I look at the stain
My period has left on my favorite *******
And hold them in my hand
As I contemplate what to do with them.
I can try to get the blood out
But the stain will still linger
A reminder that I am only human
And ******* is natural but -
“Dont talk about that,
Thats so nasty.
Maybe that's why
You've been such a *****.
Typical FEMALES”
I am gross for being a woman?
Men worship my *****
But the moment I bleed
It's as disgusting as curdled milk.
Society wants to see me
As something unhuman
An object to worship
A ******, mindless creature
That does what she's told
A FEMALE.
But I am a WOMAN
I have ideas, morals, and input.
My thoughts and opinions that matter.
I can make jokes,
And drink beer,
And read,
And play video games,
And be a musician,
And speak my mind,
And bleed.
Like a FEMALE human.
Or,
Like a woman.

I play a game with my
beast of a dog.
I say, "Squirrell!"
and she bolts down
the perfectly landscaped
avenue of trees after
the soot colored
critter.

It's tail electrified in
the socket of fear scuttles
up the nearest tree
except this morning
it got slowed down
and my killing machine
clamped down and
before I could beat
the poor animal out
of her locked jaw,
it crumpled to the
ground broken in a
way so inhumane,
the sight of the blood
curdled my stomach
like a glass of cool milk.

None of this is true, mind.

I'm a spineless poet.
Because instead of
saying what I mean about
not being able to save you-
about all your blood-
about those merciless
and invisible jaws
of death clenched around
your throat making a
mess of all things.

One day I'll stop writing in metaphors.

for the Missouri Ma'am, a reminder, for the "show me" lady,
who should know better than
like a novice lawyer,
never ask a question,
the question,
you don't want to
know the answer to...

struggling for months to answer truly
your Aristotelian query,
from now over a year ago:

who the hell writes poems like this...?

the older early answers are writ in another place, three, four drafts,
by another's face, and another hand, curdled and burdensome,
none to ever see complete-shun

now I believe, those early answers provided are out of sync,
life is messy and stressy and my pre-pubescent, precipitously yet
carefully considered, visionary imaginary invisibles, naive,
now comes similar, like this piece, which sat down and wrote 
in a minute, charging myself a lot,
mostly the costly breathing the stupid from a failure stench,
whose face is locked into a grimace

without missing a heartbeat,
messy and stressy,
fully forged, seeing a head ahead,
breathing out the fire of the dying dragon who does not,
give no longer giveth a good *******

see the man on the street, the man,
lying on the street whose cardboard sign says:

for two bucks,
will write you a commemorative,
custom tailored for the occasion, name and season,
no waiting, done in five minutes

four lines $2
eight lines $4
(obits cost more)

who the hell writes poems like this...?

the sad angry ***** *** on the concrete,
who stinks from
overuse and misuse,
everybody's fave faun, now gone,
now writing *****
for a living dying

now, that's who writes poems like this!
ask him nothing, and he will rhyme it for you, child,
the prior life, previous name, the perchance poems, ah, who cares...
just don't ask a question, that you may not want to know
the answer

Love.


I grew up in what I later had labelled for me as “une famille anglaise typique” which consisted of me, my brother and my parents. It was as typically happy as those typical families that can be found in typical children’s books and children’s imaginations. We were that ‘close-knit family unit’ type family and we fitted perfectly into that ‘ideal family home’ of our typical red-brick English terraced house. It was one hundred years old but felt older and we went to church on Sundays. We were boring, safe, long-skirted.


We loved each other with the sort of love attributed to our type of nuclear state and I’ve always found it both funny and convenient that nuclear is a word for both bombs and families. Like the people who thought things up had wanted to draw our attention to how we were a touch away from detonation and a mere countdown from demolition.


Mummy blew me full of buck-shots; her Love was fired in rounds. Each cartridge of anger settled deep but left only pleasant traces behind. They lodged beneath my skin, etched with Protection and Compassion and Parenting, and those words bled internally into my immune system so that I knew how to identify hatred and remove the threat of it from my body.


Love.


If you’d asked me of Love I would have said that Daddy rubbed it through my hair when he said “Goodnight” so that it crept through my dreams when I slept. I would have told you how I’d clung to the fence of the infants’ playground until my brother had come to tell me that it was OK to let go. I suppose I might have said that it was an underrated ingredient in Mummy’s baking that she kept in a cupboard all by itself.


I would have passed you as many clichés as you could bear to take and I would have delivered them all in the half-smiling manner of a typical intelligent six-year-old girl.


Love.


We don’t sell clichés anymore. The business of Happy Family Stereotypes fell flat and we bailed out of the sinking ship in divers’ gear that only made us sink faster. Mum forgot to restock her shelf of ingredients and the time for Typical skidded through our fingers like shopping lists and childhood.


It’s not that we no longer lace our shoes with the same strings; only that the strings have been forced to fray and have shortened themselves with knots. It’s not that we don’t continue to Love each other but that we ceased to remember to love ourselves and, when we did that, there was somehow less Love to go round. What should have been an excess curdled and I watched it rise like water vapour from hedges after a frost.


On all of our To Do lists we manage to exclude the most important detail: Love Yourself. If we were to remember the task’s existence then we’d procrastinate a bit until something easier came around. We overlook ourselves and yet people still say that we humans are selfish creatures.



Too selfish to Love ourselves?


It’s not simply that self-deprecation is in fashion (although it is) or merely because we want to draw pity from those who spectate our lives (although we do) because it is with utmost sincerity that my friend and I agree that “if I was my friend, I’d loath me.”


We sit in town on benches by the fountain that sometimes forgets to spout water and rinse out the colours of our lives in the summer rain.


She says;


“Sometimes I’m scared that my friends don’t like me, because I can only ever see myself as annoying.”


I say;


“That isn’t a 'Sometimes' thing, Evelyn.”


Love.


It’s such a difficult thing to hold onto; like an idea or an aftertaste.


She laughs like I was cracking jokes on the paving slabs and says;


“Do you think we’ll ever grow up?”


And I ponder it because I know we’ll grow old but that’s not really the same thing at all. I wonder if I’ll ever grow out of my petulance and fantasies and idiocies and excuses.


“Not really. I don’t want to, to be honest.” To be honest; I say it like I'm the sort of person who wears truths around their neck and invites others to borrow them.


“Me neither. Everyone wants to fast-forward to Prom and then hold time there like, like, I dunno - like they would hold someone’s hand.”


“I don’t.” How relieving it is to confess that I have no interest in the event that 'you just have' to Love.


“Me neither.”


“It’s just an awkward excuse for dressing up and then standing around, pretending to look pretty.”


“You going with anyone?”


“Of course I’m not,” I laugh and hope that she isn’t either so that we can carry on being two lonely, ignorant, inexperienced best friends who’ve never tasted kisses and who have no concept of the term voluptuous. Boys don't fancy girls with flat-chests and freckles.


“You should go with Aidan.”


“Why, because we’re both as short as each other?”


Love.


I laugh at her suggestion even though I know how stepped-on I’ll feel when he arrives at Prom with a tie in a shade that fits my dress and an arm around another girl.


When I was nine, I followed an instruction manual for making a Secrets Box and the first secret I squirreled away was his name. I wrote it on a piece of paper and punched love hearts into it with red pen.


Love.


These days we’ve taken to exchanging banter in Tutor or Maths and I always make sure that I never make anything that’s too much like eye contact in case of humiliation. I busy myself with the fear that, if he looked at me too closely, he’d realise that I was staring back at him with my nine-year-old self. He’d recognise in my face that I still have the secrets box, empty of all but his name, and although I don’t quite believe that I’m in love with him I know that I smile inside when we have good conversations. I know that if he asks me to Prom, I’ll say yes and not just because he is the only boy with whom I am on eye-level.


Love.


“It’d be cute,” she says and I lean away, holding up my hands as a protest and a shield.


“God no.”


And here I go, hating myself again because I have absolutely no intention of ever telling her that I keep my heart like a secrets box. I confide enough in her to say that I don’t care for myself but starve myself of honesty when it comes to caring for someone else. For which, in turn, I procrastinate on the task of self-centeredness a little longer.


Love.


I don’t know much about Love. I know that there are four types – Philia, Storge, Eros, Agape – but who could say where exactly they filter into my life? I know that I ‘love’ beaches, I ‘love’ Rolos, I ‘love’ pencil sharpenings and the smell of good books but the truth is that, when it comes to Love, I'm a sherbet love heart that's been left to dissolve in a glass-jar ocean. I'm a Cadbury's Dream that chose to melt itself out. I’m a strawberry lace that someone likes to chew the end of.

He was one of the cognoscenti,
She was one of the ‘up-for-sale’,
I knew that I shouldn’t fall for her
That she’d more than  likely bale,
But she came to me as a short-stop
On the way to a better deal,
She wouldn’t have even thought of,
(When she dumped me), how I’d feel.

I know it was my decision
To take her on at the start,
Then I didn’t know the bad effect
She’d have upon my heart,
But she gave to me unstinting,
That was how she really was,
Right to the time the know-all came
And told her what was what.

She’d gaze in a fascination
As he’d run off at the mouth,
Telling us in his wisdom
What he’d learnt, both north and south.
I couldn’t compete with his wallet,
I knew what his gifting cost,
And when he moved to the bedroom,
I knew that my cause was lost.

She shrugged it off in the morning,
She said it was only fair,
That I’d been suddenly just a friend
With benefits, to share,
But her life, it was slowly changing
And she sought stability,
That was the thing she found with him
That she couldn’t find with me.

I saw them off to the movies,
I watched as they went to dine,
I saw him caress her everywhere
In places that were mine,
I thought that I couldn’t stand it
The signs of their outward bliss,
Even though I had always known
In the end it would come to this.

But my love for her had curdled,
And my heart had turned to hate,
Revenge was upmost in my mind
When I planned an awful fate,
They ran around in a speedster,
A car with an open top,
I cut the lines to the power brakes
And I watched them both drive off.

I heard they were doing eighty
When the car didn’t take the curve,
And smashed them into an old oak tree
As it leapt right over the curb,
They both were thrown clean over the hood,
He broke his neck on the tree,
And she was crippled below the waist
But he was dead, you see.

I’d visit her at the hospice
As her health returned to fair,
But nothing would change the fact that she
Would spend her life in a chair.
I’d push her out in the garden
As I felt repentance soar,
And she would cry, ‘I want to die,’
While I fell for her, once more.

And she was happy to take me
At last, as the second best,
While in the guilt my tears were spilt
Though I tried to fake the rest,
I’m stuck with her in a wheelchair
And my life is merely dregs,
There isn’t a single benefit
For a girl with crippled legs.

We can’t make love in the morning,
We’ll never dance at a ball,
I’m tied for life to a crippled wife,
It’s my own fault, after all.
I shouldn’t have given in to hate
For a love that wasn’t mine,
And now I wonder if she loves me
Or just wants to pass the time.

David Lewis Paget

You are the Titan of Tears,
Sobbing to the unforgiving milkman
Who breaks your ***** bottles
And feeds you curdled milk
From withering cattle.
He crunches around broken glass
With his scuffed leather boots on your front porch
As you watch from a hole in your bedroom wall,
Losing your first piece of dignity
And the last of the sanity carrying you since age ten.
You are the Titan of Tears,
Crying to the cutthroat poetess
Who refuses to send your estranged sister
A collection of misery soaked poetry.
She burns your insincere words in front of the mailbox;
Stanza by stanza the ash coats your mouth
Like lipstick for the ******.
Spiraling into smoke as she walks away
Fast enough to lose her in the midst of your fit.
The Titan of Tears—
You whimper in torn apart doorways
To block out strangers who will never appear.
You, Titan,
Who only feels clean when flossing
In the harshest of summer storms
Because you believe your great God is washing
Sins out of your matted hair.
You, Titan,
Whose childhood feels never-ending like evening traffic.
Childhood is the milky smoke you witness
Seeping from your dying neighbor’s chimney;
Childhood stares at you
Like glassy eyed pigeons outside of your office window
As you weep into your cold black coffee, Titan.
Your lacking adulthood is full of sloppy attempts to silence
Barking dogs in your slush brain,
Pushing down the bile that rises in your flaking throat,
As water floods your eyes like a basement during Katrina
And feeding worms writhe out of your flared nostrils,
Covered in snot and blackened discharge.
You are the Titan of Tears;
Your weeping rivals Mother Mary’s ****** streaks.

Palm-brained, more sweet than salty
you do not wilt and you do not expand:
cats always land on their feet,

I worry like your owner. He may fall,
he may stoop on his knees a fateful day!

And the ripples seeming ocean waves,
pale as an eye’s center, brine inside
your skin goes a particular way beneath
curdled fur, covered you so –

you are a still a ****** to my hands,
though I have tongued your fleece case
there is the special salt pulsing below.

We are bigger than sin, we have size on
huffing waters. They are wafers –

lanterns, their latches open and shut
but we say the same: I worry & you haze
not concerned that I will jump,
girls are like cats landing on their feet

girls who fall because they believe
their palm, a parachute is expanding.

Every morning I check myself,
and every night too,
and sometimes after I ***,
hiding in the shower stalls
under sterile florescent lights

I can see the fat,
how it hangs down my body and
melts off my chest,
a misshapen bag of
curdled yogurt,
yellow

If I pull my stomach in,
*******
straining
the lumpy muscle peeps through,
deformed and grotesque

And yet,
I cannot help but notice
how my ribs show through my chest,
stubbornly squeezing through the fat and
forcing the flesh to my hips,
refusing to comply.

America
Born of fire and ice.
****** from the womb of discontent
And a fiery gestation which curdled in the throats
Of young men.

America.
Thrown out into the cold.
Birthed by force,
Cut from the natural cord by
Ben Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson
& the boys.

America
John Adams spoke it into existence.
And soon the unrest would begin.
Born from the killing,
Born to experience every thing.

Born,
And crawling about, like an infant,
Oblivious to all but the self,
Knocking down furniture and sticking
Fingers into sockets.
Electricity.

Born
Born with a destiny,
Born out of the indignation and the self-proclamation,
A ****** birth,
Created of nothing, out of mere air.
Immaculate and supernatural.

America.
Jesus.
Created by God,
Those Men of the original 13.
Coming on ships and cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
Men with their hats and their guns.

bildings in roowins
I rite with brokin-hand


it is the year of the unlord-tyms 2085
and skool hadbin abolishd since fyv decades
evrything in disrepair -
                    no hospitills no parks
                    no creche no greens
all grey and dark

now here I lie amid the rubble
I see they took my legs for under-market
what else did they take?
**** *******!
belly rumbles
the last I'd eaten was 2 days on
a chunk of hard-bread whose colour would turn envy in its boots
with artifishal-milk whose curdled smile greeted the back of my arid existence

**** bastarrrrrrds! they put me under, sawed off my legs
left me hobbling with jagged wounds and smirk-pain like hot-rods searing my brand-new stubs
elementary-bandage of an old sheet torn into strips...

wait, I must use this anger as fuel to get me going
she told me so
many, many times..




(I can remember my mother reading to me
reciting from her memory
they had burnt evry-single-book Man had ever known
                My eyes have never been graced with a book
but
she tort me words with stick in sand
and counting with stones
and there were many stones
               she fed me poetry when there was little else to eat
with fainting-body and starving-belly
my mind took pleasure in her ultimate-care
               she told me of a time when childrin took poor-interest
in the blessings of a book.. wen their minds were swallowed wholemeal by what they called media, I think
when they were not saddled with the worry of their next meal's magical-appearance
                (I can spell 'their' at least, yes.. she made sure I knew the difference)
the only pictures I saw were the ones she drew for me
in the volcanic beach-sand when we ran away from the parasitic-city
                I knew nothing of the world but what I saw around me
                        - decay, decay, decay
until she brought me colour - rite into the hart of me -
                           blooms that hurt at first, so bright and giving
                           that it saturated every molecule in my parched-centre
                           and I became a rainbow-suffused capsule in a otherwise drab-society
such wonder she spoke with open-eyes and loving-tones

and I also remember.. the day they took her..
I remember.. too much)



I crawl forward like a snake in the .. wait, what was that expreshin again?
I'll think later when I find a place to harbour my broken-body
                     thought is a luxury here
thers a horrible smoke in the air
          stings me so
and I miss her so
I have nobody left
but I cannot feel forsaken, as so many do
and succumb to self-pity
she made sure my armour grew
                 from the inside.. first
yet.all.the.while.she.watered.my.hungry.mind
and I took it with disbelief painted on my face
the things she told me about..




                I cannot believe there once were -
green fields and trees with chirping birds
a blue sky
blue? not possible
I've never seen a blue sky
I think she was being kind to paint me portraits of psychedelia
   to entertain and distract me
   from the horror of our lives
I heard tales of things called flowers - daisies and things
like vegetables and fruit
it seemed funny to me - little beings in the ground,
                                       growing
                                       standing rooted, awaiting harvest-hands
               just for people??
uncredibill
waaaat???
no..  such depth of kindness I can hardly imagine
for we have had only *hard-earth.. most concreted
and drank only brack-water from collapsing pipes
no, an unforgiving-scene is all I know
yet
     she is so kind to feed me such fantasy-tales of deep-imaginashin
     pity she could not tell any others
     for any tenth-of-a-whisper of this to any wrong-ear
and her head would roll
in the gutter.. where we lived in contest with rats
she could only rally my mind and relay things which would die with her
things that she bequeaths
to me

what will I do with it? this legacy of forgotten-paradise..
what can I do?   this wonder-clad heresy..
                I now know thers a way out these city walls
                ther is a life beyond
with valleys and rivers and salty-seas
I must try to find a river
she told of oceans which live - which heave and swell and move!
she said these things too .. they exist
what quaint-things, indeed
oh, for dreems..

but now, I must off the streets
for a double-darkness has begun to fall
when red-eyes will scour the streets for scraps of flesh
        anything is worth a barter
        even a dead-man in a lane whose eyeballs are gone
        harshly-hacked out living - by a previous-visitor
becomes a piece of currency for seekers of the dark

I don't know what they've done to her.. or where she is now..
yet, she always said - keep moving
                                   keep searching
for blue-sky and flowing-rivers and yellow-flowers..
(I wonder if it's real
I do believ her - I must)*




now I scrape on in haste into a darkening-alley
towards a derelict-bilding
whose sinister-interior is the only welcome it can afford me
             I have little choice
             no time for sentiment
plus, I feel a fever coming (perhaps this is all the dreem.. and she is the only-flower I know)
the night-Rats will come out soon
and I hate their stink
it doesn't help I leave a trail of blood..




now
only hoap lives
on
in hobbled-soul

as I rite on with brokin-hand
onto the back-pages.. of my mind




S T -  5 octoblah

You planted and preened the seed you destroyed.
Your midday whispers running up my legs;
You left behind a trail of innocent tickles that,
In the empty evening air,
Curdled into a sinister, aching itch.
You left my ankles and the insides of my knees abandoned to snap down on a mosquito
In one swift, final bark.

My thighs still sting.

Autumn's eve, tinting leaves, the breeze creates a gentle hiss,
     A sun shining bright, wooded air
     that bites,
     Would meet to kiss, rebirthing night.
A hunter trawled through forest sprawled,
it flowed and rose before him,
     With him came prose he must
     prepose the winter snows that awaited,
     The winter snows, would end his hunt,
     and so off he set with a subtle grunt,
     To complete his latest autumn hunt,
     a stunt raught with err.

A fortnight prior, the hunter slept in a spire, a vision came as he did tire,
     A shimmering gold figure, whose shape
     bent and flickered,
     With haunting words it smiled and
     snickered;
     "On a jaunt to forest haunts, not an
     arrow shall be nocked--
           --lest all effort be for naught."
The hunter gave the lot no thought,
     An archer, he is, a prophet, he is not,
     And so was his steed set off on a trot--
           "--Lest all effort be for naught."

A hare was eyed, time now nigh, prey and predator had arrived,
     Hunter prepping a bow draw, as hare
     gingerly awed and gnawed,
     As hare gnawed, a warning walked, out
     to the hunter's mind,
     Reminding him, to his chagrin--
"Not an arrow shall be nocked," inside his mind it ticked and tocked,
     Words flicking like hands on clocks, the
     ticking clock, he cleared with knocks,
     And so he returned to his stalk, but once
     an arrow then did nock--
           --Alas, all effort was for naught.

The ground caved in, his head spins, as his punishment begins,
     Take from the forest, and the forest
     takes back,
     Our hunter grasped, as he fell to black,
     his dream was no dream, but real life,
     He strifed over omens, regret that stung
     like a knife,
     But descent had already begun, with
     darkness endlessly growing rife.
He had spent his whole life gloating,
     now he felt as though he's floating,
     floating deep to an abyss,--
     Nay, not safety, nay, much darker, nay,
     unnatural-- nay, remiss.

Body meets tension, and blood meets a flood,
     A splash, and a crash, as the hunter fell
     with a thud,
     He had berthed on a river, clothing and
     blood curdled with mud.
Awoken from slumber, skull pounding like thunder, his mind felt asunder,
     Rolling over a flower, he climbed
     from the river,
     Perverse cold forcing a shiver, as he
     looked to the sky, and began to quiver,
Onyx above, with a moon shining three, scouting around, he shan't find many a tree,
     Or any sign that from this hell, he'll be
     freed--
            --Lest he notice the shimmer,
              approaching with speed.

The shimmer approached, the hunter recognized he,
     The shape from the vision, that whom
     warned thee,
"I see that my warning, thou did not heed, now thou must travel, if thou wished to leave,"
     The words strengthened the thunder
     inside the head of our hunter,
     But then he spoke, with an intrigue of
     wonder,
"Where must I go, with my head pounding like thunder, and self so asunder?"
     The shimmer glared, its gilded eyes
     flared, freezing the hunter like snares,
"Voyage to the Druid, speak to thee, ask for relief, and thou shall be free, but when the deal has ended, have not a spare thought--
            --Lest all effort be for naught."

And so the hunter travelled endless night,
     Bulbous purple pods glowing on the
     ground, providing light,
     As giggles from around echoed, causing
     fright.
Our archer saw faeries, goblins and elves, hiding in the shadows, deep they'd delve,
     Child's fairytales, nay, did not match
     the whelm,
     He felt as if in his own mind he'd lost
     the helm,
     In the so unknown, yet familiar realm.
At last up ahead he saw a light, the shine of a lantern, a beacon in the night,

Ahead lie a hut, a small abode, he set for the door and trekked the road,
     He made it to the home, hoping for
     luck,
     He grabbed the doorknocker, adorned
     with a buck, and rapped three times,--
--"My door you've struck, and summoned me, state your name, or propose a plea."
     A frazzled voice from the other side, so
     quickly, the hunter knew he had little
     time,
     His thoughts, a clogged drain, but finally
     became fluid,--
            --"I, the hunter, wish to speak to the
              Druid!"

Inside the shack, the two had talked, after the knocked door was locked,
     The hunter had the holder chalked, the
     Druid she was, and so he hawked,
     Asking, pleading, and begging for help,
     until she finally talked,
"I can read your future, boy, I'll call upon my Tarot, but in exchange, when comes the First of Snows, you must not lie low."
     The hunter was perplexed, reluctantly
     he agreed not to cower,
     The Druid then laid out all three,--
            --The Fool, Eight Swords, The Tower.

"Before I explain the Tarot to you, I must ask a question too,"
     The Druid spoke with wretched ardor,
     But as she hissed, our hunter had to
     listen harder,
"Do you know, the shimmering glow? It's the one who shares your fate,
     But beware its trap, within a snap,--
            --You could both open the gate."

The Tarots meant only one thing each, Naive, Hopeless, Doomed,
     Shocked by landing on The Tower
     locked the hunter into gloom,
     Then the Druid had one last warning,
     a mourning that froze the room,
"You will find that Tower, boy, and you must hold our deal,
     Resort to zeal, and turn your heel,--
            --And The Tower will be your tomb."

The hunter tripped and left the Druid, rushing back on trail,
     His spirit felt as though a fawn, frail,
     and his path like a train, on rails,
     But he knew as the wind did gale, and
     freezing rain began to hail,--
            --Traveling the veil, he mustn't fail.
Then he sauntered off to wander, not a stretch away, he sensed a haunter,
     He saw a damsel, through rain's silky
     curtain,
     Looming, deep within the black, a
     vermin frame which flowed as glass,--
            --To persist, to leave, that which
              he must pass.

A serpent, it slithered, our hunter shivered,
     A feminine side revealed, as it got closer,
     a familiar poseur,
     Our hunter had to steel,
     But as the ghastly creature neared,
     his composure wept with yield.
Half-snake, half-woman, it spoke soft and slow,
     "You're brave to show, you're weak here,
     useless I'd say-- the Tarot told, I heard, I
     know!"
     As it spoke, its tail flickered, eyes alight
     with rosette glimmer,--
            --Our hunter knew, he'd met a
              trickster.

This snake, it claimed it was part of the hunter,
     Part of the hunter, surely a blunder, he
     was no viper,
     But the snake became hyper, its voice
     high like the shrill of a piper,
"I know you and you know me, but your feeble mind, it cannot see!
     I would say to look within, but you're
     powerless, you couldn't even begin!"
     The snake had spoke with a giggle and a
     grin, and quickly turned sour,--
            --"My name is not snake, please, call
              me Flower!"

Flower ended up a consort, nary a slithering foe to thwart,
     They'd walk and they'd chatter,
     The soothing rain's patter, appended by
     small creatures scatter,
     But before long, Flower had stopped,
     with something the matter,
"A mirage, I've sensed, do you feel it, the air ever so dense?"
     The thought forced the hunter to tense,
     he felt the air, ever so dense indeed,
     But Flower he could read, her face
     screamed with plead,

"The Tower, it's here. The one from the Tarot,"
     Flower spoke slow, speech reaching a
     crawl,
     "I can bring the Tower, it will use all of
     my power,
     But you must keep your deal, you
     mustn't cower!
     Within you will always be a friendly
     little Flower,"
Her tail flicked, she smiled, "Close your eyes, archer," and so our hunter did,
     Alas, when he opened his lids, his only
     ally was rid,--
           --A Flower replaced, by a tower.

He took a moment to reflect, upon the roads that he had trekked,
     The warm river, the safest he'd felt,
     before he was shook by a jolting, cold
     shiver,
     The druid, the scholar of fate, the
     friendly mystery from whom he hid,
     Yet Flower, the extension of him, a
     snake he'd judged and wished he'd
     forbid,
All assistance lost, warmth had turned to frost, as he looked to the tower, he did fraught, but he must begin,--
            --Lest all effort be for naught.

He entered the spire, and his soul felt dire,
     As he seeked up to see stairs seemingly
     spun by a spider,
     The climb felt wholly bleak, but he
     summited the peak,
To the top suite he'd sneak, and look in with a peek,
     To see a familiar physique, shimmering
     and sleek,
     As he scouted the room, lost in ornate
     mystique,
     His legs felt swiftly weak, a lavish floor
     creaked,--
            --And this piqued the figure,
              who began to speak.
    
"Thou hast found the Tower, the Druid, and the Flower. Yet the taste, it still seems sour?
     Worry not my hunter, ye need not scour,
     your hunt has reached its final hour."
     As peril did flow, our hunter did know,
     and reached for his sidearm,
     His trusted bow.
"Sheathe thy fury, and do not worry, just enjoy my show,
     Set down thy bow, and peer the window,
     But surely, thou already knows--
             --Thou hast reached the First of
              Snows."

The light had lingered into night, soil stifled by ivory plight,
     As the hunter twisted back, he heard a
     composed crack,
     The figure had snapped, and the walls,
     collapsed,
     Then they were out in the sleet, the
     frigid air a silky sheet,
The indigo sky danced like a marionette
of winter,
     A violet aurora, sliced through like a
     splinter,
     Iris flowers in the wind, shuddering
     with a shiver.

"Thou art getting what thou desired, dear hunter,
     Or doth thou wish to wait and wither?"
     The voice of the shimmer, it spoke with
     a chill,
     As if the snow had forced it to a shrill,
     The hunter felt a thrill, as in a glance,
     the shimmer's intentions would spill
     from its stance,
"Thou knew this would come, I know thou hast great skill,
     Alas, thou art a hunter, now come
     for the k*ll."

The hunter drew his bow, and an arrow he nocked,
     He could feel his heart ticking, counting
     down like a clock,
     The shimmer turned pink and purple,
     with eyes black, like a portal.
"I never craved to hurt thou, yet thou broke thy own law,"
     The shimmer had said, but yet it stood
     still in awe,
     The hunter thought he was ready, he
     locked on, then draw,--
          --Then he felt a pain, a thrash, and
            his heart began to thaw.

He looked down and saw crimson, a **** let loose velvet ribbon,
     He fell back to the snow, and as he
     gazed skyward,
     Up stepped a purple glow, to look at the
     hunter below,
Their eyes met, and at last, true nature would show,
     The hunter's woe, he'd finally know,--
          --Was the furthest thing from a foe.

Behind the figure a gateway, a gateway of silver,
     Then the figure turned grey, his
     shimmering grew dimmer,
     Defeat still boiled in the heart of the
     hunter,
     It was met with ease, and the two
     would melt and simmer,
"Our bond is obvious, certainly, dear hunter, just as our dreams melt in snow,--
           --My heart ignites, infernally."

It was then the hunter noticed the arrow,
     His shot had hit, but the shimmer shook
     it off, unevenly harrowed,
     Then the hunter's vision narrowed,
     and he realized his last arrow, he'd split,
"I didn't want thy death, or mine along with it,"
     It spoke as if for two, and open the gate
     flew,
     "We're connected, me and you, I need
     not be blunt,
     I loathe to see the river dry, alas, there's
     an end to every flow,
     But blood in the snow, under a
     violet glow,--
          --Befit to end our hunt."

Well you wanna go out dancing.
I don't wanna leave my pad.
I won't loosen up this necktie 'til my head falls in my lap.
               Then you'd be lapping up my words
               that are
                     curdled,
                     soured,
                     absurd,
purchased with inflated currency
and sold off for a herd
               of sappy sentiments
          for worn-out, bought-up malcontents.
Yeah, you're believing anything these days...

And I'm far too good a liar
               selling real estate
          on toxic, poisoned ground.
Filling in all of these forms
and putting dumpster fires out.
               Standardized.
               Attracting flies...

Follow darkened circles down...

To my parlor. Find me cutting up and dealing
               out my cards
and doubling down on all the reasons
I've been feeding you.
               Repeating 'til it's my turn
               to start eating plates of crow.

Now you won't take any chances.
I'm a golem made of ash.
I won't fire up the big band. You won't come sit on my lap.
               I've been dishing out these words
               that are
                    used up
                    barren,
                    burned
far too long. The chafing dishes cooled
and all our vittles turned.
               Buffet line sentiments
          for naïve, hungry malcontents
starving to believe in anything these days.

Well you wanna go out dancing...

I'm not gonna leave my pad...

"the words you found yourself exploring
are curdled old decayed & boring
i haven't heard one spoken sentence
but i enjoy the broken remnants
because then i can place & rearrange
the lame explanations on blank pages
replace the phrases i don't care for
erase the reason they were there for
display them as a euphemism
more mistakes to be forgiven
you're pathetic i'm the greatest
you're regretted i'm replaceless
i'm incredible you're a waste
i'm sensible you're outrageous"

Torch flame and red wine.
                          I'm doused in paint and sweat
                          Stomach curdled in hunger and irritation.
He is late.
He usually is.
                          The wine was for me.      
                          Nevertheless, I let him sip from my glass.
           We argue. Pardon...discuss.
                           I win.
                           I usually do.
           We watch the bottle vanish.
           We recline.
           We muse.
                           I relax into my own sore muscles
                           including the muscle in my chest
                           tell a story that sharpens its ache.
He stutters.
                           I startle as
he kicks his chair out from under him.
            Tears flicker in torchlight.
            Hands clasp too fervently.
            Questions.
                           No. Actually...
                                  
...just one.

                           I knew the answer, but was
                           left
                           utterly

                                                        ­                                                                 ­                                     
                           ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­ speechless.

With her cowpoke
She went riding out with him
One dark and windy day.

The desert had forsaken their love and left their hearts astray.

As sharp as a cactus' spine, her lips did pine for days.

They sat around their victim's pyres tasting burnt bone, curdled blood.

She saw the mess of her cowpoke, blonde and brown beauties layed in the mud.

She asked why must these girls die
If their looks were truly good
He mumbled that his heart had been broken by the stormy flood.

So they swept across Arizona with it's bright windy haze
And withdrew their revolvers with eyes that met in gaze

They downed a couple of beers in the dusky saloon
Until right in front of them was the old rusty moon

Tonight she will riding out in the ****** lands
Where with her man she'll be soaking her rigid hands

In wine that oozes from the corpses in the sands
And in the sheets ridin' she'll take command.

.
These wrought iron dreams
won't bend in the wind anymore.
Unleashed immortal magick mimics death
within the hazy orb of crystal,
while the wizard stands motionless in the corner.

Darkness subdivided as his metamorphosis neared
completion.His dark black wings dried slowly
in the diffused moonlight.
My hands trembled as blood curdled up
the grimacing face of the moon,
an ungodly scream sent shock waves through
the unmolested silence.I left
the room.My unraveled nerves recoiled
at the touch of darkness.
The wizard pointed at me as I asked--
if I could continue the dream..

Stale greens served again
At the same tables
Echoed conversations amidst the
Glow of brilliant faces
In a room, a windowless
Place of task and
Of mere knowing

We traded desire for
Errant follow-though
Like chapped lips locked
Where we might have gone
- A mouth of salty water -
If we had not stayed
- A chassis’ curdled rust -

We dream of tired eyes
Sleepless till the dawn
Sore hamstrings while running
Chasing the stuff unknown
A lemon meringue
First ****, then toothsome
So inspired by where we reach

He fell into a bottle
Met the Devil on the way
The Devil chose to ask him
"How long d'ya think you'll stay"
He thought a while and smiled
I'm just here to look around
I'm not sure if I'm staying
"How much whiskey have I downed?"
I'm talking to the Devil
It's enough to make you think
"Son, you've been drunk a month"
"you've made it to the brink"
"You offered up your soul to me"
"A week or to ago"
"But at the rate that you were drinking"
"There was no need to show"
"I figured you'd know when to stop"
"Or at least give it a try"
"But the rate you were consuming"
"I thought you might just die"
"And then I'd have you anyway"
"We wouldn't have to deal"
"It's like praying with an Atheist"
"Imagine how I'd feel"
"You prayed to God, and then to me"
"You offered up your soul"
"You said you'd never drink again"
"If I would make you whole"
"But Man, you drank like crazy"
"Southern Comfort, Jim Beam too"
"You know, we thought we had ya"
"There's no way you'd pull through"
"I figured, I come up and see"
"take your soul, and get it cheap"
"I'd leave you there to sober up"
"Leave you lying in a heap"
"But, whats his name..sent in some help"
"An angel he sent forth"
"And said "You cannot take his soul just yet"
"He knows not what it's worth"
"I told him that you called me
"The deal was nearly set
The Angel said you get his soul
But what does this boy get?
I thought and knew I'd blown it
You were getting nothing in return
I jumped the line a little
Just hoping you would burn
But, God...That Goody Two Shoes
Put a challenge on the floor
We would fight to see who got you
Where'd you want to finish more
So, we're  off on a small road trip
Off to see where you will go
But, boy...the way you drink that stuff"
"I'm already sure I know"
"It may seem like a cliche'"
"I'm sure you've seen it loads"
"It's in every God and Devil movie"
You know it as the crossroads
My champion plays you to win
The loser gets your soul
You play guitar or something else
At least that is the goal
"I don't play any music"
"I can't play the guitar"
"I can't keep tune when whistling"
"Can't find the jukebox at the bar"
"OK then...we'll do something else"
"You know you'll still be mine"
"It would have been much better"
"But, I'll still win you...that's fine"
"Singings out....can you tell a joke"
"nope and surely nope"
"**** it....oops too late"
"I'd have pulled out old Bob Hope"
"You don't steal jokes the way he did"
"And not end up down here"
"I wish I didn't grab his soul"
"I wanna tell ya's all I hear"
" Ok then what is it you do?
"What contest shall we wage"
"I've got a super show room there"
"What can you do up on stage?"
"Dance?".."nope"..."juggle?"...nope
"What can you do real well?"
"Can you play a golden fiddle?"
"We've got four of them in hell"
"We've had showdowns of all shape and size"
"We've done all that one can do"
"We've played music, danced and jitterbugged"
"And now...I'm stuck with you"
"Your'e boring lad, you know that kid"
"God will win your soul no sweat"
"And frankly, you're a failure"
"You're souls not that good to get"
"I thought I had a winner"
"A man whose life was run by vice"
"But, here you are a loser"
"And I could have lost you twice!"
"I should have let God have you"
"I'll be marked out as a fool"
"For the soul The Devil's seeking"
"Should be worthy as a rule"
" I know" he said aloud
"It took some time to think"
"The one thing that I'm good at"
"I can really chug a drink"
"You saw me on my ******"
"You know I'll do you proud"
"I think I'd rather stay down here"
"I think I like the crowd"
That's different, thought The Devil
He's taken up my side
There's nothing in the rule book
It's not a cheat....I've tried
God...he just won't like it
It's not been done before
He comes along to save you
It's your soul he's fighting for
He has to have a champion
One to come and take you on
I've got all the rock stars
And the Rat Pack...bring it on.
Five rounds....five shots
The first one finished wins
I know you'll like it down here boy
There's a multitude of sins
I will pick for two rounds
And God will pick the rest
Contrary to popular belief
He still thinks he's the best
The contest is a snoozer
First Jim Beam and then Old Crow
And God will have his choices
He will lose and then he'll go
At this point one more Angel
Came with choices wrapped in silk
God would like the last drinks
To each be a large milk
Your kidding right, Milk you say
His soul is mine for sure
Let's put a little extra on
Let's bet a little more
The Angel said, God is prepared
To do a bet...a  one-off
If you should win he says next year
The Leafs will make the play-offs
The contest waged and God did win
Four rounds easily hurdled
Then finally the ***** and milk
Got mixed and the milk curdled
The Devil knew the soul he lost
Would come again,....no fear
He knew that another hopeless soul
Would soon come bend his ear....

Why do we hurt each other
Why does reputation and ego fuel conflict
Good and evil
We have both—but why

Fear

Spray paint “***” in pink on that kid’s locker
Back-bitten turned backs seek satisfaction

The closet
Closets churn monstersecrets
Hypocrisy’s scarf weaves deliberately around two hangers

The gay kid is the first to scream ******
And louder than the others

Do you know the gay kid’s heart
when the outing is seen coming—it’s the worst
the time between ‘getting caught’
and
being ‘outed’ is the most fatal

heart and soul in throat then writhe
a darkness that’s curdled and sour

tears  follow their predecessors tracks
on a twisted, wizened face
red lightbulb eyebrows
the chispa releases fear and tension
choked spine back bend in bed

--and social media
Displaced reality
Magnified consciousness
Reread, recheck, redo
Perpetuate and recreate the wound
Contagion medium

everyone has to come out somehow
in some way

drop the hate
drop the leather belts
rope
blade
pills
gun
alcohol
cough syrup
… house hold products

we have too many outs
shed the closet and shed your doubts

"To ruin,"
she cried.
As her thoughts condensed and curdled
like souring milk.

"To giving up,"
she thought.
As her mind twisted
into the gnarled roots
of ancient tree.

"To death,"
she muttered.
Speaking to the reflection of herself.
As the pond's surface rippled
with every stone she threw.
Sending shivers through her chest,
as she gasped,
"Too late."

And her eyes watched as
up
from a deadened log
to a branch
that snapped
as upward
and she wished she
had said
"I love you,"
before he flew away.

Sun dust haze
an old wooden door
I reach, locked
handles, hands
pressed splintering
knock,

The newspaper reads EVACUATION NECCESARRY
Exasperation of the lilting seed of sanity;

the clocks unaligned to my watch
the fridge has been off for days
milk curdled, cheese hardened
this Panadol, IbuProfen parachute me
down, codeine
hits me hard upon the ground
the fireplace surrounds
a dragon breathing flames out of our mouths
and the room is no longer hot;
it is supernova.

Stars sound like songbirds outside, shooting,
gargled gin smells like grace,
erase
the drone of Arab spring
the scent of comradery
for a security station
computational bastion;
calculus of reason,
reputation, family, existential crisis
lets circumnavigate

to the window ,
reality split by liquid,
a rainbow in the sea,
children dancing beneath the Pohutakawa tree

“Hello?”
“Hello, were you here all along?”
“Long enough to see
those purple hues of your dressing gown, you
standing aimless across the room,
you came here today too?”

“I didn’t really choose” balloons, still tied to the ceiling
pop
“I must go”
“Stop”

ground dissolves, glass
mirrors, present, past
pop

“take my hand
lets watch the angels carry the sun away”

Rent paid, toying with dewey decimals. Expense made, avoiding the forced confessional.

Skimmed milk, drunk up from a skinned ***, begged for in a time of need. Curdled for cheap cheese, worked over by skilled feet, reneged for the sake of greed.

Licking spit skeptically off a boot-wiped floor for the worth of a dime. Picking grit hectically in a moot-like chore, covered in grime.

Flick’n flash beat against the permeable door, social media made aware that you’re poor.

Moth and flame play the poor man’s vice, retreat handed out for a bag of rice. Told to go and play nice, life revoked if mistaken just thrice.

Livelihood donated through public tax, all to afford a home infested by rats. Hospital trips noted by fat-cats, looking to assimilate this case with their stats.

Infection corrodes every ****** cut. Distinction acknowledges a momentary rut.

Rent paid, thanks to forced confessional. Expense made, up-scale digs coined on a dime termed parental.

I pass bins bloated and stinking
dead pigeons squashed 'n rotting on the floor,
I pass the rich, the greed-infested
sniggering entities dancing on the backs of the poor

I pass dogs nailed high upon billboards
apartments riddled with flies,
out in the distance a stray cat whines
curdled with the sound of a child's cries

I pass drug addicts sneering and leering
arms pock-marked and bruised -
through ***, drugs and addiction
obsessive compulsive dispositions are infused

ecstasy the fuel to the stars beyond
to a world way better than our own;
through poisoned hope and substance abuse, upon our brains
the stye of sickness has grown

[music blaring formulated and fascist
Oh save me ground control! Ashes to ashes]

for is it any wonder I rot from inside
doomed to death by a heart blackened and sore?
Crawling along, the carrions line up on the horizon -
my cuts bleed, my bones ache, pain this body can't take anymore

nineteen years I've waited to be loved
alas nothing but a crass compassion that neglects

oh please -
please tell me
I'm not destined to live like these rejects?

["I'm so happy... hope you're happy too"]

Endless stains of blood
On white t-shirts
On nights that scatter blue trees over black earth
Alight by shooting stars
The mother tells her child
Unwilling to unlock the truth

The truth those stars
Don't grant your wishes
They grab them
With scarred scratching hands.
Alight,

The damp stitches in the soil
Cemetery symmetrical to hospital
Those shooting stars circling
Like a vulture
Speeds towards dead carcasses
Still, the murdering star will not cease

To break bones
That have already broken
To take lives
That have already been taken
To burn
What is already charred

Today
smells like burnt muddied skin
feels like gnawing on your own fingers for feast
sounds like tired, howling machines
spurring and sputtering, never-ending their onwards trek
Swallowing distances and with it, nameless faces
countless places

Today the earthquakes of death
Don't make the land shake anymore
For it has learned to cope
With the desolate cemeteries filled with mute bones

Today burns like gasoline
Looks like intestines decorating destroyed doorways
Today it rains curdled crimson

Tell me shooting star
If the child liked  jam on his toast
Did he snore?
Did he like math? Or english?
Shooting star doesn't know and neither the bombs.

As bodies fall from trees
like rotten plums.

The world was born in blood
And has not ceased to suckle its wounds
Endless blood thirst, Endless war
But not endless skin to bleed.

I'm reading the Codex Gigas,
one hundred and sixty pounds of flesh,
black hairy tongue,
penitent Battenti sponges staining the robe with blood,
stalking through Campania.

Crushed insect nests,
a shiver up the jaw from food not had in too long.
Squashing caterpillars,
the insides squirt from their ketchup-packet bodies
in a spray of slime-neon green.

Pheromone cream drips from your *****, I gag it down,
curdled milk-paste.
When pulling the dress down, one never knows
whether you will get a paper cut,
or a gaping jaw of hairy
life.

We all live like pigs, but need to clean up to appear to live
like everyone else appears to live when we visit them.

You rob me of myself; a teacher
walks into a food bank ashamed and finds his student working there.

My life experiences pile up like broken infant bones,
fragile phalanges of famine,
until all I add up to are decades of
Holodormo,
the Killing Hunger.

You hide in the sea,
I lick your left palm.

Handshake claw grip, crustaceans with an overstatement,

Never distressed with a sober sense spent on aimless wastage,

Never become too complacent,

Never butter devil's sodden words on scriptures burned through the ages,

Certain pages curtain stages grace to shattered shambles curdled shameless.

Shiny geodes the traditions on the backhand,

Sages matching matter sets a salamandrine babble balance act,

Skin tight ever-bond clasped reattachment,

Radical bags sag at the mystery of a mattress ,

Routine carry forth enabling of double standards,

Tailored youth to a callous canvassed pander *******,

Cat scratch moral compass to the badlands,

The pinnacle of rabid actions in the aftermath,

After that,

A rabbit or a lab rat,

Maze running side effects from the last batch,

No lessons learned just oblivious to brass tax,

Malleable malice in the marrow of the crab man,

Can't stand a phalanx divided by the last laugh,

******* sinner Peter chapters in the chapel of a hashtag,

Shadows in the chiaroscuro flit mongers little gas lamps,

Calypso rhythm stages a symphony of backstabs,

Coup d'etat passive damage scatters gravel slat in sandbags,

No matter shiny medal coiled vertebrae permeate the flashbacks,

Never with a sordid memory retraced to get a plaque stamped.

i’m addicted to touch
craving the love of another mother
from which our love blooms
like a ******* child.

arms inflamed with bees,
bones protruding in awkward angles
from our elbows
never asleep,

your back is ripped with claws
oh, how to love, they told us
lies, to keep us up at night, to keep us
trapped behind skin

little petals at your ******* fold away,
wither with red and blood, falling
as though writhing, angry
snakes. but we’re gone

disappeared behind dreams of clouds,
perpetually propelled
by great tails of thorns, by
a force grown from seed.

darling, our hearts curdled, we
stand at the hearth of a fire
kindled by secrets, burning
memories of love

You muttered lies and empty threats
With the intention to collapse all that we’d built together.
Our empire was structurally sound
And flawless to the last detail
But you've crumpled it
With your angry footprints
And your inexplicable ability
To reek havoc upon the unsuspecting citizens
You created dysphoria in city streets
The muffled screams of children pressed into the breast of their mothers
Clinging to their shirts
For all the life that their tiny bodies had experienced
Appeared to be crashing down.
In a nanosecond everything changed
Our quiet halcyon would erupt into a volcano of misery
You played your violin on the rooftops
Listening to everything you had ever known and come to love, disappear
It spread like wildfire and soon your music was no more
Soon we lived in desolate silence
You and I
Spoon feeding the masses our hollow heap of endless lies
“Hush my people, everything will calm once more if you only do as we say.”
That night we all passed bitterly away
The cold overtook our shaking bodies
And curdled our blood like sour milk
My last sight was you
A sinister smile spreading across your chapped lips
“The end” you whispered, as you grabbed my hand
“Is here.”

782

There is an arid Pleasure—
As different from Joy—
As Frost is different from Dew—
Like element—are they—

Yet one—rejoices Flowers—
And one—the Flowers abhor—
The finest Honey—curdled—
Is worthless—to the Bee—

I dreamt of you last night,
like I have done on so many other nights.
This dream was different,
it didn't wake me
in the chilling dark of night
through my own blood curdled screams
leaving pangs of aching agony.

When the smoke cleared
and I broke through
the milky darkness
there stood this little girl,
and I knew that she was you.

I couldn't move,
this dream it felt so real
I was shock-frozen,
at the sight of you -
a mini me,
but with brown eyes instead of blue.

And before I got the chance to grab you,
to tuck you into my arms
and keep you there forever,
you instinctively knew
delicately touching the water
and as it began to ripple
so I floated away -
away from the smokey ghost world
and back to sitting by your grave.