eulogy to the brave
Salvo of respect

Applause to the Eagles
Conscripts of the sky

Medal of the departed
Proud on their shoulders

Offering to our cadaverous
Salute to our gone brethren

Gone, not forgotten
We think them dead

We perceive them not
Living are they,
in their love of the Lord

it is a nice feeling of tragedy
when i let the bathwater
gently slide into place
and underneath the door
through the threshold
blue wisps from the television
keeps your face lit up
throughout the course of the night
i hear birds and those sounds they make
not just in the early morning
but always
leaving spots translucent beside me
every noise is subtle and
sinister
staring at the dark corners
cadaverous
forgetting only means that you’re
making room for something new

Dear Harlot
You kept my soul in check.
The loneliness encased was spent.
Wonders of unending flesh.
And yet the scent is fleeting.
The seclusion returns afresh.
The ethereal heart deceiving.

What once brought sweet memories.
Now are void parentheses.
My empty arms are bare.
In addition a cadaverous stare.
Skin cold with horripilation.
Trudging on in desolation.

I long for comfort I confess.
To the skies I do profess.
For on the ground my feet shall stay.
Am I worthy whose to say.

Another harlot.
Anther day.
Not my harlot.
Not my harlot.
Not my harlot.

A glimpse of her visage I pray.
Solitude is how I pay.

We must not ignore the pachyderm in the attic.
Trying to pull knitted fabric over our visual orbs.
For I am sure, although it's home is vacant.. the electric bill must be huge!
Maybe it requires a soupçon of his own panacea?
But we all know the summation of a pair of pairs..
And will come to the realisation.. it is a cadaverous fellow promenading.
We should all indicate the direction with our index finger...
And declare.. Pachyderm!!!


*We must not ignore the elephant in the room.
Trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
For I am sure, the lights are on but no one is home!
Maybe it needs a taste of it's own medicine?
But we all know, adding two and two together...
And come to know.. he is a dead man walking.
And we should all point
And yell.. Elephant!!

Some days the sky is a glass chalice we hold between our lips to take a sip
The palliative qualities divine in nature are seeping through the subtle splits on the surface of our palms
Fleeting textures suffuse through our quivering hands
Various hues illustrate the wrists as they coil upon the cadaverous structure
Outlining our internal scaffolding with diverse shades
Colours ricochet within our human receptacles
Our bodies are prisms allowing the light of the sun to shine
Beams break forth from the orifice that rests upon our undistinguished faces
Reminders of what is within splintering through every available opening
Wandering rays rendezvous at the core of the chest
Exploring uncharted paths on the geography of our physical selves
Transcendent roads vague to our periphery  
Slowly defining their forms on the outskirts of our wearied retinas
Our illuminated minds, embodying the sun  
candescent stones fortified by layers of bone meant to hold their fluorescence
Our organic beams of light, such tender arms, lingering in the punctured sky
are using the clouds as paintbrushes, pieced together bits of mosaic already at their disposal
Our backs resting on abstract clay with shifting pastels, whispering clarity into our cartilage
leftover laments torn apart to bits with the newfound realization that we are whole.
Like unearthed clairvoyance, we survey the translucent waters before us
peering into the stillness our bodies disrupt like the pillars of beautiful dissonance they are

Greed, gluttony, indulgence, selfishness.
These are all characteristics I've viewed
From a man who chose such a proclaimed selfless profession.
Amusing how the less fortunate prey on the wallets thicker than theirs.

There is a significant difference between intentional wronging
And misguided, assumptions that only souls that are led astray make
The purpose of this text is a public service announcement,
some may call it art; only the creator truly knows it's meaning.
Mom's in the wild will protect their progeny to the death, I'll leave it at that.

It began in spoken word. Your fear carried on to strings of letters that could only flow through a brain sunken in liquid toxicity.
Don't believe everything you hear, don't dismiss it either.
Play your pawn carefully sir, as your next movement
Very well could be checkmate.

I care about society until someone I know crosses me,
I have honored you by not interrupting your rendezvous. Taking advantage of people is your game.
You prey on those who are too naive to type six letters following a name into a search box.

Fortunately, your cadaverous will forever rot.
While the tempter, sits in delight holding onto a smile so menacing. You have only seen it portrayed by Mr. Nicholsan.
Regard of the Crest of the house would have prevented your sad demise.

As there are no do-overs when you work with Satan, at least you fell for his entrapment, and no one will be wounded by your passive lies again.

we wish you eternal damnation,
the m.H.d.

Marching on thru our circuital seas:
A moat lurking beneath tremendous Facebook walls,
delineating our impalpable fortress of solitude (irony).

We slog through the trenches like Lee's troops,
drudging on a fatal course
to an awaiting Grant in Appomattox (destiny?).

Soldiers falling at the wayside,
from wounds, starvation, disease,
hashtags for dog tags draped around cadaverous necks--
Perhaps you can identify us by what's trending.

Had we the strength to shout,
and tear down the walls of Digital Jericho,
would we have been able to do it,
in 140 characters or less?

They both wandered in to the night,
unaware that the other one too,
was in the dark labyrinths prowling,
itching to bury so many lies festering,
painful it felt, not even letting the stars
know that what it meant for their love,
that was a wild red flame creating hopes of permanence.
the stars twinkled above with fervor
night was the marsh, convenient for them to hide
every dead dream deep in to its slush, the past
but they knew this night, they would never walk past,
the stench of dreams forcefully buried would haunt
even if they pretend everything is pushed
too deep in to the mud and they are clean hereafter.
when they came out one by one, unaware of the other
drained and ridden by anxiety-
a pale moon was waiting for them to reappear from the quagmire
on her face was a quizzical look,
the moon has her rays driven deep in to their darkened psyches
yet he thought his secrets weren't exposed,
he sat looking at the melancholy moon,
and sang that song that pleased his love, without fail
it sounded like a ritual for the dead ones, dreams in fetus.
then, she approached on tiptoes as if she is a form of death
out to steal unfortunate lives
they stood face to face, everything was revealed,
the cadaverous moon looked on them both
they were felled as if eaten by past, a sleep that will never let them go.

For Aleš, who reads pacifist novels during wartime

I

For the Millennials:
Victims of opportunity,
Saviors of humanity.

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!

We, the Confounded Chiliads,
are the electrified pulsating
offspring of the digital age:
Serendipitous,
enigmatic
vagabonds of the modern world.

Standing juxtaposed between
two centuries,
two generations:
Redeemers of the new millennium.

We’ve read the writings on the wall,
for they have been by our own hand.
Blood dripping down the fluorescent page,
the endless scroll that consumes our gaze.

Gaping holes in our hands and feet,
screaming telephone poles pin us to the magnetic current.

We are trapped but we are not alone.

With every word we bleed,
with every eye to our flesh,
our cries are drowned in the digital void.

We have been washed away by alluded idiosyncrasies,
never unanimous nor harmonious;
feeling our fingers tie into knots,
mangled, finagled, wringing, hovering like a
Ouija board over menacing letters.

We close our eyes and feel them
burning within our skull.

So many voices, so many bodies,
pouring into our thoughts;
endless rainfall
drowning the long coveted silence.

So desperate for the parting
of ***** storm clouds,

for a sign from heaven
to pierce through the ceaseless night,

to cast its lovely gaze upon us
like a father’s warm and gentle hand,
lifting up downcast faces.

We toil in our anguish,
suffering information overload;
a whole race of individuals
accumulating into a massive “I told you so.”

Every wish, every genius mind,
every glance into the future,
every crystal ball rubbed,
Electric Eye awakened

as the dream sighs into existence;
the blending of fact and fiction
in the prophesies of Fathers Orwell and Huxley:
maddened forlorn oracles of modernity.

As we cross the rivers of Babylon
to find ourselves swimming in
the Fountain of Youth
we escape dripping, exhausted;
aching bodies shivering.
They drape expensive towels around us,
breathing warmly on our exasperated shells
of humanity.

Our mortal vessels no longer capable of
carrying our fragile identities,
we leap out of their torpid mouths
exposing the gelatinous crustacean.

Amorphous brain matter
sponge-like, soaking up
the sweat of our plunder and plight—
Clinging desperately as our liberators

pry us off the wet earth
like barnacles off a ship’s keel,
wringing us out
over the supper bowl:
the thin soup of mortal consciousness.

Feeling our voices and vices,
virtues and virulence,
mingling together;
meshing into one.

The hive mind descends upon us,
protruding a gaping straw
from its abdominous being;
sticking it into the electric ocean,
proceeds to **** life up into its
wrinkly, sickly tightened mouth.

Past the gleeful tongue,
down the throat;
tumbling over each other aimlessly
in the darkness—
limitless potentialities.

Directionless;
ambiguous
voices in the dark:
cavernous, mindless cacophony.

Echoes bouncing off
the windows of my soul,
I tumbled into the darkness
lost, and afraid.

“The world is yours!”

I never feel my feet stop moving.

Our nightmarish episode of consumption concludes,
leaving us moaning, naked, confused in the depths:
Haunting spirits wandering these novel dwellings
built on the backs of the olden brutes
and the barbarous archetypic minds of the Marxist prophets.

In this world of post-civilization,
we are post-human(e) in our efforts;
unable to gain a foothold in the foundation—
more quicksand than earth and stone.

Our seeds were thrown to the weeds and the crows.

II

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!

I glance at the others: gangly gangrenous guiles!
Feasting on each other, never growing any stronger;
clawing out each other’s eyes, spitting in their mouths,
screaming utterances most foul in their ears.
Climbing over each other in the obscurity, unseen.  

I want them to take my eyes.
I want them to take my ears.
I want them to take my voice.
I want them to squelch the flame
that burns within my cadaverous chest.

Surrendering any chance of agency;
if there were hands to bite,
I couldn’t see.
I hear the voices shouting,
but I can’t cut through the discord.

What if I hold my breath?
But I know that won’t last.
Feeling my lips turn purple,
the kick drum in my chest:

furious relentless crescendo
pace quickening mind’s racing
all the sins in the world
rotting in my soul inescapable
pounding at the door
clock ticking through the floor
lungs shrivel can’t take anymore—

Exhale.

Panting, hands on my knees,
ears perk up to the sound of malicious snickering.
I lift my gaze up to an eclipse of the moon,
so ghastly in fresh blemishes plaguing its majesty.

Squinting,
I see smiling faces,
eyes full of mocking laughter,
belonging to snide children
anxiously peering into the crowded fishbowl.

They watch us squirm without water,
dancing in aching bodies,
craving the touch of something cool,
and refreshing.

They dangle hope and promise like
lifeless puppets encircling
an infant’s crib.

I watch them tie onto simple strings:
wealth, and
power, and
love, and
belonging.

Reaching higher, and higher,
straining formless muscles,
feeling weakness overcome
creeping up like a tired conscience
climbing over the golden crest
atop the transparent foothills
encased in the nicotine screen skyline.

It hangs its head low
on its hands and knees,
lifting up a weary voice
so familiar and ignored.

A final sigh ringing in the ears of a generation:
A cough, and then a final weak sputter:
“I Told You So.”

III

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!

Anchored to the next big thing
sitting below deceptive still waters
murky mysterious
loathesome beast
peeking an eye out to catch us peering
over the edge of the docks
a glimpse at the promised eternity
immortality
delusion of grandeur
our eyes to the shore
nostalgia preserved
in the retellings of folklore
childhoods never forgotten
for fear of being lost in the present
and the forthcoming future
always a step away
how can we move on
when we’re busy cutting off our legs
to be eye level with our inner child
more like an exoskeleton
more exposed than our need
to grow
we sit huddled in our bemired despair
grinning sheepishly exposing our sin
crying out to the gargantuan
overlord of childlike fantasy
wielding our innocence
like a button-eyed ragdoll gluttonous treasure keeper
playing with fire in the alchemist’s den
so close to our material wealth
with the flames roaring lapping at our heels
feeling the dock begin to break from dry land
from the weight of our inflated consciences/consciousness
following the fangs of the snake to our parents
on the shore
with one hand sweating on the television remote
strangling in its grasp
they have no choice
but to squeeze the pump
harder and faster
legs of flesh and bone
break and give way
we begin to drift from the shore
pulling closer to the murky behemoth
that lurks under the perpetual offing
in the empty horizon we cry our broken hearts
into its cosmic bowels
feeling ourselves being sifted through
the hungry machinery of death
eyes luminous we shield our faces
from its rapturous gaze
fearful of the pillar of salt
that will stand in our place
but we look back
we take our hand off the plow
with ***** and Gomorrah at our backs
we peer through the electric eye
the sands of time
pouring through the hourglass
that spits us into the depths
of eternal strife.

IV

Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing!
Twentynothing!
Twentynothing!
Twentynothing!

Tw­entynothing in the classrooms!
Twentynothing in the workforce!
Twentynothing in the bathrooms!
Twentynothing in our parents' wars!

Twentynothing in the golden streets!
Twentynothing in the broken homes!
Twentynothing in the dusty libraries!
Twentynothing in the TV's drone!

Twentynothing in the Promised Land!
Twentynothing in the songs we sing!
Twentynothing in the secret plans!
Twentynothing in freedom ring!

Twentynothing in hands over hearts!
Twentynothing in our love in bed!
Twentynothing in the obscure route’s start!
Twentynothing in the lies we've read!

Twentynothing in the lives we fear!
Twentynothing in the scholar’s debt!
Twentynothing in our guns held dear!
Twentynothing in the tables set!

Twentynothing in the colors of skin!
Twentynothing in the reality show!
Twentynothing in the losses and win!
Twentynothing in the nightmares below!

Twentynothing in the kisses we hide!
Twentynothing in the I O U’s!
Twentynothing in the chanting of pride!
Twentynothing in the love you too’s!

Twentynothing in the hope we give!
Twentynothing in the dread they moan!
Twentynothing in the time we live!
Twentynothing in the chance we own!

Muse-less, useless, Twentynothing!

In the post-modern world aimless!

We, the Confounded Chiliads:
We are dangerous,
We are longing,
We are hopeful,
We are broken,
We are serendipitous—
We are eternal.

We Are Twentynothing.

…and that’s **** well something.

wHat beckons is the silent Kingdom
a sanctum holy devoid. whose apt walls
are tawny bricks of quiet. the patrons
clamor somnambulant. and heaps of
proffered tongues litter the illucid
broken halls.

the forgetful powder piles neatly
limbs of gray on and about and
the pews drink the sun or the sky
     is a plait of onyx feathers.
an arrhythmia of breathes struggle
daft lungs. the stillness beats. bleating
nothing lambs flocked in stupid silver.

the mouths are all corded sinew bound.
epitaphs scrawled untidy letters drench
cheeks apathetic. a corpse of hollow resonance.
step and stone; cadaverous hues, sallow indolent
light on every stanchion.

                                                                in
the cathedral, cloistered, is a stiff artery.
a heart stagnant veins. a king whose crown is
ash, a face whose efforts are unfleshed. no skin
has purchase. nor sight. empty hood scythe loaded
dreams the morphea plated scalp. a soft vesical
limpid chromatic fingernails scrabble festering
nodes.

he is waiting
in the comfort of his filth
lithe carpals flexing summons
to his cloak

the candles are making naked lips
kissing darkness; lovers uncut
bound fornicating. i sitting sat saturated
the valley fluxes.

                and a tissue of blue decrepit
night dusting the sin of noise. a naked wind
     so                      says



         he

Turn on

I
This is the BBC news at 1 o'clock.
A rambling diatribe,
lost boys, a lost war.
The falling cost of stamps.
'What do you think of the deficit,
Graham from Newquay?'

II
Some bald man
holds a cadaverous gaze.
'She don't want me no more Pauline.'
The ware and tear
of Albert Square
immortalised
in one ***** stare.

III
Ella looked into the eyes of
the African children with bloated
stomachs, scooping up brown water
she wouldn't even dip her toe in.
For a moment, they were face to face.

VI
Margret! Margret!

Look what they're...

Check the cupboard,
have we still got...

uh...

tinned peaches and caster sugar.

V
Our hands, in every listless waft,
wander through an electric soup,
thick as frog-spawn.
Spermatozoa of information.
A gentle fuzz of creation,
our atmosphere is
pregnant with
separate universes that
embed themselves
inside our own.
We broadcast
our noisy planet
to the skies.

VI
'I've seen what's going on,
you don't have to tell me!
I know what they're doing.'
The walls are closing in,
as each breath from her
dusting lungs is getting tighter.
'Besides, my eyes won't let me, or
my knees these days, It's all i'm
good for'  
She wheezes.
'I can see all I need from here.'

VII
Click
I swear 400
*******
channels
And there's nothing on

VIII
As I approach the blue glare
of the living room, I know
she's in there. Not even
watching,
she's on her
iPad. We don't talk.
We went to the
Maldives
once,
after the wedding.
she couldn't keep her eyes off me.

IX
Dead square.
Silent pixels.
Nothings watching.

X
We crept down in the morning - my sister
and me, before anyone else was up and squabbled
what loud cartoon violence would take our attention.
Nightie, pyjama cotton siblings, sewn in to the 7 to 9 o'clock schedule,
we were as vital to each other as sleeping bags and cereal.
Our building blocks stood in a castle,
we were unaware that one day,
they would be strewn across the floor
as we grew up.

XI
We're not going out tonight.
I just want to slip my hands down your
pants and touch you while
we watch game of thrones...
Deal?

XII
Smoke rises behind the mosque
in an arabesque twirl.
The blinding sunlight behind the minaret
crashes on the lens, like a flash bang.

The call to prayer is empty bodies, iconographic art,
cars hollowed, alien tongues, history, a melting *** culture,
cockroach romances, squalid graves, body hewn tunnels, little cuts on
trigger fingers, trained monkeys, orphans, marble carvings,
the stench of petrol, jobless drug habits, brickwork, wiring,
forbidden love, lust, teenagers, plastic explosive, god, work,
prayer, tears, life and death    

and briefly the box is the world in our homes.
We must see who's behind it.

Deep in wood’s twig embrace
She lies beneath the leaf tessellation
Her hollow skull and hollow chest are friends with the burning winds
She is hallowed in her sloping waist
With child

She is mother bony
Woman with skinless face
She is grinless
For her jaw was stolen in ages past
Yet she is blessed with child
Her middle is heavy with boundless boy

A boy fated
To be *******
Emperor
Tyrant
King
To be lord of the shattered lands and even their scattered men
Destined to be crowned in fragments of skulls and silky fabric reds
He shall mate with fire
Be father of arson spawn
His face will be carved in Mammon’s silver toys

He will never be forgotten by any of history’s tedious scribes
Yet first he must be born

Now the winds are chanting
They push at her pudgy waist
They are chanting for the birth of the emperor ******* king
They desire the tyrant
They are the slaves of God
For they are catalysts that mold the shapes of futures’ lords
They will sing triumphant
When he is pushed through dusty hips
They will congratulate their oldest and most silent friend  

He is birthed with great force
The spit of cadaverous womb
Crying shrieks in the forest
No one living to clean him

By spirits’ force he is taught
To eat the last of mother’s skin
To grow to be the friend of the whispering burning winds

He shall grow into great beast
With strength to wield the lance
He will enter the kingdoms of men
Appearing as a wild God

While he is shaping his role
His mother will often laugh
Ever since he left her
Her body was never again the same

Crazily he loved the cadaverous moon,
the goddess sans merci of his dark noon.
Heady wine of love she offered him was pain,
in all *seven stages of love, his heart bled,
turned white.
                He was laid to rest in silence, in her  heart,
               when wailing violins all, fell dead in grief.

She sits, and she’s pale and cadaverous,

her black hair, short to her chin, the dye in her skin,

the corpselike designs deify her to me,

and she is marvelous.

-

A snakebite in her voluptuous blackened painted lips

eagers me to receive a curious kiss

upon my own who so long for,

the taste of her, like nothing before.

-

The gorgeous permanent stains of ink

upon her *****, thighs, arms, and calves,

exemplify her smooth pearl-white skin

her delicate tattooed knuckles and hands,

could now easily tear me in half.

-

As i try to look away

from that teasing, black lingerie,

she turns and looks with pale blue eyes,

the most wonderful I have ever seen,

so far into my soul she delves that I admit,

I am but a lowly, mortal being.

-

This Goddess of death, this Massacre Angel

what some call not a treasure,

she is in all my nightmarish dreams,

and I always owe her the pleasure.

-

I am a slave to her eyes,

that so easily peer through me,

it is not that I tread not, or wear disguise,

but the answer always eludes me.

-

Though she is my unholy holiness that

grants me dark in wretched light,

one day I shall pass and our spirits

will lay together for an eternity of

a macabre romantic night.