Katydids and fireflies have the levee tonight
Swat team held the day

There is peace now
and peeping neighbors
emptying horror
among themselves in whispers
left to wonder
‘bout the screaming and the barking
of earlier that day

“Put down your weapon and come out
with your hands up”

Again and again
the demand of surrender
Total
There is no other way

“Let them go!
Come out! come out with your hands up!
It will be okay”

…and he argues in his mind with the shame and loss
…and the shame and "No…it will not be okay"
He had hit her! Hit her with the Gun
again and again…with the gun
Of his demands
The gun of his power
to make her!
The gun of his despair
He had hit her
the dog is barking
His children scream!

“Put down the gun and come out
with your hands up!”

How many more times will they say it!
for all the neighbors to hear
on a loud speaker
Surrender!
in front of his children
Had she cheated?
Had he lost his job?
Could he lose any more to the screaming?
to the "junk"?
to the flashing lights?
to the window's smashing?
Fence run down?
Lobbing
canisters of tear gas
into the room's stinging eyes
where there is no room
where there is no time

"I would never hurt them!
You!
You know!"
"Let them go!"
"You left me!"

“Put down your weapon and come out
with your hands up!”

It is all too loud
It is all too much
as you put the gun against your temple and…
pull the trigger

Words
     that constantly run through my mind and fill my vision
     I can't get enough
Canisters and bottles
     that bring me peace when I'm done dealing
His hands
     that make me shake with desire and terror
Hello Poetry
      -- now I have somewhere to put everything
Connor Jessup and Finnick Odair
     because I'm a fangirl
Pain
     and it follows me everywhere
Sunsets and starry nights
     that I can't stop drawing
Photography
     -- always
My religion and beliefs
     -- I'll never sell out

Thousand minstrels woke within me,
"Our music's in the hills; "—
Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-colored rills.
Up!—If thou knew'st who calls
To twilight parks of beech and pine,
High over the river intervals,
Above the ploughman's highest line,
Over the owner's farthest walls;—
Up!—where the airy citadel
O'erlooks the purging landscape's swell.
Let not unto the stones the day
Her lily and rose, her sea and land display;
Read the celestial sign!
Lo! the South answers to the North;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;
A greater Spirit bids thee forth,
Than the gray dreams which thee detain.

Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades;
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrive the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound.
Accept the bounty of thy birth;
Taste the lordship of the earth.

I heard and I obeyed,
Assured that he who pressed the claim,
Well-known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.

Ere yet the summoning voice was still,
I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed
Like ample banner flung abroad
Round about, a hundred miles,
With invitation to the sea, and to the bordering isles.

In his own loom's garment drest,
By his own bounty blest,
Fast abides this constant giver,
Pouring many a cheerful river;
To far eyes, an aërial isle,
Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The country's core,
Inspirer, prophet evermore,
Pillar which God aloft had set
So that men might it not forget,
It should be their life's ornament,
And mix itself with each event;
Their calendar and dial,
Barometer, and chemic phial,
Garden of berries, perch of birds,
Pasture of pool-haunting herds,
Graced by each change of sum untold,
Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.

The Titan minds his sky-affairs,
Rich rents and wide alliance shares;
Mysteries of color daily laid
By the great sun in light and shade,
And, sweet varieties of chance,
And the mystic seasons' dance,
And thief-like step of liberal hours
Which thawed the snow-drift into flowers.
O wondrous craft of plant and stone
By eldest science done and shown!
Happy, I said, whose home is here,
Fair fortunes to the mountaineer!
Boon nature to his poorest shed
Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.
Intent I searched the region round,
And in low hut my monarch found.
He was no eagle and no earl,
Alas! my foundling was a churl,
With heart of cat, and eyes of bug,
Dull victim of his pipe and mug;
Woe is me for my hopes' downfall!
Lord! is yon squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead?
Time out of mind this forge of ores,
Quarry of spars in mountain pores,
Old cradle, hunting ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear, and deer;
Well-built abode of many a race;
Tower of observance searching space;
Factory of river, and of rain;
Link in the alps' globe-girding chain;
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the Eternal standeth well,
And what obedient nature can,—
Is this colossal talisman
Kindly to creature, blood, and kind,
And speechless to the master's mind?

I thought to find the patriots
In whom the stock of freedom roots.
To myself I oft recount
Tales of many a famous mount.—
Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells,
Roys, and Scanderbegs, and Tells.
Here now shall nature crowd her powers,
Her music, and her meteors,
And, lifting man to the blue deep
Where stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight;
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes,
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see:
And, by the moral of his place,
Hint summits of heroic grace;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To fight pollution of the mind;
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong,
The insanity of towns to stem
With simpleness for stratagem.
But if the brave old mould is broke,
And end in clowns the mountain-folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke,—
Sink, O mountain! in the swamp,
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lap!
Perish like leaves the highland breed!
No sire survive, no son succeed!

Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men;—
Found I not a minstrel seed,
But men of bone, and good at need.
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland people,
Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,
Strong as giant, slow as child,
Smoking in a squalid room,
Where yet the westland breezes come.
Close hid in those rough guises lurk
Western magians, here they work;
Sweat and season are their arts,
Their talismans are ploughs and carts;
And well the youngest can command
Honey from the frozen land,
With sweet hay the swamp adorn,
Change the running sand to corn,
For wolves and foxes, lowing herds,
And for cold mosses, cream and curds;
Weave wood to canisters and mats,
Drain sweet maple-juice in vats.
No bird is safe that cuts the air,
From their rifle or their snare;
No fish in river or in lake,
But their long hands it thence will take;
And the country's iron face
Like wax their fashioning skill betrays,
To fill the hollows, sink the hills,
Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills,
And fit the bleak and howling place
For gardens of a finer race,
The world-soul knows his own affair,
Fore-looking when his hands prepare
For the next ages men of mould,
Well embodied, well ensouled,
He cools the present's fiery glow,
Sets the life pulse strong, but slow.
Bitter winds and fasts austere.
His quarantines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he breathes his boys.
They bide their time, and well can prove,
If need were, their line from Jove,
Of the same stuff, and so allayed,
As that whereof the sun is made;
And of that fibre quick and strong
Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song.
Now in sordid weeds they sleep,
Their secret now in dulness keep.
Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,
These the masters who can teach,
Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords,
These they turn in other fashion
Than the writer or the parson.
I can spare the college-bell,
And the learned lecture well.
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For the hardy English root
Thrives here unvalued underfoot.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground and never soars,
While Jake retorts and Reuben roars,
Tough and screaming as birch-bark,
Goes like bullet to its mark,
While the solid curse and jeer
Never balk the waiting ear:
To student ears keen-relished jokes
On truck, and stock, and farming-folks,—
Nought the mountain yields thereof
But savage health and sinews tough.

On the summit as I stood,
O'er the wide floor of plain and flood,
Seemed to me the towering hill
Was not altogether still,
But a quiet sense conveyed;
If I err not, thus it said:

Many feet in summer seek
Betimes my far-appearing peak;
In the dreaded winter-time,
None save dappling shadows climb
Under clouds my lonely head,
Old as the sun, old almost as the shade.
And comest thou
To see strange forests and new snow,
And tread uplifted land?
And leavest thou thy lowland race,
Here amid clouds to stand,
And would'st be my companion,
Where I gaze
And shall gaze
When forests fall, and man is gone,
Over tribes and over times
As the burning Lyre
Nearing me,
With its stars of northern fire,
In many a thousand years.

Ah! welcome, if thou bring
My secret in thy brain;
To mountain-top may muse's wing
With good allowance strain.
Gentle pilgrim, if thou know
The gamut old of Pan,
And how the hills began,
The frank blessings of the hill
Fall on thee, as fall they will.
'Tis the law of bush and stone—
Each can only take his own.
Let him heed who can and will,—
Enchantment fixed me here
To stand the hurts of time, until
In mightier chant I disappear.
If thou trowest
How the chemic eddies play
Pole to pole, and what they say,
And that these gray crags
Not on crags are hung,
But beads are of a rosary
On prayer and music strung;
And, credulous, through the granite seeming
Seest the smile of Reason beaming;
Can thy style-discerning eye
The hidden-working Builder spy,
Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din,
With hammer soft as snow-flake's flight;
Knowest thou this?
O pilgrim, wandering not amiss!
Already my rocks lie light,
And soon my cone will spin.
For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune,
Rhyme the pipe, and time the warder,
Cannot forget the sun, the moon.
Orb and atom forth they prance,
When they hear from far the rune,
None so backward in the troop,
When the music and the dance
Reach his place and circumstance,
But knows the sun-creating sound,
And, though a pyramid, will bound.

Monadnoc is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among,
But well I know, no mountain can
Measure with a perfect man;
For it is on Zodiack's writ,
Adamant is soft to wit;
And when the greater comes again,
With my music in his brain,
I shall pass as glides my shadow
Daily over hill and meadow.

Through all time
I hear the approaching feet
Along the flinty pathway beat
Of him that cometh, and shall come,—
Of him who shall as lightly bear
My daily load of woods and streams,
As now the round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams,
Whose timbers, as they silent float,
Alps and Caucasus uprear,
And the long Alleghanies here,
And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all their history.

Every morn I lift my head,
Gaze o'er New England underspread
South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,
From Katshill east to the sea-bound.
Anchored fast for many an age,
I await the bard and sage,
Who in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed,
Shall string Monadnoc like a bead.
Comes that cheerful troubadour,
This mound shall throb his face before,
As when with inward fires and pain
It rose a bubble from the plain.
When he cometh, I shall shed
From this well-spring in my head
Fountain drop of spicier worth
Than all vintage of the earth.
There's fruit upon my barren soil
Costlier far than wine or oil;
There's a berry blue and gold,—
Autumn-ripe its juices hold,
Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancor, Athens' art,
Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight;
I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat,
Bread to eat and juice to drink,
So the thoughts that he shall think
Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars.

He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South-Cove and City-wharf;
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath,—
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow;
Open the daunting map beneath,—
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His city tops a glimmering haze:
I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding;—
See there the grim gray rounding
Of the bullet of the earth
Whereon ye sail,
Tumbling steep
In the uncontinented deep;—
He looks on that, and he turns pale:
'Tis even so, this treacherous kite,
Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,
Thoughtless of its anxious freight,
Plunges eyeless on for ever,
And he, poor parasite,—
Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,
Who is the captain he knows not,
Port or pilot trows not,—
Risk or ruin he must share.
I scowl on him with my cloud,
With my north wind chill his blood,
I lame him clattering down the rocks,
And to live he is in fear.
Then, at last, I let him down
Once more into his dapper town,
To chatter frightened to his clan,
And forget me, if he can.
As in the old poetic fame
The gods are blind and lame,
And the simular despite
Betrays the more abounding might,
So call not waste that barren cone
Above the floral zone,
Where forests starve:
It is pure use;
What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind,
Of a celestial Ceres, and the Muse?

Ages are thy days,
Thou grand expressor of the present tense,
And type of permanence,
Firm ensign of the fatal Being,
Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief
That will not bide the seeing.
Hither we bring
Our insect miseries to the rocks,
And the whole flight with pestering wing
Vanish and end their murmuring,
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,
Which, who can tell what mason laid?
Spoils of a front none need restore,
Replacing frieze and architrave;
Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave,
Still is the haughty pile *****
Of the old building Intellect.
Complement of human kind,
Having us at vantage still,
Our sumptuous indigence,
O barren mound! thy plenties fill.
We fool and prate,—
Thou art silent and sedate.
To million kinds and times one sense
The constant mountain doth dispense,
Shedding on all its snows and leaves,
One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.
Thou seest, O watchman tall!
Our towns and races grow and fall,
And imagest the stable Good
For which we all our lifetime *****,
In shifting form the formless mind;
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.
Thou in our astronomy
An opaker star,
Seen, haply, from afar,
Above the horizon's hoop.
A moment by the railway troop,
As o'er some bolder height they speed,—
By circumspect ambition,
By errant Gain,
By feasters, and the frivolous,—
Recallest us,
And makest sane.
Mute orator! well-skilled to plead,
And send conviction without phrase,
Thou dost supply
The shortness of our days,
And promise, on thy Founder's truth,
Long morrow to this mortal youth.

there's actually a laughing gas
epidemic in this little
corner of england...
    it might have died out, but...
there was a time when you
could have picked up these
enigmatic "******" bullet-sized
metal "containers"...
           they were lining the streets,
thrown out of cars,
or whatever...
            i had to ask this drunkard
schizosphernic what they were
when i presented the example to him...
all he said was:
            'laughing gas.'
        apparently there are places
in the world where syringes and ******
are the problem...
  where i'm from... the solution is apparently
laughing gas...
     i am the most loud-mouthed laughing
person around here, so i figured:
   am i really that inspirational?
      i'm still the only person found laughing
around here...
        but i could have told them that:
i once inhaled a balloon containing
   "laughing gas" in a club in edinburgh...
   for some reason i didn't exactly laugh...
                it was placebo...
fake, ******* gave me fake...
                               i was expecting the old
testimony of patients in dentistry...
  like that myth of tying a string around
the tooth that gave you aching pain
and then tying the other end of the string to
a door... and then opening the door
and the tooth being pulled out...
           ****... why not? hades? zeus?
the minotaur?! hercules?!
                o.k., we have achilles and we have
homer... and we also have hesiod, ovid and horace.
   but around here... it's not glasgow,
it's not ****** and syringes that's the problem...
it's these ****** rifle bullet sized canisters of
people inhaling laughing gas...
                 let's just say that history
of what was and isn't, but what really was can
be translated to literally applicable via
   metaphor...  -osis...
                             it was 2016 and these ******-rifle
sized "bullets" were really found on the streets...
like i "said", it's not glasgow...
             then again laughing gas in edinburgh
was placebo... and i too thought that the middle-class
******* from england would prescribe me
something efficient during a night-out;
                         evidently they didn't.
they diluted that **** like they diluted absinthe
to the point that you don't really hallucinate from
the wormwood that's missing in the 21st century
translation...
                            ****... who was it? ginsberg!
yeah, he was on laughing gas once... took it
for recreational purposes...
                        absinthe these days is just shrek *****...
double the strength and not much else...
             drank it a few times... ok... envy sambuca
given the liquid rice... liquorice / lee-co reesh.
                   it's true though, a year apart from
when i'm writing this "article", these streets
were peppered by these ******-rifle-bullet-imitation
canisters...
      and as my sources claimed... laughing gas
canisters...
                     imagine a laughing gas epidemic...
what the hell do you do with it?
            how do you begin treating laughter as
a disease?
             is it like sydenham's chorea?
       or is it some sort of symptom of engaging in
kuru? and then the jack sparrow comic entrance?
  it was, don't know if it is: but i certainly
know it was laughing gas that caused this uproar
in the english county of essex.

O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!

Halloween Poetry: Dark, Eerie, Haunting and Scary poems about Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Reanimated Corpses and "Things that go Bump in the Night!"



Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch

Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?

Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound,
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?



The Witch
by Michael R. Burch

her fingers draw into claws
she cackles through rotting teeth...
u ask "are there witches?"
… pshaw! …
(yet she has my belief)



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross ― such common things.

Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.

We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he earnestly prays to find us...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

Black waters,
deep and dark and still...
all men have passed this way,
or will.

Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the River Styx to their eternal destination, has been portrayed by artists and poets as a vampiric figure.



Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch

The Halloween monsters, incensed,
keep howling, and may be UNFENCED!!!
They’re angry that children with treats
keep throwing their trash IN THE STREETS!!!

You can check it out on your computer:
Google says, “Please don’t be a POLLUTER!!!”
The Halloween monsters agree,
so if you’re a litterbug, FLEE!!!

Kids, if you’d like more treats this year
and don’t want to cower in FEAR,
please make all the mean monsters happy,
and they’ll hand out sweet treats like they’re sappy!

So if you eat treats on the drag
and don't want huge monsters to nag,
please put all loose trash in your BAG!!!

NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams

of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise

to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,

while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies...

it's Halloween!



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell

Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.



All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term “banshee”) and, eventually, to the Druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgan le Fay and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil’s
fen...

if nevermore again.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot

born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,

dreaming of blood,
her fangs ― white ― baring,

revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring...



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels ― winged,
shimmering, misunderstood ―
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.

Their eyes ― hypnotic, alluring ―
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather...
to see, to touch, to feel.

Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s ―
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and while I hear everything,
he says nothing I understand.

The moon shines ― maniacal, queer ― as he takes my hand whispering

Our time has come... And so we stroll together creaking docks
where the sea sends sickening things
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes.
He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine;
my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard, his face bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes ―
the pale dead.
After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
only half-remembered.
Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
blood-engorged, but never sated
since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.

Published by The HyperTexts



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her...

How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast ―
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.



The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch

O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!

The poem above was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.



Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
― the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore ―
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely smothered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea...

their skeletal love ― impossibility!



Dark Gothic
by Michael R. Burch

Her fingers are filed into talons;
she smiles with carnivorous teeth...
You ask, “Are there vampires?”
― Get real! ―
(Yet she has my belief.)



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.


Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
― Michael R. Burch, after Plato


Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
― Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus



Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
lifeless at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
― Michael R. Burch, after Simonides



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire―
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?


Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me―progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically―her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure
to a consuming emptiness.

We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture―
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts
to the first note.

Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

The night is dark and scary―
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star ...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother’s love
and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit!



the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.

There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.

There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.

There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.



Duet
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad!
How worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we laughed together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .

Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement―in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us―our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .

Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .

No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .



Horror
by Michael R. Burch

What I ache to say is beyond saying―
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.

No, there are no words for the horror
as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...

What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.



Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch

We are all dying, haunted by life―
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.

With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.

We are the dying, enamored of “life”―
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.

We have only one thought―Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.

We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.



Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch

Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.

But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.

So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!

I lie, pallid vision of man―the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.

I love her beyond and despite even shame.



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone―unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ...



Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson,
the very color of blood,
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers,
men have forgotten it now,
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there,
four horrid dark creatures―chattering, bickering.
Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair;

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

“We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.”
As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm.

“Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
“Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.”

“There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .”

“But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.”
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . .
“Ah, but red is the color of blood!”

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise . . .
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something old and pale and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and with tentacles about it squirming,
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh,
knowing man’s demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.

Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her ...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun―
my dark twin, unreal . . .

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel . . .

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.

He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.

She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale―
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.



A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.



An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says―“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”



East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch

He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.

Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.

He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.

He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to *****,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch

Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.

At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.

It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause

between odd bites to sniff through the ****,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...

Evil, the rat.



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood . . .
we have that, at least, in common.
And it’s true that I found him,
shriveled with hunger,
shivering in the desert,
skeletal, emaciate,
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it’s true, I believe,
that I offered him something to eat―
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great “temptation”
of which I’m accused.

He was a likeable chap, really,
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God―
how hard He is to know,
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant,
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave,
imploring his “Master” on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun . . .

We are nonplused, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant . . .

We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade―
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . .
Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned,
complaining that I am no longer “pure?”

I threw myself before you, and you frowned,
so full of noble chastity, renowned
for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark

I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips
were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark
to light the cold dominions of your heart.

What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim
upon these territories, cold and dark,
do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light

my heart in death and leave me ashen-white,
as you are white, extinguished by the Night?



Liar
by Michael R. Burch

Chiller than a winter day,
quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams,
eyes wilder than the crystal spray
of silver streams,
you fill my dying thoughts.

In moments drugged with sleep
I have heard your earnest voice
leaving me no choice
save heed your hushed demands
and meet you in the sands
of an ageless arctic world.

There I kiss your lifeless lips
as we quiver in the shoals
of a sea that endlessly rolls
to meet the shattered shore.

Wild waves weep, "Nevermore,"
as you bend to stroke my hair.

That land is harsh and drear,
and that sea is bleak and wild;
only your lips are mild
as you kiss my weary eyes,
whispering lovely lies
of what awaits us there
in a land so stark and bare,
beyond all hope . . . and care.

This is one of my early poems, written as a high school sophomore or junior.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



Keywords/Tags: Halloween, dark, supernatural, skeleton, witch, ghost, vampire, monsters, ghoul, werewolf, goblins, occult, mrbhalloween, mrbhallow, mrbdark

Published as the collection "Halloween Poems"

I'm alone and I'm feeling stuck I feel the weight of an elephant sitting on my chest and  the pressure is unbearable. I'm in a different place but I feel like I see the same faces. I feel like somebody is after me and wants to **** me but I feel like that person lives inside of me. My stomach hurts because the pressure is building so I let out a yell from the very bottom of it. I can feel a hot rush to my eyeballs as my brain decompresses. I can feel the pressure agai Yelling is the only thing that helps. Still, I grab the first thing that I see and I throw it, it just happened to be a backpack through a windshield with a laptop in it. I want to hurt everyone who's ever hurt me and then I realize it was me hurting myself this whole time so I inflict another wound upon myself.



How did I wake up in prison again today when in last nights dream I got so far away. I love running away in my dreams because though I know I should be tired I never run out of breath so I'm able to cover quite a bit of ground when I run away from this place in my dreams. I also like to  breathe underwater. Right before I went to prison I was still flying freely in my dreams I could literally run and jump and fly from place to place but after three years in, I can't seem to get off of the ground. I'm wondering if it's some subconscious thing going on.



The guards yells "stand by for chow!" With elongated syllables and his voice travels down the run with purpose. This old prison has the classic looking Steele prison bars you see in cartoons and movies growing up, it's actually quite eerie. I throw my sheet over my bed and tuck the blanket into the edges so it sits tightly around the mattress and fits snugly in the 6 foot steel soap container type mattress frame that is attached to the wall in a way that you can for this frame up and ******* to make your 6' x 9' space a little bit bigger . I only do this after I put my books in a stack at the end of it because they were spread out with no organization like sub group of war refugees. I turn off the TV, click the desk lamp,  press stop on my tape player, but I let the fan still run. I fold up the drawing I was working on into my dictionary of symbols along with a couple of the poems that were simultaneously being worked on - it's like I have to work on 10 different things at a time to keep my mind occupied. I'm stuck in the cell 23-24 hours a day with ADHD and I was the type of kid to wonder the city for 16 hours on my bike.  I like it because I feel like I'm getting good at 10 different things at once and though I know i it's pretty much impossible to focus on more than one thing at a time I set aside small focuses for each thing in bits and pieces and then go to the next thing, it's quite refreshing to be honest.



I throw some water on my face brush my teeth and I comb my hair back  after I put on a fresh T-shirt, some new pants and my new shoes . Even though I'm wearing all orange I want to look the best I can because it makes me feel good. On the walk to the chow hall we have to go down the stairs and central unit in Florence, Arizona. We all squeeze shoulder to shoulder on the tight run of cells and have to walk Down five flights of stairs and everybody is in a rush but still acting like there just walking casual it's pretty funny to see people do casual speed walks. Everybody's cracking jokes and excited because   Tonight we get pizza and we only get it a couple times every six weeks for they have the menu on a six week schedule. It might taste a little bit cardboardy but who cares it's been years since we've actually had a real slice.  And if you bring some salsa with a little bit of your own cheese you can actually fix the pizza up to where it's quite delectable.  



We pass through the old metal doors and you could fill the air blow from above where the door fan is. As I walk into the chow hall, I can feel tension among the other inmates - it feels like when the lowest frequency on a sound scale with a bass comes in really deep at the bottom of your stomach and a high pitch of the top of your ear that is out of tune and doesn't sit well. You can always tell when something is about to happen because everybody gets quiet and you can feel it in your stomach it's almost like the same feeling of fear and anxiety because the guy who's going to get gotten never knows it's him. I give the guard my last name and I get in line to get my pizza. The food trays come out of the hole in the wall  pretty fast -  inmates that work inside of the kitchen have this down to a science and their muscle memory and pattern recognition is that of an expert sous chef.   Pizza corn jello and a cup for the potent artificially sweetened juice they give us. I'm going to sit down in the middle tables because they have the tables sectioned off for people of different color the white boys sit with them white boys the black people sit with the black people usually closest to the door. The paisas (Mexican national)  sit with each other, the Chiefs have their own tables among  the Mexican Americans. I never sit closest to the wall because if you sit at the back table closest to the wall that means you're striving to have prison political ties and that is something that never interested me because though I am doing five years that is still a temporary stay and I did not want to join a prison gang. But when you're on the higher yards like central unit everybody is pretty much down for the cause so sometimes I will sit back there with homies. Once seated I grab my squeeze cheese from my right pocket, bite a  small piece of the corner off the packet and and squeeze it onto my pizza. I  also apply  some hot sauce and I get o have my friends pizza because he owed me from last nights 49ers game with a bet he lost. This story was probably believable up until the point I said the 49ers won.



while all this is happening in the back of my mind I know something is about to pop off because I could feel it in my stomach. once you know you're good then you're good as far as not being the one about to get stabbed or stomped on but there is always a lingering thought in the back of my head like I hope it's not me that they're about to get. I know it wasn't going to be a prison riot because we all would have known we all would've been prepared with knives ready.



I started eating. Yup cardboardy. Now a little bit faster because my gut told me something was about to pop off and about 3/4 through my second piece of pizza I heard it.



Attacks are usually really quiet in prison usually you hear the stomping of feet, grunting and groaning or slamming against walls so you can feel the wall shake. unless the person that is getting attacked by anywhere from 1 to 4 people starts screaming for his life and begging the guards for help.



This particular attack started with hoofbeats feet on the ground and punches landing and struggling breathing heavy and grunting. You never really want to look directly at what's going down because you don't want to draw attention to the situation or yourself if the guards aren't  paying attention. Attacks like this committed in the middle of a chow hall typically indicate that the person being attacked has to go and is no longer allowed to stay in the general population with us.



I'm Going to say which particular race or who was attacking who because specifics can get a little bit sticky if you are journaling your experience I would hate to offend any particular race or be considered a snitch. three men were stopping another man and it happened really quick. I didn't realize that they had knocked him unconscious and he was breathing really heavy and snoring as if he were dreaming of a beautiful place and had a stuffy nose at the same time.



In what seems like is forever or at least a really long time only just a few seconds have gone by before you hear the guards rushing in. four now eight now twelve guards with fire extinguisher sizes Mace cans, Spraying the men on the face both attackers and victim.



It's crazy because when you're in a room and they use those mace canisters on one person in the whole entire room gets clouded with Mace or Pepper spray  and everybody goes down on the ground and  starts clinching their throats and gasping for breath. some men cannot bear it,  though they typically don't die it seems like they're right on the edge of their last ****** breath.



I just felt bad for the person who didn't get their pizza in time because they're  going to be hungry while we're  all locked down until  the situation re-centers itself. then again the other part of me was a bit jealous because I'm sure the Mace served as a hot sauce and they got to enjoy a little bit of that.  



As I lay dying, I put my face in the ground in my arms and take the smallest breaths possible because it feels like I can survive these breaths and when you breathe deep it stings so bad that you can't help but to gasp for air and cough and perpetuate the struggle.



  I drift off to the beach... Here I am with my feet in the sand at the ocean. I hear seagulls flying above overhead and their calls are panning from left to right like the cleanest headphones you've ever heard. I can hear the waves crashing in and I can feel the sea breeze on my face.  it's one of those days when it's not too hot out but you feel good in the sun with the cool wind on your skin just enough to add A balance. Kind a like a sweet and salty sensation. I love this.



I'm really thankful because last time they maced the whole group it was inside of our living space and we had to sit there for 2 hours and cough but it was only the first 45 minutes or so that felt unbearable. The first time I got maced or actually experienced mace in a really bad way it was when they maced my neighbor inside of the shower because he didn't want to get out of the shower and I thought I could be tough and not feel the effects that much and I was eating crackers while I could smell the mace entering my nostrils. A few seconds later I was on the ground holding my throat because I felt like I was going to die and I couldn't even swallow the crackers I was gasping for air and hating God for this pains existence.



Now again we rise  up on our feet moving back to the run  where our cells are located and I can tell that a lot of the people who have been in prison for a long time who are not in the political movement Are really upset by this because they just want to do the rest of their life inside of these bars at peace.

it's a college party
even though i never finished and the rest of y'all are spending money you don't have on the ingredients necessary for homemade sangria so you can drink the crippling anxiety of not knowing how to pay off your student loans away

there's a man living in a tent in the backyard, and i'm pretty sure we put one too many pieces of scrap wood in that very-hard-to-maintain bonfire. that has to be a metaphor for the state of most of our lives. stop throwing things i'm unprepared for in what already feels like a situation that is going to **** me.

is this a literal housewarming

i'm drunk, and sitting on the deck, counting the christmas lights. i smell ****, and there are white people dancing and singing to blink 182 inside.

i paint my name on a drywall with a brush and canisters i find on my way to the living room, where i'm asked to referee a game of beer pong. i lose interest quickly.

i scroll through my phone, sober enough not to text you but drunk enough to desperately want to. someone sits down next to me because i've apparently become that person at the party.

i talk about rent with a guy who really wants to connect on the fact that we're both middle eastern, even though i'm not middle eastern. he smells like PBR and completely believes what he's saying. he says he's proud of me for following my dreams of coming to new york and that he likes my "crazy hair" and that he wants to **** me.

i raise my eyebrows, more in disgust than interest, but he then takes his perceived cue to shamelessly ask me if i have a ******. i don't, and i leave before he brainstorms any alternatives i am just as aversive to.

ironically, i find a ****** dispenser attached to a tree on the walk to the subway. considering the amount of catcalling i experienced on the way to the station, my level of discomfort is amplified by the fact that the neighbourhood literally, physically implies, ******* is going to happen in the streets. it's 2am, and i just want to go home. and i'm sitting on the J train, recalling everyone who's told me it's shady and unreliable and makes you feel like you're going to die.

a few months later, i am nicknamed J train.

Can you believe her? She was with me when it happened, when that perverted old man bought that chocolate bar. How do I know he’s perverted? Well he was wearing sun glasses, in a ******* Walmart at eight in the afternoon. I could tell he was looking right at my chest through those Smokey lenses. Anyways she was right there standing next to me, and she told the boss she didn’t see anything. We both knew he was wearing layers and layers of tacky bowling t shirts under his coat. What a *****!!
I’m sad to hear that honey...  What are you making for dinner?
Fred was watching the evening news on the small 16 inch Panasonic that sat on the coffee table they picked out of the neighbor’s trash. The McDonalds on sources road mysteriously caught fire earlier that morning. Black flames swallowing the restaurant and pictures of dead obese children reflecting off of his Smudged lenses, the reporters voice muffled through the television static. Fred sat there ******* on a green bottle as He crossed his legs, still wearing his blue oil stained shirt and pants ripped at the knees. While he Smiled hauntingly at his television set.
Fred was a mechanic by trade but like the average Canadian man he owned a couple vices that he kept from the world. He was avid reader, stashing shoe boxes filled with Hustlers and Penthouse magazines under the stares. He made Bird houses out of toothpicks and put together puzzles on his free time. He had a wife who worked at the mall and complained constantly, had ******* a nice *** and could sing like an angel rubbing her own ****. They lived in a single floor house in the quiet suburban jungle of Montreal; harmoniously working their dull jobs, surviving their boring and regretful lives.
Shepherd’s pie!
Would y-
Yes, yes extra cheese I got it.
It was the same thing every day; Change tires, headlights, the occasional brake job. Then drive home in his beat up old Toyota Pickup. Weave through schools of blind pedestrians, honk at aspiring race car drivers. Reverse the hunk of **** into the narrow driveway and kick the sweaty boots into the closet. Watch the world burn to ashes on the television, eat, drink and **** then off again into the night. He did this religiously but he didn’t mind his boring life all that much. Whenever he’d slide his blistered fingers across his thinning eyebrows he is reminded of what he really lives for. Whenever he sees them; the men in suits and noose cravats, he is reminded constantly throughout the day of what he lives for.
After a much needed meal and a coffee, Fred makes Unpassionate love to his wife, and waits for her to fall asleep. Staring at the ceiling while maniacally plans the rest of his night. Shirley is used to this, lack of *** drive and Insomnia was normal symptoms of depression. Little did she know he would wait every night till her tossing and turning would subside or die down. Then he would slowly crawl out of bed and tip toe down the stairs, something all too familiar to the middle aged man. He knew what floorboards creaked and how fast to swing the front door opened. He knew to release the handbrake and wheel the truck out onto the street before turning on the ignition.
Like clockwork he knew what to do, he’s been doing every night for years now and he wasn’t about to get caught. Fred drove slowly along the thin snow covered streets. The neighborhood was quiet deep into the night, not a soul outside except for the occasional midnight smoker. He made his way down the boulevard and into the intertwining back streets and parked the car far from his destination.
He had placed gas canisters in the snow around the perimeters of the closed coffee shop the night before and  As he held a book of matches tightly in his fist he made a prayer to a god he did not believe in. Fred wasn’t too sure of his motive, nor did he know his intentions, but he was well aware of what he was doing. He struck a match and watched the flame dance in the cold air before he dropped it into a trail of gasoline he poured himself. The bright fire was quiet pleasing to his squinting eyes and it grew fast. Unravelling itself as it engulfed the small building. He cracked his knuckles with the sudden bursts of satisfaction that pumped through his shivering body as he walked away from his work of art. Sat back in his truck spraying himself with the cheap cologne he’s been using for decades. He crawled back into bed with his snoring wife, tucking himself back into his dull redundant life;
Only to do it all over again tomorrow.

The empty beer cans that you used to defy gravity
They empty shampoo canisters that washed away your wrath and loss
The empty notebooks not filled with the poetry you weren’t inspired enough to write
The pages of books you couldn’t finish but pretend you did
The lost shoes and who you where with you feet deep in grass and not cardboard
The bed you don’t sleep in because you have found a warmth the don’t sterilize
The roommate who things didn’t fill up your cupboards now designated for other objects
The roads you don’t drive because you have nowhere to go

Life is in the muffled noises you hear between rooms
The nights you didn’t take pictures
The ones you don’t remember even though they shaped your exact being
The times you felt boring
Or when you didn’t realize how many substances you were on
Or the papers you could have made genius  
The empty boxes of hairdye that washed out in a week and didn’t cure your suburban binality
The dumb tattoos you want to get but now would be a shameful laser treatment
Your daydreams that never came true
Your daydreams that always came true and somehow didn’t lead up to there power of inception

Life is in other peoples good nights
Other people dark pasts of drug abuse and  civil unrest in the **** of an earthquake
Life is in the drug you where afraid to do
In the lies that you tell to become a different person
Its in the people you treated like **** for your own guilty needs
Its in the people whose gritty *** you walked in on

Life is in your lack of passions or skills or drive or organization
Its in the stupid ironic thift store choices you don’t throw away but never wear for 99 cents
Its in all the time you didn’t sing in a crowd
And you let someone convince you of facts you knew where wrong
It in every liar, and ****** human being you defined inorder to not believe they were ****
Its in every used ****** of the one night stands that made miserable times but good stories
Its in *** length hair
In tongue scars
In the people who know too much about you and you have know idea

Life is in your love of things you hate
In empty coffee cups that once saved you in a moment of weakness
In all the tears you shed drunk
Its in all you temporary obsessions and forgotten hobbies
The greeting cards you didn’t read and the thank you you never gave

Life is in the person you thought you would be right now
The empty packs of stubbed cigarettes
The forgotten names and anonymous snuggles
The empty guns and unfolded knives
The unmailed letters that help you reach redemption by telling them you would never forget

Life is in the times you didn’t run to the wild
The people who weren’t who you thought
The soul mates that became frat brothers
Or those people who drifted because you didn’t no what to say anymore

Life is in our unbrushed teeth
Or the void you cant find
Or the puzzle piece hid under the radiator
Life is in the wine bottles we stack

Life is in what we treat as forgotten streaming unconscious waste
Because we always looked ahead, and to empty more that will never fill

I'm stuck.
Inside my head again
Each time on the edge
Of discovering why
I keep getting stuck
I’m lost once again
Once more thinking hard
While sleep eludes me again
I keep getting stuck
Wondering who I am
Wondering where I am
Wondering who the person in the mirror is
I remember being small
But it feels like those memories aren’t mine
I remember everything
About love about drugs about pain
I remember so much
Except who belongs to my name
I keep getting stuck
Jammed
Feet glued to the floor
Overwhelmed with sorrow
Disgust
Rage
And more
I keep forgetting
Who I am inside
Am I the packs of cigarettes
Empty bottles
Empty cans
Am I the twisted shell
Of a car once proud
Am I the cries
Of a girl
Abandoned by mommy
Wondering why forever
Mommy isn’t coming home
Am I the canisters
Lying on the floor
After a good few seconds
Of never wondering when the pain comes back
Am I really this girl
Who binge eats at night
Am I really this boy
That is scared to be mean
Am I really an adult
Out in the world
Never getting tired
Just blacking out
I can’t sleep
I can’t get tired
I can’t get a hold or a grip or a sight
I can’t peek through this tarp on my eyes
I keep getting stuck
In a hole in my head
I keep getting stuck
In a well in my heart
If I ever get out
Will I still wonder
Why I can’t remember who I am
And why I keep getting stuck

Left to our own devices,
what mischief can we find?
Some trouble to get into,
a worm inside my mind.
Climb up a tree,
or better a cliff!
Boo, not enough danger,
only a whiff.
Lets make a fire,
down in the wood.
Then put in gas canisters,
explosions are good!
Barely a bang,
what a waste of a fire,
so we run throught the flames,
like it's our funeral pyre!
Take the big knife,
thrown back and fore,
if I make Andrew  duck,
it raises my score.
Found a long rope,
that means some fun!
I'll be trussed up and dangled,
so off I will run.
Time to go home now,
off to our bed.
We're both over 40,
but still kids in our head.

We brought a warm, vegetarian dinner to the homeless in a Christian shelter
The steaming pans burned my thighs for the duration of the ride
Our host was a self-described anarchist, married with four children and a dozen guests
He had participated in hundreds of protests; countless arrests
Travelled all over the globe to the site of genocide and hate
Saved lives one at a time, noble and tragic work
His first mission was in his early twenties, to the Gaza Strip alone
The night he arrived he slept in a friendly home
Woke to gunfire, screaming bullets and children, and mechanical roar
Get down! Said the Palestinians, closing the windows and doors
If you look outside
They
Will
Shoot
You
Israeli helicopters scanned the streets and mowed down pedestrians
Dropping massive glass beads
Marbles, they called them
These spheres would shatter and leave sharp edges for scared feet
Once impaled there was no running, blood trailed and so no hiding
Tear gas canisters cleared the capable, my host watched one enter a house
Inside children cried and begged for safety from war and smoke
A doctor huddled with my host heard and acted on a hero’s impulse
Leapt from his roof to that of the yelling young
Dove in through a window and snatched all three, along with the stinging source
The elder two were scared but saved, handed to the Palestinians
The baby with them had suffocated
Too late
The doctor gave my host the canister, still warm
You brought this here, he said
And he was right
Made In The USA
He brought the story back, called every major newspaper
No interest in anything he had to say
This stuff happens every day they told him, boring
Last week twelve Palestinians were killed by a bulldozer
Now there’s front page material
Something
More
Unusual

Motions croak in crimped t-shirts
Peace hurts the leg of 3 wheelers
Spit in a book, carefully holding hands over healers
Frosted articulation of bricks hitting off buildings
The doctor resumes surgery on the filming
Actress gummy mouthed backpacker sharing rooms with a jet-lagger galvanizing goo
If I phone myself, I’ll phone you too
Ad-hoc hop around dentures holding saxophones, laziness is the common king around here
Match the sketch with the deliriant fear free freedom and sneer
Shut the promo drunk and dolo
Potions of pogos bouncing so low
Both bones focal, keeping in a smile from an eye perched over the edge spitting on the populous
Attacking formulas with cruel gruel from the oesophagus
Wilting oxalis wooded in obelisks
Mortal coil in amphetamine greed for the sleep
Positioned slightly awkward and barely out of reach
Been seen being dreams piercing holes in the purple of the seeds
Peace is deemed green, free me from the iron between the sheets
Coins flipped in a river and an etude rings out with a profound sense of urgency
Won't wake up faces blindly painted deranged by a 5 sided box that gave fame to what was contained
Warp the wattage, walk in nervous
Hold cosmic stardust in one hand
Another a phone to call the best man
To marry the two hands and I’m sure the priest will understand
Hairs on the ceiling float through the window and provide an outspoken account of how they are feeling
Canisters of friendship huffed in the backs of vans till passing point seizures explain themselves
9mm film reel candy bars and ring modulation skeletal structure cat gut harps
Never finish a walk to work without beginning the start
Trolleys of Dolly Parton facelifts
Knife cutter butterfly anaesthesia makeshift
Hollow bellies of pardoned mop heads becoming a commodity
I can't say sorry if I begin to speak so oddly
I’d say probably yes if you lit a fire beyond the fence where the old man gambles drop-***** with 50 pence
Bite down on copper, synchronise the action
Winter comes and goes like conversation going out of fashion
Morbid, terra-fin switches waterbeds
Hints home at spit-roasting ostrich heads
Cost and effect, cause and intellect
The castle puts his foot down only to find a horses neck
Zipped up in honey, the combs hive mind should reconsider its self lucky
Unorthodox autodidact naturally diffracting compound eye composes paranoia and lies
The patronage of the savant is murderous and contrived
Its better out than in
The constant metaphor for unluckiness
Is where we begin
Radiance in a hot water semi permeable membrane crescent
Strokes the backs of frogs in the desert, stars iridescent and sun bears a weapon
Hammocks, ****, sweat on the brow, split lips on cornerstones of the solstice in the dead of now
Space-age ape on the country road lets out a cough
Caution to the hissing hills ****** in hidden zygotic havens
Actors have no time to cut themselves shaving
Austro-Bavarian chemical burns Molotov cocktail sewers
Crayons let me draw this face on, paint the day on and on, it gets newer
Its the context at which you and I notice the separation, that cues canned humour

This lonely container; used to interact and circumnavigate
the complexities of this earth, of this land, and of this temporary place.
To meet, mesh, mold, and communicate mentally and physically with other
fleshly canisters on this ride, this trip, this journey.

Then emotion is what our essence does, the spirit of us that resides within,
Yearning to unite with the ethereality of another, to bind with their intangible magnitude.
Loneliness connotes desolation, void, and emptiness; the heart weeps longing to fuse,
There is unconscionable comfort in reaching an island in twain, not in singularity.

Though these receptacles oft give us fleeting tastes of satisfaction,
It is yet impermanent and fulfills the hasty need of our lust in the interim.
Yet when we make exquisite LOVE to one another,
Our vessels dance whilst our souls provide the music, the dance floor, and the ambience.

We were made to be together,
And I love our fit.

ChawzzyScript

'There wasn't a beer in the house. The wind pushed the branches and the leaves of the trees outside like bullies does its prey. There wasn't a single beer in the house while the moon hung in the night sky like a thick toe nail. The stars were splatters of milk on an endless blackened canvas. I looked at my watch. It read 1AM. I had an hour.
My dog Wino laid next to me on her side. She was a miniature french bull dog who took pleasure in sleeping, eating, and occasionally drinking wine mixed with cocoa cola and water. The perfect dog if one had a small attention span and could keep them fed, petted, and fit. The coke and water trick had not come into fruition by my mind, but from my friend, Penny. He drank at a place called The Lounge, a dive of dives meant for locals and young kids with old souls. Luckily we were still young and somehow blessed with the formalities and general manners opposite of a drunken frat boys bent solely on intoxicating themselves on red bull and jager shots mixed with an aperitif of bud light.
The Lounge was four blocks toward downtown from where I lived. It was the kind of place that served microwaved hot dogs until closing if you're wondering what I meant about dive of dives. Penny was there, dead drunk or pain-stakingly sober, depending on how much money he had. I don't know why I thought of him at that moment, most likely trying to figure who else to drink with other than myself, but right when I thought of him, I knew it was already a lost cause. It was 1:05. The hour was too late to reconvene with anyone. I knew I'd have to go alone.
*******, there's got to be something, I thought, this God forsaken house is empty? A beer? A shot? Anything? Nothing! How can it be? My good for nothing roommates must have drank it all...or maybe it was me? Maybe I'm to blame? No...that couldn't be right. I would have remembered? But why so sure? I could have easily forgot from all the beer I was drinking before...people make mistakes...happens all the time. Jesus, I told myself, get yourself together and start thinking straight.
I felt like a handicapped, bloodthirsty hyena. Pensive, I looked down at Wino. She was dead asleep with her tongue oozing out between her lips. The stench of wine coke hung around her. She would be no help at all.
I got up from the kitchen table and looked in the refrigerator. Hungry gripped me as well. Getting attacked on the front of drink and food was not an enjoyable place to be. Moves would have to be made...but where? When? Well, before 2AM of course and where, well, that would take some thought. As I scrounged around in the deep crevices of the refrigerator, pushing aside moldy mashed potatoes and old plastic tins of Chinese food, furry oranges and near empty bottle of ketchup, dark soups with mysterious things swimming around inside and a very large bowl of what looked to be sugar, but was actually Arm and Hammer. We would eventually get a dating and signature system to avoid all of these unwanted science experiments, but that's another story.
There was nothing of nourishment in the fridge so I closed it, discouraged, weighing my options. There was a liquor store on Geary, the main drag in the inner richmond, my neighborhood. But it was a Wednesday and they were most likely closed. Why would they stay open late on a weekday? For people like me? Not a chance. I stepped into the laundry room and looked out the window. The sky was clear and the moonlight and the stars were white florescent shining down on the tops of the leaves hanging from the branches of the trees like a prisoner dead on the gallows. The roofs of the apartments across my ours were painted with this same cream white. I could smell the salt of the ocean from sporadic gusts of a sharp wind. In the distance, an ocean tanker heading into the city or out to sea blared their fog horn. It sounded like a whale in heat. There was a party going on in an apartment across the way. I saw people with glasses in their hands and listened to their chatter and their laughter. I knew they would have *****. I also wondered who throws a party on a wednesday night in the middle of June in San Francisco's winter of all the times. The fog had been rolling in hard the last few days and that night was no different. I was in a thick sweater, pants, and knee high socks and my teeth were still chattering. No use staring over plaintively at their apartment, I thought, I probably look like some kind of shadowy, drunk apparition. Better go inside before they call the cops on me...
Inside, I ran the faucet with hot water into a bowl. When it was almost full, I stopped the water and submerged my hands. That sting that happens when extreme cold goes to extreme hot began. My entire body started to tingle, go numb, especially my hands. The reason for this action I never fully understood for I really wasn't that cold, but the image of a hot water filling a bowl just popped into my head and I gave it no thought, only action. If anyone had walked in at that moment, I'm sure they would have thought me drunk and craze and, well, maybe I was? I was no longer sure. The only thing I did know that needed to happen was to get down the stairs, out the door, down the street, and to the 8th and Geary where my liquor store hopefully, was open.
My phone read 1:21 PM. I'd be cutting it close. Luckily, I had cash, so they wouldn't have to be bothered with a debit card transaction. I recalled trying to use a debit card there once and they were convinced it was OK to charge me $5 for a purchase under $10. Most places would charge you 50 cents, a dollar at most, but these hustling swindlers were trying to push $5! I wouldn't have it. I walked outta' there quick and knew the next time I ever was forced (I usually bought alcohol at grocery stores where their inconvenience offered more deals) to step foot into a liquor specific store, I would have cash in hand, poised in the ready position.
There was a problem with my departure though: I couldn't find my shoes. I thought back to when I got home from work, beers in my backpack as well as a pint of whiskey in the secret zipper department. My shoes were on at that point, I was sure of it. When I had arrived say around 3:30 - 4 o'clock in the afternoon, no one was home. They were still all at work and in no way taken my shoes by accident. This had never happened, so I was curious why I thought that that specific day, when I would later need my shoes so desperately, somebody would have mistakingly took them to thwart whatever plans I may or may not make to go out. In truth, I couldn't see any of my roommates devising such a plan, at least on a week day, even more so a wednesday. But where were they? Had they slipped under the couch? I checked, but was only to discover a few quarters, which I pocketed for pool and juke box use in the future, various types of potato and tortilla chips, a hat, *****, lint covered socks, and a remote control to the TV which I had been searching since the week I had moved in a year ago. No shoes though. Where could they be?
I lightly ran downstairs to check the shoe rack that no one ever used. The middle of our door is a rectangular piece of glass, so one could see right through and down to the street. The stale light of of a single street lamp beamed an orange streak across the pavement. Besides that, the block was black. There was a car parked in the space in front of our steps. No one was inside, at least it didn't look like there was. It was very dark. I could have been mistaken. The car sat underneath a large tree with heavy, thick branches that blocked any light that may have been coming from the lamp or the stars, so very possibly there could have been a mysterious person, thing, entity, what have you in vicious wait. But, I asked myself, waiting for what? For me? Why for me?. All I'm looking for is a six pack and another flask. What would this thing in that car even want with me except twelve bucks? I stared out the window, thinking these things until I remembered why the hell I was there in the first place. The shoe rack was filled with old bills, coupon brochures, voting ballots, and neon pink Chinese menus. I rummaged around this heap, with no sign of my shoes. Well, I thought, there's only one more place these ******'s could be.
My desk, which holds most of my books, looks out onto the street. It holds stacks of papers in deep drawers that should be thrown away but are kept due to the fear of tossing something potentially important, condoms, pens, checkbooks, candies, film canisters, notes from friends, headphones, cards, hair gels and deodorants, and really anything I don't want on my desk. Occasionally, there will be a left over dinner or breakfast plates lingering around the edge of the desk, flirting with its own demise and even more so if I have left the window open, which is  half a foot away. If not plates then bills that have yet to be paid or notes on old papers, probably old bills, that I never got around to flushing out or did and just never got rid of. A large oak desk, it sits and feels a little small for my size, but, I make it work, for it was a gift. I try to use whatever I receive for free to the utmost until the discomfort is either too much or I come across something better that I can afford, which is rare. But, there they were, pushed up against the wall that faced the street. My chair was jammed all the way up into the desk as well , so much so that it was tipped slightly upward, like someone had been trying to throw the thing out the window. I didn't remember doing this at all which made me think perhaps it wasn't me, maybe someone else had been in here...but who? Why would anyone trespass on such a simple, lowly place with no real worth or chance of treasure? It just couldn't be, so I threw the thought into the wind and got my shoes on. I checked my phone again. It read 1:37. That gave me 23 minutes.
I stumbled down the stairs, out the door, and down the stairs. A car drove by me as I walked down the street toward Geary. Their headlights were off. I turned to see the driver of the car as they passed me, but they were mere shadow, their faces black, blurry smudges. I paused and turned around back toward my apartment. Something in me told me the car would stop at my house, but it continued on to the stop light, then up the hill toward the park. Where we they going?
At Geary, I took a left and walked quickly toward 8th avenue. There were no cars on the main drag. Both sides of the streets were completely empty. A large gust of wind from the west forced me to pause, almost making me take a step back. I looked up into the sky. It was thick with a rolling grey fog. At night, the fog always rolled in the hardest. I never knew why. It just did. And there were no stars. Everything was black and grey, but when I pushed forward through the wind, I saw the neon yellow and red shell station ahead as well as the flashing stop lights which hung over the streets. As I came to 8th avenue, I saw the liquor store. It was closed. The only light that shone was a rotating blinking light in the shape of a beer bottle. I wanted that beer bottle, even if it wasn't real.
The store windows were grated and there was a large metal gate before the actual door to the store. This told me they had had trouble before, probably from guys like me. Inside there was everything I would need to get me through the night and to the morning. Out there, on the cold sidewalk with a violent fog swirling around me like a hurricane, I was just cold and dangerously sober. Reality rapped on my temples like a ravens beak on a thin window. There was nothing I could do. I was forced to go home, empty handed.
As I brushed my teeth in nothing but my underwear, I wandered to the back deck and opened the window. The fog was still rolling heavy and would continue to do so until the sun came to burn it all away. Sometimes, the fog was too much and it would hang there all day like a heavy shawl. Those days were nice. They didn't make me feel guilty about staying inside all day reading or sleeping or really doing nothing at all. Sometimes that is necessary. I spit my toothbrush saliva mixture into a dead plant that rested on the banister near the ladder that lead to the roof. I hadn't ever been up there. Terrified of heights, I figured I never would be.
My clock read 2:13. It had taken me a long time to walk home after such a defeat. I had spent so much time thinking about moving I had failed my overall goal. Too much discussion with oneself can make you go crazy. I've seen it happen to friends, family, ****...myself. I closed my eyes and told myself there is plenty of value in talk, in discussion, but it takes a true human being to act after all of that talk. I would have to remember that one. Yes, I would have to write that one down.

I think what they forget to tell you when your parents decide they don't love each other anymore is that no matter how many times they swear they aren't broken the vacancy in their eyes will send a different tale and
"we'll pick up the pieces of this broken home" will ring with the consistency of metronomes.
When the dark shadow walks into your mothers room at night and she swears that it will brush up the shambles of ripped up hearts and dollar bills from rotting wood floors and perhaps "help get my head back where it belongs, and we won't have to go weeks with no hot water anymore!"
When they felt the clanking in their chest halt and waves of past due after past due after empty canisters used to drown past due lay about in my nursery after past due after the simultaneous flinch as hands brushed reaching for dishes in cold water after past due.
They never told me.
That when at a cross roads leading into oblivion came about my wonder of carnivals would turn into split homes, split cars, new moms, new dads, never speaking out when it happens within the strike of a lightening bolt that came down and electrocuted my world before I had any concept of what to do with it.
I was never informed that balloon animals would become "you're a spoiled ******* brat" and that fifteen years later the spoiled brat in me was just a little girl reaching out for her mothers hand to ask her for a second "what happened to dad?"
Just to ask her to take one moment to forget about evenings we spent lighting candles in place of light bulbs and keeping warm by the oven and to address
What they never told me.
Why they were moving in new bed sets while my so deemed "alternate life" sat on his couch drinking the same empty vessels from the long fights and the past dues and the empty cavities where hearts once lie.
Why I went from child to Cinderella and next thing you know I had two kids by eleven and you were out building his fortress while I rest my head on dungeon floors night after night after night.
When past due became brand new and next thing you know we're in a new world with a new life and I watched you lose sight of past due, of you.
And for a second did you ever stop and tell me that you'd end up with your will trapped within a tornado of "I'm speaking" and "You're clueless anyways" and that maybe you escaped the clutches of sleeping in back seats at the expense of yourself?
That maybe your only sacrifice would be my only sense of solace?
They. Did. Not. Tell. Me.
That I would be screaming into a void inches away from leaping out of my own skin at one final attempt to bare my still shattered, unknowing, uninformed heart stuck in the first fight of the last night that I saw my parents kiss.
That mister brand new would take the old you and throw it in this dumpster that held baby dolls and sundresses for not even long enough to rid them of their tags.
That maybe the ship has sailed.
They didn't tell me my own heart would be shredded on the floor of a divorce court.

its a discontorted reality birthed from the mush of what is and could be´s but wasn´t and won´t yet still carries the presence of that which should have been what hadn´t seen before.
its a cold beer getting warm, one of three put in the fridge next to the cheese and butter under the liver across from the milk and the jelly who wanted to be eaten but only saw the hot get cold, I´ll drink you slowly tonight.
its this little fly that keeps landing on my left arm as I stare at blue capped deoderant canisters wishing for the year 1995 video game joy as I shake a shake and eat coconut tasting cookies with no coconut anything listed in the ingrediants.
its the warm night slipping his fingers down the back of your pants as you inch forward resisiting what you secretly want, a bead of sweat runs over your lips as you cry out and find your own hands reaching where warms ones wont.
its an unfinished pool that needs five truck loads of sand, three of rocks, five of dirt because the dirt can´t touch the sand and the the rocks can´t touch the pool if we want to swim while the sun is high and the clouds are sparse.
its that feeling you get as your walking up dark steps and you run you run and you never know why, its the listening without having to know, its the yes to your goodbye, its the I can so I will move on, its the no longer a boy I finally feel like a man, its any pants are too tight with a *******.
its life.

Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub

She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).

Keywords/Tags: Agnostic, Atheist, Chauvinist, Heresy, Heretical, God, Religion, Atheism, Nonbeliever



Is there any Light left?
by Michael R. Burch

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for being?
Blind and unseeing,
rejecting and fleeing
our humanity, goat-hooved and cleft?

Is there any light left?
Must we die bereft
of love and a reason for living?
Blind, unforgiving,
unworthy of heaven
or this planet red, reeking and reft?

While “hoofed” is the more common spelling, I preferred “hooved” for this poem. Perhaps because of the contrast created by “love” and “hooved.”



Evil Cabal
by Michael R. Burch

those who do Evil
do not know why
what they do is wrong
as they spit in ur eye.

nor did Jehovah,
the original Devil,
when he murdered eve,
our lovely rebel.



Red State Religion Rejection Slip
by Michael R. Burch

I’d like to believe in your LORD
but I really can’t risk it
when his world is as badly composed
as a half-baked biscuit.



Enough!
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that I don’t want to die;
I shall be glad to go.
Enough of diabetes pie,
and eating sickly crow!

Enough of win and place and show.
Enough of endless woe!

Enough of suffering and vice!
I’ve said it once;
I’ll say it twice:
I shall be glad to go.

But why the hell should I be nice
when no one asked for my advice?
So grumpily I’ll go ...
although
(most probably) below.



Altared Spots
by Michael R. Burch

The mother leopard buries her cub,
then cries three nights for his bones to rise
clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise.

Good mother leopard, pensive thought
and fiercest love’s wild insurrection
yield no certainty of a resurrection.

Man’s tried them both, has added tears,
chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’
white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs

where dead men’s frozen genes convene ...
there is no answer—death is death.
So bury your son, and save your breath.

Or emulate earth’s “highest species”—
write a few strange poems and odd treatises.

"Altared" in the title is not a misspelling, but a play on the words "alter" and "altar" (as in a religious altar).



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



Well, Almost
by Michael R. Burch

All Christians say “Never again!”
to the inhumanity of men
(except when the object of phlegm
is a Palestinian).



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

“... so let your light shine before men ...”

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but — immaculate — shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity —
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time — an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you’d convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.



Mayflies
by Michael R. Burch

These standing stones have stood the test of time
but who are you—and what are you—and why?
As brief as mist, as transient, as pale ...
Inconsequential mayfly!

Perhaps the thought of love inspired hope?
Do midges love? Do stars bend down to see?
Do gods commend the kindnesses of ants
to aphids? Does one eel impress the sea?

Are mayflies missed by mountains? Do the stars
regret the glowworm’s stellar mimicry
the day it dies? Does not the world grind on
as if it’s no great matter, not to be?

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.
And yet somehow you’re everything to me.

Originally published by Clementine Unbound



Maker, Fakir, Curer
by Michael R. Burch

A poem should be a wild, unearthly cry
against the thought of lying in the dark,
doomed—never having seen bright sparks leap high,
without a word for flame, none for the mark
an ember might emblaze on lesioned skin.

A poet is no crafty artisan—
the maker of some crock. He dreams of flame
he never touched, but—fakir’s courtesan—
must dance obedience, once called by name.

Thin wand, divine!, this world is too the same—
all watery ooze and flesh. Let fire cure
and quickly harden here what can endure.

Originally published by The Lyric

The ancient English scops were considered to be makers: for instance, in William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makiris.” But in some modern literary circles poets are considered to be fakers, with lies being as good as the truth where art is concerned. Hence, this poem puns on “fakirs” and dancing snakes. But according to Shakespeare the object is to leave something lasting, that will stand test of time. Hence, the idea of poems being cured in order to endure. The “thin wand” is the poet’s pen, divining the elixir— the magical fountain of youth—that makes poems live forever.



O, My Redeeming Angel
by Michael R. Burch

O my Redeeming Angel, after we
have fought till death (and soon the night is done) ...
then let us rest awhile, await the sun,
and let us put aside all enmity.

I might have been the “victor”—who can tell?—
so many wounds abound. All out of joint,
my groin, my thigh ... and nothing to anoint
but sunsplit, shattered stone, as pillars hell.

Light, easy flight to heaven, Your return!
How hard, how dark, this path I, limping, walk.
I only ask Your blessing; no more talk!

Withhold Your name, and yet my ears still burn
and so my heart. You asked me, to my shame:
for Jacob—trickster, shyster, sham—’s my name.



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know you as Mary,
when you spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard you exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.

There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.

There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.

There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.



ur-gent
by Michael R. Burch

if u would be a good father to us all,
revoke the Curse,
extract the Gall;

but if the abuse continues,
look within
into ur Mindless Soulless Emptiness Grim,

& admit ur sin,
heartless jehovah,
slayer of widows and orphans ...

quick, begin!



Bible libel (ii)
by Michael R. Burch

ur savior’s a cad
—he’s as bad as his dad—
according to your horrible Bible.

demanding belief
or he’ll bring u to grief?
he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival!

was the man ever good
before being made “god”?
if so, half your Bible is libel!



yet another post-partum christmas blues poem
by michael r. burch

ur GAUD created hell; it’s called the earth;
HE mused u briefly, clods of little worth:
"let’s conjure some little monkeys
to be BIG RELIGION’s flunkeys!"
GAUD belched, went back to sleep, such was ur birth.



wee the many
by michael r. burch

wee never really lived: was that our fault?
now thanks to ur GAUD wee lie in an underground vault.
wee lie here, the little ones ur GAUD despised!
HE condemned us to death before wee opened our eyes!
as it was in the days of noah, it still remains:
GAUD kills us with floods he conjures from murderous rains.



stock-home sin-drone
by Michael R. Burch

ur GAUD created this hellish earth;
thus u FANTAsize heaven
(an escape from rebirth).

ur GUAD is a monster,
**** ur RELIGION lied
and called u his frankensteinian bride!

now, like so many others cruelly abused,
u look for salve-a-shun
to the AUTHOR of ur pain’s selfish creation.

cons preach the “TRUE GOSPEL”
and proudly shout it,
but if ur GAUD were good
he would have to doubt it.



un-i-verse-all love
by Michael R. Burch

there is a Gaud, it’s true!
and furthermore, tHeSh(e)It loves u!
unfortunately
the
He
Sh(e)
It
,even more adorably,
loves cancer, aids and leprosy.



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .

I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .

But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,

thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .

How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down
by Michael R. Burch

each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival.

the fiercer and more perilous the wrath,
the wilder and wickeder the weaponry,
the better the daily odds
(just don’t bet on the long term, or revival).

so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically,
if indeed He exists
as ur Bible insists—
the Wildest and the Wickedest of all
with the brightest of creatures in thrall
(unless u
somehow got that bleary
Theo-ry
wrong too).



The Strangest Rain
by Michael R. Burch

"I ... am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur?and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves ..."?Emily Dickinson

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

The strangest rain, a few bright sluggish drops,
unsure if they should fall, run through with sun,
came tumbling down and touched me, one by one,
too few to animate the shriveled crops
of nearby farmers (though their daughters might
feel each cool splash, a-shiver with delight).

I thought again of Emily Dickinson,
who felt the tingle down her spine, inspired
to lifting hairs, to nerves’ electric song
of passion for a thing so deep-desired
the heart and gut agree, and so must tremble
as all the neurons of the brain assemble
to whisper: This is love, but what is love?
Wrens darting rainbows, laughter high above.



Note to a Chick on a Religious Kick
by Michael R. Burch

Daisy,
when you smile, my life gets sunny;
you make me want to spend all my ****** money;
but honey,
you can be a bit ... um ... hazy,
perhaps mentally lazy?,
okay, downright crazy,
praying to the Easter Bunny!



A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.


lust!
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled ...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god’s creation
then spoke for the Beast:

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne’er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
“the ***** jezebel.”

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.

Published by Lucid Rhythms, The HyperTexts and Black Waters of Melancholy



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some distant “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it QUICKLY!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did Japheth devour for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?



Modern Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

after David B. Gosselin

I dreamed that God was good, but then I woke
and all his goodness vanished—****!—
like smoke.

I dreamed his Word was good, but then I heard
commandments evil, awful, weird,
absurd.

I dreamed of Heaven where cruel Angels flew
above my head and screamed, the Chosen Few,
“We’re not like you!”

I dreamed of Hell below, where prostitutes
adored by Jesus, played on lovely lutes
“True Love Commutes.”

I dreamed of Earth then woke to hear a Gong’s
repellent echoes in Religion’s song
of right gone wrong.



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.


Keywords/Tags: god, Jesus, Christ, Christian, prayer, Bible, angel, atheist, faith, blasphemy, heresy, heresies, heretic, heretic, heretical, pagan, pagans, god, gods

Published as the collection "Nonbeliever"



Kim Cherub is a pen name of Michael R. Burch. Keywords/Tags: God, male chauvinist, religion, Christian, Christianity, Jehovah, Jesus Christ, feminist, feminism, skeptic, nonbeliever, atheist, agnostic

His origins, unknown. (He cannot remember that far back)
The first light,
blinded him.
But he could feel the others,
always around him.
Jostling, cramped, comfortable.
He settled down,
further,
until he was close to the bottom.
There,
it was dark.
The noise was less.
But it changed.
He awoke to trembles and whispers,
that turned into a fearful clamor.
They were tipped and tumbled.
He struck the cold surface,
hard.
A jet stream tore his skin,
exposing his light tan under.
All round,
they were naked too.
His shame turned to fury.
Salt was blasted into his wounds,
and then he was tossed in,
he was no longer with his kind.
Others, strangers.
Some were bigger,
some were green,
a few smelled sweetly.
Thoroughly mixed.
Then poured into canisters.
Darkness beckoned,
but this change was new, unsettling.
............
Sudden jolts, and then he and the others tumbled into a clear bowl.
The words on what had been his holding for a month read: "mixed nuts and candy, eat by tomorrow."
He was surprised,
frightened.
He needed to survive.
Struggling to the top, he lunged over,
and toppled over the side onto the floor,
under the ottoman.
He was never missed.
The salt dried him,
cracked,
he thought about giving in and letting the curious schnauzer, Jeffrey, find him.
But, then he found the green bicycle.
A child's toy it was,
but then the game piece gave him hope.
He donned the high hat,
jumped aboard his vessel,
and stared ahead.
He was angry,
alone,
it was too dark here.
He rode out into the light.
Immediately swerving out the open screen door to avoid Jeffrey.
There he found a daisy,
reminding him of a field.
It was green there,
peaceful,
a field of his own,
anger.
It was gone,
Taken.

with our slick smiles and flashy bodies
now we’re impressing hell with gaudies

with our hearts thumping till they bleed
now we’re singing dirges while we scream

with our licked lips and shrilling laughter
now we’re loving  bones lying there after

with our tin flasks and empty canisters
now we’re swinging from the banisters

I noticed you afar in your tainted uniform and deeply ironed apron.
When you walked with swagger and a little confidence, your dark hair stayed in place and reflected from your sunrise brown eyes.
Straight shoulders that arched your back and showed the bottom of your rose tattoo on your right bicep.
You approached me with that cocky charming waiter boy attitude,
sparkling white teeth and cunning smile.
Definitely a University boy
Can't be no older than 22
I slipped in a couple questions along with my order.
Are you local?
college boy?
I'm not an expert at flirting and you can probably tell that I haven't before.
You went easy on me.
"I board at the University ten blocks from here, but live three blocks from the diner. I crash at my mom's occasionally, but I like college."
You made it look like you were doing work by filling up sugar canisters.
I was enjoying the coffee too much.

It was 2:45.
You got off at 3.
I grabbed a pen and wrinkled napkin on the corner of the table.
I dotted my "I"s with stars and wrote 10 digits meticulously with a steady right hand.
You handed me the check and walked cooly back to the cash register.
Time was ticking, but I didn't want to be desperate.
I flicked my long straight black hair to my shoulder so it could bring out my eyeliner.
I walked to the register and nochalantly gave you the check.
I smiled and gave you the tip.
You threw the tip aside as the register flung open and held the written napkin in the light.
I walked out in confidence and exactly at 3:00.

She wakes up after drinking
glassy eyes rolling like marbles
rattling against her aluminum skull.
Last night’s poison congeals in her blood
leaving her fevered and sick.
Her mind is overcrowded with
the throttle of spray paint canisters
and the incessant buzz of fluorescent lights
tunneling deeper and deeper into her temple.

She wakes up to new hurts
ferociously spattered across paper tissue.
Bruises kiss her knuckles, her knees.
Cuts lace and stitch her arms together.
A cherry burn line stripes her shoulder.
Just vague memories of clumsy rage
and stress relief.

Shaky fingers flutter and brush
the ragged skin she wears
assessing the damage
dressing the damage.

Her black out injuries are mementos.

My footsteps were dampened
By the cool grey stone
As I walked down
The cold and empty hall

On my right and left
Were rows and rows of cells
This place must have been a prison
Long ago before it was abandoned

Dusty light fell down
Through the small barred window
Passing through it I noticed
It felt much thicker than air

At the end of the hallway
I came to a wood panel door
Reinforced with metal
But it appeared to be unlocked

I gently turned the ****
And enter the room behind
It was small room furnished by
Nothing but a crude chair and table

Shutting the door behind me
I realized that
There were no other entrances
Or exits to the room

It was rather dark
Dust and particles filled the air
The only light
Came from a lamp on the table

On that table, besides the lamp, were
Various old files, Empty film canisters
And a curious movie projector
Devoid of any film

Searching further I found
One of the canisters
Actually contained a film
In immaculate condition

Curious I picked it up
And fed it through the projector
Once I was sure it was in place
I turned the machine on

Nothing happened at first
And then the opposite wall
Burst into animation
As the film began to play

There was an eye
I was not sure
If the movie was playing
Until I saw it blink

And I do not know
How long I watched it
For it managed to hold
My unwaivering attention

Other scenes began to play
And they flowed from one to the next
The longer I watched
The less I understood of what I saw

The visions on the screen
Became increasingly stranger
I felt both sick
And horribly uneasy

The only thing I could now make out
Was a dark lanky hand
Stretching and curling around
Around a door frame

Only then did I realize
I had stopped watching the screen
long ago

There's this room
old wooden floors that creak in certain spots unless you're real careful
to tiptoe over the strewn clothes I never got around to hanging up
brick walls with several holes from nailed up paintings I was proud of
a window from floor to ceiling that overlooks the busy city street
that lets all of the winter air in and magnifies the summer sun
and a king sized mattress with the bed sheets half hanging off
you're still half naked, fast asleep under what sheets are left
I walk through and see the typewriter on the floor surrounded by
pages covered in red and black ink from the nights before
boxes of undeveloped film canisters at the foot of that king sized bed
a couple of empty mugs with the tea bag still clung to the bottom;
I hit a creak, you roll onto your back and give me that half dead smile.


I open my eyes

furious aesthetic and empty grace
like broken glass, like shattered inertia

holy roman emperors born and raised
in missouri gunned down, target practice

furious grace and empty aesthetic
like tear gas canisters, like shattered bone

hidden by roses laid down the highway
now ashen, red from embers, red from blood

the furious world watches empty screens
there is no aesthetic, no grace, in ******

Out for a walk today, you're looking out a ***** window.
You squint against the overhead sun and see a sky,
ripped and faded light-blue like denim--
the clouds wispy and thread-bare
receding into the white horizon.
Here the sky meets golden-brown grass,
flattened and dry like a pancake.
On the road, the cars dusty and dull,
not even the clean ones shine that much,
but they still sound loud and rushing
like high wind or running water.
You wouldn't be able to tell it's spring here,
except for what it says on the calendar.
Well, the snow is gone and left last-year's trash;
plastic ******* and grocery bags
litter the ditch and empty lots.
It bothers you, so you focus on the patches that look green,
under the brittle stems of old grass.
This is what spring is to you:
dirt, dust, dead grass, and
Marlboro packs and canisters of chew on the sidewalk.
It's the planting of seed in an empty lot,
watering the dry soil,
and clearing out whatever winter buried.
Here, the first stirring of life clears the dust from the window.

I shall never know,
if you faked those blackouts.

The ones that made you crumple
on the stairs. Or else out in the cold
of Andy's rusted shed. Once I caught

you naked, you know,
during one of your blackouts.

I shall never know,
if you faked those blackouts.

I wouldn't have blamed you,
a shed-full of
wasted tanks and canisters;
lighter fluid, degreaser, air freshener,
foot spray – they spoilt the flooring,
and they spoilt our thoughts.

Never once deterring
from the self-manifest dream of escape,
of truth and eventual decay;
we took to bare arms
to satisfy
our escape from oxygen.

And, in open view,
you laid out naked with her.
You more studied her,
than ****** her,
you more observed ***,
than became it.

I wanted her
as much as I wanted to be you.

So, I traced my dreams to your nothings,
upon your heralded wisdom,
but never could I untangle
from some impossible condition.

No, I never could untangle
the means from the ends,
and never could I darken
at will,

my old blackout friend.

Circles within circles clenched in a fist,
finger prints of mothers, fathers, of fathers oncle, ma grand-mère et grand-père,
Vietnamese blurred French – English dialect – adopted.
Held captive by four corners – owned by simplicities of mind, lesson well learned.
Combination of two sides, cinching an aged tradition,
Recycling words, welcoming of solitude in circumference chasms.

Plated orange-yellow poles upon, crimson grading pens upon, pink erasers upon,
yellow painted light wooden pencil between the webs of my fingers,
foreign and forced upon my uncoordinated hand,
ached and cramped knotted upon them, strung upon my tangled fingers – alien.
Blind to possibility, possible to the blind,
your warm hand guiding mine, gliding streaks of graphite-lead onto smooth bamboo paper.

Inked loose leaf paper upon sheets of bent thoughts meant to be traced upon.
Handwriting of the foreign, different from the raced,
language to be taught, words to be learned,
syllables chopped, from tongue to lips, to be refused by air,
my lips followed yours, by a semblance in matter,
your dashes guide me, synchronizing to your hand before smooth, a poem you wrote.

Sawed cut chopsticks to count upon mixed upon erasers, grips upon,
wrinkled skin between clenched newborn fists,
opened wide, exposing the wings they possessed between each finger,
creases created to count with father’s hitchhiker’s thumb,
until one realized that there was more to count,
with the spaces between mother’s joints on her wide hands, and long fingers.

Canisters of undeveloped films, reminders that one has not rendered,
Fluent spheres develop in your mind, death-sentence tolled,
A color and composition – segments of hued breaths you took between shutters unraveling that you belong—intertwining my foreign fingers in your hair.
Words you’ve forgotten, shriveled hands cracked,
I wrote the words you could no longer teach me: to have met.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

One, with a layer of dust on it,
behind the toothbrush holder
below the hand towel.
Vitamin D – to curb panic,
to promote happiness.
Useless and old and forgotten.

Two, to replace the vitamins,
sitting front and center
among the more useful bottles.
Prozac – half-finished,
sometimes forgotten.
Huge capsules hard to choke down
every morning with a glass of water,
and the anxiety they are meant to stop
making it difficult to swallow.

Three, four, and five, nearly empty canisters of
antibiotics – not much else
to be said about them.

Six, for times of emergency,
awake in the early hours when sleep is necessary.
Melatonin – for forcing the heavy blanket of slumber.
Strong, but not prescription.
All-natural, from the health store in town.

Seven, the newest bottle to replace
the many emptied ones.
Painkillers – over-the-counter, perhaps,
but abused nevertheless.

Eight, completely emptied, tipped on its side
by the empty glass of water, standing in its own plastic wrapping.
Tylenol –.

I live in 2300 square feet
of dark cold house.

there are steel canisters
of fresh ground coffee.

there is a coffeemaker
that is old but working.

there is a cedar box
full of discount cigars.

there is a wooden rack
stocked with cheap varietals.

there is a media player
with hours of blues tunes.

there is a desk with pens
and reams of lined paper.

take those away from me
and I will have nothing.