There is dark magic
Here in my attic
A magician’s tactics
Cause pain emphatic

This magician gives me all I can handle
Until one day I’m dismantled
Like a once lit candle
Extinguished by the ice near Ymir
Birthing the Titans I fear
Bringing death here
Morphing me into a rigid wreck
Here in the frigid depths
I wish I left

The violence of violins
Lamenting the vile sin
Conjured by riled kin
Like they’re wild djinn
Can’t be muted
Only diluted
By becoming rooted
In thinking stupid
Avoiding Cupid
To join the putrid

The magician concocts potions
That excuse my emotions
As I forget devotion
For a temporary motion

The magician gives us difficult obstacles
And easily medicated excuses
So people won’t make things optimal
While purpose eludes them

Like Jekyll and Hyde
My hackles I hide
With shackles of pride
Covered in mystic thorns
So my wrists are torn
From the pain adorned
It’s my brain I mourn

The magician erects walls so thick
They separate healers from the sick
With magic bricks
Imbued by the magician’s enchantment
He builds a wall and then expands it
Until those inside become tantric
From the prison wall’s antics

Every time I turn the page
I am given rage
On the magician’s stage
Of the wars we wage
Under a curse of anger
Dehumanizing strangers
To deploy the Army Rangers
Perpetuating harming danger

The magician lies
The magician steals
The magician hides
What is real
Until I feel
The cold steel
The magician wields
Piercing through my electrified body
I guess the magician finally caught me

Alone in the darkness I sigh. Other things far away from the battle line occupy me, such things as love flow through my head. I imagine you naked and standing before me, such acts we perform, words we say to each other, words I could never utter into the realms of speech lest I be stricken down with rod of lightening. Nether less I adore these glimpses, indeed I harbour intent for fruitful desires with my intended love.

As horn doth bellow weapon is drawn at readiest, with lance and sword I am at last prepared for what is to come. I stand abreast with better man than I, awaiting the extremes of battle. It is not an army that faces me, surely a nest, a colony of such unending mass. I fear that the whole of humanity stands before us this day. And as they swarm forward I fear such an infestation so unimaginable to behold.

By the grace of God I do believe my life will end here. I fear that I shall never again see my homeland and the one I share such dreams with. I look to God for the strength of many, for my heart to be engulfed with that of a Lion, and my Sword to be as enhanced as that of our own good King Arthur’s Excalibur. For if victory is to be ours this day, it is the Right Hand of God that shall hold this battle to rights, for it is in no mans hand to wield this capability.

Hour upon hour the death toll exceeds. Such things I see this day are beyond reproach, a more foreign battlefield I have never seen. Not simply the war of man but that of wizardry and witchcraft. This attacker is of no breed I have ever witnessed but that of incarnation. This Evil manifestation parades upon human being. Slaughter is its middle name and this entity feeds on its own etymology.

Brave knights on sturdy steed make your attack riotous and as Foot Soldier fights and dies by peculiar hand you chase down the brewer of this unfortunate broth. Wiser Knight shall not be found than he that sits in circle with Arthur Pendragon. They brave the wave of inhuman soul battling around them with valour and vigour. In their centre the figure of Merlin concocts his own mischief upon said fatal clan.

Once more to victory we strive, foul spell is cast no more and inhuman hand flags, falling by our side as he breathes this mortal coil no longer. The deed is done and battle is no longer. We grieve as we haul body of friend and fellow to bear in deaths pile, though within such angst lies an under current of relief. Happiness will flourish when this deed is concluded.

I can now allow myself such aspiration that once flowed through my being. Upon my return to dear England those forbidden words from my dreams shall once more become a reality. I shall give her my all and expect nought less in return, our ******* will rival, if not overwhelm that of any other man that eve. With health and happiness before me I take my leave of this most pleasant of company.

God save the King

She walked up the stairs, swiped her metro card and made her way up the stairs to the platform. As she walked towards the front end so she could get on the second car of this F train headed to Manhattan, she felt the cold winter wind snap at her. Pulled up her collar and wrapped her arms around herself bracing for the cold.

She was wearing blue jeans with boots over them – a small black ski-jacket with a red scarf. Her hair, shoulder length blonde was covered by a knit cap, also black.

It was the 5th or 6th month of her working at the Union Square Barnes and Noble. She still wasn't even sure what her role was there, her title was “Music Manager” yet there were two other “Music Managers” there as well. She enjoyed working there because she loved to see so many people enjoying the books, music and the other stuff that they sold there. She also loved to sit during her breaks and read. She loved to read anything that was written around the 1920’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Edith Wharton, and so many more.

She had always felt “different” from her peers and this caused her to find herself alone some nights watching TV or forcing herself to write on her blog.

Julia was 26 years old and had graduated from Kingsborough College 4 years earlier. She had thought about graduate school but then realized that she really wasn't interested in any specific degree or even future.

She had been diagnosed with depression back when she was 16 years old. She had never tried to **** herself nor hurt herself but would spend too much time in her room and away from any social life.

When she was 18 and a freshman at college she fell in love with Mitchell, a senior with four different girlfriends and a future as a politician. When she found out about one of his other girlfriends she broke up with him. It was a couple of nights later that she found out about the others while browsing through Facebook. The fact that she had been so blind and naive to not even catch any clue that he was actually dating 3 other girls, hurt more then the loss of having him around. She was hurt and she closed herself off from any social life after that.

“It wasn't the fact that he was with the other girls, it was the fact that I was stupid enough to fall for someone like that. Thank God we never had *** – that would have really put me under.” She had told this to her therapist and the therapist only cared about asking her. “Why didn't you have ***?” She felt creeped out and stopped seeing him.

Her friends tried to bring her out of her slump but it was way above their ability. Love can heal all things but some wounds can only be soothed not healed.

The darkness in her room followed her  wherever she went.  It wasn’t until her 26th Birthday when she decided to go to see a different psychiatrist, a female Doctor this time. Towards the end of her first appointment it was suggested that she should begin taking medication. She felt she could help herself without taking any medication.
“When you feel you want to try them out you just let me know. We would begin with a very low dose…”

She saw the train in the distance approaching in its snail like pace. The wind, the cold and the clouds all conspiring to make it feel as if the train is at a standstill just two blocks or so away. Finally the train crawled in and came to a stop; the sound of the doors opening, the electronic ding-**** and the voice – “next stop Avenue N, stand clear of the closing doors.”

She finds a seat by the window of a two-seater row. She likes to look through the window and watch as the different scenes come into view and just as quickly disappear. It reminds her that her’s is not the only world that exists. That the world does not truly revolve around her. She watches as the train rolls along McDonald Avenue; school van picks up children, two people are sitting eating breakfast on a second floor apartment directly across from the train. She concocts different ideas of what they are conversing about – are they expressing happiness and love or are they scared and feeling alone?

She looks inside and sees an older man reading a hard cover religious book, perhaps the Talmud or something? Two seats to the left of him is a Haitian woman speaking on her cellphone in Creole – really loudly. He looks towards her and nods his head in disapproval. Down the way a large man sits eating with his jacket open revealing his sizable girth, as if in pride? he is downing a bagel and licking the cream cheese to avoiding it from spilling over. He has a Yoohoo chocolate drink in between his legs and is in some sort of comatose gorging ecstasy. A lady is applying makeup to her cheeks and when the train stops at Avenue N she draws her eyeliner pencil under her eyes – framing her Asian eyes with the imperfect blue she decided to use.

Avenue N and the doors open to a black man wearing a yarmulke and looking Jewish but for the color of his skin, in these parts at least. He is of Ethiopian descent and is Orthodox – she knows this because she once heard him speaking to another passenger on the train. A fifty-ish lady walks on and is, of course, on her phone giving orders to one of her children, it seems. Julia looks away and checks her phone – no alerts, no emails, no missed calls. “Next stop Bay Parkway.”

Across from her on the other side of the train, she can see the Verrazano Bridge and outside her window she can see thousands of graves lined up. She thinks about their lives – mothers, fathers – they were all once babies who needed to be fed, dressed and changed.

“Snap out of it! She tells herself.” She stood up as if to wash crumbs off of her clothing – shook a bit and sat back down again. She would not, could not allow the darkness to seep back in again. It always began with a thought…since she finally gave in and had been on meds for a little over a month, the fog had begun to lift a bit. A bit. The “low dose” had been doubled since her first week and now she began to “See a little clearer, is that one of the benefits?”
“You are seeing more clear because you are not running as fast as you used to. You are slowing down and able to live at a healthy pace. So now the colors you once defined as green, yellow and blue have a deeper meaning to you, am I right?”
“Yes, its as if I can focus now>”

She looked out the window, looked back into her bag and took her book out. “The Corrections,” she had yet to read it but loved the title. In her mind she had pictured it as someone in the middle of their life who decides to make “Corrections.” She was afraid to begin reading it because she knew it wasn’t about that, specifically, and preferred the definition in her head.

“I am making corrections these days.” She thought to herself.
The fact that she decided it was time for her to take the leap and swallow a pill once a day was proof in itself. “I want to be the best I can be, to enjoy life…” Lately she has been having vivid dreams – only to wake up, try to remember only to forget quickly.

The train goes underground and where once she would get anxious she now welcomed it as if an embrace.

“Too many stops to go until I find my way…” She heard a voice inside of her say, or sing? Or was that the lady behind her?

“Too many corrections to make within myself so I can even begin to find my way anywhere.” She thinks to herself as if answering someone.

“Corrections…yes…can it be as simple as that? Look within myself and accept what is wrong and right and make some corrections?”

She walked off the train at 14th Street and found her way upstairs and out onto 6th Avenue. She walked east towards Union Square and felt the cold air hitting her face – feeling like a pale of freezing water in the August heat.

She feels a bit more at ease and knows that there is a change happening and it could be from that small pill. A sense of hope, not full blown hope but a ray and that is more than she has felt in a long time.

She looks across Union Square and sees the celebrations of everyday life on display. Men painted in silver and gold, a clown dancing or riding in a small child’s bicycle, chess players lined up and waiting for challengers. People walking quickly chasing time trying to catch up or outrun it. Cold wind blowing pieces of paper high up – churning around and around.

She looks up, crosses the small street, smiles at the guard, opens the door and walks inside.

italicThere are countless stories of people in this world chasing memories, dreams or hopes that were once so vibrant – now laying dormant on the side of empty streets. Ghost towns where youth and optimism were once at play in the streets where dreams were erected only to fall in a lost battle against the ultimate thief – time. Julie turned out to be one of the happy stories in this world…she ended up meeting her cousin at the store that same day. He was with a friend of his named David – he smiled and she smiled back. Sometimes good things do happen and they happen when you least expect them to. She is still working on her corrections and has yet to even read the first page of the book.

Silhouetted against an orange sunset
in expectation of eve's subset
Halloween night, black cats
with green eyes vie for bats

ink-of-night garbed witch flies
on a straw broom in the skies
she concocts her plan to broil a brew
a potion, a mighty how-do-you-do

to poison anyone who thwarts
take note of her nose warts
don't cross her or you will surely die
and she will **** if her plans go awry

I love the words that I read here
The ones that you leave spoken,
Your hopes and loves, doubts and fears,
The thoughts you write upon being awoken

Offering perspective,
Through a page, to see your reality,
Concocts a connection:
The power of empathy

Old, young, the chained and the free,
And especially the pariahs,
Whose words read to me
Like a personal Messiah’s

I read them from my bed,
Words of comfort, words of woe,
I suppose I could just leave it unsaid,
But I wanted to say hello.

her tired eyes have seen the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets
pinks yellows and purples, hues of what true happiness must be
she begins to see in the colour schemes of sunsets and sunrises
blind sighted by her own la vie en rose

his bright eyes see in shades of grey
clouded by the thunderstorms with the most beautiful lighting display
that his eyes have grown accustomed to

their perspectives disturbed by natural phenomena
not representative of their heart's bona fide notion
her tired eyes do not reflect the sunrise, she pulls up the blind relunctantly each day and night because she cannot be anything but the sunshine girl
his bright eyes, hidden by the storms that do not rage inside, but he concocts them nevertheless because no one wants to see a bright eyed boy

If I close my eyes I smell the butter of fresh popcorn and hear the whirring of a laptop powerful and bright. Can taste the dichotomy of the crisp melting of the popped kernel in my mouth, feel the happiness of being in a desk chair in front of a screen and surrounded by books.

Then I open my eyes and see I have to edit everything I've written to be even vaguely coherent.

Happiness is hard when you're never satisfied. When the childhood curiosity stapled to your youthful lips never unpinned as you aged. Neither did the idealistic expectations. Couple that with a pessimistic anxiety disorder and a mood disorder to swing things between the two disparities and it gets a little more complicated.

I've been my most relieved and anxious in this place of empty, of nowhere, that I've settled myself into for the next three weeks. A piece of me enjoys the rest and possibilities. The other hates it for those exact reasons.

I need to breathe, I tell myself. Being so separate is my fault, I insist.

But another voice in my head pipes up quietly, offering a new idea. I'm demonizing myself for not being ideas, for not being normal, for not being one.

But perhaps be bipolar, in more ways than just disorder, is exactly what concocts the human I like being.

Perhaps the great empathetic thoughtfulness yet great introspection work so well in tandem.

Maybe the assertive extroversion yet pleasured isolation balance in their own, special way.

In a way, I might just need to look back on the old Sunday afternoon specials and speak to myself the lessons of their half-hour programs. In particular, admit maybe its ok if I'm weird. perhaps its ok I just be the own odd balance that is me.

The Nowhere, the empty, can be itchy with the possibilities sometimes. Yet these moments, that help me breathe through my own neurotics and idiosyncrasies, may just be the best kind of nothing.

Maybe the bothersome nowhere can also be something grand and great for me as well.

There perhaps is another side of nowhere, and perhaps it is my favorite.

"why mustn’t it fail?"
Why mustn’t -- He fails.

                                     Trenched in the sand, from whence It hails?
From the mirages treacherous, Thenceforth It prevails, yet,
Implore He must, Its ignorance prevails.
It fights Its fights; Its inquiries It derails:
It is a because, not a why not a may(be).

                               He; shallow his origin as the queries He concocts
why must He question, why mustn’t... He fails.

Three headless white eagles flew through Tel Gomel, blood on their twisted claws of turgid spines. They brought the prediction of double foretold death, with their double armor on and their double helmet that transmuted the rings of the putrid Thanatos through the feces, and through their tarnished lips weak in Him. Vernarth had sent them a missive with the Eagles in low flight; all of them were clothed in the stench of the field of yellow and black battle mist. On Beelzebub's slimy hoof that towered over Alikanto's, they hiccupped over the six-decade-dream-sized lymphoma in its ridged crucible, which was puffing purges from its snout full of lymph traces staying in the interstices of its teeth. Burnished canine-alans. His heart became a red cuirass ad limitem with blooming endocardial blue. At dusk, Eolionimi and Shamal, with the Jáquima of their greedy steed, were breaking the vertical with the Jáquima of their greedy steed by spitting helical volatile mats, in the catacombs of Markazí where residents of their lineage, forge abodes in abominations of the Lives that were reborn. victorious from the fire of worship to the city that houses its true Life and Soul in the Persian Sibyl.

Song of Wonthelimar: “the veils have already been gathered, we will carry the candles that wire the liberated souls of Trouvere. Cries of prosperity await us, from the roots that will be reborn from her immanent presence. Meters above the level of the lithosphere, the Iberian Rings will appear towards the meeting of the tertiary jogging in the Zefian Arrow. This is where the law is interpreted, the future gives us the pennant of justice in excess of the Light beyond the cave that is born in the turns of the third world. It is said of the meturgeman or Rabbi who breaks down the avatars of advances, for off-centered purposes if they are to be the verticality of the Sibyls with the mind of God. Thus we are crowning by this axon of spiritual fatigue, focusing on the nervous excess that comes out of the body of consciousness of the cosmos, transmitting impulses of the same through ties of Elijah, where the motor structure of the master concocts the testamentary of Levi, and Greek Aramaic Levi in Qumram, subsisting at high speed on how it is to pass? The priestly Messiah will interpret the entire word of the Mashiach in the Aullos Kósmos of his motive order. Here is the Priestly Messiah, and the patriarchs like Set, Enoch, and Isaac having the task of unraveling the illusions and mysteries of the cosmos, in the same way, that the angel interprets the nocturnal visions in the apocalyptic stories of Saint John the Apostle "

love concocts
  a slow death.  the night
          chronic with melancholy.

     somewhere in the world
   a man, contemplative,
   underneath a lasso of light
    peers through the window
      without a word,
     only an insignia.

    we are
    only
    tender bodies
    in supple movements
    trying to weave out
    timid moments
    trying to shatter
    the inertia
    of being
    here.

A veces, amor, a veces
I want to tell you all about
Asphyxiating in the ambrosia of *******
Indulging my kapritsos of thanatos
Following you to your crusades, caballero
I ******* to the mendacious marvels
my mind concocts to make mundanity
a bit more palatable.
I imagine that I consume your carne,
cariño, cannibal that I am
Quiero que te sientas como yo
Quiero que te mueras como yo
I commence with your carotid
I take swigs of your blood like bignay wine
Till satiation spells sweet slumber
Till I **** the sublimates of such fictions
Morning come I’ll bite into my bread
And wonder if I could toast it to be
as warm as your inaccessible flesh
I do not think I’ve sinned in such desires
To the padre I’ll have nothing to confess
This pandesal is a muscle of my messiah
I mutter amen and no longer protest.

I hope you can forgive me.
When I said I am,
I meant I seem. And when I said
The Earth is round, I meant
It looked round. You don’t
Believe much in science. You think
There is no chemical response
when I tell you I’m depressed.
Sorry — I seem depressed.
Literally, a flower is in front of your face,
And you question it.
Here is a flower. No —
I hold what seems like a flower.
When an earthquake occurs, you’ll say,
Those movements felt like an earthquake.
It was, and is, an earthquake.
You can’t deduct truth from a situation
Using language. You can only be precise with it.
Oh, be. You hate be. To be, an anomaly
In communication. What is be? Assume a state?
Turn into another thing, far different from the
Previous version of yourself? Be concocts
An idea of an abstract future. Is. Are. Be. Was. Been.
It won’t matter much.
I’ll be leaving you.
You are an *******.
You don’t seem like one —
You are actually one.
I am stating that as a fact. Pontificating, if you will.
I am tired of your *******.

Veridian waves wash over me
calm, healing currents
streaming over hot
black asphalt of my mind
racing in all directions

Emerald turf, tides rise up
surging, gushing from
open, uninhabited woodland lots
and neighborhood lawns

I smile totally in awe -
the thousand shades
of medicinal green elixirs
Nature concocts for us:
soothing jade, invigorating pine,
dazzling emerald, gentle fern,
happy go lucky shamrock, pensive moss
blessed, peaceful olive branches
repair, restore, revive
our flagging spirits

O Devi we take refuge in Your
alcoves of Green Goodness
and "lie down in Green pastures"  
on your Divine lap

A poem needs a metaphor
A poem needs a theme
As the poet weave his words
And concocts his scheme.