My eyes see nothing but crosshairs
My right hand does nothing but clicks
In this cyberspace with no cares
Finally, happiness sticks

My ears hear nothing but bullets
My left hand does nothing but W,A,S,D
An experience that's as good as it gets
For at least a few hours, I'm free

My feelings are nothing but joy
My thoughts are nothing but video games
A place I can dominate a boy
Without having to say any names

We marched to the words of "We Shall Overcome"
courting justice to walk by our side,
seared into memory with the heat of sun

brothers and sisters, arms linked one to one
beneath that day star's unblinking eye,
we marched to the words, "We Shall Overcome."

We swore an oath to forego the gun,
to carry only freedom's cry
beneath the impassive afternoon sun,

through bludgeon and cudgel one by one,
each truncheon summoning others to rise,
to join in the words "We Shall Overcome."

As we embraced, the marching done,
a crosshairs trained a ******’s eye
to wrench malice from the indifferent sun

to hew a path in blood and bone,
to rend flesh
                     and a rasping
                                              fatal sigh . . .
in the fading caress of the afternoon sun.

Beneath the eternal arc of the sun,
again we will muster side by side,
a sanctified chorus, whose song will be sung,
let our marching echo "We Shall Overcome.”

Copyright © 2018 Gary Brocks

U.S. NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM / LORRAINE HOTEL
Site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thursday, 4 April 1968.

"We Shall Overcome”, an anthem, title and refrain, of the American Civil Rights Movement of the mid 20th century.

all those months ago,
you told me that
i don't get angry.
i don't have a temper.

you're right, you know.
i grew up
a target of anger.
anger was in my blood.
and that blood was a scarlet crosshairs
painted on my back,
a poison to my fragile skin.

my household was
the veritable entirety
of the world i knew.
it was ruled
with harsh words
not the words that make you angry
but the words that you say
and regret
and can't take back.

i was raised in
an intimate relationship
with the red-hot eyes of rage.

i know angry.
i know the rolling boil of your intestines.
i know the pressure in your chest
i know it well.

i know how to cool tempers
(a survival skill for my emotional state)
and i know how to rile them up.
i know how to play
the heartstrings of your fury.
if you asked me,
which emotion i knew best;
which state of mind i could best harness;
i would answer, simply
anger.

anger issues are
embedded deeply into my dna.
i've felt cloth pull
under my fingertips.
i've seen spots in my vision.
i've known the rise in your throat
the frustration squeezing
and refusing to let go.
i've felt anger.
i've received anger.
i've survived anger.
i've seen anger tear my family apart,
i've seen it linger and remain
even after apologies
like an unwanted curse,
determined to ruin me.
determined to ruin us.

i don't have a temper, by nature.
but every now and then,
it rises up in my chest.
but i've been oh so careful.
never would i want my anger
to hurt others.

i have the bruises on my wrist to prove it.

you once told me;
out of all the things in the universe
you could have told me;
you told me that
i'm not an angry person.

i've never felt so relieved
because the very last thing
i could ever want
was my fragile existence
painted with the curse of anger.

i refuse to let
the very thing
that ruined me all those years ago
cling to me like a parasite
and turn on those i love.

so thank you,
thank you because you
spoke it into existence.
by telling me those words
all those months ago,
you, while not breaking my curse,
confirmed it was broken.

The cross is lined up.
You need to take a shot.
This is the moment,
So muster up.
Everything's dies.
We're all
In the crosshairs of
Times gun.
Death waits till
they pull the trigger.
It doesn't matter when,
Now or tomorrow.
Time and death
Will hunt you down.

I.
The people look like flowers at last - sick thoughts of dead men strike the clock winding backwards and ignite to illuminate my approach,
The people look like,
Cigarette burns,
Bullet wounds,
Casualties of Rollins' war with himself,
Of Ellis' numb utopia,
Of the Bukowski cynic suicide,
Of the thoughtless progeny of deadbeat generations desperate to push back,
Every street corner is holy, baptized in the blood of those who died believing,
A thousand fists moved to release a thousand frustrations, and a celebrity endorsement for each overdose death,
Angel mine, abate your gutter wars and mob mentalities,
The tattoo ink has dried and the clubs are closed for the night,
Where are the revolutionaries to go now?

II.
The revenge of the skinhead minority,
The born again soul of a fallen brother,
The madman defiant in publicized rage, the faces of the enemy painted with crosshairs on TV screens,
And the damaged finally able to stand on their own,
Damaged and unrepentant,
Damaged and brilliant,
Damaged with criminal record eyes,
with paranoia brain, with X's tattooed into calloused knuckles,
with track marked arms,
Damaged, the unstoppable tide of the righteous youth - caricatured in the spray painted stencils of their testaments

III.
The spoiled children of an undefinable zeitgeist with nothing to lose,
In ecstasy binges these angels hallucinated manifest destiny through non prescription lenses,
Studying traffic patterns I remember how people are afraid to merge and everybody is looking for just the right amount of trouble,
A fire dies and another is born almost immediately,
Careless ramblings in careless county - a land I'm sure was promised to someone, somewhere, sometime
But after the gold rush nobody could cash out fast enough,
I can't cash out fast enough -
Every girl has got the guilty smile of a teenage runaway living out a Janis Joplin fantasy, and all the boys line up like addicts itching to cop,
The air is so heavy nobody can hold a thought - and when I speak, It's the accent, they say, they can always tell,

IV.
Taxi rides in laser show utopia,
Sicilian saint newly minted tells me about the ******* machine and it's ravenous posturing -
be present & be seen,
Fake it till you make it,
Cop killers singing confessions for beer on the street corner,
While the socialist manifests itself in mispronounced beverages and faux-marked Russian volumes,
avant-garde hyperrealism & ritualistic sacrifice,
There was something about *** and dying on the radio I couldn't be bothered to hear,
A drunken brawl over a bad bet made, disappointing street race, police sirens distant growing moreso,
In ****** bars where ladies always drink free, I rewatch the fall of a ***** old man from the penthouse to the street all over again,
If you haven't figured it out by now,
Don't try

V.
In dreams I walk the Pacific Coast Highway dead of night, barefooted soul alive and naked in the Western night like a Jim Morrison poem, the traveler that never arrives, watching the sunrise form halos over the Sierra Nevada, like a girl I know back East who talks a great deal about plans, the best of which never even have an aftertaste of freedom
There is the same sublime anthems playing on every radio and palm trees forming crosses for any messiah who is willing to claim them,
Last train out of Anaheim as the tessellating California skies swell and give, catch and release,
I see the roofs of tenements lit up by Disneyland,
ocean reflecting the glare from Heaven,
faces of the impoverished reflecting the glare from Heaven,
everybody getting sunburned from the glare from Heaven,
I watch the lovers depart for Santa Ana,
Elderly Asian tourists for Irvine,
Hipsters for San Juan,
and the rest of the destitute ******* for Oceanside en route to San Diego,
There but by the grace of God go the drunk kids spilling out of greyhound buses, sitting till dawn contemplating skylines reflected on the bay, finding romance in every moan of living Earth,
wide eyed at possibility of removing themselves from the equation and finding the answer,
Neil Young harmonicas drift listless above Spanish villas,
Everybody talking like something bad was gonna happen but I couldn't see much thru the windows past the tourist burly shouldered slumbering beast,
I think it was somewhere between Yuma and Dallas, with Mexico stretched out like an invitation to an anarchist rally where I was haunted first,
I'm haunted by El Campo Santo, paved over restless Indian graves in the shadow of the hanging tree,
By La Calavera Catrina blessing the sinners as they pass, hollow faced and sunken on the ***** Spanish streets of their ancestral Apartheid home,
I'm haunted by Calvary, 3000 spirits hanging around unsure of what comes next,
I'm haunted by the faces of the beggars I couldn't spare a cigarette for,
In dreams the Western night releases me and I leave California a shade lighter,
And the handful of stars that manage to burn through the haze seem to promise me:
"You may be gone, but your shadow lives on without you"

Gloria, latex snap. Opaque lipstick.
I should press holiday stamps
over those big blue eyes of yours.
Misspelled spoken word, whole hunting
from malignant orange ,
crosshairs and et cetera.

*** on me - stellar hardwood floor ;
the last unicorn was a battered woman
with certain dysmorphic symptoms.
My boyfriend thinks it's **** when
i read the dsm v the way i eat jello shots.

Still, I don't **** him how I would the
surrealish ***** in a polyester uniform.
He knows there's been a cowboy in a parka on the corner for days
politely asking about the three legged race. I have no answers for him
or his handsome eagle co-defendant.

I really think
I'll marry my best friend for her
enameled heart and health insurance.
I took my multivitamin , tapping out
morse on old formica ,
while telling my dead dog im sorry for
letting them **** him.

A river flowing against its course
As if to floss
Its rare peculiar uncanny ingenuity
A notable case study of ambiguity.

An estranged lover unceremoniously
Literally butchering his offspring mercilessly
In cold blood
For having been dragged through the mud.

The undercurrents of change overriding
Entrenched seemingly myopic tendencies which aren’t binding
Causing irrevocably reversible state of affairs
Care not to be caught in the crosshairs.

A hopelessly optimistic romantic
Head over heel in love with the mystique
Aura of eccentricity effortlessly effused by
Her, she indeed worth a try.

Myriad circumstantial conundrums
That is cause of the inevitable humdrum
So characteristic of life
Answers a trifle few and the lackluster enthusiasm rife.

I.
I thought you were the one.
I imagined us flying to Manila, meeting the entire family,
you proposing on the pristine sands of Boracay or
in the small village where you used to play with spiders.
I thought of possible baby names pronounced beautifully
in both of our families' native tongues.

II.
We grew together, abandoned defenses until you were my only confidant.
I still haven’t recovered from the way you used that against me:
Sealing my confessions into bullets in a magazine and making sure
I was centered in the crosshairs of the scope,
a different kind of target practice.

III.
You were my special kind of poison, the kind that slipped through my veins
unnoticed until it corrupted my cardiac muscle and collapsed my lungs.
I ate away at myself until I was small enough not to threaten you,
and even that wasn’t enough.
I finally got the courage to leave you, but I formed a thick cocoon
around my chrysalis of secrets to protect myself from you
and the next.

IV.
It’s been two years and I still have you, your mother,
and every Carlsbad or Mira Mesa area code blocked.
You realized you could invade my voicemail so you rang in 2019,
screaming whiskey-soaked wishes for a better year for us both.
I honestly believe you want that, in your own way.
I wish you the best too, but
I have outgrown you.

Hello, anguish.

Long time, no torture.

How have your travels been?

Tell me, did the fires burn
Too hot for you?
I thought, for once,
I had banished you
To whichever pit
Of Hell
You managed to arise from,
So that you may
Find me so easily,
As the goal of a hunt
Caught in your crosshairs.

I should have known better.

Well, while you're here,
Please have a seat.
Sit anywhere you like.

Anywhere but THERE!

You must be a well-seasoned guest
To know exactly which door to knock on,
And exactly where you want to rest.
So of course you pick my heart,
And lay your feet upon my soul.

I do so hope you're comfortable.

Insistent *******.

How have I been?

Why, how kind of you to ask.

What's your motive?

I've been fine, really.
A little sporadic uneasiness
Here and there,
But mostly on the fast track
To regaining my peace of mind.

Well, I was actually
In the middle of it
When you arrived.

I sound like I'm talking to a therapist.

Yes, I need 10 milligrams of Stop Talking To Inanimate Feelings.

Oh, don't be sorry.

As if you ever are.

I don't mind the company at all.
I do spend so much time
Alone these days.

I was well on my way
To finding my resting place,
My place of solitude
And productive thought,
A fragile teacup
Of a space
In the landfill
Of the world.

Some days are better
Than others.

What's that?

A gift, you say?

A souveneir, perhaps?

To hell if I'm keeping whatever it is.

What might you have for me this time.

Some sort of anxiety, I'm sure. But what about this time around?

My schooling? My finances? My family? My relationship, matters of the heart?


Oh.

Uncertainty.

Well... it wasn't
what I was expecting,
But still, it's nothing less
Than what I would expect from you.

Uncertainty about what,
Though?

There's no label this time.

.........

What do you mean,
It's a gift for identifying?

And WHERE are you going?

No.

NO.

You cannot simply leave this here,
Resting upon my weary shoulders,
Which bear so much already,
And leave me to figure it out.
You mustn't simply waltz off
Into the unknown blackness
Of the recesses of the human mind,
As if you haven't a care in the world.

You are a terrible guest,
Showing up uninvited,
At a most inconvenient time,
Bearing gifts of unneeded,
Unnamed weight,
Leaving me to figure it out.

Fine. Leave.

You wretched, vile creature.

See if I let you in again.
Begone, and let every door
Hit you on your way out.
May every jagged rock
In your path
Catch your foot in your
Sadistic, carefree walk
About the earth.
May every web
That spiders weave
Entangle you
Beyond rescue.

Yes, goodbye.

Now, what of this....
Thing?

It has no name,
Yet I am supposed
To know what it is.

Hmm.

Feels like...
Questioning.

Yes, there's questioning here.

Many questions.

But of what?

I have questions about
Many things,
As my curious nature
Must have it so.

Also feels like...
Emotion.

Unwanted emotion.

How that little beast
Does manage to bring
The worst gifts to me,
At the worst times,
Is beyond me.

He needs a hobby.

Let's see... emotions
Of the heartfelt kind.
Of the deep recesses
Of that bipolar *****
Which no ne trusts
And everyone breaks.

Emotions and questions.

Oh dear God.

No.

No, I must dispose of it
Right away.

This is the sort of thing
I fear most.
HOW did he manage,
Also,
To get fear in there,
As well?!

No, it must be thrown away.


"Do not yell your curses at me!"

"Who are you to say that I
Haven't an idea at all
What I want, and when,
And where, and why?!
What judge are you,
And with what authority
Do you claim I am divided,
My side unpicked,
And that a canyon
Lives within me?"

"Petty fool, you are not welcome here!"
I know what I am doing!
And I shall make the rules,
For it is I who must obey them!"


Alas,
There are no rules.
None to be made,
And none to be followed.

Even more tragic,
Is that I know not
What I am doing,
And I doubt I ever will.

For it is these,
Of all horrid gifts,
Delivered without
Notice,
At the precious price
Of losing sureness of mind
And peace of the soul,
That may not be returned.

The gift that keeps on giving,
Until I decide it shan't...

A decision I cannot bear to make,
While in company
Of battered spirit,
Fearful heart,
And overconfident,
Incessantly calculating mind. 

For now that he is gone,
I must entertain them, too.  

*How did I ever get so lucky?

         Where will you be
       twenty twenty
          I've got news for
       you aplenty

Leave me alone let
  me pilot my drone
                             let me fire my missiles
                                            in a no fly zone
        I don't need your permission
      to release ammunition
    You might as well leave if
   you're looking for contrition

Rifle Rifle—wait for it wait for it
   Trifle Trifle—everything's legit
      Eyeful Eyeful—never can forget
  Look out!  I strike without warning
Splash!  Try again tomorrow morning

         Liar Liar
       tongues on fire
         can't put out the
       forest fire

Leave me alone let
  me pilot my drone
                             let me drop my ordnance
                                            in a no fly zone
        I don't need your permission
      to release ammunition
    Get in my crosshairs
  You'll be headed to perdition

Rifle Rifle—wait for it wait for it
   Trifle Trifle—everything's legit
      Eyeful Eyeful—never can forget
  Look out!  I strike without warning
Splash!  Try again tomorrow morning

Leave me alone let
  me pilot my drone
                             let me fire my missiles
                                           in a no fly zone
       Here's the facts hard cold
     if I may be so bold
   if you really want to win
you'll have to wait till I get old

         One step forwards
       two steps backwards
         Once released you
       can't take back words





© 2020 Mark Toney.  All rights reserved.

jaeger.
chasseur.
foxtail.
seduction of fascism in mind,
like tumbling autumn leaves
ever and always
on the steps of a country house.
always and ever
just outside the aix-les-bains dance hall.
his blousy new bride
and her old lover
aware of his sympathies and
  the danger he presents to them.

jaeger.
chasseur.
foxtail.
seduction of fascism in mind,
ever and always
on a deserted alpine road.
always and ever
one trail of blood,
remnant of the preyed upon.
she screams against the glass,
quiet devil in the backseat
haunted by the disorder
  of his own mind.

eyes opened to
his own mutability.
alienation is immanent,
bred in the bone.
a desperate need for gravitas,
built upon vaporous credulity.
and she is pursued through the woods
ever and always,
through iridescent fields
always and ever,
until finally in his crosshairs
  she falls.

those like him have not suddenly
vanished from the earth, but
  are merely lying in wait.

0.
Friends, lovers,  co-conspirators, criminals, junkies, artists, vigilantes, killers and heroes and the ghosts that haunt all indiscriminate, I write this in your blood, for you alone,

I.
I saw you each to each pressed together in a crucible, growing callouses in a garden of fire, fingernails black from digging the harvest of ashes, and when the lord came near you boarded your windows and cocked your guns because you could no longer hold stock in a strangers promise of love, not since your father branded his name into the tender skin of your back and told you, you are only as good as what you own in this country, and by covenant you belong to me now, some nights you still see his face in clouds of smoke when the cold chill of predetermined destiny kisses the back of your neck, other nights you watch the sky and wonder which parts of you will be left when the birds have had their fill

II.
Mercy and desperation,
Concentric circles divided by zero around a sacrificial pyre,
Something here cannot coexist,
Something here has to break to fit,
In longing the martyr dies never knowing what for, and in sacrament he is chewed up and spat out
In longing the basin fills, and in sacrament it breaks to flood the earth
In longing I carve out my insides, and in sacrament they will call me a museum
That is to say, the difference between a museum and a graveyard is a still beating heart

III.
Lear looked among his children and saw only sharpened knives,
Castro looked out over the ocean and saw only crosshairs,
I look out over the city and see only cupped hands,
Our grandfathers could level nations to prove a point and our grandmothers could only cower before men of such rage and power,
Make no mistake, these streets have witnessed genocide and remained passive,
Driving fast down these empty roads after midnight, you can almost make out an apology from the wind,
She says,
You have to understand what it's like to be gutted in appeasement,
You have to understand what it's like to become deadly against your will

IV.
In dreams a vision of Ginsberg, playing chess with his demons on the fifth day of a three day psych ward stay
Vision of Plath setting fire to her own head rather than have its contents laid bare,
Vision of Wolfe watching trains roll by paralyzed by fear of the future and his own hand in it,
Vision of Van Gogh unable to express love in any way other than to destroy himself
Vision of Virginia atop the lighthouse demanding payment for the transgressions against her
Vision of the poet as a saint performing miracles after death, vision of the poet as the archetype of madness realized, vision of the poet as divine mouth and unholy ghost, vision of the poet writing his own obituary and praying for silence

V.
We are blessed with the ability to tear down our monuments when they no longer stand for us,
We are blessed because we can justify anything we destroy
When Jacob's time came they carried him to Canaan and the Lion of Judah went on to fill its stomach with the blood of anything innocent it could sink its teeth in,
I take this to mean that there are some hungers that can only be sated by devouring everything you believe in
But what do I know,
I am a crown without a king
I am not much for devotion
I pick up the pieces of the monuments that once stood here and I sanctify them in hopes that one day this will mean something,
And if that day ever comes,
We will live again inside of something everlasting,
And until then,
I will carry this with me wherever I go
It's the least I can do

Reconnecting broken ties,
mending the misleading lies I spoke.
I awoke to the harsh reality.
My reckless mentality carved out the space you use to hold.
It was my addiction to control, I wanted you.
I had you in my view, my crosshairs closed in on your heartstrings,
I could feel the rhythm of your being pressed against my isolation.
Here in desolation I dream of what we were,
a loving transfer of thought patterns and soft skin.
To begin again. Another position in time and space.
Mentally I trace the contours of your face with blinded intentions.

I'll always wait for you long after I push away.
Moonlight come bend me and twist me once more.
I miss your entirety.
You need to leave.

.
Hello    archangel,
fallen goddess behind my morgue.


    Whose complexion equaled the moon,
craters and abysses,
    cascading like salt on
an empty

    wound.


With the crosshairs of nicotine
a mirage on her cracked lips;


“Leave me,

    lowly poet,

Your pity is unbecoming.

I am the 13th fallen sister,

    so linger here

no longer.”


“Death is an old friend,

    I fear not his company,

nor his demise.”


I’ve never seen such eyes;
glass-stained,
divine & unpredictable.


“I’ll **** you.”


“Darling, I’m already dead.”



Her monologues could summon the dead,
she preached of the lovers
who bore no fruit
and the heartless
that lay eternal
in the eyes of
her dalliance.


I’d often find myself
yearning at the pebbles at her gravestone,
impatient, to be graced by her
ink soul and  rhapsodic  presence.


“Are you my friend,

poet?”



“No,

I am much more.”


And for centuries
of cracked dawns and
folded nights,
shallow moons &
crippled suns,
we’d meet---
poet to god,
at her morgue.


“Poet,

why must the most beautiful

people die?”

She once asked me.
Alured, I answered:

“When you’re in a garden,

which flowers do you pick?”


“...The most beautiful ones.”


I’d spend my seconds ‘neath the gallows,
among the bones
of her brethren,
all had fallen before her,

from the house of god.


I bargained my soul with Ursula,
my sins with Lupus,

    I ignored their tempertantrums

& discord.


That very evening I stitched a universe,
upon her shoulder-blades.


“What are these?”


“Wings.”

I dream of living to see the next revolution,
And of the men who will not live through that revolution,
Of the air humming electric static heat in anticipation of the inevitable riot,
Of the holy barricades standing in defiance of Heaven,
Of the enlightened kicking down the doors with guns and masks, asking;
"ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE PROBLEM OR ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION?"
Of gallows for the dogs of war,
Of guillotines for the capitalist pigs,
Of a firing squad for every reactionary content to oppose the wheel of history even as it crushes their bones down to nothing,
Of the end which justifies  the blood staining the cities red as the hammer and sickle cells that divide and multiply fevered in the streets,
Of the ghosts of iron men long dead still insisting that we take not one step back,
Because men get arrested, animals get put down
And God,
God made them as stubble to our swords, boys
And with blades clenched between their teeth so climb the dregs of the Earth to the surface to taste the apples they shook from the trees,
In 24 hour news cycles the slogans repeat to infinity:
"NOT RESISTING ARREST"
"NOT COMMITTING A CRIME"
"I WAS NOT A THREAT, WHY DID YOU TRY TO **** ME"
You can only force people to paint the smallest target possible on their own backs for so long before you end up in the crosshairs
I have seen the faces of  my saints painted on the walls of eternity -
Of Trotsky,  million headed proletariat staring daggers through the hearts of the tsars,
Of Cromwell, crusader for the ungovernable force of will,
Of Robespierre, headsman of divine terror riding on the wings of the Angel of Death,
I have seen the end and the means played out in countless dramas across millennia,
And the only question that remains unanswered is this:
Are you gonna be a part of the problem or are you gonna be a part of the solution?

While i was learning to savour the new taste of cashew and walnut in the autumn of that year
you were learning to eat the bones of your neighbours' dog as you fled from an earth gone moist
the leaves of war were torn from the jungle as a cavalry of shrapnel burnt away the air
you were learning to hold your breath while i was doing the same in a suburban swimming pool

when the dust of your family filled the lids of your eyes
being left to see for yourself held quite a different meaning
while your skin seared from the heat of warfire
i was feeling the warmth of a shopping centre in winter

when you went without feet, a landmine exploding your underneath world underneath
i sprained an ankle at basketball
the words of an american god spat forth from an automatic weapon
and you saw the tongues of the lamb inviting you to feast in a foreign language

and while i drew in crayon on the kindergarten wall
you were drawn in the crosshairs just before the smell of cordite

A battle between
crosshairs,
we fall
and
rebound
back; we crack;
ricochet.

The bullet grazed,
and kept at bay.

Tell the ******* truth, Gwen Stefani, bleach blonde vamp.
Questions stack up in the recesses of my mind,
A renovation’s trash pile of drywall dust.
You changed me, but there are things to clean up.

Did you just take a break to remake your image
For swarms of chubby white suburban pre-teens
Swarming in packs at the middle school dance?
Are those the only bees you could catch in your hive?

How did you meld and mold the Harajuku girls
To fit in the camera’s crosshairs or to walk
the thin line of a New York fashion week runway?
I must admit I still have my bottle of L.A.M.B.

Was the woman who screeched she was Just a Girl
Just floundering for fame? Does this happen to
Every mid-level artist? Will my inkwell turn
To the blood of an easy fan base too?

I wanted you to be my mother, but you picked
my platinum model sister as your favorite.
But will I still become you, even though I know
You’re false? Your press coverage can’t reveal the future.

Black tar lies spew from US magazine covers
Eyes dark, I gobble them up in violent shudders.

Almost a year since the presence was known, gave me time to roam,
she was busy gardening an idea that couldn't be grown.
Times change. The mind got rearranged. If I stepped in untimely then I'll burn too quick in the fame.
My past is in the past and she's not one to be passed. But I'm not sitting in crosshairs because I've already got my own aim.
I can't start something that has no substance, or at least a hint of,
But a constant trajectory to the revolving door is what I could easily get sick of.
I have my own value, sad & true. If there's no space to place it then I guess I'm just passing through.
For now, I'm giving it time to see what the ride might brew.
I'm all in. Take every inch, every thought, every sin.
I don't trust a soul because there tends to be bite behind every grin.
If you want all of me there's a simple recipe:
Be true to yourself and then I'll bring the mess of me. Restlessly.
I can sense the powerful energy.
Life is what you make it. I've grown with every ache and confronted anything I've been faced with.
When you concoct your potion hope it's not poison it's laced with.
If you mean every word, bird, we'll paint the sky with our symphonies.
Make rainbows jealous with our palette of memories,
Sitting tight, sipping fine wine as you bring out the best of me,
Turn the atmosphere on it's head while we chill in our new heavenly mezzanine.

You like to blend in
It's safer, not being identified in a line up
Not being noticed by the school Bully
I couldn't bear that life.
Always needed spotlight
Crosshairs
Skyscrapers.
Let people come into my building for it's big neon signs
When they leave maybe they've learned how to use pen. Bought or sold stories.
Taken something with them.

You are in the ocean
One of the many holding hands
dropletts blending together
Boats motor by, dump their waste
People dip their toes in,
******* before they leave
Scream over you about their tragedies.
Never hear you.

Except one girl
She sits by the ocean
Listens to the waves and the crashing
Watches the men hurl lobster traps
wants to be a ****** diver.
takes lessons
Gets a degree in marine biology
visits your rocky bottom
Lost in the sea of other droplettes
Illuminated Neon Coral houses
Tiny white specks to chase
lights dangling from
big teethed fish

She stays there
Loves how beautiful it is
Her name is Poetry

When I want to write
And the words are churlish and
Sluggishly slow in coming -
And even when they come
They linger at the door-frame
And rub their soft cheeks
Against the painted grain -

I read in a special voice.
Sometimes it's the voice
Of my English teacher from
Junior class. We didn't get along,
But not a word passed her
Lips that wasn't as gilded and
Mellifluous as edible gold-leaf
On a chocolate-chili sundae.

Or the voice belongs to
Rives, who plucks meaning
Out of words like candy
Out of an Easter egg.
He savors every syllable
Like it's an annual treat
And lines them up neatly
In his throat like some kind
Of spoken-word songbird,

But the things I write are
Least likely to be read aloud
By Rives and my English teacher.
(And reading in their voices
Seems too proud.) So I pen
The last of the stragglers down
And clear the alien voices out
Of my own (often sore) throat.

I enjoy my words, wallow in
Phrases, and praise lines of
Alliteration about as often as
A soldier runs past shelter
Helter-skelter and takes his
Chances with unfriendly crosshairs.
My voice quavers, quivers, shakes,
And shivers when I read my work.

I find every letter and line
And nuance absurd, but
I keep myself in check. Editing is
A controlled demolition of
Punctuation and capitalization;
Sometimes the "submit"
Button is hard to hit after
Splaying one more page of
Myself into crisp computer print.

But I breathe and repeat
The words that are lodged
Under my ribcage like a
Stray bullet: "You are not
Superlative; you are not
Fantastic; you will not be
Famous; you will not be
Any better for a long time
And even then you may be
Terrible, unbearable, and
Infinitesimal,

But everyone is."

                                                            click

For regrets i have
And times i missed
I never thought
I could be so ******

War against any who approach
No method or trials
This is nothing that can be coached
Rage

Fallen friends ill avenge this yet
You thought i wouldnt **** wanna bet?
Youve taken all i knew
I now turn the crosshairs on you

Fueled by love
Compelled by hate
No man could reach a power this great
You try and try but will never overcome
I have the world under my thumb

I saw your hope crush
Felt your strikes
To me, but plush

Im calling you out
Here i am
Any resistance is futile by man

Pushin my baby on the swing each one way,
        Bullets passing the wind not punching
me and my baby. But the fools be running
like they could outrun fate.

They can't escape the crosshairs of
  ill-prepared revenge.  
    Cadavers hit the floor blood outlines
that turn white after they felled.

I kept pushing my youth, hoping
she'd grow to an age where she
           could push her own.

But every day I playing Russian
   roulette with her swinging,
    me pushing her further so that
she's higher than the gunshots


          as they always hitting lower.

Today I was pushing her, she in her nikes,
     swinging her higher than death could
catch her tight grip...

But my neighbor she hanging low, catching
two unfollowed friend requests  flying through
the air, one in the thigh, one between the thoughts,

I kept pushing as her shadow swallowed by her
folding on the floor, her baby swinging slower
but still alive.

         Blue took her to her daddy, hope they
find out who they are as she had more than
           one by another man...


I m still here pushing my baby on a silent playground.
      No one comes here, that's good for me.
   pushing her low as there isn't a problem
of drive-bye byes... No more *******, no one to ****.
                  There is just me and my baby pushing..


Come on baby its time to go home,
                 the road is white, and we aren't
going to our usual place...


R.I.P to those who never didn't do nothing.
          


Another drive-by, grills smiling as flashes
greeting shaded window frames,
                                          hanging low.

i am a mess of broken strings and branching neurons that will never quite reach their intended purpose and i am a creature that loves like arsenic. i am curling flames that make their way into your heart and nest there with no intention of ever leaving and this is my problem; i never know when it is time to take my inhibitions and my shortcomings and get on a bus that will drop me off in your left ventricle, where i can smooth out my broken pieces and start again. i am a bird who can't fly and relies on others to take me up into the clouds because my potential overshadows my reality and i have never learned to escape mediocrity as it chases me onto a dead end street. i am all parts and no wholes; i am all fragments that won't fit together and no amount of glue will repair my shattered sense of self or my crippled brain that loves so intensely it drives people away. i am a line so long i can't even begin to look for the front so i settle into waiting and let it become my personality, let it become my everything because here is now and there is then and the timeline of my life has never been a straight line; it has always been a zigzag of humanity that folds back in on itself despite my mumbled protests. i am not a phoenix - when i have burnt to ashes i do not wish to be reborn because i have always been a loaded pistol and embers don't mix with gunpowder (i know this because i have been an inevitable explosion since the day my mother first held me in her arms). i am a surplus of pride and shame in the form of hidden tears and crumpled papers but i have always been older than my years and the anomaly in me has never been extinguished; maybe this is why when i look down at myself, i see only marks and freckles and imperfections instead of the blinding glare of my rattled soul. i am Hiroshima with its enormous power (too great to be contained) that dissolves my judgment into fine white powder and scatters it over dead soil like a twisted mosaic on a mottled canvas. i am poison - you will know this part of me if you reach past my organs into my core where my fears rest, if you get too close for comfort and my electric fence of a heart shocks you back. i am a being that never learned to love the right way so i love all the wrong ways and if you get caught in my crosshairs from where i stand above, you should run. i never learned how to escape myself, or my arsenic heart, and this is my problem. this will always be my problem.

Warning: Some bad *** language.*

There's a rabbit in my garden,
Just like in nursury books,
This little *******'s not Peter,
He hasn't Peter's looks.
I admit the ***** looks cute,
But he's not wearing Peter's suit.
This little *******'s wearing fur,
The ******* critter's hunching,
The *******'s munching
On all my sweaty work.
My cat's hardly a terrorist,
His name's not Benjamin,
The lazy **** lies in the sun,
His shadow moves more than him.
I could lure him in,
Use arrow and a bow,
Catch and skin
The little ****,
To fashion my scarecrow.
I lined the **** in crosshairs,
He lifts and sniffs the air,
As if he sensed a certain fear
Impending doom was near.
I thus approached,
We both stood there,
There's something about him
We both shared,
As if we were a pair.
I did the same,
When I was young,
I thought the world
Was mine for free,
And gathered all my oysters.
His innocence
Wasn't lost on me.
Hold on,
This tale's not quite done.
The oyster ******'s still in my garden.
The **** can live,
But must stay out,
I spread blood meal about.
And gathered all my oysters

I never really notice the color of people's eyes but
I can tell you that the way you hold a pen makes me think
the words twisting inside of you
are streaming and surging and sharp;
a deafening waterfall I can't chase.
They're throwing themselves into the dips of your eyelashes and demanding to be set on fire-
they're screaming to be loaded into a barrel,
cocked and aimed at the crosshairs of your moleskine-
You're hunting wild words for the thrill of the ****.

I don’t remember your license plate
so each passing pick-up,
(cobalt, clean, too high to just step in) sends me reeling.
As winter fades, the memory of rushing heat
that struck bare shoulders and spider-scurried
in deep, mascara-laced blinks from your passengers seat vent
to the base of my spine replays sweetly-lonely,
it echoes tightly-comforting.

I tread sensory smiles because spring can't get here fast enough.
My boots are always drying.
My thoughts are always climbing.
I'm craving a day that has shriveled up
and blown away; giddy on these too-tough
March ghosts and gales-
being tangled in it feels almost safe to me now.
In a certain moonlight rejection resembles refuge.
No border tries to contain me;
I burned my passport.
I'm growing out my hair.

These light-and-sweet iced coffee, round-tummy, solid-thigh days
find me a galaxy away from the springy, sinewy nights of us-
the nights when I didn't slouch
and I had hands worth holding.
My shoulders aren't the smooth golden brown;
(shea-butter-softened, an amber, wrinkled velvet

that demanded your caress, 
that confused my heritage,)
they were when you were driving me places-

They're thicker now;
thick and full and that yellowy,
greenish kind of pale that pulls drum-tight over dewy purple veins.
Veins that weave and sprout in every direction;
that bottle Mediterranean blood across leaky night lectures
and fevered weekends.
An arrangement of flesh that smiles the picture of pretty health
and tired vigor with a vineyard tan;
but limps sickly sallow when dodging the sun.

I'm flipping through notebooks and turning out
coat pockets. I'm looking for any little bit
of my autumn daydream to slip out
and remind me that it was so much better
inside my head. The receipts have faded
and we didn't take enough pictures-
fingers clutch my memory’s b-roll negatives,
the soundtrack a roughly translated laughter
in a knotted, almost-vocabulary.

My hands are full of crumpled words
and the small, neon lighters
that I liked to buy and forget about
at midnight October gas stations.
There are words hiding in other places too-
words I've strung up
like Christmas lights and dubbed poetry,
the frozen solid words you held
which I begged for but could never extract,
and the noble, solid words you offered me
like a fireman's blanket while we both sat upright and facing forward
from opposite ends of the same couch.
The words that detailed, in no uncertain terms,
all the ways in which I was not enough.

I think, if I ever fall again,
I will let the dressed-up details
coarse through my veins first.
The descriptions, the elaborations,
the tacky garnishes-
they can bloom in my memory void of language.
I'll let the tiny bits that do nothing for me
perch on my sternum,
then, sweet as a mockingbird,
call out, sing to and mirror back the lives
and centuries and twisted roots
of migration and exploration within me.
My birth certificate is lying-
I've been biting my nails and humming
across six thousand years.

I'm still learning;
now I know the shade of your eyes,
the make of your car,
the cds in your glovebox;
they're fine details I can shoulder
through the winter and won't imitate
bullets the way words seem to
when it's time to hibernate inside my skull.

Maybe by next spring
I'll shake off the novels my thoughts
are dripping with and writhing on the floorboards in reaction to.
Maybe by next spring
I won't wake to find my finger on the trigger
of a loaded paperback gun,
its howling muzzle aimed toward the sky.

The day you went away,
I looked at the wisps in the forest to search for your secret grave but they just turned to me
and faded away.
I searched the sands for your parched remains and i knew when I'd find you
because life would spring from where you'd rot
and the oasis you'd bring would flood the desert floor
with our memories we spent a lifetime trying to endure.
So I built a ship for two,
to guide me through the storm
to the next beckoning light that calls- another rock to crash upon,
my foundation?
lies in pieces of micro-organic emotions and concrete
unhinged delusions.
The seat next to me is taken,
I know she's already...dead,
but still, I remember her presence and I'm not mistaken,
I'm waiting to pass over
so that when it's over,
we'll start again
and row through the waves- together.
Sure, it looks weird now: a young man who looks old,
and people say he looks dead but
thanks man,
I try,
I just can't drop down at the last
breath,
to rise up in depth,
so I feel I can never drown...sad.
The only drug is your gasp as you frown at the last glimpse of my face-
enraged? alien?
sadder still,
I don't remember,
Everything happened in a beat back then;
metronome swings of fervent passion.
Our nights were tunes of harmony and disarray,
we swung them together and stitched new holes
in places we liked by ourselves;
defunct from casual belief
and such times!
People strained to find insanity, androids in love looked for guidance upon us,  
who dreamed of mortal sleep.
Our dreams,
were nightmares we always woke up from a second earlier
before it ended.
Waking up was more real at times,
and at times,
I couldn't tell the difference
but I dreamt nonetheless
and so, we decayed beautifully;
so used to it anyway that we didn't stop for a moment,
to look at the skin beneath our bones.
Everything in angles and shapes and simple motion
bent to our rules of private physics and the laws
of Fatal Human Attraction.
I knew the science
and knew the value of distance and its measurements:
too close and it pushes back, explodes
and leaves
absolution,
the aftertaste.
So I tasted implosion- time and again,
just to keep
our crosshairs fixed.
If one of us moved closer,
our bullets wouldn't miss,
and now, I can't smell you
if I did, I'd touch you,
but I can't hold my breath yet,
my lungs still keep me
dead awake.
Till then,
I'll just hunt you,
keep dying,
and see.
Till then,
don't
come
back.
I'm ready, haunt me.

You remind me what it is like to smile again,
to pick up a pen that sends a positive message,
you salvage the wreckage that is my life
my light seems to flicker on and off
but I scoff at those who say I'm living in darkness.
I fall apart often trying not to get lost in
the crosshairs of two shooters crossing pistols,
I fall apart often believing in false prophets
that gives me warning and false cautions.
But I have you to pick me up every time
every line I write is a appreciation of you
of how you made the blue in my life vanish
and banished the negative emotions
that drizzles into an ocean drowning everything.
You are the sun when there is darkness,
you are the mountains and the harness
that keeps me safe and happy.
You are everything beautiful in my life
remind me one more time that tonight-
you still love me.

My heart beats for you, the familiar door knock
it's not chained up or locked so enter at your will,
come live inside my heart for free, it is always open
for a golden sunshine like you.

The walls are vibrating
with sweat pouring
my artificial heartbeat
is the recorded sounds
of feet taking flight up sidewalk runways
pouring with sweat
heart exploding
and maybe if it does
I can get something on the page
for you magnificent sons of *******
but my appetite will be vanquished
in t-minus one hour
the extended release of last nights beer
and smoke permeating through skin
blow it in the air
to show the trip wires
my desk chair dusty and lifeless for too long
“how’s the writing going, Harry?”
about as well as when poets try to be real people -
so a lot of complaining and selfish procrastination -
but my crosshairs are all aligned
trigger finger itchy
the sarcastic, *****, dropout, “just rolled out of bed”
cynical wordsmith
with a chipper chip on my shoulder
and just like lays you can’t just have one
so I’m quick to 86 any competition
who are too quick to toe over my line
you don’t wake a hibernating bear
and you certainly don’t poke the starving wolf
when the grease from last night’s dinner
coats your skin like slime
my hands are shaking
and homework is due by the start of class yesterday
But I’ll be fine, Ma
I’ve got a mouth full of big talk
and eyes full of short sighted leaps of faith
my soul blows through alleys, avenues, and storm drains
and it tastes just like little kid medicine
something artificially sweet masking the bitterness
When I was a little **** -
making dens, kicking cans, and ringing doorbells -
they told me I could be anything
except tall enough to ride all the good roller coasters
so now, I’m a carnie in a booth
getting revenge on the world
by ignoring all the kids screaming
for me to stop the ride
I’m no artist
far cry from a poet
I’m a kid, too smart for his own good
too dumb to know better
to confused to guess at the ending
of this movie

Culture Vultures dining on carcasses,
a culture of artist that,
act as if everyone is targeted,
and we are whether bisexual or bipartisan,
or both no vote only the onset of mainstream socialist monarchism,
a subconscious stream of consciousness consumed by a constantly contradicting condition of consumerism,
an avalanche of retail therapy and the avant of avant-gardism,
doesn’t have to be a better product or improved edition,
just has to be better packaged and marketed,
sold our souls so we don’t own anything anymore not even our own cognizance,
just look what what the mass media market did,

our collective memories and ancient traditions all but forgotten,
designer jeans symbolize a degenerative disease like Parkinson’s,
want to end this madness but don’t know who started it,
so who can we blame but ourselves in all honestness,
as we absorb Virtual Reality and ignore Actual Reality creating an occultism of Oculus,
Rift we drift into thee abyss of dark indifferences…

Neglecting the blueprint everybody’s a studio gangsta these days just ask 50 Cent,
morally bankrupt lazy played daisies try to copy Jay-Z’s blueprint,
but no body has a DJ Clue or a Ty Dollar to spare still everyone’s got their two cents,
all opinions given with no wisdom taken from the Grand Architect,
what good is good advice if we don’t take the time to listen we just dismiss it quick,
showing off trophies donating charity checks,
acting like champions we bare and beat our chest,
wearing fool’s gold and blood diamonds but we’ve won nothing yet,
honestly feels like we haven’t even started yet,
still we feel exhausted from this rat race for dominance,
slaves of an alien race we pledge allegiance with our obedience and faux pas ambiance,

And it’s all almost over for our entire empire so every moment better cherish it,
white robes with Chipko flip flops we hold the reins to Her Majesty’s chariot,
whipping the 500 horses faster in the fast lane will get you buried quick,
so I try and pace it and not get too wasted still I feel very sick,
when captain screams “You move too slow sailor!”, that’a when it’s time to depart this ship,
but you can’t rush good art and I’m an articulating artist for all the artisans,
in a constant state of affairs is why I haven’t married yet,

which of course means no divorce from any or all of this,
so I continue to translate transmissions without prejudice,
love is star crossed colorblind and my wonder mind is in wonderland’s luminescence,
as I illustrate illustrious illuminations off every edifice in this hedonistic eden like Edison,
with an ample amount of ambiance this is this rebels renegade Renaissance,
I write light before I become just another martyr for the Martian’s master plans,
my words are honest sonnets on tablets of mono-cultured monograms,
mono-glyphs that shine like a beacon on the Tower of Babel atop a cavernous monolith…

This is all honest in all honestness.

Here at the docks with assorted Goddesses and narcissistic walruses,
way up down under not trying to be negative but the only thing I’m positive of is,

we are cultivating a culture of artist that,
act as if everyone is targeted,
and we are whether bisexual or bipartisan,
so stay up and keep your eyes open because the games have just started kid.

This is all honest kid.

And I’m open to discuss everything except religion and of course politics,
so if you’re having issues then tell me what the problem is and maybe we can solve it quick,
and please don’t blame the Dalai Lama or Obama’s broken promises,
see we all have soiled wings just like these vultures that pick at our carcasses,
as we dine on Soylent Green served hot from the meting *** of concubine colleges,
wrong right black white day night see everything has it’s opposites,
so even the kindest animals will turn into carnivorous cannibals when all that’s left,
is blown kisses well wishes ***** dishes corrupt princes and spiritual paralysis,
this is the age of the dawning of Aquarius and the end of our passing genesis…

But what do I know I’m just a Son of a Gun on the run writing this mystic futuristic hit-list,
dressed to the nines with a bottle of moonshine and a bunch of empty cartridges,
in the Wild West with Clint Eastwood clean as a whistle mixin’ with ***** Harry’s pharmacist,
The Good Bad & The Ugly drink in acid rain and eat magic cactuses…

Howling at the full moon with peyote coyotes absent minded off the absinth mix…

Alive right here left for dead insane and out of practice with,
no clean water in the canteen and circling are the vultures just above us,
this teenage wasteland has no purpose with,
riff raft rats and religious rabbits in the crosshairs with deserted desert tortoises,
see these badlands will make the most professional professionals seem like just silly naive novices,
there’s nothing more to see here in this mirage except my rusty gun as it tarnishes…

my visions getting blurry bodies stopped but my mind’s still hurried this is what exhausted is,
and I’d escape if I knew a way out but instead I stay because I’m not sure what my other option is…

See I knew I would go I told you before everyone is targeted,
so soon it seems I’ll be just another rotting carcass that,
the Culture Vultures overhead dine on as their dinner when feeling peckishish,
terminated no terminator but like Arnold said, “I’ll be back.”, like I just started this…

∆ Aaron LA Lux ∆

Worldwide Bestselling Poet

I shot you
in my wildest dreams
again last night.

Over & over,
I put you in my crosshairs,
aimed straight on you
& drew a bead.

Then switching to a rapid fire mode,
I unloaded everything I had
on fully automatic,
dropped you
every which way but loose.

Ratta-tat-tat,
kapow, kapow,
ratta-tat-tat,
that's where it's at!

And you,
playing the perfect victim,
lay beautifully sprawled out,
relishing in each & every wound,
covered with my flood.

It was extreme,
so romantic,
a wonderfully ******,
sensuous scene,
and it made my blood boil,
left me dreaming for more
hot, straight-shooting.

Lock and load!

Hurry up Darling
& shut the door!

Wise words
Well unheard

Lost
On a heart
Heavy with hope
Hollowed by sorrow

A friends warning
Well made
Too late

The blade is unsheathed
The soul blind with longing
Caught in the crosshairs
Of desire and denial

I am a refugee from the City upon a Hill.

My homeland once a resounding light to the nations; has become a convulsing black hole, threatening to devour any semblance of civility.

My City, once a radiant promontory of enlightenment, its illumination of liberty’s searing torch revered, it’s practical striving for democratic wisdom shaping the long arc of the moral universe emulated by people of good will across the globe; now lies in state as a mordant corpse, serenaded by a funereal chorus of laughing griffins, a dead patriarch surrounded by the ruins of a once opulent now sacked city, a bygone home to the scattered disassemblage of a once noble people.

I recoil from the rancor of extreme partisanship, the gerrymandered apportionment of citizenship rights, the buoyant vindictiveness celebrated by small minded ignorance.

The blind allegiance to jingoistic nationalism, the adulation of Blueline authoritarianism, the fealty to imperial militarism and the dangerous trajectory of it’s awful consequence yet to come, enthralls me with dread.

Compelled patriotism enforced by threats of faux patriots, amoral ammosexuals, their small hands stroking quick triggers of long guns, genuflecting in mastabutory glee to the preeminence of 2nd Amendment atrocities, angling crosshairs of resentments to firmly fix a promise of ghoulish body counts, a rationalized apocalypse a captive people must suffer to underwrite profiteering gunrunners who blindly defile the constitutional tenets of life, liberty and happiness, the blood splattered keystones of our true exceptionalism.

Xenophobia and racialism, are stoked and celebrated by the City’s chief executive, his impish smile mouths Blood and Soil sloganeering, he solemnly salutes the Confederate flag while cheering torchlight processions of enraged White Nationalists marching to the drum of the Grand Republic’s midnight dirge along the once hallowed trail of Jeffersonian Democracy and a sacred place of secular enlightenment and higher learning. His gleeful decrees tweet the destruction of families and his police agents mouth holy scriptures to justify the imprisonment of children.  These vandals rhapsodically paint images of phantasmagoric nightmares trampling and mocking democratic ideals, resurrecting long settled conflicts, terrible tests a once great City rose to extinguish, now swelling numbers of craven citizens ardently embrace Klansmen, insurrectionists and ****’s as righteous brethren.

The madness of chauvinism and racial supremacy has fully metastasized within the body politic, polluting the mind, infecting the bloodline with a virulent strain of a white blood cell disease coursing through the veins of republican citizenship.

A City stolen from the Native inhabitants, ethnically cleansed and its former inhabitants remanded to the prisons of reservations, a City constructed on the backs of chattel slaves, erected on the graves of exploited wage laborers, provisioned by the ruthless denigration of the earth’s bounty, law and order mandated by criminalizing the marginalized, repressing the civil liberties of outliers and subjecting women to a perpetual status as the second *** underclass; has failed to repent and steadfastly refuses to make reparations for its sinful past has made the City uninhabitable.

The embrace of tolerance and diversity is the balm, the curate that can salve the oozing sores crippling the City. Nativist prejudice is a long protracted path that City citizen’s find impossible to exit. The malevolence that consumes the mind and moves the soul of a desperately spiteful people, who take delight and find it necessary to dehumanize and imprison alien races and creeds to maintain vapid notions of superiority, profane the ideals of a republican calling. They ruefully ignore the beacon of light warning of the dangerous shoals that lay ahead. The ideals of the great democratic experiment on course to be dashed on the jagged rocks of ignorance, fear, and anger. The doomed City has set a course that endangers its embargoed citizens. Travelling in steerage, a captive body, believing they are on a course for the rebirth of the City’s greatness are emboldened and chained by the delusions of their self destructive steadfast resentments.

My home City has become unknown to me.  I have become a stranger in this strange land. What was once beloved has become insufferable. What was once treasured has become burdensome. The familiar has become fully alien. A terrible avenging apparition haunts and mocks people of good will. My heart is disheveled. My spirit bruised. My body literally aches from the wounds exacted from the deconstruction of my beloved metropolis.

I stand stranded at the border of incivility. Bewildered I peer through a protective wall of concertina wire, eyeing the imprisoned haughty souls of fully enfranchised citizens, bellowing self righteous psalms, singing interminable lamentations of terminal ignorance.

Condemned by their belief in the salvation of violence and recrimination, secure in their faith that their moat of self righteousness shelters them from the gulags of perdition they eagerly proclaim for others, feeling recused from the bane of sinfulness by meager tithes, tumidity and scriptural specificity and the sweet delusional conviction they are the chosen tribe of God’s favor; their aspirations viscerally dashed in blizzards of metaphysical illusion strewn like meaningless confetti onto a passing parade of barbarians who have taken the City as its grandest prize.

Sadly I must withdraw from my beloved City. I retreat to a refuge where the barbarians dare not enter. Their ignorance and stasis weds them to a place far from my sanctuary of choice. May my sanctuary restoreth my soul!

I find refuge in the temples of jazz. I sing arias of lucent improvisation. The freedom of unbridled expression reinvigorates the mind, alighting the emanation of our better angels. The music calibrates my soul with the syncopated beat of an irrepressible life force, the humanity of my welling heart swells on the sonorous oxygen of a lyrical free spirit.

I take refuge in our vanishing mountain wilderness. The natural world offers a solace of solitude, a unrequited impression of scale and a transcendent communion immune from the trampling cacophony of gleeful vandals running rampant through the streets of the City. In winter the summits are capped in crowns of viginal snow, spring awakens a dormant flora, autumn leaves shout the chorus of a seasons glory and summer flowers bloom in multitudes of brilliant colors marking a startling contrast to the fifty shades of gray tattooed onto the City’s restive souls by the purveyors of power.

I find respite on the friendly banks of rivers and breeze swept ocean shores. The perfume wafting along a rivers streaming eddies or a briney snort gulped from the foam of a cresting wave invigorates the lungs, strengthens the heart and clears the mind. The flow of living water heals lifes wounded spirit. It quenches a thirst for justice and nourishes the hope of freedom for all incarcerated souls. The ceaseless roll of the ocean waves prove the enduring power and inevitability of liberty.

I find a good refuge in books. Here I discover a fleeting glimpse of our forgotten love of knowledge and pursuit of truth and rational thought. Enlightenment is the plot of every storyline.

I take refuge in art. I escape into the multiple dimensions of aesthetic beauty trouncing the twittering banality of fad, pornographic affectations and consumer fethishism. Glimpsing beauty while beauty is there to behold and the diligent practice of its creation is an answer to a higher calling.

I take refuge in my dog. Unconditional love and trusted friendship are values at peril in a transactional world; virtues nobily demonstrated and freely given by our canine and feline friends.

I take refuge in late night comedy. Working the midnight shift, whistling past the graveyard with a hearty laugh helps to while away the desperate hours. The rancid fruits of our labor leave a bitter taste in our mouths, humor is the bread of life that clears the palate and makes the terrible sufferable.

My lasting sanctuary is the stronghold of faith, forbearance and tolerance. I trust the long arc of justice will bend toward the righteous and offer a pathway of redemption for all desecrated souls.

I take refuge in the Blues. Let my lamentations turn to songs of joy and deliverance.

I take refuge in prayer. May my places of exile restore and heal my denigration. May God deliver us to a good destination. May our generational wanderings in the desert of desolation end in the discovery of a good place of habitation.

In the solitude of prayer may I experience catharsis, may my petitions find an open ear, may I achieve clarification, may my pious supplication be genuine , my conviction firm, a direction found, a decision made, a call to action clear.  May I become a healer of the breach.

May Your grace be sufficient for me.

I declare my exile over. I will return to my City. I will attempt to rekindle the extinguished flame of liberty to dispel the darkness enveloping my City.

Selah.

Mark Almond: The City

Puyallup
6/30/18
jbm