It all started with a walk through a graveyard.
We came to sprinkle glitter,
we came to ring the claw bells,
we came to read the eroded epitaphs on 200 year old tombstones.
Instead we found a “working” aimed at killing someone.
A black bird without a head.
Lopped clean off.
Some kind of voodoo.
Consecrated with a dark blessing by a tombstone.
Naturally we took the bird home.
Laid it out back in the freeze.
It was a “working” aimed at killing someone.
A santera over on east King street informed us of the details.
Told us to burn it and take a sweet bath.
Told us to put water next to the door to catch the demons off our shoes,
tracking in all the demons off the street.
I put water next to my bed to catch the demons in my sleep.
I wondered to myself just what exactly was going on.

A cat got to the bird before we could
but it left us the wings by the fence in the yard.
Monica stretched them open and now they are drying in the garage.
A set of wings to fan the smoke once we light the sage on fire.
I didn’t have a good feeling.
I wanted to burn the black bird.
I wanted to stop the “working”.
I wanted to leave a green pumpkin for Oshun by the waterside.
But instead I only watched it lying on the leaves
out back under a tree
from the kitchen window each time I did the dishes.
Then one morning it was gone,
but I didn’t say anything.
I thought about other things until I saw
the stretched wings in the garage,
until I pulled the Raven card from
the Oracle deck.
Black birds came to visit me.
I was advised I better start getting crafty.
I had been diligent with the water by the bed.
I purified the demons with the singing bowl every morning.
I bless my demons in the water so they don’t use
my mouth to scream
and my eyes to cry.
But the raven came to see me still.
The one without a head, and the one in the oracle deck.
And the ones that fly around the power lines outside where I walk,
cawing and cackling in a crooked ******.

Fancied myself a priest
baptized by the Holy Spirit
home of the Sacred Feminine.
Found myself screaming in hysterics like a little boy in his blanket
after he's told nothing shall be as it was.
So much for the priest hood.
So much for the New Earth.
I pulled the Tower Card.
And that,
along with the ravens
and old man Saturn…
I had never been so afraid for my body in my life.
Now we walk around town and find bird heads on the sidewalk.
Starlings, and a little wren.
I learned my demon’s name is John and that he stands behind me.
Big and wooly like a wild thing on two legs.
He doesn’t fit in a glass of water
so I brought him to the Lemon Street Cemetery
and said bon voyage.
Buried him by a gravestone tree stump and said the prayer of two deaths.
The walk home smelled like ginkgo nuts
and the dust from the crumbing of the Tower hasn’t settled yet.
Now it’s as if I've been inoculated.
I lost my sense of taste for a week and didn’t break a sweat.
I’ve pulled the rug out from under my own
two feet so many times
that if I don’t learn to levitate
my poor tailbone won’t have a chance to heal.
Home of the root
Abode of the World Serpent.
I wasn’t prepared for what was awoken within me
that day up in the promised land,
and it's been climbing my spine ever since.
Now I bless the water by my bedside every night
in case John comes back to roost.

I cover my floors with happy feet
I paint the walls with candle light
I light frankincense and tie prayers to the smoke
I watch them float to heaven
I ring a singing bowl
I put the demons in the water and I drink them.

Stumbling in my fears
Crumbing through your glares

Rising to the sky
Standing oh so high

Walking from your cries
Running because you lie

Falling with a sound
Landing on the ground

What you didnt know is that i landed on my feet.

Now look who lays in defeat.

Hadn't it all been forgotten
Between the brooding the bruising and the torn skin tissue
What did it even feel like to ride a bike up a hill to deliver soup to the boy with chills
your boy
That boy who you thought nobody else could be
Insist to lay in the arms of others in a state of apathy
is it really coming back, I will get hurt and trapped
All of these notions rushing in a quick return to help, heal but worst of all heal
Knowing what love is, when to say it, if to say it is all a different thing
It's a forgotten flavor long lost in an ocean numbed by nicotine and liquor
A warm cinnamon bun hot from the oven, tender and brittle perhaps maybe crumbing

you're like barely lightning
stumbling angelically of that frosty womb
dangerously you are flakes of minute cold
crumbing deftly cheeks pale as
sleep. who is a club of kind
fantasy or sometimes a plush terror
reckoned in pleasing symmetry.
i know only your valleys and your pastures
the breathless yawning landscape
my lips are hithering or withering
about to imbue with every effort
of my love your perfect vessel my ardor
in lumping crunches of delicate
kisses,    ,          ,               ,                           , , ,  .

It was the first time in a long time.

I had resigned myself to being locked in my fortress, alone, but safe.

Then you came.

You were a friend at first, and then you were more, and I opened my shackled doors.

Things were good. They were hard sometimes, but they were good.

You wandered my castle for a time, acquainting yourself with the parts of me you could reach. Sometimes you hurt me when you were hurting, but I didn't blame you. Because I loved you.

After more time had passed, I allowed you into my throne room.

Told you what had been lurking in my depths, the fears I felt and how the mortar of my structure was crumbling. I let you into my very core. I thought you could help.

You seemed to grow slowly hostile after I told you. My halls weren't filled with the usual warmth. Then I brought you to the throne room when my stone began crumbling and my throne began splintering, you agonized on how the splintered wood affected you, instead of giving me the support beams I needed to stay together. The wood of my legs split, and I was hurting, and I needed you most. I still bore your weight when you hurt, but my breaking, jagged wood was... Too much for you. Though before I began crumbling, you had told me you would endure anything, for you loved me.

But then you left.

My throne was broken, the stone of my castle shuddering without support; I was falling. I supported you in your loneliness, cradled you by my hearth when life was too much. But when I began crumbling, you decided my halls were not for you any longer. You would not help maintain that which sheltered you through brutal storms, that which always promised you a safe place to stay. You left.

And it hurt at first.

But then I was angry. My fire flared, knowing you told others that my crumbing bricks weren't really breaking, that I was an insult to those that truly needed help, even when you knew that the bombardments of my crisis shattered my walls, broke my throne. You would have people look at my cracked stone and jagged wood and think it a ploy for pity, even as I struggled to keep myself standing in the vicious storm that raged on.

I allow close friends to wander my halls after you left, and they help rebuild. Place mortar between the cracks of my walls, clean the cobwebs away from my corners.

I will not allow them to enter my throne room. Not yet. It will take time. I will rebuild my broken throne, my hands will bleed from the splinters, but I will prove you wrong.

I will be the King I was meant to be, I will show you how wrong you were about me.

I want you to know what treasure you left behind. What you took for granted.

My walls are fortified, my dear friends maintain it for me, and I hold them by the warmth of my hearth. I will support them as I did you, for they are grateful and help keep me standing.

Not like you.

The cold stone towers
Cast shadows across
The barren desolate lands
Throwing darkness for miles
In the quieting times
Of the sun’s farewells.

The hard steel gates
Stand in stark contrast
To the openness of the sky.
Shut tight as a clam shell
Barring even the insect
And the wind from entering.

The tall brick partitions
That loom over the world,
Halting all time in their
Intimidating presence,
Keep the caged birds in
And the foreign spies out.

But a small breeze blows
Across the empty plains
Starting up a rumbling
As the walls began crumbing
And the fortress walls
Collapsed in wards
Showing that they were
Made of nothing more
Than dreams for posts
And sugar for mortar

The protection falls
Tumbling to the ground
Baring my **** body
To the growing crowd
To see all my scars
And my deformities

The winds from the plains
Give me apprehensive chills
As I wait to hear compliment
Expecting only cruelest jeers.

Even if one thousand
Pages were fluttered out
By ****** and crippled hand

It would turn toward
The eyes and ears
Of man to busy
To lazy
To eager
To star struck
To mind numb
To look for the book
From which it came

Great hands ears eyes noses
Prose imaginations now in woe
A fine finger presses upon the blank ink
Warrior in black and white robes

Who cares if the times have changed?
The reason why we are all here
Sitting and staring up and up
Is now being leaked like lost blank ink
Into the mainstream smooth as metallic plastic

A note worth mentioning
Like Mozart's final breath
A touch of death never hurt anyone
It only made them realize
The elevator only has

So many floors
So many buttons
So many places on can hide

And as the dawn wavers
The dung beetles carry out their wears
Watching the sun hit the pastel buildings
Crumbing in front of their weary eyes

A telling note
For the quill
The pencil
The pen
The ****** finger nail and
The spit

Now
We sit in plush red velvet sits
With yellow puffs of butter
Watching **** bounce
Men scream
And children wandering as if blind
Wondering what it was like
To dream

Like an old house that stands alone and forgotten,
I to feel like abandonment is all I will know.
Like the waves that crash upon the sand at all hours,
I to feel a little broken and beaten down.
You see I always believed that on cloudy days,
The sun can seep through but not anymore

Like a child running scared from the monsters,
All my darkest fears are coming true.
Like an outcast at the freak show,
I’m mocked and forced to act like it’s okay.

Like the mountains that have been worn to crumbing stone work,
I too feel like I have been worn down.
Like the dead man made path upon the forest floor,
I too have been walked over till I feel nothing at al.

I’m sure you never mean the things you do
Or at least you claim to know how much it hurts.
Yet you never make attempts to amend it,
You just expect me to allow this bad treatment all the same

I've had dreams*
that I wasn't this way
that my world wasn't crumbing around me.
That I was okay.
That I didn't have so much fear of pain.
That I could fly far away to not face
everything.
I don't know what to say anymore.
Pathetic I know.

My name around the house is Mr. mushroom

Cause I’m always cooking mushrooms

Salt and pepper mushrooms

Squealing in a pan

You’re vegan and you don’t like mushrooms?

I don’t understand


Looking like a lizard, chewing on stringy hallucinogens

Or classy and tall floating in your soup

Or rich like truffles

Or frilly like flowers that kiss each other


Growing in bark, growing on trees

Growing in fields with no strawberries.

I met a mushroom picker one time, real nice guy

Was his trade, did it all day.

Squealing in a pan

My sister said when it comes to cooking mushrooms, I’m the man.

Don’t get all imaginative on me, and start breading and crumbing

Just doesn’t do.

Just the nice robust standard cups, at your local super market,  or sometimes those portabellos

Get them sweating like scalps in the heat!

Torture them with black pepper, fingernails on blackboards!

Then sunburn them in sea salt, crisping around the eyes like a vagabond child

Don’t let ‘em escape!

Mushrooms clouds, over the reef, think about them in your sleep.

Serve with rice or toast with a coffee or tea,

It’s Mushrooms for me.

A pale horse riding
Atop a dark Vista,
Knowing what name
Is writ in the dust

Eschewing lineage
Of Abel's dark brother,
Red roses bleed
In Neptune's cold sun.

Here at the bottom
Of Mickey's lost hour,
All rails terminate,
The end if the line.

The pen is my muse
A linier connection,
Writing Mozart's
Concerto of rust,

An ill wind finds
It's way with the weather,

A muttering stranger
Lost in the rain.

These bleating words coming
In hollow smoke signals,
Chittering of nothing
Drunk on the stoop


Pinned to your sleeve
Like a hag in a *******,
A crumb for the gods
So easily amused.


Dredging the dregs
Of one's own possessions,
Setting them down
In buckets of rain.

A sad reminder
Rimmed with compulsion,
A harbinger skittering
Alone in the dirt.

Here in the mill
Stinking of textile,
Memories haunt
A crumbling wall.

No need to mention,
It comes when it wants to,
A brutish devil
Whispers obliquely,

I cannot remember
What dream I've become.

I kneel in the night,
The tigers surround me,
Strange dreams in half- life
Blue saucers of sun.

Here in the dark square,
Ring up Odessa,
It presees the future,
So fast and so numb.

In the depth of the Maelstrom,
Abyss in the darkness,
Hollow upon
A billion blood sea,

As fish swim Lakes
Black at the bottom,
Ghosts of oblivion
Dance in the clouds.

Twice what it's worth
Is half it undoing,

No I remember
What dream I've become.

Memories are feelings.
We share them
but then we hide them
We live with them
But then something trigger them
And emotion flows through us
and we start crumbing like and old castle.
Never forget your old you, because one day
it will make you cry.

Oh what a tangled web I weave
when bread crumbing is how I feed
her appetite for me.
It's quite the powerful role.
Sometimes I push, sometimes I pull.
Toying with her affection and attention
it's just a game you see.
It doesn't take much effort for me
to toss a crumb her way playing with
her triggers and traumas carelessly.
I manipulate her sweet heart
and harness her energy
but then I leave her hanging
by a thread swaying delicately.
I like to play with a few hearts at a time.
That way my options for ego strokes
dance around in my mind.
I don’t know I'm avoiding my own inner pain.
I wear
different masks to keep myself untamed.  

Oh, what a tangled web you've weaved.
You took my kindness for granted
and ignored my heart on my sleeve.
You thought you could play with me for your own gain.
But instead you will stew in your own self-inflicted pain.
I don't take kindly to feeling played.
You see this kinda thing fuels feminine rage.
It was never that I was too much.
It's that you're too limited in
energy, emotional regulation and such.
You thought I was a basic one
who you could easily get under your thumb.
But you were arrogantly wrong Young Gun.
Kneel before this High Priestess.
And know your place.
For you must now live the karmic lessons
that you shaped and continue to create.
That rut you say you're in and can't escape
just got deeper and messier in your space.
Maybe one day you'll face your fears buried deep in your soul
And you'll kick yourself for letting me go.
But I bid you farewell as I know my worth.
I am not a coward who runs from truth in fear.
I conquer it all with one silent tear
as it rolls down my cheek
I feel my affections for you disappear.
I straighten my crown and take a seat on my throne.
I now know for certain I will walk this path alone.

I don'r care
I wonder if I ever did
The wonderwall of my worries
perished in the the wake of new thought
When my mind matured and ears stopped listening
beating hearts that beat chests to pieces
Stare from far distances
At the silhouette of the crumbing person
I became with new breaths of stale air
Welcome to the desert  of forgetting
And remembering what was to be forgotten
Welcome to loops of sanity and insanity
merging together
crashing and swirling through each other
it was never art
I was never an artist
It was just what it was
And the Earth will continue to turn
The wind will continue to blow sand off the ground
And feet will continue to walk to furthers point of no return
Until the sun warms cold faces again
And again they looks towards each other
Smiling maybe
Tearing up most probably
As the morning rears to an end
They too will welcome me

i wish i can go back to the good times
goo back to the prime time
when
public figures were not so dumb
when the worlds' health dint feel numb
i want to go back
when tech dint take care of us
Instead of our moms and dad
or whomever
I wish we all can go back in time
when society was not crumbing in our feet
when every thing dint came to disagreement
Where every answer was wrong
and every is wrong
when we didn't isolate
until the point of auto killing.
i wish can go back in time
to prime time.