48(Cd)
is a highly toxic, poisonous and soft metal used in many production processes, but mainly mixed with Sulfate to make the color yellow.

metal is suppose to be tough.
Not malleable, ductile and easily cut.
Polished to a lustrous finish but will corrode in due time.

I am Cadmium;
soft and easily cut, my finish does not last, I can be poisonous if you don't filter me.
But if you mix me correctly, I am a beautiful Yellow.

Riding down the rapidly declining *****
on the bright, soft-water day,
I imagine myself as nothing more than an animal
falling down a waterfall into a lake clear and crisp.
The wheels of my bike turn rapidly
like the a propeller of a plane,
just as powerful
and just as dangerous if I fall,
but only to me.
Catching the sea salt breeze
my blonde, sun bleached hair flies as if
it were flying on seagulls wings.
I am a cadmium yellow blur on a painting,
moving much too fast to be captured and depicted accurately.
I ride until the end of my ***** this way,
finishing strong with out a hint of regret.

Yellow, Cadmium, Aureolin, Lemon
It's the shades of your true nature.

Sheen, Spring Bud, Bitter Lime, Lime
It's the other side of you.

The day when I met you is Lemon,
Drowning me into the watery trap of yours
Lemon in Water, that's how you cast a spell on me.

Sour, it's the taste of waiting for you
Bitter, you left me rotten and lost
Sweet, it's when you smile to me
Refreshing, the reason why I look forward toward tomorrow
Plain, the black truth behind your kindness
Sour+Bitter, the days when I must forget about you

Lemon, Lime,
I got addicted to your freshness,

Lime, Lemon
You stir me up like a juice,

Lime
Those dream felt so real

Lemon
I should've known, that I never belong to you, ever.

I want to say being with you was like coming home, but that seems so over-done.
Despite the truth it holds.
I think maybe I’ll try and speak your language. Because being with you was homemade paint.
Mason jars lining shelves, oil and pigment and a palette of your own creation.
When you ran your fingers over my skin it wasn’t Cadmium red, no, it was more like, the setting of the sun after a hot summers day. Orange so deep it feels like you are going to fall into it. Not Permanent or Transparent. No, it was like a fire, warm and so, so bright. Like the world around me had gone up in flames and I was happy to burn with it.
Or when you laughed, the air lit up like a sunflower. Not Hansa or Nickel or Indian yellow. Think something between gold and the shade of a lemon. Honey, sweet and sticky.
And my heart twisted and turned inside my chest, adapting to the mix of colors, oil dripping into my veins.
When you smiled. God, when you smiled. The world seemed to converge. Nothing made sense. I was spinning in a circle in the middle of a carnival. Too much to process. Stained glass windows at noon, playing out across the floors of the church. Iridescent and never ending.
The only thing that brought me back was your brush hitting the canvas, your voice calling out to me, and then it was green, so much green, like a perfectly polished suburban yard and standing beneath a canopy of trees in August, looking up and up until the sun forces your gaze to turn, and the green depression glass that sits pretty on my mother’s bookshelf. I think of light dancing off an emerald ring, not Viridian or Olive or Sap. Nothing you can find in a crafts store. Nothing that can be manufactured. Only that which can be bended and built from your own mind and hands.
And then you were gone. Twice now you’ve left. And it is blue like I have never known. So dark it feels black if I dwell for too long. Richer than Idanthrone, not quite Prussian. Have you ever gone to the ocean at night, just before a storm hits the coast? Or, went up into the country, where the stars illuminate the world around you and the sky is spread out like a blanket above you? Not Cobalt or Cerulean. No, this blue is only something you can make. Something you’ve brought with you. With your sunflowers and your sunsets and your stained glass.
We talked about the way colors can change when they’re next to each other, next to something similar or vastly different. The way the depths can be altered, and just a little more oil can thin it out.
There is nothing to compare anymore.
Just blue. So blue I can’t breathe. So blue my fingers shake and my head aches.
The blue is okay when you’re there. When you’ve laid your palette out before me, when your canvas is full, and beautiful, and I can’t look away. But now, you’ve taken every other color with you, and left me with blue.
Not store bought or easily replaced.
Your blue. From your words and your touch and your voice.
I thought I saw you the other day, for just a moment, the world exploded around me. All the color I thought I’d never see again. A storm so rich with color, I could have gone blind.
But you’re still gone. And I’m still blue.

The wolves did not just stalk quietly through cadmium woods.
Their teeth grew madder and rose from each others throats.
The tigers did not just sleep on mossy slopes,
they colored the afternoon fushia and indigo from caladon heights,
The dragon with its terrible emerald tail and ruby glare,
did not merely threaten to incinerate everything around it.
Spiders prepare a grave.
This thing in a binding tomb.
A multitude of flames, a million orange and blue....
Tears cremating the past.
A burning snow falling everywhere.
When the darkest angel of all, sits at last upon my chest,
permanently enfolding me in its radiant wings....
A creature without a voice,
A voice without a name.
As immortal as mi life,
come here at long last to summon the wind.


© Crystal Erickson

we were the bomb squad
a tribe of children in
plastic crash  helmets
pillows tied on
to protect our insides
holding hands to keep
from feeling lost and alone

we were the bomb squad
living like thieves in cardboard caves
beside the mine fields
hidden beneath beds of poppies
decoy explosions
in cadmium red *****
tender tongues
like kittens licking
the insides
of trembling thighs

we were the bomb squad
mucous membranes and bones
tick tock throats and veins
popped in the pyre
stomach bile and marrow
all up in the same smoke
as something that was
once smooth and sentient

we were the bomb squad
we found no time for any flag
nothing to do with kings
or foreign countries
just the knowledge
of not having known anything before

late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore
of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon
sometimes obscured by impasto clouds
the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies
screaming in agony
Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there
naked and weeping, her hair and body
wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae
Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases
with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire
when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia
who sang an old Dutch love song as he did
Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet
in a puddle of passing moonlight
and didn’t seemed to mind, anything
to stop her endless wailing I heard him say
Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid
who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry
and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her
just look at Titian’s Madonnas
Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly
from the bullet wound in his abdomen,
where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him
just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt
steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art
Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending
it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue
but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises
way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe
my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts
where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the *******
borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it
now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe
Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies
he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming
where’s my ship where’s my ship
they’re all on the ship my paintings
my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows
I only killed one man
Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt
says it happens to all of us even our wives and
mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our *****
it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much
Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist
with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing
the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life
that’s what Monet was painting at the end
using the palette from the other side
pran transmitted through the wailing
of the waterlilies the siren’s song
that lures artists to their death
and then washes them clean for the next go
to pick up where they left off, alone
with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots
at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks
those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks
floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge
all the color gone from their plumage
drink the water Jackson or better yet
let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver
and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily
and float it out into the middle of the pond
where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids
and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts
can help it filter out the poison of living
too much and then you too Jackson
will make painterly love to Saskia and she will
daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue
and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows
and send you back into the world
where you will continue to splash us all  
as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined
our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever
Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side
get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for
splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at
and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead
drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny
Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson
and when you come back
spit it out on our parched souls

I want to live life in a Bob Ross painting
With serene monstrous mountains far off in the distance
The peak half covered by happy little clouds
A happy little tree and it’s many brothers and sisters
Blanketing the landscape of light snowfall and growing bushes
A small cabin bathed in melting snow rests comfortably
Next to a thawing private lake lit by a cadmium yellow sun

This is where I want to live
Swarmed in colors of titanium white,
Phthalo green and blue,
Midnight black,
Alizarin crimson,
And Indian yellow

Where there are no mistakes
Only happy accidents
Where the big decisions
And the tests of courage are
Where the next tree will go

In a Bob Ross painting
I could live peacefully

Naples yellow
Prussian blue
Burnt umber
Cadmium Red Deep
Napthol Red
Quinacridone
Phtalocionine Blue and Green
Portrait Pink Light
Yellow Oxide
Raw Sienna

Can you make a painting without these?

I'm still waiting for you to kiss me
With those crimson lips so smooth.
And I'm still waiting for us to be alone
When the pain in your bright eyes can be soothed.

I'm still waiting for you to get help
For the carmine rivers that you trace.
And I'm still waiting for a reason why
You broke the promise you put in place.

I'm still waiting for my head to stop spinning
The rose hairclip means I see you down the hall.
And I'm still waiting to tell when my stomach flips
If it's good or not at all.

I'm still waiting for my logic to return
But love gives an alazarin tint to every drama.
And I'm still waiting for a chance to talk to you
But I seem to have bad karma.

I'm still waiting for that hug you owe me
My ruby hair shoelace flopping in my eyes
And I'm still waiting to be the tall one of the pair
As I try to move on, part of me dies.

I'm still waiting for that movie date we planned
And the ketchup coloured earring you wear in the left ear
And I'm still waiting to dance and twirl you round
In my arms I could hold you near.

I'm still waiting for when you blush
Vermillion as insults are thrown across the street
And I'm still waiting for the chance to set that right
Remmembering you defending me in the stifling heat.

I'm still waiting for the time to tell you
How much you're in my thoughts
And I'm still waiting for your birthday so I can gift
The cadmium sketchbook that I bought

I'm still waiting for the coral pain to stop in my heart
It's there for you, of that I have no doubt
And I'm still waiting for the laughter to return
To my life when we sort this out

I'm still waiting for the trip to the coast
The bergundy viking boat alight
And I'm still waiting for what will never be
But then again, it might.

Cadmium*

You took a bullet to my heart
made of titanium,
poisoned my blood with deceit and lies,
filled my lungs with cadmium.

How can I not see your reflection
in any one who speaks your same words?
I try to forget of your mistakes
but mirrors only amplify the hurt.

I have given up on searching for your heart,
hope and want are a self destructing team;
you've never once apologised,
I've had to settle for "I'm sorry" in my dreams.

boy-flesh,
death rattle,
I arise out of youth
doused in kerosene.

I bask in the sun
like an old farm
cat, illuminated--
cadmium yellow.

's favorite meal is not children as you may expect
it is old people, the elderly near death
they taste better to him
he fantasizes their whole lives with every bite

whose heart like bottles or ransom clinks against
itself eating the useless parts of its own stomach
rotors of bone hum about revenge
the earth clones pale enigmatic cyanide

my spawn sweat bourbon and bleed sweet milk
I'm the Tower
Look Look
let us hold eachother here until the dark blossoms

into an invisible canine snarl
crushed by feathers at a
tomb-encrusted countryside
wax swans bleed from

their eyes and bulls inside run
in circles around ancient ice prisons

Look a clock
century weary mariners
gape in disbelief
at a yawning dawn
of cadmium
on the tongue of
a bristling free roaming
continent of
gothic salt

i smear oil paint across your lips.

your face, outlined in pale brown and
robin's egg blue and
yellow-green,
rests gently in negative space.

part of me hurts
when i look at this part of you,
this part i am
so familiar with,
in an unfamiliar way.

the lines of your eyes
(eyes i've gazed into a thousand times)
betray my secrets and my soul;

the whisper of your hair
is the same as the quiet brush of mine
on the tops of my bare shoulders;

i reach out to touch you,
and my fingers touch dried oils
in shades of raw umber and cadmium lemon;
my paintbrush still dangles, wet,
from my other hand.

the creased wax paper on the table
carries swatches of color,
the potential energy of
my pigment-smudged hands;
you are still unfinished.

i am still unfinished.

she wanted it to be the way she felt when painting
fearless messy vivid
instead of this faded photograph of a staged existence
and click click click she winds the film
dreaming cadmium red and deep cerulean
and the tightening of drying oils on her
fingertips arm lip pulling and biting at flesh like an old lover
wet sable slides across canvas
sweet turpentine and resin saturating the room
like the smell of sweat and *** lingering over some half forgotten affair
and back to the taut fabric again
in flashes of titanium white
the intensity of vermilion
slipping with animal instinct into rich umber and raw sienna
and a final stroke of ultramarine
click

I want to see you sleeping after
tick-tocking like a wind-up clock all day,
falling like a taut of rope to the bottom of
a canyon to thud down into a pensive pile,
spreading your energy out as a silent spirit
across the dry river bed, the wind of you
whipping up sediments in the vast valleys beneath.

I want to bear witness to you catching my eye
from across the room cautiously,
covering the communion in cadmium lemonade tape,
tasty and afraid of being caught at the crime scene.
I'll throw you a line and you can come up gasping,
glorious and shining in the adolescent sun,
pulling in air where water should come.

I want to watch you write that paper you're working on.

I want to spot you screaming into oblivion,
washing over wonder with waxy fingers,
grabbing at the truth like five year olds ****** fireflies
out of a fleshy, dusk-dipped night
with mothers calling out "Come inside!" in loving, eager fright.

I want your eyes to glimmer something back at me,
meeting me in the cosmos to make the moon,
Mercury slinging stardust over his shoulder,
flirting with Venus and fighting her smolder,
meteorites crashing into each other,
creating solar systems in their wake.

I want to contemplate you on a flat plane,
feeling a frenzy of agitated hands
and fluctuating heart rate,
fault lines moving crazy,
crashing through geologic time
to make earthquakes feel human.

I want to stare at you saying things
that would color me crimson in broad daylight
as we breathe out heavy to the ancient incantations
of an early umber evening.

I want to see you
without a pocket mirror attached to my wrist,
cutting into my skin,
blood purple like lavender iced tea in the summer
and veins an undulating blue.

palette
russet, olive hues
yellow ochre
bird's egg blue

vastness held
within a bowl
turned over earth
to heal and hold

moisture from
the morning rain
thus the painter's
eye is trained

cadmium white
a fan-like brush
sketch mare's-tail clouds
an artist's touch

far horizon
grayish blue
a woman reclines
in the ****

her form reveals
the breasting hills
her hips the mountains
hushed and still

mid-ground
blurs of olive cacti
the saguaro
rise like hackles

Palo Verde lie in lumps
yellow flowers
bloom in clumps

point of brush
tweaks out the trees
turn of branches
stippled leaves

small are they
to catch the light
but the moisture
loss is slight

ochre foreground
brownish stones
blue-gray shadows
light source shown

grayish purple
prickly pears
ocotillo
here and there

spindly with splash of red
barrel cacti nod their heads

buff highlights
saguaro flowers
I could sit and
paint for hours

there's time to write
but now I pray
look upon these
words today

they paint the desert
you will find
If only in
the poet's mind!


SoulSurvivor aka
Write of Passage
2017

we’ve traded knowing apples with
lush green mothers of cadmium
and fiberglass
veins of copper,
silver, and gold

siliconed our brains to currents
of controlled thunder

we ****** flat breasted,
hand-sized puddles of glass like
only lesbians and lonely wives
can wish for

iron our souls out
in selfies of people
we wish we were

epoxied our hearts to
shallow resins of hope

we’ve
followed polyester roads
of truth

have we forgotten the
simple flesh of carbon?

the
naked
nitrogen
of our belly buttons?

the
happy
hydrogen
of our eye lids?

the
oxygen of ******?

**** me not
with metals of progress

but with
ancient odes of
skin and calcium
teeth

i’ll take the devil of
old

over this

--Kingston Rag--

It's 8 a.m. again,
And my mind reels
In memorium
As I reel up the sidewalk,
Down the street
To the emporium
To eat a ****** bagel
That costs far too much
For the taste of cadmium
That comes like a punch
As I bite into cream cheese.
How much?
Three fifteen?
I only got a dime,
Can you throw
This one to me?
It's not a crime,
I won't tell your boss.
I get tossed right out,
So I guess I'll walk
To the bench
By the bus stop
And hope it stops
To let me on.
If not I'll pawn
The watch my pops
Gave to me (it's gold),
The only thing
He bestowed
Upon his spawn
Besides pools
Of *****
On cool granite
Slabs that served
As a deck
For the wreck
Of a shack
I grew up in,
Plus drunken sins
I had to cover up
For him,
Because that schlup
Could never win.
'Drink up, drink up,
There's no more gin,
But there's mouthwash
In the cabinet,'
But he wasn't havin it,
So I got hit
And sent outside
To sleep on the bench
On which
I now reside
Waiting for this
******* bus
To give me a ride
Back to the Bucket.
**** it.

who knew that growing up,
feels a lot like growing thin?
who knew my weathered bones
would grow to hardly recognize the skin that they live in?

i’m tired
and when i say that
i mean more than just the sleepiness that seems to reside permanently around my collarbones.

i’m heavy
with the weight of converging adolescence and adulthood
like kissing life-milestone tectonic plates,
they bury us.

we spent the last of summer days soaking up what little sun the mountain range allotted us,
and the last of summer nights gathered closely around the burning ends of our post sunset cigarettes
murmuring that there must be more than this.

striving to make the grade without making ourselves insane.
substantiating our existences with substances and excess.
growing closer to these ragtag companions we’d patch-worked together in a few months time than friends we’d known for years,
this is family.
this is kin.

they say that nothing compares to the first breath of spring but i digress,
the first breath of freedom - that first whisper, no matter how tainted with ash and glitter and the ever-present impending air of responsibility it may be,
is truly incomparable.

but, on the first night you find yourself talking someone down from the dangerous concoction of stimulants and ego,
listening to them scream about how they hate the world, and you, and themselves,
remember your arboreal roots.

remember that there are trees that survive forest fires with their lives but not their branches.

that same night you will see in the mirror how resilient buds can bloom through ice, and concrete, and self-loathing.

you will find solace in persephone.
letting a piece of you die each and every winter seems a fair price for the rebirth of spring.

i cannot say that this will be the last night you find a friend on their bathroom floor,
like a child with matches, trying to strike away the unruly sprouts that have taken root under their skin
i cannot say with confidence that you will never find yourself there either.

there will be more forest fires coming your way
like a child with matches, you may start a few yourself.

but, darling, spring is around the corner
you may be mangled and gnarled and knotted,
but i have seen trees engulf steel, and watched as flora took back abandoned gardens
i have witnessed oceans of grass shoot up from ashes,

there is nothing manmade that the earth cannot take back
the earth will take you back,
there is still green within you.

count the dandelions you find poking their cadmium heads through asphalt,
remember inhabitance is not a matter of comfort but a matter of will.
feel the ripe bud of growth in the soles of your feet.
remember there is nothing wrong with returning to the dirt.

Ripe, bitter, sour and oh so sweet.
Dangling off of a Californian tree.
Living within peels so stringent and
containing cascading juices so pungent.
He leaves you wanting, aching to know more.
He lures you in with the irresistible sweetest of enchanting
songs and ballads.
But what you didn't know was, that the ending
melody left you in a note that made you feel as though
you were drowning in a sea of rotten,
forgotten, and lost once loved dreams.
You became addicted to his freshness,
to the zest of his scent.
You became seduced, captivated even.
You let yourself become vulnerable
and susceptible to his touch.
You slowly opened up your wounds.
You let your friable bandages flow free.
You even let him lead the grand dance.
You let him twirl and spin you to the point
of reaching a state of trance or reverie.
He took you on romantic evening picnics,
he brought you to the oldest of antique boutiques,
and he even painted you angelic
mosaics in oil.
Ones comparable to those grandiose and imposing
works' of the masters.
At last he casted you under his spell
and he enticed you once again.
He had the charm of a thousand
and he was spontaneous in all his ways.
He never failed to surprise you.
They say he had an oriental descent
and this would explain much.
But when you least expected it,
he touched your wounds.
You felt an unbearable pain,
and a strange surge flow through you.
It burned, to say the least.
You almost felt your incisions
blister under the effect of his acid.
His yellow and aureolin tint
seemed only to be a facade.
An illusion, a charade to the naked eye.
But in that moment you could see through it.
You looked at him with pain-struck eyes,
full of confusion and disappointment.
You couldn't really identify the look in his.
You realized that he really had nothing to do
with his cadmium yellowish golden tint.
You felt as though you were fainting.
You were sinking and all the sweet
memories you two shared, flooded your
sight.
But then he said, "look at your wounds"
and you did as he ordered.
You looked down and shook off the stupor
and came back to.
You looked at your wounds and
became staggered and managed a mere "thank you".
For your wounds were no longer swollen and irritated.
He had healed you.
So when life hands you lemons,
don't make lemonade.
No, instead care for those
misunderstood beings,
and tend to their needs.
Because the lemons in our lives
are all too prevalent and far too
misread.

i.

I canst not thanketh thee enough, for assuaging mine pang's
On earth, in heaven, on the dwarf planet's, in thy kiss of leaven;
When thou art down, I'll taketh thine frown, when broken, when hopeless, I shalt giveth thee mine own gladness; lifting thy smile.

ii.

In cities, in town's, aloft the skies, on the ground, in the open, in the wild, cadmium yellow floret's, mine Asian child, in thy eye's;
In thy laugh, passed the noise, of hellish mess, passed the pain's, madness and stress; I shalt always be by thy waistside, mine pet.

iii.

In ourn life, and beyond ourn death's, we shalt meeteth at the place of holiness, tis not a place sculpted by hand's of men;
Tis a place of dominion's and kingdom's. Inside God's house wherein we shalt be in peace, the angel's shalt singeth, halo sleep.




©Brandon Nagley
©Earl jane Nagley (Pookie) dedication
©Lonesome poet's poetry

She lit her cancer sticks with the candles that she lit up with her eyes when she was lit up, bouncing up and down on that strangers thighs. So she smiled. When you smile you’re happy and with her it appeared so otherwise her dark eyes wouldn’t have that ****** glow.

Now have you ever thought maybe we women are all actresses and this thing we call life is a performance. Just because she showed some skin didn’t mean she’d decrease her value, as a star it takes lifetimes over lifetimes to dim. So she sat on Venus and talked to the goddess, not a gas planet but she spun on the rings. Living on the edge, almost falling off the rims. After a few times around she did get sad and her world was like Alaska in the winter. Cold and Dark for days after days until that season ended.

But this wasn’t sports, so when would this end. Yes, this wasn’t sports because this wasn’t just a game. Well in the end it was kind of like sports with the angry fans and sweating athletes trying to please people who paid for this event. It was a lot like that last part, pleasing fat angry lonely beer drinking patriotic men. Taking clothing articles and undergarments one at a time off her skin she would try her best to play the game, please the audience and still win.

But what did it mean to win. To get a lump sum of cash like this was a boxing match? It kinda is, to try to reason that living the label of a negative stereotype could somehow be good for you? Beating yourself up on things bad for your body before you fought that bear physically, just so you could leave 30 minutes later with a decent state of mind and to be healthy mentally.
Healthy? Now what is that, a good beating heart to be thin, in america we can’t be fat. But we are, fat in our stacks that go to 1 out of the 100 people that live in this country. Fat, yeah we’re fat inhaling McDonalds because it’s all the other 99% of us can afford. It’s illegal to farm on our own because we might provide something healthy, something that’ll keep us alive.

So this cigarette is as natural as it gets, and the horse tranquilizer inside of it takes her to a prairie where she earned her fake name Black Beauty because that horses eyes reminded her of her own, and when she looked deep enough on a sunny day she could actually see the reflection of herself. And as she takes another hit of the Cadmium she got vibes of energy and flashed back like a campfire flashlight to the days when she carefully inspected the batteries to make sure she was putting them in the remote correctly.

How is it that her careful eye has boiled itself down to making sure a middle aged mans ***** goes inside of her correctly, bandaged with a ****** like her brain will need to be bandaged with gauze because she decided those cigarettes weren’t keeping her sane enough. These men aren’t reliable so she’ll die in the hospital bed she can’t even call her own for she forgot her name. She’s struggling to pay forth for the 1 million dollar X-ray so Mr. 1% can hopefully try that electrifying fish someday. In her last hours she’ll regret every man she let lay a hand on the small of her back, every man she ****** off like a summer snack, every man who labeled her worth on the minutes out of the hour she was there and by the ****** favor.

My lesson here is to never sell yourself like she did, ****** or no ******, a baby and 3 hours of labor is just 18 years of reminding you that 1 hour with you was worth 225 of their dollars, 9 months of your year, and a new label to a single mothered child who would seep infinite tears due to the lack of knowledge of why mother loathes you and why mommy’s eyes are as dark as the words she doesn’t speak to you. And hopefully this child will grow up relieving it’s blues though rhythmetic clues to his or her life, just as I am telling the story of a girl I met and learned for two days who just happened to be a *******.

habit is at
my elbow, tho
crouching
scenes not small too
flank the left
ulna. hell,

w a flick
of the wrist
i could commission
a fistless head squawk bloom. but this

hag
viscous, if
lag of lead and
cadmium sapped, ack-

nowledges
a vision,
also. all

have a voice,
no matter how
crude or

elemental.
the hydra, for
instance, has a mouth-
ful of
membranous
know
how.

jet-void smaller daff-
odils milling and
mauling tall, i am beautiful
because i  
am here
amid it all
for such
a little bit

a C. Bukowski poem and bean with bacon soup with regular crackers
I dipped in and burned every bit of my mouth swallowed the reactive mess fast, like a nuclear thing it burnt all the way down.
I felt the way I did when I kissed last Sunday, that twenty dollar *****
on her nether lips, I dipped my cadmium rod into a beer, after
stopping what may react just like Fermi did.
Satisfied, I cooled off, and farted away bubbly drinking
the rest of the night.

When Dad died
I had this nightmare
of him standing
by the bedside
ten feet tall
at least
trying to say
something
but the air
only congealed
into a
black paste.

A few of
those dreams
& sleep keeps
its distance.
So I go
running,
not to escape it
there is
no escape
it colonizes
the mind,
but to exhaust
the bones
so old Hymnos
can descend
on his one
charred wing,
and mute
the memory
of Dad
in the
hospital bed,
waxy gasps
collecting
in the air.

Tonight
I run west
with the
gale wind
that rubs
against the slate.
Along the
crannied angles
of the money houses
where windows churn
with the cadmium glow
of happy families.

The invisible gale,
the voiceless flat
slabs of slate.

Burning fire death curdling scream because I’m back from the dead *******. Anger is an energy that I cannot ignore.
When I am worn down to a nub it is the soul seed,
Which I can hold onto,
My psychic anchor in my hour of need.
The moment when you have broken through to the other side
And you explode in a thousand fiery shards.
The collapse is imminent.
There is no avoiding the finale.

I washed my hair today with three in one body wash, shampoo, and conditioner.

It has come time for someone to say the facts in blunt and bold terms.
A Cartesian scaling of reality
There are no facts

In a society founded on genocide and warped by decadence,
I find no solace in bitter resentment.

Thriving in ennui, when the real demons come about
I parse together bits of my consciousness in a frantic search of clarity.
No solace,
And I have become the neurotic eye of the mid mind watch dog.
Sailing into Armageddon for want of heroic end,
Plastered to the seat back with sweat.

The carefully constructed outer shell of my being disintegrated in front of me in a mesh of color and light, and they said there is no god.
Enter the Thing

In the desert ****** up the *** by a sordid English poet, religion finds all the seekers, otherwise its madness.
And without truth, Its just a ride, we
play the game, for it is the only thing that we
really have—As  I begin to calm down, two months later,
I realize the folly of my actions.—Actually, **** that nonsense, folly is a lie,
there only Is.

Is there evil in truth? truth in evil?
And is evil not subjective?
For the fathers made the call.
Doth thou do what thou hath
For truth, subjective as well, is an infinite path,
Gödel’s law.

I write with groomed fingernails on a keyboard of obsidian-blocked letters and cadmium laced circuitry.

At our core we are neither inherently evil nor good,
Intelligent or stupid,
Narcissistic, altruistic.
life is Never simple. ‘No secret ingredient’
And pity the swine who clumber over the word nor

If you think you have found the answer to anything, especially in real life, and especially if you can write that answer down in a sentence, you’re Dead Wrong.

So what is there? You think I don’t know where this is going?

Lines written with acid and syrup tapped deep
Is there logic in reason? You know, the what’chamacall
Aren’t we all
Dominated by utopian views
of manifest destiny; the End All be All.

And so what of the fall; the universe that cares not?
No matter how many mushrooms I take,
Reality Still Exists. Then, I almost forgot

And This Beacon of Hope,
Will it save us?
Will we win?
Is there a win?

Where is the end Dark lord of the nether?
Does begging this question get me closer to the truth?
Does it even get me closer to explaining what I mean?
The man selling purses on the corner, patent leather
I cry out to you! For a soul’s desperate answer

But **** that defeatist ******* also, this journey must come to its bitter bite.
And flight from the truth is cowardice divine.

“What reason is there to believe that humanity will not overcome the next world crisis? There is no reason to believe that it won’t. If the universe is infinite isn’t every point the center? Why else does reason even exist, why else do we see ourselves as the masters of the universe?”-Bill Hicks

Here is the closest I have come to any conclusions ever in this Painfully Obvious vision

The universe is chaos,
Our soul is order.

We draw the ductile copper wire through chaotic blackness.
This is our being, it is our tool, take that as you will.
A fiber of a thread on the ocean floor vs. the divine sepulcher

I have lived my life bucking everything that didn’t come from myself, but in vain
Because even these are chains.
I am my own slave master.

In the depths of true evil is the darkest knowledge
Is morality but a thin mask? Fear and Weakness
Is there any difference? Dawn on the killing fields
Dew on the earlobe of a dead man
Drips off and drowns an ant

Back on my so-called Conclusions.
I cannot say I still hold any of them
Even though I typed that sentence not thirty seconds ago.
That man who drew conclusion is now a stranger in the past.
There are no conclusions to draw.

Sometimes I wish I could **** without mercy, if only to know I am really free. Sometimes I wish for suffering, if only to give me some obvious direction. Sometimes I wish for death, if only to clear my skull of all these pesky thoughts.

On the train
A tunnel under New York,
The unseen interlocking teeth
The Filthy steel grating
Narrow shafts of brilliant day shown through
Illuminate the works of unknown artists
Cartoonish letters hastily scrawled and placed
Directly in the light
The only light
Of the tunnel of the New York train
There it passes, and another and another
Each precisely placed
In the thick blackness laced
With light
For your viewing pleasure

And So Spake Urgnd Lichmae The Prophet of anarchic Tremor, Schlock and Paradox. Of the author nothing is known or will be known.

You're so
afraid of what
they might think
even though
your cheeks are rosy
and your wrists
are perfect
Your eyelashes are
in a row
and your veins take
vermillion
crimson
cadmium blood
to your heart.

You're so afraid
of what they might
think
but you
can feel
the moon light
the sun light
the morning, dusky, midnight
light on
every inch of you.

and you believe in
miracles.
and you believe that
light will always win.
My God, that means
you're perfect and it
means that
I'm in love.

i can't.
when trimming the calico hairs on skinly jaw.
like trip-hop leaching out of your pearly *******:
like magic-jesus.
with porcelain around her
animal seeds.
where i can find:
the swirling of Listerine flushing down the side of your throat.
like swabbing for cells from the floor of your tongue

like swapping girls.
or
(like) picnicking       deep inside
flower-bait.blue
trilling Gatorade apology/  
simulating love.

and even now. inside the folds of dead house plants  
i would be okay if you stained my teeth
with anything
you
had
to offer.
horse-whole in the water-
milky for you-
white as cuticles.

like the /**** me/ hum of the A/V cart
hooked up and left running:
nothing.
stuffy
in the boxed we built

i am more perfect than camouflage
like pipilotti rist screaming her lungs to pale ribbons.
as kimono as Kiki was real
she- as brave as anything

i found it out.
as fragrant as
the deepest rooted thing-
blissfull as the afternoon.
as
red
as good cadmium.
and that is ******* red

my painting teacher once told the class
"you'll never miss it if you don't know about it"
he said some paints weren't good for us
& even though they looked better, with richer, more brilliant colors,
they weren't safe for us.
too much exposure to them could poison us;
for they included a toxic component.
we never used these paints,
and so we never missed them.
i wish i could say the same about you.
~a poem about cadmium colors

What a strange instrument of
desire - how can it be? I
am cut out of flesh and
twenty god forsaken years
later I am wanting another
form inside
me.

I do not feel
it.
Warm, is
that how it
is?
I am
shown.

A grand view
of the miraculous
***** of
man. He is
curt, red and
ready.

Will my body react as
an infant does to
citrus? Lemon cadmium,
squeeze and
shriek?
Charred, boiling hot
like thick wax.