In the good old days
Before rock and roll
******
The velvet underground
*******
Sid vicious
And assorted bad men
And bad women,
In the good old days

No man and never a woman
Would profess their alienation from society
As society was a god society
And if you were alienated from society
You were in effect alienated from god
Which made you a sinner
An outcast
A candidate for purgatory, hell or if unborn or unbaptised,
Limbo.

Thus a man or woman
Would confess their sins
On the first Friday of each month
In the local church to the priest
Who knew them intimately
Despite the darkness
And the little grilled window
And the closeness of voice to ear

And on the first Saturday
All of society
Would be full again
Of forgiven sinners
And the good old days
Would continue

There are of course flaws in this.
In the new days
You can be alienated
From yourself
Your wife
Your mother
Your father
Your sister
Your whole **** ******* of people you know
You don't know

And you listen
To sid vicious
Nirvana
Rammstein
The voices in your head
The dreams of your nightmares
The girls of the canal bank leafy walks
The boys throwing cars at each other in the boreens
The men
The women
The whole gee bang sheebang hee bangs

There are flaws in this

And what you project is no longer god
And so no man or woman is god

Cranky tin pan alleyway of a universe
Cluttered with suffering silence once more
As no one knows the unknown language
Of the unknowable when all you can
Know if the echo chamber of the mind and soul and two pence
Mind we rig up with lights and flashing noise
Known as the modern
Keeps mouthing nonsense on top of nonsense
Without due regard to that ******* boat
That brought us here,

Echos of hades, charon, siren siren siren siren

This morning I watched as crows
Grabbed black pudding left out by my girls
On a small wooden bench

And over the hand made wall of dry stone
A thousand bodies kept each other warm
In that other place, no place, some place, where place, what place,
Marked by lichen crusted stone crosses and then some,

Discord they cawed, discord, discord, as they swooped
And watched with eyes sliding magnetically open and closed
Revealing milky white spectral analysis
Of this small earth ball of mucky matter
Which on closer inspection
Reveals much space between
And the nothing inbetween which makes us more of what we are
Much more so than believing we are flesh or bone or even water

The nothing in between, between, the start of and end of the sentence
That begins I am insert whatever the **** twixt the blanks,
And no amount of miraculous sonerous beautous melodifications
About blooming effing flower petals nor soulful dirges
Can be the blank in the between

Is it a scream, a whooping holler, a mouth rounded beneath
Roundier eyes miracling a confrontation with all of space
And
Maria Callas does not end on that note, ever.

I told the crows to *******. I ate the pudding. It is only fair.
My feathers are darker and more spectacular

Though my girls
Whooped and hollered
As I flew away

A space in space.

Today a blackbird gave me inspiration.
It floated casually towards the ledge.
Inches away, only a thin piece of glass between us.
It stared, looked me in the eyes,
Opened my soul with its piercing eyes.
Gouged away until it found some real meaning inside.
Twitched, no, that wasn’t a twitch,
It was a motion, a signal,
A glorious method of communication –
No pigeon could mimic that!
It ushered my eyes towards the beauty of the lake,
And away from its black and grey and blue
And (I’m sure many other coloured) body.
My eyes were dragged from this beautiful, overweight creature
To the forever-moving, forever-living lake,
Then to the fountain.
Six shoots of white water kept the sky where it belongs.
They held it – of course! The sky!
The blackbird had given me light.
The sky was alive, the clouds were rolling,
The sun was breaking through,
And as I re-adjusted my eyes to thank him,
The blackbird leapt from his perch,
Cawed a “you’re welcome”
And soared towards heaven.

I cant remember my dream.
I cant breathe.

Her thin painter hands open the door to the stairwell, the smell of fresh paint replaces that of a spring rain.  Skipping the clean stairs two at a time, she reaches the studio.  Walls of glass flank the empty white hallways that weave in and out, remains of torn masking tape shrivel on the walls like dying flowers.  The door looks like it belongs to a prison, too familiar.  

The sun barely moved, if at all, outside the window.
Tracing the outline of his body, she let the colors tell the story.


A stroke of shadow

Walking to the center of the room, limbic resonance.  A vaguely masculine figure melts into the painting.  It's silent as he dies.  

Her feet hit the pavement.  From the familiar soft dirt path through the woods, she crosses the courtyard to the doorway of the stairwell.  Memories flood her mind under the dull lamplight amidst the rustling dead leaves.  

Moving a stone from the crumbling wall of the school, she places her letters to you beneath the rubble.

Blinding white

I'm holding the keys but I can't find the right one
and the sun burned itself down,
the rain receded into the clouds

nothing is the same


He lies down in the stream
water rushing over him
relaxing, water replaces air

everything is different now.

Blistering Blue

I can't remember my last dream.
Out of space, out of time.  Unnatural surroundings.  
Muffled screams float in from the hallway.
Golden seam of light from the doorway saturates illuminated stitches.
He couldn't remember the last time this had happened.   When he almost lost himself in the pain---
It's like seeing her for the first time, over and over.

Suddenly his hands were covered in their blood.

But I remember them,
telling me to be quiet, not to fight it.  


Blush of Crimson

I've lost concept of time,
time to be quiet
I need to schedule my time
need to go away
Ophelia covered in glass
veins like kite string
he breathed in the water
I never said goodbye.

You know that feeling like everything's the end of the world
Next to the campfire, stars carved into her upper thighs
crossed like constellations as she moved closer to the flame,
gaze drawn up
The flight before the fall

He hasn't yet hit the ground, green flannel still in suspension.  Dew collecting on the leaves slide down to the earth and surround his body.
His eyes are already closed, a moment of vulnerability.  Still on the surface, cold blue water saturates his cuts and seams.

For the touch of a vanished thought caressed the back of her mind, like birds balanced on a live power line.  Digital ripped walls, lights leading to the intervention of the other side of the ghost city, building brick school, and infinite nowhere.  She lit her candle in the studio, watching the wick burn down and melt the wax, a ring of liquid growing from the center.  Strange to drown in heat.  It seems there's a wall of glass between her mind and this supposed reality, without any sound but her breathing and the occasional crack from the slowly burning candle.  She mixes her paint and doesn't think about anything.  The sun sets and rises and sets and rises again.  Sitting in the same place, the candle frozen in perpetual burning.  The room was clean.  And she was painting.  And the birds on the wire gently cawed against a white sky.  The echo returned to the blank room.

I remember that night she stopped answering my calls.  She doesn't pick up anymore.  Curled up in the doorway scrawled with tick marks from when we grew extra inches overnight, phone clutched to my chest.  I looked up and saw old Chinese fortunes folded above the doorway, hot tears spilling down my cheeks.  A feeling of helplessness, guilt.  If she answered I would have driven up there, taken her home.
It was 2am when I left.  I grabbed the keys from the counter, my coat, some chocolate, and a book.  walking to the car, I could see my breath suspended in the air.  Frost coated the sides of the windshield but I didn't stop driving.  I forgot my mittens.  There was a foot more of snow as I ran towards the old door to her dorm, yanking the handle hard enough that the lock slipped and I didn't need an ID to get in.  Warm stale air enveloped me as I gazed over empty security desk under fluorescent light.

Muted Undertones

The painting took up a whole wall of the room.  There wasn' any money to frame it, so it would have to always stay here.
Sunlight leaked in from the window like a steading dripping faucet against a clogged drain.  Her hair was turning blonde again, like when they were younger.
Humming, she was
remembering his hands
as they gripped the wheel loosely
at 5am in the morning
reflective and
coated in glass
in the back of
his black pickup
the sun slowly
bled from behind the clouds
dripping like honey
illuminating blonde
eyelashes,
the dirt on
the windshield.
warm golden
air filled the truck
as he turned the heat on
one hand on
the wheel
the other
reaching backwards to
twisting metal,
broken limbs.
Connected below
the surface
of broken glass.

In between the falling leaves, she whispered 'see you' and kissed his eyelids as he fell asleep.

Neutral Tones

I knocked on her door.  Her roommate answered.  He hadn't seen her at all that day.  I've grown indifferent about my own problems.  So I walked in her room and picked up the scissors from the corner.  Put on her coat for her.  Walked her through the snow to the car.  Cecilia sat between the driver and passenger seat, hand in mine.  I wish I could heal her arm through our layers of jackets, taken some of the sadness away.   We didn't say anything as empty pavement and trees passed in every living moment.

I was thinking about him.

Occasionally we touch, but only in passing.  Shadows, we cover from the heat.  

Ridicule gnaws at these connection, scrapes paint strokes until the threat snaps, the pillars bow
And we take shelter in the cleansing water.  The clashes of flesh.   The segregation of interactions for fear of having ours be known by anyone at all.

(But still they talk, recite the script)
'Cecilia tried to **** herself and her clothes need to be washed'
(Look now, do you see it?)
'It looks like her soul
left her eyes'


Purple Haze

I knew it was a nightmare.  It's stuck to me.  These alien emotions; like a sickness or a burn, interdepartmental rhythms of my brain I'll never fully grasp... not artistic or poetic.  or anything fake and useful.  Just nebular, inhibiting, distressed.
I'm always trapped in something.  A heaviness.  A natural declining, dissipation, entropy.
A brutal and sterile resistance, inviolate and soft to the touch; a lapsing despondency.

He was the sea that he drowned in.  And he was the riverbed in the trees, too.
Swept in whirlpools and ripples and age rings, whispers of fallen leaves in the lucid water.  
Silenced by hushing rage of stone cut rapids.


Ultraviolet Love


He's not seeing normally.  Through the rippling surface her face is reflected into a million moving pieces.
Lines of tape surround his body, they shrivel in the heat of the sun.  This is not natural death.  There are no birds circling overhead, the stream continues to trickle over the rocks.

I drove her home from college started to run a bath.  The hot water faucet turned all the way.  I put my feet in, trying to avoid eye contact with the parallel lines.  Familiar to what i had stitched before.  Pale blue - green water kissed our skin as she closed her eyes.  

We are not creatures of visible light.

gulls cawed, so loud their calls
echoed off the cliffs behind us, a ghost flock answering,
though not shrill enough to rouse us

they flew crisscross patterns
and dove into the surf, but not one landed
on the carrion strewn across the sands

not like the vultures of my youth,
ravenous black hawks that began their devouring
at the first scent of death, or a moment before

no, these creatures merely called
to one another, a curious conversing
about the carnage below

perhaps their strange song
our dirge, as they swooped to and fro, wings
slicing currents carrying our souls

Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944

A flock of steel grey and white doves flapped up from the neighbouring roof in sudden excitement and fluttered up into the sky as though at the sound of an inaudible gunshot.

They worked their wings with great joy and they circled high, one following the other, sparkling and feather-light.

They circled on and on, weaving ever-evolving patterns in the sky, circling now closer overhead so you could see each one of them tilting the beak sideways listening to the wing beats of the others, and with subtle paddling variations of the wings merging seamlessly with one another.

They circled on and on and away, taking their flight to levels beyond concepts. They turned into specks of pure delight in the grey evening sky and, with the light of the heady regions playing on their wings, became invisible flickers of nothingness, dissolving from memory. They wheeled back into view yet again, drawing strands of some invisible filament from a drifting cloud.
 
The sun was behind a big bank of rainclouds in the west. The whole line of the horizon west had caught fire and the clouds were billowing up like black smoke from a massive conflagration. They trundled east like a herd of wild elephants conquering a valley…

A sudden squall disturbed the trees, exciting cuckoos, sparrows and crows out of their perches. They flew from branch to unsure branch, but only the crows cawed. The doves were still circling high in the sky, wheeling in and out of the east-bound rainclouds.

They wheeled with the high-altitude winds, sometimes the wind blowing them off their course, but each time the faltering happened, they dipped or climbed together to navigate the choppy ether, effortlessly weaving newer formations in which the wind too joined to make the whole. 

The clouds galloping east were invading the whole sky: they rolled forward, the breakers curling in with the onward ****** of the massive clouds from behind. The wind among the trees had fallen silent. The whole earth seemed to freeze with the expectation of the first drops of the downpour as the clouds passed overhead…

It did not rain. The clouds seemed to be holding back, not allowing the rains they carried to condense and spill. They held back and rolled on and on, as though they had to reach somewhere very fast…They rolled on and on and the light began to grow dimmer by the second, until it seemed night and heavy shadows would soon embrace the sky and the earth...

And then there was light! It had neither shape nor dimension; it was like a flower slowly flowering, petal after petal unfolding—the clouds were lifting their blanket in the west and the sun was coming out and now shining in its full glory in the western horizon.
And the doves were now circling closer and were not of this world. 

They descended gliding radiant on still wings, the deep violet of the rainclouds behind them, their beaks soft and shining. They came swinging down, bobbing up in smooth arcs at touchdown and flapping their wings twice or thrice to gain sure-footed perch on the old rooftop.

They perched in a row at the very top of the roof where the tiles folded pyramid-shape and they were all facing east and crooning. They perched transmuted on the rooftop and they were all gazing happily at a glorious rainbow straddling the eastern sky, all seven colours sparkling.

They crooned as though excited it was their work; the entire sweep of the rainbow was their work!

A cuckoo began to sing and it was raining rainbows somewhere far in the east.

The Ravens

On a rainy night so boring
I heard Munin soundly snoring,
I grew tired of my poring
Perched above Valhalla’s door.
“Munin!”, screeched I to the ceiling,
Sending the poor fellow reeling,
“Let’s deal out a joke to Odin,
One that he’ll be falling for -
Just one joke, and nothing more.”

After barrow ghosts-invoking
Odin entered, wet and soaking,
And I started with my croaking
From the dark above the door:
“I’m the first and oldest Volva!
All my secrets I could tell ya,
For the right price I might sell, yeah”,
And I cawed, “Would you know more?”
(He is crazy about lore.)

“What!”, cried Odin, “Quick, be talking!
At the price I won’t be balking.
Searching wisdom, I’ve been walking
Wandering from door to door.
Let my need for knowledge reach you,
All my own skills I would teach you;
Tell me all now, I beseech you!”
Quoth I grinning, “Nevermore!”
(Just a jest, and nothing more.)

Odin with frustration sputtering,
Munin laughing, wildly fluttering,
I was dead-pan and kept uttering
Nonsense about hidden lore.
For his need he found no quelling,
All Valhall woke from his yelling –
Oh, the fun to keep on telling
Him that one word, “Nevermore!”
(We thought it was a joke, no more.)

In the morning ceased his raving,
But that did not end his craving,
And we saw our master waving
To our roost above the door.
“Friends”, he said, “Now I will ride out;
Over Midgard you shall glide out:
Seek the Volva in her hideout!”
- Then it felt a joke no more.
(And Munin, to this day, is sore.)

Every day we must keep flying,
Always for that “Volva” spying,
Acting as though we were trying;
Well, the joke’s on us, for sho…
To escape a rightful chiding,
To this day the truth we’re hiding;
By this tale we are abiding,
And we’ll tell you nothing more!

I laid nose-to-nose, in tall, old grasses, with a spirited coyote, some nights ago.
He said to me, with lips unparted and low, shiny eyes - to listen.

Hesitantly, I inched forward and nudged that coyote with my face, prodding him for something more.

But, nothing came.
He simply stared back at me, unblinkingly.

“I listen!”
I shouted with a heart on fire.
“I listen more than anyone I know!”

The coyote continued his staring game, quieting my bosomed flames.
Stubborn - they erupted, something ugly, from the valley, into the mountaintop.
Spilling from eyes, in the mountainside, I screamed back into his so loud,
The mountain ached from its shut in echo.

Patient " the coyote waited.
So, I stopped.

Somehow surprised, I found that, after the flames subsided into greys of ashes, in silence, I had begun to listen.
That coyote’s eyes were urging eyes, unmoving " unrelenting.

Obedient, I drew forth my worn, careful bag out and placed it, gently, in the dirt between us.
The coyote snatched it, in the grain between our breaths, and held it between clenched teeth.

I glared at him with challenging eyes " he stared back at me, just the same.
I reached out to grab it, but halfway there, I heard the coyote command me,

“Stop.”

The coyote lay there, my ashes raging about loudly " still silent, my bag between his teeth.
As the ashes settled, his glaring eyes mellowed, and I watched as he gobbled it up.

--

A crow cawed somewhere.
The full moon shone down approvingly.

My soul sighed once.
My body followed.




The coyote slept -
I bowed my head in silence.

I walked along the fence line,
hands in my denim-jeans,
headlong into the warm-breeze.
Windmill-blades spun,
squeaking through rust,
wildflowers fluttered
as the sun bore down.

A flock of birds hung
on the top strand
of kinked barbed wire,
scattering as I approached,
spinning up
into a spiral above.

Cool-sweat dripped
down my spine,
reminding me,
reminding me of her,
my dream girl,
the sweat we created
in fields of clover.

The crows cawed,
mocked me,
reminding me
it was now over
and I,
I was all alone
in these empty fields of clover.

I stood in the garden
In the still of the wet morning
And watched the leaves twitch
From the pounding of tiny droplets.
As if some small creature was racing for its life
From me.
The intruder.
A chickadee found its landing pad
Just in front of me
At my feet,
Unaware of my hulk.
A miracle unto its own.
Crows cawed,
And eagles screed,
Not breaking the silence
But contributing to it.
Rhododendrons,
Astilbes,
And wisps of grass
Missed in yesterday’s weeding venture
Waved in response.
And the only thought I could dare
To bring to my mouth,
Lest my puny effort to describe
This cacophony of beauty
Destroy it utterly,
Was “Amazing Grace.”

Was it my fault that I asked the larks
 your secret whisper-name?
A small mistake, I won't regret,
 yet I am ashamed.

They said it was Mountain Laurel
 who opened the morning for song-
I was happy,
 half convinced
They were not wrong

The rain could come
 or bubblegum.  
I'd smiled as the flower
 of our nakedness bloomed,
Then withered in the bower.  

Mountain Laurel Girl,
 what wilts your cheek of rose?
Why switch those crimson lips I kissed 
 with blue umbrellas?

Later, confronted by nightingales,
 they blamed the larks of lies-

       "Moonflower is she
     of the slender wrists, she,
            of ocean eyes"

And when I asked those dapper chaps
 how sweetly she did love me
They cawed a song of sunset
 beset with storm, and ugly

Blackbird was a queen
She lived in the north
She was a mad queen
Her rage stretched forth

Aye' she was mad
Filled up with hate
She started wars
Only she could dictate

She loved the smell, the sound
And the taste
Of the blood that ran thick
Up to her gates

There she stood up
Up in her tower
Black eyes glinting
“Look the people, they cower!”

Her long ebony hair
Wiped in the breeze
Her deathly white skin
Stood out from the trees
~
Many lusted for the queen
In all her stark glory
For non were like her
So beautiful, yet gory

But the mad queen had a secret
A secret deep down
A secret not spoken
Lest she need make them drown

This beautiful queen
Yet mad in the head
With her long black hair,
Loved her birds instead

For everywhere she went
The birds flocked around
They were always with her
Sitting upon her crown
~
When the queen was alone
Not another soul around
Blackbird would cry
A very ungodly sound

She was meant to have wings
To sore high in the sky
Glossy black feathers,
No wonder she cried

Long ago,
When she broke from her egg
Never had she dreamed
She’d have legs instead

A great tall castle
That so many call home
But to her, oh to her
It was no more than stone

In a great big cage she lived
With heavy bones and bare skin,
When all she wants is the sky
And her feathers back again

But no, this is her life
Ever since that day
She cawed loud at the goddess
The ugly Grafey

Mocked her she did
For her outwardly shape
Then ****** to the ground
Suffering in this state

So here she was
Gnawing at the bone
Stewing with revenge
Longing to go home

For the ugly Grafey
Lives in the world of wings
So Blackbird instead
Makes the swords sing

But all the blood
And all the tears
Gain Blackbird
Only more jeers

For though she is mad
And ruthless and savage
She stays in her tower
Away from the damage

The people gossip
Snicker and sneer
But they won’t for long
Not with her near

“Come with me my loves,”
She croons to the birds
“Let us make them scream,
And drive them into herds.”

She took then her sword
A heavy old blade
But she carried it steady
Filled with her rage

Storming down the stairs
Yelling curses all the way
Death was coming,
With it she’d have her way

Yes, death and suffering
Mauling and tearing
This is what would help her
To keep on caring

Bursting through the doors
Of her cage, no, castle
Everyone stops, nothing moved
Not but a swinging tassel

The angels up high
All began to cry
For what happens next
Made them beat on their chest

“Too long have I been in this corps!”
She screamed tearing at her flesh,
“But if I go,
I’ll make you follow.”

She charged ahead
Into the crowds
Slashing, stabbing
Making the birds proud

She killed all those people
Men and women alike
Only the children she spared
For she could no longer fight

Her beautiful hair
Was now matted and tangled
Her shock of white skin
Looked all but mangled

For the people had been stronger
Then she’d originally thought
But now there they lay
Left only to rot

“What’s that? Is that laughing?
No, you’re all dead!”
She cackled loud,
With a wariness in her head

She thought she’d feel victory
But all she felt was defeat,
This isn’t right she thought
Stumbling on her feet

She sunk down to the ground
Soaked with too much death
The sword clattered down
Somewhere off to the left

“I want to go home now,”
She whispered in a small meek voice
“Come my lovelies,
Listen to my choice.”

All her pretty birds
Different blues and blacks
They all flocked to her
Their talons digging into the cracks

“That’s it my dears,
Come give me your love.
Send me back home
To the dark skies above.”

With tender love and care
Her birds ripped her apart
She gave one last sigh,
And that was her depart.

Her birds kept on pecking
For they loved her only too well,
Blessed be the queen
The blackbird who fell.

He yelled
Out **** spot
to the freckled boy from next door

and
out **** spot
to his own black labrador

he wolf whistled and cawed
to all the lambs on the moor

yet
he had never seen or thought
of the blindspot in his own eye before

"Fuuuuuck!" groaned the Tortoise.
"****!" spat the Hare.

"Son of a *****!" barked the Fox.
"**** on a rooster!" cawed the Crow.

"***** of a bison!" growled the Wolf.
"***** of a llama!" brayed the ***.

"**** on a termite!" squealed the Ant.
"**** of a cricket!" grated the Grasshopper.

"THE HUMANS KNOW OUR STORIES!!"
cried the animals in unison despair.

"Yeeeees," hoot'd the Owl
with an evil-wicked grin,
"but only the ones with a moral."

A crow rested on a fence
and I wondered what this story-book fiend
with his dark, beady eyes, clever sense
and his feathers well-preened
wanted from someone as hollow as me.
I couldn't do anything but wait and see.

What did one say when faced with a crow
who had no appointments to rush to
no place he must go?
As if speaking was something I could do.
So with a wooden arm I gave him a little wave.
Pleased, he came closer, that fabled young knave.

I could not move much and I could not speak
as the crow stopped right at my rooted feet
and prodded my foot with his beak.
I'm a listless liar he deemed worthy to meet.
So I did not speak and I did not move
an inaction of which the crow did not approve.

He flew back to his fence that creaked
and shifted when the wind pressured its joints.
The forceful draft stung my eyes so they leaked
tears, I found I always disappoint.
The crow flexed his black wings
eyes closed as, for him, the gale sings.

I croaked out a question from deep in my throat
the wind became a whisper as the crow paid attention
"Are you here to jeer and gloat
over my bad decisions and poor intentions?"
He shook that dark head and said
"You're a terrible liar. I'm here to help instead."

"But are you not a portender of death
here to show me I have the illest of luck?"
Why can I not catch my breath?
Wondrous wings glide on waning wind then tuck
neatly against his back for he chose my shoulders
to better speak words that doused what smolders.

The crow rested on my shoulders and cawed
a sound soft and broken
and I thought it terribly odd
that the crow would caw when it was well-spoken.
So when the pressure of panic permeated my chest
the crow spoke again so my horrible heart could rest

"If I were just a crow residing on a fence..."
He gestured with his wing to where he was before.
"Then I'd have left you to your own offense
and not show you what you often ignore."
His black wings pushed my head 'til I saw the gate.
Hope swung at my roots freeing my feet from their hate.

"I believe you have many apologies to make."
I nodded my head and the gate opened.
The crow continued, "The right choices often take
an ax to your tree, to your roots. With hope and
desire to change, you can grow something new."
I stepped into the world beyond the fence and away the crow flew.

The crows cawed out with harsh, sorrowful cries as we drove up.
I fumbled to pull my phone out of my pocket,
and asked my mom to pull over.
She gave me an odd look,
but did so all the same.

It was a true ****** of crows,
like none you have ever seen in your life.
Black on the gray sky,
they swooped,
each feather a silhouette against the shades.

They sat on street wires,
balanced on wobbly tree branches,
and pecked at the ground.
Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred? Three hundred?
Too many to count.

I walked around the sidewalk in awe,
as in waves they would lift from the ground,
soar as one,
before lighting back down,
as if nothing had happened.

The busy cars whirred by on all sides of the small, road-boardered area. What a great welcome to your new home.
Would you have taken it as a bad sign?
Something of that majesty?

Drip drap drop my blood on these white tiles
I feel the pain but it would be for a short while
Another person who cut of their life line
Nobody can say that I would live for a lifetime

Hahaha! I wonder if I'll finally die. Every single time I ever tried I failed and did it miserably. Is it wrong to have suicidal tendencies? NOPE!!! My family says that there is nothing wrong with me. To believe or not to believe who cares? Well certainly not me. It is said that thinking that you have a mental disorder when you don't is a mental disorder. How can it be? Humans are very peculiar; they are not understandable.

Red river coming out of my body
I guess I'm just another person to bury
If there was anyone who really cared about me
They would suffer bad when me they'd see

Already seeing the white light.
I never thought that it would be so bright.
I never thought that's so much it would shine.
Numbness now coming from my wound site.

Hope it was my destined time to die.
Can't really breathe, on my knees, clutching to my side.
The red streams are so dark; they make me start to cry.
Is there another way other than suicide?

***** blood on the toilet seat
Wish somebody would come here and rescue me
That somebody would most likely not be real
My fingers and toes I cannot feel.

Gurgle, gurgle
My life I just burgled
Wish people wouldn't say that I looked like a gerbil
I wouldn't have to face the fact that I am in trouble

Blarh, blarh!
A black crow at me cawed
I barely see I'm encircled by blurry vultures
My eyes closed, my last breath I draw.

I saw five blackbirds perched on a telephone wire at six am
They were black as the blackest of nights and as big as Caterpillars
They were looking down on cars taped over with blowing plastic bags
Floating in the hot pink wind like tornadoes made from lipstick
Their talons were long daggers looking to pierce the deepest part of my heart
To open my eyes with their meandering meaningful meaningless
They had shipwrecks adorning each obsidian feather and crooked teeth
Capped the nightmares that lurked behind the glare of their eyes
They watched solemnly at the scene below of closing doors
Of rustling papers and stained tears tarring the summer ground
They had secrets cawed in a language of screeched whispers
Warning and educating ears that were too deaf or too self involved to listen
We’ve got no chance to escape this drudgery of modernity
We’re stuck in this self-built prison of black and white prisms
Of three dimensional reasoning and the attitude that follows
Never meant to be but it’s what it is when we think we’re free
How can the one blind bird perceive things differently
If our shortsighted near-death experiences have left us numb
Numbing us to the presence of the stars in the morning sky
Or the Sun exploding torrents of fire during the night
Wrapping us in a chilly warmth like blankets soaked with gasoline
We've left ourselves to wander the desolate land thinking of the obscene


I saw five blackbirds blacking out the sun as they took to the sky
Laughing their murderous laugh at the awkward bipeds down below

Crow
-------
A crow  cawed, inviting visitors
While I was translating my country in my dream

When I got up
A pigeon was sitting sleeping
On the window of the flat on the other side

Not saying anything

O visitor, go back
Don’t stay in my dreams
Without a visa

Coconut trees
------------------

Date palms asked

Why are you staring?
We are the coconut trees
After you translated us.

He took her by the wrist and gently placed a brush in her hand.
She dipped it in a bottle of pastels,
And under His watchful eye
She drew a sky with all the colors before her.
A shade of blue glowed on the page,
And in the distance birds cawed.

Once He nodded in approval
Her brush painted a scene of love and silent tears.
Houses appeared on the page,
Each with more meaning then the next.
Gradually the scene changed,
As things do with age.

Her brush faltered,
Painting a scene in all blacks and blues.
She shaded her face until only the tears showed.
The painter stubbornly looked down,
Ignoring the face of beauty looking down at her,
Ignoring the gentle touch on her wrist.
She painted scenes of confusion and pain,
Worry and death.
She became ignorant and blind,
Forgetting the setting she had once loved before.

The painter suddenly noticed her mistake,
And once again found Him and the guidance He gave.
He whispered his plan to her
And her brush danced across the page with a renewed hope.
She painted all the joys in colors of yellow,
All the little hints of love in various tints of red.
Times of growth and understanding leaped off the page in vibrant greens.
She didn't hesitate to paint the sorrows,
Knowing that was what He wanted her to see.

And on the seventh day, He rested.
The girl, old and wise from the life she led,
Became a lifetime younger.
She curled up into His arms,
Like a child on a cold night.
He smiled down at her and she set down her brush,
Retiring to heaven
To admire the painting they had created.

You're the one to pluck the pricking rows from the gathering rose
Gracing heads in the hours of cowards
I saw you wishing at the well speaking spells without change and a bucket full of mouths
No nickel
Sans silver
I know no drunken night will get rid of the bones you have hid skin deep without fair or fond beauty
I thought you knew that broken boys were made of burning wings and puppet strings
Sticks
Bones
Glass
Stones
They bow down to my crown
So please speak the mind of your weak and shaking knees
Ease us all and tell how tall you can scrape a sun-less sky before I judge this trail of wax and feathers with a burning back
Call the red light whistles: I'm having an angry young life mistake heart break attack
You never said whether the weather was flame or shower
So my marching men cower you see, being made of wood
In fire or water a daughter of either nemesis elements will make them all fall down
You should mourn you thorn torn mess wrapped in a pedal-less dress
You dared to reckon with the second son of death
And I did not breathe my first breath being born between two eyes seeing any form of life out there
And I did not believe you'd relieve the constant arch sparking the greener side no longer cleaner than the duller parallel due to forest fires
Button up that shirt, and have you tied your black tie?
The beholder has died
We must mourn the values torn between flawed judgment cawed by a bird’s eye view watching you from petty pictures and a meaningless word they heard from the latter mentioned bucket as two of them are cracking your glass with one stone like
"You foolish fool, hasn't life shown you heaven never listens at 11:11?"
And melting the unleavened within my frowned mouth with spit and a tear I fear for you while my eye is watching it all from a distance in an instance of sickness and sadness
"What is this madness? My body is not made to witness a price paid with another laid down and made dead. In my head there are funerals, in my head there's parades; both celebrations for a nation in heartache full of memories bowing down below the crown that they break. And I refuse to let the pieces of my transparent house be collected by mavericks. Time ticks on the dawn of dying days. With words up my sleeves, I continue my melancholy ways."

eerie plover cries
and night jar acrobatics
in broad daylight
were a sign of something amiss
especially coming so soon
after a barn owl
had pecked his fruit bowl at lunch
and a crow had sat on his head
and cawed lustily for an eternity
it's *** for tat from nature
when we think only of ourselves
without doubt we demean our stature
when we upset nature's designs
one of these days an ape will come visiting
and help himself to the fowls

“Ring-a-ring-a-rosie,” we screamed
holding hands in circles. We laughed,
fell, tumbled when the end came
and rolled about in the thick grass.

Mothers would scold us and click
their tongues. Big sighs came;
we knew the games were over
and retired the evening inside.

At night I played the game myself,
pulled on my teddy bear’s arms
and loudly whispered the rhyme
as I danced around my room.

Like a possessed child I danced,
fully drunk in the night’s vigour
until there came the trumpets,
slowly gathering pace outside.

They became louder. So did I.
I twirled as the house shook,
span around me and laughed
until it all blurred violently.

The sound was deafening
much like my heart in my ears.
Ba-doomph. Ba-doomph.
The explosions rattled me

as wailings came and cawed,
but I carried on in my fever:
“We all fall down” I said, dizzy.
I knew I wouldn’t dance again.

Yes or No, The Crow Cawed(./?)
What Does it Entail, The Fox Chuckled as it enticingly twitched its hindquarters.
Who, crowed the Owl?
No. What, cried the Crow.
Is it For her or For him, questioned the quail.
This drew the eyes of the Predators and The quail hurried along into the long grass defining the other side of the clearing.
It made a point, chimed in the vulture, Which startled the cat Who Was Lying at the base of the tree, grooming itself as if To Seem to not be paying any attention at all.
But with a flick of a paw, the Cat covered it up, and reached Back to scratch Its Ear.
That Would Be the Question, wouldn't it, yowled the cat suddenly, Startling everyone In the Clearing, save the fox, which glinted with a bit Of Light Just for a moment as its jaws split into a Small smug Smile.
As it It were Expecting it, Harrumphed the Cat,
Settling back down across the roots to resume Grooming.  
It certainly is the question, whispered the human in the clearing.
All 6 pairs of eyes turned toward the center, the Sixth seen just outside the clearing. Do you have an answer, whispered the quail.
I don't know.
The fox chuckled again, but the rest stayed Silent. Until the human looked up and the animals had faded away.
Only one pair of eyes remained,
looking back from the mirror,
reflected from the human's own face.
I don't know yet, the human whispered again.

Me, up on the snow-rock white glacial cliff hedges mountaineering my way in the moments-after-twilight-sweeping-black. Execrable cold, a death-making quiet, Not a seal, not a hare - this Earth of gelid death. I climbed out above the snow Where my expiration left sinuous brandings in the copper light. But the Weddell was siphoning the darkness to the katabatic deep valleys - piceous lees of the brightening umber - cleaving the moon in two like the split eye of a winter lynx. And I saw the penguins: Little specks of black in the limitless white - fifty together - obelisk-still. Their inaudible coo, they sat motionless, nearly mute, With creamsicle feet and amber-eyes, incomparably mum. I proceeded: not one chirped or swiveled its little fur cap. Black silent fragments of a black silent world. I hearkened in the barrens of the desiccate plains. While the wooly bears came from the sea to see of the silence. Slowly edges oozed out of the darkness. Then the moon ivory, porcelain, azure erupted Quietly, and halving to its heart and shot mist, shaking and the ocean opened, crying blue, And the giant mountains lunged-. I stopped Scrambling, as if up from my voice at the mouth of a nightmare, down towards the snow-rock, from their glacial sheaths, And came the penguins. There stood they, still-, silent, in the river of blue light: Creamsicle feet and amber-eyed Thwacking the ice in a grand fête While everywhere was gray and rimy. And still they did not speak above a breath, Not one squeeked or cawed, Their nestled shining beaks dug into the polar rim, Low into the valleys, in the blue shimmering rays - In throngs of the congested cities, living among the years, the faces, May I some day greet my memory in such solemn a world Into the estuaries and the azure-skies, curious wooly bears, Listening as the ice tholes.

The wall said "not anymore"

Mother searched school to capture the bullies. But the rapture that sang never rang a word to her.
"Capture the bullies!"
No, not anymore.
The father called on his group, but their theories flying south. She needed diagnostics. Something was wrong.
"Something was wrong!"
No, not anymore.
Not anymore because something was gone.
Something was wrong, but could not be diagnosed.
It could not be diagnosed by popping a dose.
The dope on the street,
the sky wasn't blue,
it's just blank.
What was wrong?
Oh yes, something's wrong!
And so the rapture rang, and it cawed and it clawed!
And it scratched at the window with a piece of a shirt, and a scripture to say
"NO! She wasn't okay!"
Does it take you so long to decide what was wrong?
Well it's not your decision!
Yes, something was wrong!
We knew it all along.
Something was soulfully, graspingly wrong!
But before you point fingers,
before you slam doors.
Please listen to the rapture,
"no, not anymore!"

There was once a time
I was the friend.
The friend of the sun,
The friend of the day.

There once was a party.
A party of fun,
a party with the sun,
a party with the day.

I knew I couldn't resist,
So I took the moon,
the night,
to the party of the day.

It was an ugly scene;
Day turned dark,
And Night turned bright
as the party of the day
turned to a party
of War.

The darkened sun
Brought forth a crow;
The brightened moon
Let go a robin.

The robin chirped,
and the sun turned day and bright.
I felt happy.

The crow cawed,
And the moon turned dark;
My feelings grew scared
as the moon departed.

The sun turned to me,
he yelled at me,
he banished me.

Here I am,
Banished to the moon,
Where I look down upon Earth,
and sneak peeks at the sun.

Here I am,
hoping for the day
another fool would bring
the moon
to the party with the sun.

Today, moss felt like felt on my fingers
as I stretched my hands on the nearest tree
and watched as the clouds formed and vanished
over the small, swampy lake. I sat at the edge,
just beyond the edge of the water, and stared
without focus. The crow landed on the
branch above me and cawed deliberately and I
silently wished I could echo his sentiment.
Today turned into a respite from the forest
that I had entered to rest;
an escape from an escape.
And as I smell the breeze off the lake, I
hide my recognition of the anesthesia in the air
because I like the sun on my face,
the wood-chips pressing into my palms, the
dirt in between my toes.
And as my head drifts back down to the ground
my eyes rolling back
I smile momentarily, wondering
but not bothering to care, because
I can’t.

The crows cawed to us
through the ancient-forest,
a chilling revelation.
As icy-mist settled on the lush green,
you disappeared into the blackness,
traces of your fragrance trailed
behind you in waves.

I screamed in desperation,
I can’t be alone,
I can’t leave you
like me
pained,
paying dues
from the beginning
of our childhood memories.

I fell to my knees,
cried for you,
you are my only love
Darling,
save me,
I’m not asking for anything from you,
my fingers are raised in a V,
peace come back to me…

sitting in seclusion
on early morning's beach
with a friend
eating potato chips
talkin' 'bout life
he was jobless
I was playin' hooky
a gray sky hovered
cool winter breezes blew
for some reason
he thought his pain
was greater than others'
but he wouldn't talk about it
the chips were salty
seagulls screeched and cawed
the ocean crashed
life went on
but not for him

We walked through pale yellow daisies,
a red ribbon wrapped around your neck,
as black birds cawed in the distance
and cicadas sang in the treeline.

With storm clouds in your eyes,
the wind picked up dust,
surrounded us, and the daisies wilted
because it was October;

the frost had come.

obsequious bitterness
cawed of your hallowed mask
take 5 steps and
disappear

cakes in the oven, save
for the life after next, save,

footsteps, tinnitus ring,
records and mulch


everyone cowers
  at the wasp on the bus
that's passed unnoticed on the open street

uneasy

orbits of flight
  inchoate rage
bashing its head against the windows
radicalization of blind corners
spectacle of death
coil and frisk


how miserable how unfortunate how tragic how mindless how unthinkable how predictable how impossible how  urgent how hopeless how uncomfortable how


tongue severed tie

the centre expands, ossifies,
swallows and dissolves

best leave the dead to speak for themselves, they've
history on their side
  after all


inflected bias
in silent tears


if only  i could drown the whole world in melancholy


siren wail
   nervous tinder and pike
buzz and clutter


everyone
  waves their arms in discomfort, but
otherwise sits still


the irrefutable materiality of inertia




the bus drives on