The fiscal snare is drawing tight
Putin’s day... now courting night,
Rouble tilts vertiginously
To Satan’s **** religiously.
Fiscal snare is drawing blood
A trickle then... is now a flood,
Russia’s central bank adjusts
But ineffectually, combusts.
Hard line prospects elbow dance
Aligning for assasins lance.

Perhaps….
Better now, the Devil known
Than facing down an Unknown throne…..
Facing down an Iron call
With finger poised in nuclear thrall.

What choice now for ego’s Prince
Retreat from Eastern Ukraine’s wince?
Retreat Crimea’s balmy shores
To face the nationalistic howl of hordes?
Brinkmanship…the other way
A gamble that the West might sway?

Either way the game is up
Now bitter wine brims Russia’s cup.

M.

From nothing but

Cerebral constructs

Mind becoming

Matter

Spontaneously

Combusts.

How to cook a gourmet (whatever the hell that means) dinner:

Step 1: Send your boyfriend a text inviting him over for a romantic, candlelit home-cooked gourmet dinner.

Step 2: Remember that you are forever alone and don’t have a boyfriend.

Step 3: Go buy mass amounts of chocolate and cry about it.

Step 4: Get over it and invite over your grandmother instead.

Step 5: Preheat the oven to 975 degrees

Step 6: Freak out about the fire in your oven and turn it off.

Step 7: Open all your doors to let the smoke out.

Step 8: Get out all the ingredients you need for the recipe you are
following.

Step 9: End up eating most of the ingredients before you even get to
use them.

Step 10: Spill oil and wine all over your recipe book (umm pffft the
wine is TOTALLY one of the ingredients, that’s why you had it out… heh heh… yeah…)

Step 11: Panic and try to dry it off by taking the book outside and waving it around.

Step 12: Watch in horror as all the pages in your book tear and fly off
into the wind.

Step 13: Chase hopelessly after the pages down the block screaming
swear words and having a heart attack.

Step 14: Politely smile and wave awkwardly at your neighbour who
hates you.

Step 15: Yell an apology across the street to that other neighbour who
REALLY doesn’t like you with the little five year old daughter who is
now repeating all of your colorful vocabulary words you just yelled.

Step 16: Reluctantly accept the fact that your recipes are gone. And also
that you have just contributed to the global problem of littering the
streets.

Step 17: Walk back to your smoke-scented house in shame.

Step 18: Look through pictures of scrumptious-looking meals on
Pinterest.

Step 19: Get inspired and decide to put your brilliant idea of creating your own recipe into action.

Step 20: Get out your frying pan and throw a bunch of random ingredients in.

Step 21: Put out yet another fire and realize that marshmallows, sprinkles, raisins, baking soda, orange peels and liquid gasoline probably wouldn’t have tasted very good together anyway.

Step 22: Wonder what the hell is wrong with you.

Step 23: Get distracted by the television for half an hour.

Step 24: Try to microwave 2 week old mac and cheese you forgot to
throw out.

Step 25: Watch as your microwave malfunctions and spontaneously
combusts.

Step 26: Decide to clean it up later because you just cannot even deal
with it right now.

Step 27: Fill a *** with water to make pasta and try to boil the water.

Step 28: Somehow manage to burn the water.

Step 29: Wonder how that even happened?!!!!

Step 30: Give up and call the pizza delivery guy.

Step 31: When you grandmother arrives have her take a seat in the
kitchen.

Step 32: Call an ambulance when she has a heart attack seeing the mess
in your kitchen.

Step 33: Get ready to leave and drive after the ambulance to the
hospital with your grandmother once the pizza arrives so you can
bring it with you. Get a call from the pizza place.

Step 34: Listen to the manager explain that your pizza spontaneously
burst into flames in the oven and they are terribly sorry there will be a
delay in the delivery due to this.

Step 35: Pass out.

The green combusts, the cherry sclerotized mask dances above
the invisible paper carapace.
Stuffed full with Rotten skunk innards and burning,
tongues of heat sweat away its crystalline hairs.
Aren is hunched and crooked, all teeth and lungs,
under the mixed halogens of suburban porchlight,
being bathed in bluescale waves from the
strobe of the neighbor's telescreen.
Ropes of smog pour from the slats between his picket fence ivories and get frayed.
I drink the filth, choking down the viscera of the vermin.
It doesn't seem to get easier.

Stumbling inside, my feet detach and I throw myself on the door
until I've locked out the sickly tide pool light of dawn,
and I'm rolling toward his bedroom.
Jolting and sputtering, and
grasping at the hands of the clock,
listening for the steady metronome to
count me through.
And then numbness.
I know the feeling, and next come the
pins, digging into my
fingertips and the pads of my
toes, and then I'm all body and silent prayers.
And I'm whispering sick thoughts to Aren -

"Those adrenaline demons
will do me in,
and if only I could relax,
and my dear mother
used to have a stalker,
and I almost got run down
by a car on the highway when I was five,
and asthmatics are five times as likely to have a
generalized anxiety disorder."

The adrenaline demons gather my tendons in pincushion palms,
tugging at the strings,
panicked arthritis and my fingers are
twitching and curling backwards
while I glare on with shallow breaths and cataracts.
The organs moan in the cavern of my body,
with thick wet air pouring from the opening.
I'm standing now,
a fetishized devil doll,
shaking out the pins
and the needles
and the sick splinters of glass
and the long holy skewers
and I'm breathing again
and I sit and
I breathe.

To pick my brain
I'll just lay here
Have some pins and needles
It's so fun walking on them

Reeling
Like a kick right to the feels
In my heart
In my soul
Or, maybe my nuts

As I grow old
I've grown more cold, to the terror
It whittles away
and I simply admire it, vacantly
It happens on the daily
Change the ******* channel

Every morning I look in the mirror
And tell myself, "Life's a ****. **** it."
You **** that **** duderocketship.
Filthy *****.
Bawling my eyes out
With a coat of smeared lipstick
streaking my face

It's my birthday.
What a beautiful day for nuclear holocaust
Good a day as any, I reckon
To wine and dine on a feast of destruction
While the world spontaneously combusts

Somebody hand me a beer
And we'll scale my collapsing cognitive function
With a ******* to The Man!
I got a whole fist I'd fancy to ****** inside him

This end of the world clock is broken
and keeps ticking
And I just listen
Tick tick tock
Waiting for the bomb
Losing hope
Idly twiddling my thumbs

To go out with a bang is my lone desire
It rattles my bones
Set the world on fire
Light up the night
I just want to watch it burn
There's a pretty nice view
from my back porch
Replacing the stars with torches
Scorching a ravaged sky

It's a party
******, Gandhi, & The Pope are coming
Bring your friends
I'm cringing yet effervescent
In supple prepubesence
His dead eyes ****** me

Jesus wept

The sadness that resides within me is gone;
there is hope etched on my every rib
that combusts my fuel of desire
to burn the negativity of this world!

The farmer and the poet walk side by side. 
The wind is blowing and with every grain of sand approaching their skin, the kettle moves closer to boiling. 
The farmer with his miniature mule in his palm sweeps in motion with his other hand, the one with golden rings and chewed nails. 
He shows the poet that the land must be toiled. 
And sweat must mix with blood to form meaning to one's life. 

The farmer combusts into ashes over the poet and the untouched bloodless ground. 

There is no anxiety. 

The poet and the glassblower walk hand in hand, shoulders pressed closer, finding rhythm in each other's differences. 
Warmth and love shine from their portrait. 

And the poet thinks as he walks. 
The thoughts collapse and the glass blower breaks into sheets. 

Furthermore into jagged shards and then, into pieces too small for a human eye to see. 

With each step the poet contains his winces and his groans. 
Walking his every step, a moment closer to suicide. 

I'm aware this is temporary. 
The solution is permanent. 
Stay as permanence, pouring as warm oil from the eternal lion's mouth. 

I grow uncomfortable. 
Distance yourself and twist language. 
Pull yourself together.

Dog days fly dust to dust over a hick
pit sardined between corona bikinis that house
the unmistakable stench of lukewarm apple
sauce in the c-cup padding and toothless
******* sitting indian style. Graveled friction
fading the back pockets of their overall
dungarees. Amongst them a settler on their native
turf accepting a Jim Beam peace pipe while above
the influence commercials march in protest claiming fried
egg consequences from engaging in the act. The culture
shock is worth the weekly once-in-a-lifetime chance
to sip the tabasco-glazed opening of my chemistry
teacher’s flask while he schools me in perfecting
the cotton eyed joe. A muffler spontaneously
combusts, melting the raybans off the face of a tragically
hip spectator taunted with “that’s why dad named you Joe Dirt.”

Movement stirs within womb of thought;
spellbound in fluid sac, fetally curled in
warmth; neither blooming in mind or
heart as host is indecisive; concept mote.

mind blank; confused as...

dubious action causes shame, bearing of
birth unwanted; incestuous violations,
sexually abused as crimson feather blooms
within body too young to blush; thoughts
in flaming anger flushed.

drenched in attrition...

passionate disdain of horrid disgust; in hand,
hanger of mass destruction; a fetal demise
plays against familial distrust, inside mind
combusts; a finger pointed, says, young eyes
beguiled and flamed their lust.

innocence stolen..

in back alley clinic, I extract what is just,
aftertaste, body refuting life flushed;
pysche destroyed, used like someone's toy,
chastity drained from eyes; no longer angelic;
turned cold and coy, ambivalence to destroy.

devious ploys invade anima of woman-child,
turned frigid of emotions; used and abused,
even though given emancipation rights; making
fledgling choices; in voices, now foul-tongued.

still young....

dumbfounded within...

yet, fetally unsprung...

Lives clash like cars crash
On black ice we spin
Cash my poker chips in
& Monopolize on my sins
Cause now she's my best friend
And we both win, ayo
Sometimes life's okay-o

What's a perfect day
Without a bad reference point
What's a beautiful soul
Without the bad men life appoints

For every cosmos that combusts.
Beauty coats the rust
For every argument we have
Her concerns cloud the fuss, ayo
Sometimes life's okay-o (ayo - ayo)

Karma's no buzz-**** for me
She straightens me out and opens my eyes to see
She keeps me aware of my lows,
Man, she keeps me on my toes.

1
a dark, dreary dream it seems-
no fog thicker than it's haze
2
this land is real, it exists-
this place has a sign with its name
3
no map on earth has inked
to draw the arrows to this maze
4
a garden of eternity,
where the rabbits, feral and wolves, tame

5
this place is cloudy,
but each whispy haze weighs a metric tonne
6
the crown on each tree
and their boughs so far up their trunks
7
they form a cloak, impenetrable
that paints it sable against the sun
8
and what little sunlight dies-
in the ebon sea, its flare had sunk

9
there is no light here,
save for an oil-less lamp yet to be lit
10
an ashless bonfire-
wood yet to be gathered and be burnt
11
these pixies have no home
other than the cage one carries them in it
12
these fireflies have no light,
save for what is suffered and learnt

13
the forest makes pub ******
of those who lose themselves there
14
leches of those thirsty
who drink from its streams and creeks
15
they fail and falter and fall on the forest floor,
and the bushes wake back to life and stare
16
these are the sentinels of the forest,
and it is your surrender they seek


17
skulls and rib cages decorate
and hang from the boughs in this forest
18
the beaten trail there is paved
with the bones of the pleasant and their tales
19
the lamps are candles stuffed in the skulls
of the truthful and honest
20
you walk on these and where the bones stop,
you stand on where the last of them failed

21
the night here is neverending,
according to whom have endured
22
when it actually ends,
all memory of its trees and creeks cease
23
each and every soul that stands,
has left footprints here for sure
24
no telling which are the footprints of those,
living, lived, or recently deceased

25
this place is cold,
the clement light drowned out eons ago
26
it's cruel too,
this brumal darkness too tame to **** you
27
it keeps your heart-beating,
pounding down on you with layers of snow
28
it makes you forget the clement light,
makes you forget the warmth your breath once drew

29
how you get there nobody knows,
one wrong step- the forest eats you
30
from the sidewalk, from school to home, into the alleyway,
the forest eats you
31
the door between your room and the living room's screams,
the forest eats you
32
from the covers of your sheet into the noise of the streets,
the forest eats you

33
from the street to an inn, back to the street again,
the forest eats you
34
from the light of screen into the darkness of bed,
the forest eats you
35
from the concave stomachs and a mountain of debt,
the forest eats you
36
the stool between you and a knotted rope,
the forest sill eats you

37
and then, skin hard and frozen cold
since wandering this grove of a thousand broken lights
38
the crown of the trees recede
and the boughs begin to thin towards the opposite pole
39
there is no sun here, other than the immolated torch
of your flesh burning bright
40
there is no sun here,
other than the immolated phlogiston
that combusts at the end of

the dark night of the soul

My god
It CLACKS like a
*******.
Every key
Combusts like a homicide bullet
Hacks like a machete in 100 degree
Heat
Every word brings
Guilt,pleasure
The neighbors will surely
Pound on the walls
Going insane
From the power of
The typewriter.
I'm 24 in 2015
I've never touched one of these
Things.
When I brought it up to the counter
Of the 2nd hand store
The clerk was a few years younger
Than me
He looked at me like I was catshit
Crazy.
I also bought 2 1940s editions of
The Bronte sisters
That did not help my
Questionable  sanity...
I like this old thing
Every key is ******
And you must live with all your
Mistakes.

I am feeling myself float
Haven't been so out of body in quite a while
Haven't felt so emotionless in quite a while
Freeze.
The ghost hanging over me is not mine
I smell your skin like basement musk
And the fertilizer on mushroom fields
Mr. 2004
When I was seven and you locked me in a dog cage
When I was seven and you made my body your jungle gym
It was the year of feeling sick to my stomach
Even when my food agreed with me
It was the year of going to the nurse every day in first period
You see,
Even second graders know what is and isn't supposed to happen to their bodies
Even when they don't have a name for it
Didn't have a name for it until I was fourteen
I told my guidance counselor every crevice your hands found
Every game you made me play on your body
He called it molestation
I had to excuse myself and *****
All over the white porcelain walls down the hall
He called my daddy
It was the first time I'd ever seen the man cry
I felt my body become a gun that was wielded against me
I could not hide from my own existence
So I became a ghost again.
Now,
Morphing into a spirit has become my superpower
I feel my body shaking
And I rise up to the ceiling
Watching myself self-destruct before my own eyes
Only offering a helpless hand
But, like Ebeneezer Scrooge to his past self
Remaining invisible
My body combusts under pressure
Crumbles with heat
I am my own remains
Dancing in the rubble
I feel my Winnie the Pooh shirt I wore to his house
Become a noose, tied tightly
I long to feel in my own body
So I look for feeling in someone else's
Anyone else's
I lie beneath his jutting hips
Moan the names of the ones I remember
They keep ******* back for more
Create for yourself an alter ego
Jane Doe?
That is the name they will brand to you
When they find your body
Still lifeless, with him still between your legs
Don't die, girl
Pick yourself up, girl
Stop being stupid, girl
Why, when I tell this struggle in a poem is it eloquent
But when I explain it to people in real life am I a ******* *****?
I lie in the dirt
Remember how to say my own name
Life reparative therapy, show me how to breathe
Form letter into thin air
Remember, excellence is relative
Remember, you are more excellent than this relative
Remember, you still exist, dear woman
Create a fist
And rise.

Deep royal purple bags under my eyes.
Hair that carelessly does exactly what I want it to.
To look perfectly exhausted.
Eyes that are overdriven
and burnt out.
A terrible demeanor
that idiots find charming.
A necessity to break something,
or a pent up anger that combusts
an engine of ill intentions;
Not just for me,
yes, for all of us.
Death howl
porcelain fingers
wooden spine
slightly violet.
Glass heart.
To kiss *** when pressed
and beg yourself you'll
give it hell later.
Pull the curtains off
and still see nothing.
Somehow useless like
a god or angel of death
or mercy.
Fantasy realized in the mind
that refuses to become reality.
A promise no one keeps.
Words spoken yet empty,
feeble, and without presence.
No sleep.
Trying to find the conscience.
Seeking the moral compass.
Where were you supposed to be?
Where's the wall and am
I against it? Buried in art,
"criticism of art", failing to hear
your laundry list of shortcomings.
Reading to yourself out loud
to see how ******* awful it is.
Pinching yourself.
Chewing your fingertips to stumps.
Seeing things.
Hearing things.
Dreaming things.
Wanting things.
Hoping for things.
Wishing for things.
Begging for things.
Waiting for things.
Getting nothing.

and it happens like this —
youth like the matches that make up your rib cage,
black smoke breathes in and out from your chest.
inhale, exhale, they call this a flashover.
the room combusts, and i am running for the door.
armor made of leather and air tanks.
it was not enough to rescue me from the intensity of your flame.

they sound off the alarm.
once, twice, three times.
you carry the ashes, you sing to me once more.
and how could this be?
the structure collapsing below my feet, and i imagine falling into your hands.
but there are tools in place and the weight of your exhaustion.
pulling at the air above and exposing the danger unseen.

but you see, you and i, we were forged from the most violent fire.
our bones in pits and veins feeding the gasoline.
days shaped by your heat —
they taught me how to prevent burns.

gear up, lead the way, extinguish the threat.
but, babe, they did not go over how to survive the flash of light,
the scorched throats and screams of 'mayday!'.

no, they did not prepare me to face the intensity of high tempatures in the form of your absence.
they taught me how to be blind in the dark,
how to pull you from it's depths.
but not to survive your structure's demise.

they did not teach me how to live when you set everything aflame.

Merging minds through confluence of time
Streaming into vastness of space
Piling on the eons we climb
Subjective to a human race

Evolution is nearer to nothing plasmatic
As brain tissue melts loosely away
Finding transformative signs galactic
A robotic mechanical sway

Electrodes and microbes in fervent fusions
Find waves upon air and streams
Static electricity combusts allusions
Eyes disintegrate, fried by laser beams

No ointment to existence as we are lard
The oil for machines to profit
Toil long and toil hard
As progressive adaptation won’t stop it

For the gravity of this juncture upon us
Climatic epoch in measure
As ethical questions confront us
What gains from the yield of treasure?

Gunshots pierce through my ears rendering me deaf
The amount of carcasses leaves me speechless
A bomb combusts before my eyes and I am blind
Gas fills my nostrils and I can now no longer smell
So much pain from the wounds and now I can't feel
Senses of war

the anti-siren alarm song
collapses the dimensions of the oneiric realm,
fidgeting infinitesimally,
the tangled engine of acidic tubes
combusts last nights pepperoni bacon chorizo pizza

all of sparta trembles
stalagmites shake loose and dust the bedclothes,
cemented eye-lashes decalcify and split,
as two stumbling gargantuan steps
off the promontory of your bed
lead an unguided hand to the light-switch

the florescent hum gnaws at you
a singular parameter in the speaking mind's running mouth
“caffeinate me”

a hill, no, a mountain, no, a sheer abyss
'the stairs', a godly ascent
an ascent for winged creatures of light
creatures with legs for arms, zeppelin-like centipedes
legs whose construct are Dalían,
nightmarish vaulting apparatuses,
whose step is a bound and whose bound is a flight,
as if all of the thirteen foot-tall steps become cliffsides
and all of the cliffsides become interdimensional worm-holes
as the distance between two mustard seeds grows
and exceeds the circumference of the universal ellipse
we see our premonitions are of infinite potentiality.

resignedly, we take the first step
the next twelve follow succinctly.

we reach the ochre chamber of caffeine
only to be halted by a question
a sempiternal question,
a question of mythic, unverifiable stature
a plaguing question,
a question rooted
in our achey-breaky hearts and nigh-arthritic bones,
rooted in the seeping pathos
of our ritualized morning zombie-shuffle:
but it doesn't get asked today, we drink coffee
the world is right-side up again.

across the mountains and high seas
i want to travel as far as the moon can see
and still a little more to numb my thirst
as far above the sun as below the dusk

until the night howls and winter combusts
all around the spring singing of hurt
until the autumn grows loud enough to rust
until the day burns and stars submerge

wandering down the ways uphill a bliss
where mermaids drown and the gods sit
somewhere far where the flowers hiss
and all the pieces are where they fit

there where the clowns cry and live
from nowhere to across all the towns

carrying not an ounce of pain or a crown
in temples of Angkor with nothing to give

at the end of a rainbow and rain profound
the hollow windows and barren grounds
from rotten whispers and forgotten blitz
where demons prowl and angels ****

very depth of hell and under the ground
i'll travel as deep as a melancholic sound
under my skin crawling all the way down
the thunder and my sins all in a 'round

where the lights are dim and bound
with my plastic grin and elastic faith

down the road where none can be found
i'll wait there and sin with all my hate

so come for me before i go to waste
so come for me before it gets too late

so come for me before i close the gates
so come for me and come with a blade

so come for me before i fade,
so come for me before i name my price
so come for me before i wake,
so come for me before i take my life.

The water drips,
The air purifier withers,
The dryer combusts and the airplanes slither,
Breaking sound barriers I cannot fathom,
I sit here in my bed.
To fall asleep,
To all the sounds that I use to count sheep.

Static crackling ecstatically; manic pop
Transistor hissing and spitting; sideboard atop
                                      First when there’s nothing…
                                      But a slow glowing dream…

Pirouette such as whirling dervish makes
Adolescent prancer twirls; leg warmer fakes
                                      All alone I have cried…
                                      Silent tears full of pride…

Breathless incantation; future forged in dance
Performance fascination; leap upon the chance
                                      What a feeling...
                                      Bein’s believing…

Neon flashes bedeck wrists and bonce
Peers laughter flash like fire; a ponce
                                      Take your passion…
                                      And make it happen…

The music shields, deflects. Antacid; taunts abate
Rhyhmic dreamer energized; blind to all the hate
                                      Pictures come alive…
                                      You can dance right through your life…



As Bergen-Belsen ghost yet still aware
Lost dreamer segues silently on fetid air
                                       Bruised and battered, I couldn’t tell what I felt…
                                       I am unrecognizable to myself…

Shuffling as garish Geisha; white but not with paint
Breathless as fifties bombshell; heaving sick and feint
                                      At night I could hear the blood in my veins…
                                      It was black and whispering as the rain…

With steel partner; straight firm and slim of hip
Rigid in rigor’d waltz; moving labouredly with drip
                                      I walked the avenue, ‘til my legs felt like stone…
                                      I heard the voices of friends, vanished and gone…

Faithless rusting engine combusts toxic blood
Failing sack of sinew lies where dancer stood
                                      Night has fallen, I’m lyin’ awake…
                                      I can feel myself fading away…

Monotone white noise; assuring beep
Dancer dreams in endless sleep
                                     There was a time when men were kind…
                                     There was a time when love was blind…

©pofacedpoetry (Billy Reynard-Bowness – 2018 – All rights reserved)

Acknowledgements:

1. Flashdance… what a Feeling (1983 – Giorgio Moroder, Keith Forsey & Irene Cara)
2. The Streets of Philadelphia (1993 – Bruce Springsteen)
3. I Dreamed a Dream (Les Miserables – Claude Michel Schonberg, Herbert Kretzmer & Alain Boubil)