With my growth I leave behind a shell.
A casing of the world I used to thrive in.
The past is no longer inhabitable, but still usable.
I use my memories as a flotation device in the abyss that is recurring.
I rise above my past and transcend into the new crevice that is my present.
I cannot change the past as it is set in bone.
But I can make my future fit me.
I can form my own protection
layer by layer
until all my supplies of DNA paper Mache will no longer stick.
Their glue dried up, exhausted by the length of time I've spent on earth, oppressed by the pressure of the tumulting, black sea.
Waves may break on me.
My knowledge of living my shield against depression, anxiety.
My bone hard shield saves me.
I am the chambered nautilus. I am awake.
But dream I will of times beyond 36.
What lies ahead may only hurt me on the edge because to the core my skeleton is steady.
Its weight growing heavy
Can be lifted with my spirits as if before a feast.
And dragged down to the ocean floor when realized I'm a beast.
No princess in her castle, nor farm boy in his barn
Unique to who I am, and in my niche I fit.
I may blow up.
And fall down.
And spurt salty tears.
You'd never know, my loves, my dreams, my fears.
Upon first glance I am the epitome of my life.
Upon second, as confusing.
Upon third, as painful and funny.
And as irrelevant to others as I am important to myself.
Another rock in the ocean. Another pebble. Another pearl.
Not found
Not searched for
Not hidden.

tossing and turning
in that chambered space
between
wakefulness and sleep

exhaustion
moving like molasses
in my veins

no way out

We have engendered   them.

Our   babies.
Our annelids. 
Facsimiles of Us.
A gushing warm viscous  fluid
And  a conglomerate of meat
From the womb pods of our hive
Rush out into your  oxygen.
Our mass will grow indeed.
And,
Our perfect mitosis will repeat -
More beautiful
Babies.
Our perfect mitosis will repeat -
More beautiful
Babies.
8 become 16; 16 become 32
You (solo)
Must know by now; no  doubt
Individuality is a cold, broken loop
An anachronism of a bygone era

Pass through  Our membrane , insect.
And be born infinitely back through it.
We will have you spread-out in our warmth
Under our skins; apart of our million-chambered heart

Join Us.

You are the systole to the diastole
Of my four-chambered cavity
You are the pulmonary rhythmic control
That fills air to my capillary.

You are the Pituitary Gland
That drowns my bloodstream in dopamine
You take my brain to a wonderland
Drunk and overdosed in Seratonin.

You are the only Mitochondrion
That powers all cellular activity
My Cytoplasms are in motion
For the sexiest Golgi Body.

You are the ultimate synapse
In my every granule of neuron
That gives an involuntary prolapse
To both my dendrite and axon.

this swifter's grift -
lifting loosely
fitted accoutrement

lourden fruit
carelessly held
silkened, gimlet lit
shamelessly rivened
to a paler shade
of need.

solitude's
enchanting seed
may confer
a grander banquet’s call
but, this tug of
grandiloquent oblige
and politesse . . .

master and slave consort
black and scarlet
swift of tongue and fingertip
unbound so neatly
and leather blind



tell me muse of the anger flesh on fire
is there really dignity in defeat
that eludes the victor

tell me muse of the truth in nature
ill-graced tail-lamp broken
is destiny all ways ordained in contradiction

tell me muse do hearts all times submit
to the beacon call
shyness long forgotten
narrative so harshly written

as ne'er before
with an insistence
ageless yearnings bellow  
as but glazened shadow


if reason sleeps
there will be no learning
no refuge
only to each
for their crimes
a four-chambered riddle



All Rights Reserved
James R. Morse, NYC  2013.

Unforgiving heat
Cool drink
Giraffe,
Hippo,
Wildebeest,
Gazelle
Sip muddy water hole
Crouching low.

Unforgiving heat
Cool drink
Texans
Sip fridge-cooled Camelbacks
Crouching low.

Light breeze
Eggplant skies
Tall savannah grass
Sways
Masking movement.
Predators travel
Unseen.

Guns ready
trophies sighted
Giraffe
Hippo
Wildebeest
Gazelle

Bullet chambered
Trigger finger
trophies....

Running?

Cheetahs pouncing
Texans screaming
Law of Nature
End of Story.

There's a beautiful gun in my hand.
Flawless.
                     The nightshift sun gleams off the barrel like a swan on a lake
     At home against the humid sweaty dark pressing against everything yet awesomely singular

     The clock stopped a long time ago and gunshots took over in place of the ticks and tocks…

     (I'm chewing on something soft)

                        … and I never noticed.

It seemed natural.
Every bullet chambered was just another hour passing

       And though it feels like forever I know its been half a day
      

        Blood laces the treads of my shoes
     Hugging the rubber and drawing patterns that I'm less aware of than I am of...

     (What is this? It's good.)

... myself

         Everyone I know is sitting in a pile.
        No more alive than the gun itself.
Still they talk. Memories are shared and advice is given. I don't care to know if its real.

        Everyone talks. It makes sense.
   Even the dead.
  
           The ceiling fan noisily labors diligently if not futilely against the unspeakable heat. It's the only sound I can be sure of. The motion helps.

     Nothing else is moving except...

    
(Chewchewchewithinkicanithinkican)
    
        ...My jaw. Steadily gnashing through…

     (Everyone talks)

            My tongue. I don't care about the blood at my feet or the fact that its coming from my mouth.

      *What worries me is that now everyone is staring at me and I dont have any gun at all

I can remember my 9 year old hands scrapping macabre words on top those tortured blue lines that pitied my gated head.  
I can remember my down the street friends, lips turned purple, from the snow temperature, glistening watered creek in my yard.
I can remember the quivering muscles in my stomach begging me not upchuck a landslide of overflowing butterflies on that summer night when he took my hand.
I can remember shutting out the lights on that one night while the cross hanging on my wall starred me down to fall to my knees and pray for the rotten wood in my heart to be repaired.
I can remember turning over away from that cross and find comfort in the damp pillow trailing a broken path to my withered eyes.
I can remember the thrown away unopened lunches falling free from my fingertips and throat.
I can remember my stomach hating me and my mind thinking in happy confetti-like gestures with a piñata full of echo’s, because candy insides are the devil.
I can remember abandoned dinners when spiders that took my place to cobweb my chair, and my food in the trashcan.
I can remember remnants of silver, sharp-toothed squares being injected on my skin and used as crayons.
I can remember the tree’s with broken arms smiling at me as I sat under the black leaves sharing their loneliness with me and I never did mind.
I can remember my lullaby had the same frequency as the jumpy breathes fluttering from my sunken lips harmonizing with the drops of my tears and blood.
I can remember the creature starring back at me in my bedroom and we had matching scars.
I can remember I hated her.
I can remember she hated me.
I can remember the young, immature boys with sharpened tongues quick with words that constricted the evil accumulating my skeleton as if I did not already know what needed to disappear.
I can remember my lips faking exposure of my tarnished, ***** teeth with the corners of my mouth turned up and the reflection of my cross blurred in the two windows on my body.
I can remember his voice on the other end of the phone line as he confessed his love at the same time while he was the tracing paper on my skin and I was that paper’s captain with a sharp, shiny penknife.
I can remember skipping the blue skies outside my chambered bed failing to search for the keys, but I was the guard and they were hanging on my cross.
I can remember falling to my bathroom floor, cold and sweaty begging for forgiveness as I gave my body and soul away to the undertaker when I checked off sin number “too many”.
I can remember God’s smile at me from the heavens and my heart being split open but not the bad kind of split, the kind that burst in the presence of grace.
I can remember the growling of my stomach scaring me away into night terrors, every night but they soon became my home.
I can remember sitting on the floor as my older sister, with her packed bags, walking out my house into her adult world and I was not at her car door waving goodbye.
I can remember my older brother leaving for college and I ignored the door shut.
I can remember my selfishness floating in the hands of Satan for he is the record sin keeper.
I can remember church pews darkening as I sat up from them because my sins squeezed inside and left scars, but that golden, stained glass alter at the front kept them in line all nice and tidy, and I would smile back.
I can remember that beige bread chiseled heavenly by the hands of God resting in the little golden doors behind God’s chair sprinting down my throat and planted seeds of glory in my withered and dry garden.
I can remember the holy water raining in my stomach praying for minerals of bits of food.
I can remember the blood in my veins fighting the layers of my skin rebuilding crooked patches that did match my normal skin color because I was the chemical warfare throwing rusted razors and bow and arrows penetrating the fortress just above my veins.  
I can remember needles and stitching living in the doctor’s drawer untouched by my skin even though my name has been reserved on them 47 times.
I can remember breathing.
I can remember praying.
I can remember living.
I can remember remembering this when I am 100 years old.

i
a wee shaft of beam
across
a sea of chilly darkness:
dashing on, dashing long
a chain
of disturbing crispy waves.
a haunting pitch
of sirens, of winging gulls.
…then
a whistle in the dark

                    ii
i have bled.
and ever bleeding
is resurgence.
the stones are stained now
not all are stained yet.
but i can hold no more.
no more.

                    iii
to listen would have been enough
but spoke i
to deaf-mutes, clayey forms.
and every uttered little word
faded like receding undertone.
and then
conspiracy of silence,
misquotations,
sharing of once
too friendly shoulders.
a nod would have been enough,
or a pat,
or any like gesture;
they turned askance
and i fled… fled away.

                    iv
back to my chambered shell
back to my cradle
where there are many whispers.
and every fateful swing
of the pendulum
i reel and ride the wheel of fancy,
embrace false idols
like one fearful of his god
if only to escape the haunts
of conscience;
tremble at approaching footsteps,
shriek at every shadow.

                    v
i shall walk barefoot again
past leafless stumps
windborn, heated, and bowed,
‘cross an oasis grown desert dry,
past anthills now dunghills,
‘neath rapid flutter
of widespread murky wings,
past cliff edges
where resound pampered echoes,
while arched in deceitful hues
a rainbow.
…i scan the blue… i pause…

                   vi
i await a lily-white stork
or there shall be no curtain speech.

There are four chambers in the heart
The right atrium receives oxygen poor blood
When you left I was smothered
Somehow the words from your lips had enough power to poison the air I inhaled
Leaving me struggling and aching to be clean of you and all our memories
The right ventricle pumps oxygen poor blood to the lungs
The pain of your absence spread like a virus in my life
My teachers were spouting information but none of it was teaching me
How to love myself again
The left atrium receives oxygen rich blood
I threw out the cigarettes you left on my desk and I rinsed you out of my hair. I got up early and drank my tea outside and embraced the cold air. The wind, so clean and un dirtied by your empty words and sticky promises, that its almost tangible.
The left ventricle pumps oxygen rich blood to the body
Six months gone and I'm not reaching for you anymore. No longer
Do I see you in my wrinkled sheets or the scuffs on my converse
I'm a lot lighter now
No longer do I have to carry your sad angry anxious dead weight on my sleeve
No longer do I have to use band aids to cover my wrists, but now to cover the scrapes on my knees from climbing mountains higher than I could've dreamed
And I've fallen in love with someone new
Myself.
She's great, thanks for asking.

Having lost her forever,
he steps off the escalator
into hard sunshine, drops
to the sidewalk and caves—
a troubadour whose songs
have been dismantled
by the sadistic hands
of a subway conductor.

Guitar strings slip his fingers,
and nothing will bring her back.
Not a song. Not a psalm. Nothing.
Not the angelic back
of his leather jacket,
spanned by a score
of safety-pins formed
into silver-studded wings.
Not his listless body,
tattoo-inked and wrecked,
blue quarter notes slinking
down a tight treble clef,
wires stretched across his neck.
Not his mind, spinning
in a head blue-veined
and stubble-shaved.
Not his angry steel-tipped boots.

He lost his love because he looked.
One by one,
the silver pins
have come
unhooked.

Meantime,
far below
the sidewalk,
banished forever,
she slumps cheated
and dispossessed
in the vinyl seat
of a hellbound
subway car crawling
with scorched graffiti,
spray paint-scrawled
filigree spelling her doom.
Ghost of a snake bite
below her knee.  

Mohawk depressed,
she leans against
the train window.
Dead glass reflects
a chorus of piercings,
steel threaded through
skin so translucent
her veins and arteries
glow blue and red:
mapped subway lines
circulating misfortune,
coursing with dread.

The train rattles along rails
encrusted with gems and bones.
Disgorging sparks and smoke,
it thunders into stygian gloom,
ferrying her to a heartless god.

What if her shadow
had made a sound?
A backward glance was all it took
to squander a lavish second chance.

High above his beloved,
awakened by moonlight,
Orpheus regains his senses
and gathers the guitar.
The case flung open
at his boots awaits a drizzle
of tossed dollars and coins,
piteous currencies of loss.
Hard pick between thumb
and finger, a downstroke
strum delivers plaintive
waves of power chords.

The song ignites
a crowd of women
in tight band t-shirts
and skinny jeans,
smacking cherry gum,
their flaming hair
casting embers
upon night air;
radiant specks
suspended
like lighters
in a sunless
stadium.

Spurred by his song,
the covey of maenads
coalesces and attacks,
enraptured, enraged.
A rush of bodies,
the crazed crush tears
him limb from limb,
splits him to close to cipher,
until what remains of the star
on the sidewalk is his heart:
the four-chambered *****
held in a hundred hands,
picked up and packed
into the red plush lining
of the grisly guitar case,
golden hinges snapped shut.

Entombed in coffin-black
chrysalis, the heart pauses
like an untouched drum—
a dormant instrument
awaiting metamorphosis
that, like Eurydice,
will never come.

I

A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,
But forth of the gate and down the road,
Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

II

Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:
It is only their call that comes on the breeze;
Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:
It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;
Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:
It is only the touch of their hands that ***** -
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

III

And where should a man bring his sweet to woo
But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?
Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,
The empty hands that their fellows miss,
Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,
Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

IV

And now that they rise and walk in the cold,
Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.
Let them see us and hear us, and say: 'Ah, thus
In the prime of the year it went with us!'
Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,
Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.

V

Till they say, as they hear us - poor dead, poor dead! -
'Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed -
Just a thrill of the old remembered pains
To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,
Just a touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,
As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart -
For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,
When the dead can hear, and the dead have sight.'

VI

And where should the living feel alive
But here in this wan white humming hive,
As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,
And one by one they creep back to the fold?
And where should a man hold his mate and say:
'One more, one more, ere we go their way'?
For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,
When the living can learn by the churchyard light.

VII

And how should we break faith who have seen
Those dead lips plight with the mist between,
And how forget, who have seen how soon
They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?
How scorn, how hate, how strive, we too,
Who must do so soon as those others do?
For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day,
And behold, with the light the dead are away. . . .

The box that pumps my blood has four,
Four chambers,
One holds all the light and airy facts of love along with the dark and heavy,
Another holds my memories,
The third and fourth are queer indeed, I never know what in them I’ll find,
Whether they’ll be full or empty.
The third is reserved for what I give to others,
The fourth for what I get.
The first and second display my lifetime,
The third and fourth: a day.

Healing hands laid to rest
wandering in the near light of sunrise
fumbling for fractals of memory
ambling in the haze of yesterday.

Stolen words and displaced letters
floating in the ambience of space
cosmonauts of distant planets
arms outstretched beckoning
the echoes sent from
a thousand light years away.

Time is an irrelevant motion
tiny air bubbles escorting life
rising to the surface of forgotten dreams
spiraling, pulsating in a heartbeat
chambered by grasping futures.

The underlying fever reaching
inwards and outwards through the soul
seeking the blindness of tomorrow
unfurl their magical delights
wrapped in the glint of a solar cosmos.

Drifting beyond the reach of nature
blackness surrounds with the warmth
of knowing, a million miles away,
as if an undercurrent draws its final breath
behold wonderment far-seeing
leaving strange footprints
that someday others will say:
here stood a sentient being.

You swore you'd never love again
That you'd hardened your heart
Stiffened the walls of the four chambered *****
That Cupid's arrow would bounce off
That no love could move these stiffened walls
Then...

... Now
Your palms cradle in his palms
Your head gently on his chest, ears counting his heartbeat
His fingers tracing love letters on your back
Eyes closed, savoring the images of him they've captured

Well, Well, Well...
Look who's all lovey dovey
loving and ****...

I am not the one..who chambered the final round.
Not the Pathfinder, in the smoke who called the choppers
that lifted the dead and wounded off the ground.
I am not the Chaplain who holds the hand of a dying young man,
struggling hard with his belief.
Not the nurse with ****** hands,
eighteen hours with no relief.
I am not the young widow, now with two children ,
feeling left behind,
not the biker who stands guard in a patriotic flag line.
Not the Sargeant, who with respect, present the final flag,
not the Officer, with wet eyes, collecting the causality dog tags.......
           But I could be!

a confessional screen
chambered in opaques
                        the pearly gates would sport
checkers sovereignty with grime
between myself
               and the other side of this poem

another acolyte had founted
             from our species-widened narthex-maw
                              the answer to the test
                                    the answer i have tested since
despite the veto of a roshi's sleeve

while adults justify in frowns and threats
commandment-etched
i am a child still
           aghast at drawing lines in sand to mark the living
                                           from the soon to die

one i knew who drew such lines                                  
             for whom a line was drawn to mark himself as well
not just in votes and homeland hate-speech
you see
he crossed the line
                        no unadulterated childhood can cross

he shot  his  own  face
                              or at least his face was shot
                when he was found
who can read the final lonely moments of another
                                                 when mistakes are easier than ownmost acts ?

bombing bullies politicking death
                 can sanctify the safe
unpunctuated traps
                     dividing moods in swallows
pills
swilled with undigested fear
                                   of nozzled death
mercilessly sudden





.

i
no less than two hundred souls lie
        clustered along the shoreline
        lowland they call a town.
there where the hilltops look
        below, where salty waves
        in unending sequence
        lap the rocks.
the foam floating still is fading
        and the icy gloom of night is gone.
the tug-tug of the diesel engine
        interrupts the balmy silence
        of the sleeping town.
perchance,
        here is a variant
        (or is it?)
        on new island soil
        tread one another foot.

       ii
away now from the busy hum of
        factory, from the hurrying trucks,
        daredevil drivers, the unwelcomed
        whistle of the morning train,
        from the strained scream of the
        lumpia vendor, from the sophisticated
        melody of nightclub music, from the
        alms-begging cries in crowded sidewalks,
        from pretending graded glasses seeking
        sheep-skin, high-pressured ticket seller.
        away form the honk-honk of waiting
        limousines, the haste of presses
        accommodating headlines, the cackle
        of the radio announcer.
        it takes a sea to part the two,
                and many others more, yet the
                watery distance do mend the broken
                piece-part of the broken whole.

      iii
broken by the water barrier, part of
        the broken scheme – a stray mass
        the grown untamed.
blame it on the ills of war, a frenzied
        sickness, a cancer-growth.
        a callousness undisguised
the city’s pleasure is a farmlife’s
        leisure and these
        in different garbs exist.
not even mindful of the worms
        that eat up the human heart,
        like a rotting fruit.
with colored goggles
        the hue is blood-red and shady black.

  iv
o city of pain,
vineyard of desire
o burial ground
        where lay bedfellows
        they who came, stayed, gone,
where stumps and leafless trunks
        are bare to the sun,
        breathless and devoid.
while fingers are busy
        counting metallic coins.

  v
no, not a flood shall cleanse
        this wild and wanton fleshliness,
        nor upturn the barren farrows,
        not the rise of the tides
        nor the fury of the winds
        not even the whiplash of a strong hand.
the deluge in every clayey figure
        in the farm and furnace.
the going up beyond the worldly
        watermark of the passing tide
        that is man.
the man
        the self
                is the starting point
                from which the line
                        of the circle revolves.
                        and in our chambered brief hours
                                of aloneness, shall speak
                                a shrill deep-seated voice
                                to which we shall be all ears
                                        and shall tremble.

when you
       so dear to me
      do hurt me
a pinpoint *****
is a razor’s slashing edge
       make gashing wounds
       and bleeding drains me
       bound scars to testify
       to the hurt
       the doer do magnify
i flee my brittle tiny shell
and don the mask of mirth
but fleeing never find
a chambered nautilus
which i would exchange for mine
       a twig is bent
       a leaf is fallen
       a grain of sand is lost
       a page is torn
       teardrop falls
       a lost one calls
when trust has grown
when choice is blind
when reason cannot reason
       a little twist
       a careless wink
       an unintended turnabout
              eats up a painful way
              to the heart that loves.

i would like to play the trumpet for you
i feel i could breathe
the wailing of my soul into it.

i could play myself through this instrument
into consciousness
from this sleeping dream
into smoke from this flame

i could wisp and dissipate
like clouds in your eyes
can you see the clouds in mine?
or the dew, in the morning left?
i cant remember the rain
though i am drenched, i am dripping
every bit falling, drop by drop,
into a lake never quenched

before words, before television
you have always preceded
the breath standing at the crest of my lips
but turned, scared, naked
retreating, from the beach
back to the sea

where you close curtains
to my whale song
pounding at the door
unintelligible frequencies
on top of waves and across the sandy floor

i sink so low, shaking
chains shackled to the earth
i'd barter for the key
but the guards
they ask the trumpet from me
summoning vultures to my stomach
my burning coal punishment

for swimming so reckless
for weeping on the shoreline
because you and the rainwater receded
back into the depth of chambered winds
slipping like the valves from my fingertips
before the hushed tones of my non harmonics
my soul blossoming out of it
my song on every radio, every wax and needle
in the air wisping out

when you are not the sun
and not listening.

clouds in the back of eyes,
and sleepless nights.

Some to love
others to hate
Your mind releases them like doves
ivory wings glowing in the sun
why aren't they held by this weight?

They blindly kiss the sky
as blindly as I kissed you
only to come crashing down
Chambered...
in this hell called a mind

Or do they flow like a waterfall?
Showers shimmering in the sun
to hide the unwanted truth
behind this curtain of fallacy

They'll wash over the rocks
as you washed over me
only to go splashing forth
into a pool at the bottom
with a hindered flow

As much as I love them
As much as I hate them
I must lock them away
into the void you left in my heart

the feminine bleeds
not always red, not always white
seldom enough
for words - she inters herself, crouched
chambered, begs for
cleansing, hand held cupped

round- her curves
familiar to self, unknowable;
unselfish giving - she bleeds, not enough
mutilated even by her own kindness, cradled
without righteousness, coddled by an unnamed
nebula .....she curses her own image, and likeness
slivers it, cuts it raw, for dead left - visible
a world denies
knowledge with sacred
alibi - scribed hieroglyphs, scrolled - she bleeds
white, and a

desert conceals her face
calculates her dance - her movements
mythical, she cries inside
out

tears of salt river-ed, rested
underground, a birthing place securing
her masculine seed coming to
light -  Madonna paints her
face black, "Oh Czestochowa, pray for us
Oh Mother - we beseech thee"....

She bleeds - red,  the
world turns with season - she re-seeds our flesh
feeds us with her *****, prior
to the sacrifice -"Witch, it is, Witch....burn it," conceal
in alabaster stones
lone, unmarked - her womb

tomb it only in site
of an unflinching god - hold him, birth him
in sorrow grieve and give him,  his blood shed
"take it ,drink it" - red,  she bleeds - seldom enough
as the masculine prepares for HIS resurrection
feminine for trial

He is reborn - she never dies
she is Wisdom (Sophia) eternal
He - Godhead
she - Feminine
denied....

Deep where the Sun lies
flies, and then in its parade dies
into the dark under mass
the cloaked ritual of time
that hovers upon the boundaries
the songs of the ages.

Where glint to eye
that inward sigh, the cry
that tormented deep holds its bar
far, upon the trilogy of  the lost
Gods that made and paid the cost
of frequent flier miles.

Shadows creep, leap
where the distinction arises
surprises the mornings jolt
that rides the long encounter
where cold the steel bears the fascination
of the chambered game
twirling, revolving, frame by frame
where the poker hand falls to the colt.

Triggered, offset,
the bang of the aeons arises, surprises
and dropping like the shadow he was
the smoking barrel
the drawn out look
pages from a tormented novel
that lay in a hovel
there on the floor.

Alisdaire O'Caoimph

Plant me a rose, plant it down on my skin
Dig it to my flesh, wound what make sin
Grow the thorns until it pierce my heart
Let the four chambered wall torn apart

Crimson flowers, bloom towards my skin
Turn me into something, I've never been
Watered by blood, drain the endless pain
Nourished the knife that blood stained

Flower of thorns open my beating chest
No one saw the beauty, let them see the rest
Darkened blood and the broken promises
A garden to have, to care that wishes

Grow into me garden I've always wanted
Dreams I seek and the love I've pleaded
Creep into me bouquets of flowery blood
Just this time give me what I can't have

It's pulsing along with the beat of my heart
With heavy heart and heavier mind
It sings of seven poisons laced dart
Or of three deciding fate of mine
'I've done nothing '
Pleads the side of you unwilling to Die
'And that is everything '
Says your mutinous lie
But can anyone trust lies?
Can anyone define life
without the words of others
That four chambered thing in my chest
It picks up speed
Then slows
Like the arcs in books
Or maybe in the orchestra hall
I like the grey sky
You can only see as far as you can imagine
Though it warps slightly
For me

Visions lost in cracking air
dirt and crumbling sidewalk

I drag my feet homeward
one more time

I dream the dream of dying
I wake gasping

I am locked in
this chambered hell of body

I see fire under rocks
I smell smoke in the bathroom

The night breeds evil smells
they float into my nostrils

Hope is lost, it flew away
I woke up laughing with the dead

Give me a safety pin
I have to pin myself together

My body has parted
was it a distorted mirror?

I touch my eyeball
and it sinks

I spit out teeth
with blood

My fingernails
have fallen off

Tired, I am so tired
i wander crooked streets

Shadows on the grey walls
my only companions

I am daughter of radon
I laugh as my hair falls out

I am so hungry
hungry for life

This steel landscape
of bed pans and commodes

The chill enters my toes
I wake up screaming...

There once was a shadow who thought he was a man,
He made his empty bed in a shame of familiars,
For years if not an eternity he never did one single thing,
He contemplated creativity in all its smoke and mirrors,
His only credo was padding his unknowing, limp ego,
Got a gig, speaking before a throng of other shadows,
He rewrote the crook about his own insignificances, suddenly
Nothing's became every things, all was sorely well in the bleak
Under toes.  Shadowman had found his stage, had rearranged
Chaos and insignificance to the point of no enlightenments,
No regrets.  What a sage!
Shadowman aped, traced, spewed in studied literature,
Experienced, faith, trust, fidelity, danced numbers,
In a cellophane pack with all the added extras included,
Found that reflecting words only got in his narcissistic way,
Left the California sun for the New York lowlands
Of the east, that only shine after the hurricane's
Deluge.  Shadowman has reams of flesh plastered
On a mall of wallowing sites only Shadowmen frequent,
Modern is the moly man who makes his own myth.
Shadowman has traveled to the great southern climes
Where hotels of shade tell tales of locals and enlightenment is in a drug
Called something South American or other?  A drug so smug it is a plug
For his dun holy soul.  Shadowman is only a silhouette of himself.
He freely gives seminars to the lame, chained to themselves freely,
Where all the vain echoes are chambered, embodied, entombed.

{ Full to brimming madness
A shaded blot of tin
Flumes for eyes
And the fire to fertilize
Croaked behind the wind. }
 
( Patched of a day's quilt
The moths of aperture
Spirited away the dusk
To the vestal mouse
Whose heart doth thrum sure. )
 
[ Of extolled breath
Chambered nubility 
Did shy to the hand
In which 'twas held:
Invariably. ]
 
/ In all paintings hung
Bereft of blemishes to sting,
Fibrin inks touching canvas
Evoke the rumbling stream;
The renascence of Spring. \

There was something particularly cold that hot night,
something particularly dark that moon-lit night.
Whatever caused the giggles
did not possess me that night.

My four-cornered room
Frightened my four-chambered heart.
When i needed inspiration,
all your did was instigate an un-necessary complication.

My mind swam in water,
my thoughts deep like a crater.
Trust was always the issue,
the tears and the paper tissue.

Oh did i pray to sleep
and all the remaining night pass away,
the comfort near,
and the pain far away.

Sip the fruits

Drinking from the silver chalice
To your lips in grand design
Taste the life that waits to greet you
Sip the fruits of promised wine

Slowly feel the warmth so filling
Close your eyes in wondrous bliss
Sunny skies and apple blossoms
On your mouth the finest kiss

Smiles float on windswept sonnets
In the shade formed high above
Checkered red and cotton flowing
Melodies of written love

Calling forth on chambered sighs
To your skin a sweet caress
Visions of a rosebud rainbow
Butterflies and tenderness

Peppermints on stemmed affection
Open arms to show the way
Poems penned to tug your heart strings
Painted in a vast array

This and so much more I send you
Wrapped with ribbon, satin bow
Only searching for your smile
Hoping soon to see it show