The drugged door
Opened , then shut
Ushered an era
Of pernicious rebellion
A voice that stood up
To stand down
Conquering
And then conquered
In death
Be sleeping
Overdosed
And weeping…

Sing your protests
Vehemently
Hallucinate the dreams
That will never come true…
All your  false hopes
Are trapped in a
Revolving door
That shall never swing back
Nor can ever swing in…

Goodbye rock prince
Sleep well
In your forever slumber
I can still feel your music
And I can still hear your pain…
But so many years have passed now..
Since you’ve made your final bow..

Yet you remain
A misunderstood icon
A tortured soul
A misguided prophet
With a sensual face…
Screaming wildly
And being screamed at
In return

Goodnight my prince
I close the door
And you are gone…
But not really gone,
Your voice will always
Sing those haunted, twisted songs
You interpreted so well…
Selling your soul for a high..
Burying your sorrows where you lie

'i've only ever really read one poem. i, i have to admit.*  
You know, that, that one poem that everyone’s read, whatsit,
Howl by Ginsberg, 'best-minds-of-my-generation-destroyed-by-madness,-starving-hyste­rical-naked,' , yeah, that one;'
'It's just, I identify with it so strongly.' she says,
'That poem is soo me.'
It's funny how commentary on a generation 60 odd years ago come across as timeless insights..
how we learn that true spirit of rebellion and counterculture three generations ago,
  as it is taught to us by two generation ago countercounterculture academics.
but I guess, inevitably
                                         we
                                                  return,
  to those half drowned pontifications inevitably decried into transcendental truth by the onward spilling ratchet of cultural recognition;
  that sense of universal oneness generated by the unwashed ramblings of beat-generation hipsters dense innuendo in run on sentences running, running from their upper-lower-middle-class New York homes and their privilege of true vacant meaninglessness and despair,
   to those nervous tucked in shirted clean shaven scholars swooning over the same seme drugged, melancholic bearded men profussing the deepest of opaque truths only found up the furthest reaches of their own *****.
  As we push through to our lectures, the mosaic in motion of blazer wearing mac-users and mac-pac wearing blazers,
  As we hysterically interpret the formatting conditions for our reports, which could hang in the balance of whether the dreams we once had will ever be actualised,
  As we felt lost and found and found and lost at those park benches under the stars, where occasional strangers strolled by offering sessions and life-stories,
  As we paid exorbitantly to get out of our parents homes, and into tin-can flats with broken windows, absentee landlords and cracked paint only held together by all the moss, (the empowerment that is wage slavery,) for in our youth, poverty is not an ever-present pejorative, but the rite of passage to show that we are alive,
  As rituals of manhood are defined by two things and two things only; how much insomnia one can accumulate to meet insane and inane deadlines, and how much one can illuminate the walls in ***** from all the beers, spirits, cheap wines and questionable home-brews,
  As the government dismantles the human-rights commission, and we nervously attend the rallies initiated by the radicals, and the man on the megaphone calls on the crowd to chant and we can only mumble and laugh nervously at ourselves,
  And when the next speaker runs onto stage feeling the need to plead to this already nervous, placid mass that this is in-fact a PEACEFUL PROTEST, and that we are all true patriots and they insist everyone start singing the national anthem and we all look down and we again mumble, or pretend somehow not to hear them,
  and when, in this biggest independent rally around a unified cause our generation's ever seen, we have never felt so alone ,
  and isolated,  
                                  we
                                             remember,
                                                                    those earlier days,
  When we'd bleach our hair; we'd poison ourselves white, in the vain mystic hope that this was just the transition period to the time when we'd get true colour into our lives,
  Remember our wonder at the Eurocentric Asiatic television representations of the Abrahamic faiths, given transubstantiated holy revival by the medium of Saturday morning digital pastel pasture; when we were children staring excited and wide eyed into the Metatrons Fire of Sinai 'Random Almighty Mega Damage'; as Dante and the seraph class Tyrant-infused-Michael inevitably made battle with YHWH, -in the one True End,- as we grinded within the monolithic emerald obsidian halls, Mystical wonderment spilling forth from our reddened hollow eyes, at the beautiful unlimited expansive world contained within our console/consoling digital unit discs; conformally mapped and etched into the convex hull of our minds,
  Where we were gods, doing battle with every possible creature in morphospace, filleted into overpriced cards and cartridges, for which our strategies meant so much to us though none of us really understood the game,
  When we could quote verbatim every piece of dialogue in GTA2, and get concerned glances from our parents as we conjured veiled imagery of bukake-ladled innuendo which we didn't really understand until six or seven years later,
  When sexuality was a special secret club our elders and the kids in the years above came across so wise for being a member of, rather than an anti-turing test; a farcical ritual where everyone tries their best to imitate the hyper-reality of MTV while hiding the nervous feelings that this whole thing was really meant for someone other than us,
  When creating a whole new lexicon for our self-hood (be it artistic, ******, political or philosophical) felt like existential emancipation; a transcendental rebellion against the normalising identities and semantics of old, rather than an impenetrable circle-**** taxonomy,
  When one day we'd unveil a new term in some text, and it would completely change our outlook on every corner of our lives,
  Or, the next day, when we'd give up and just sit back on rolling banks, and look out at a veil of stars,
  Or the next day, when we'd wonder desperate and painfully, which of the last two was the real pursuit and which was wasted time? (Or was it this day, the day spent building an illusory dialectic between them?)
  Remember when we were in kindergarden, and you had to pass through the kitchen, -the adults zone,- to get to the toilet, and you'd feel both shame and wonderment listening in of the snippets of conversation muttered by these titanic figures; discussing abstruse issues from the newspaper in foreign yet noble tongues?
  Remember when we were teens, and every form-checking observation and question from these same adults was so painstakingly pedantically banal and asinine, that one could only respond with monosyllabic grunts and silent hysterics?
  And remember as 'young adults', when we'd inevitably entered this same dull Aristotelian world of forms, how we'd ask the same adults for advice on filling these paperworks, at once still asemic gibberish, and at once the fine-print that contained and predicted our lives?
  Remember when our dreams for the future were not bounded by the economy of our grade point averages and just how much debt we were willing to incur
                                …
I've seen the best minds of my generation climb into pre-packaged little boxes; and pay through the teeth for the privilege of doing so.  
  Akin to a 'Howl' they call it? Our cry for selfhood? What a scream.
It's not even a cry. Barely a whimper.
More of a zombified groan, completely aware our intrepid Journey of Self is just a pricey guided tour. (Tv Ad's static commodified existential emancipatory platitudes; 'your place in the world' / 'well it's my place and it's my time' urgh.)
And so we march asleep; all lame all blind.
  Trudging through the mind-fields; arguing, unravelling the semantic distinctions between the empty boundaries and the boundaries of emptiness.
  Transcribed down for essay deadlines,  /  assessing our lives trajectory as dead lines,
Becoming increasingly aware,
  We are not the living beings, the dasein, the Übermenschen being actualised; we are the machinery through which the institutions, the factories, the markets and education facilities actualise themselves.
  (While the only acceptable language we can breathe in opposition to these ratcheting pedagogical machines is the lexicon they provide us..
  ('oh, you hate systemic neoliberal alienation; the deestablishment of ontological anthropocentrism? Tell me more about the esoteric uselessness of academic culture.') bluh.)

But

       the more we follow those phantom images we built of ourselves,
the more we become aware they are but sirens; hypnotic dreamlike figures luring us to our doom,
  and as this awareness dawns; and the cognitive dissonances and schizophrenia grows,
       We


                                just try to keep calm and carry on regardless.

Can we really claim the arrogance of having a better path?
The conceit that there's a better cliff we should be guiding ourselves to to top ourselves off?
I don't know,
I reaally
really
just don't know.

The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales’
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up, half down, as double-made,
Along the ground, against the sky.
And we, too! from such soul-height went
Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
We scarce knew if our nature meant
Most passionate earth or intense heaven.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

We paled with love, we shook with love,
We kissed so close we could not vow;
Till Giulio whispered, ‘Sweet, above
God’s Ever guarantees this Now.’
And through his words the nightingales
Drove straight and full their long clear call,
Like arrows through heroic mails,
And love was awful in it all.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

O cold white moonlight of the north,
Refresh these pulses, quench this hell!
O coverture of death drawn forth
Across this garden-chamber… well!
But what have nightingales to do
In gloomy England, called the free.
(Yes, free to die in!…) when we two
Are sundered, singing still to me?
And still they sing, the nightingales.

I think I hear him, how he cried
‘My own soul’s life’ between their notes.
Each man has but one soul supplied,
And that’s immortal. Though his throat’s
On fire with passion now, to her
He can’t say what to me he said!
And yet he moves her, they aver.
The nightingales sing through my head.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

He says to her what moves her most.
He would not name his soul within
Her hearing,—rather pays her cost
With praises to her lips and chin.
Man has but one soul, ’tis ordained,
And each soul but one love, I add;
Yet souls are ****** and love’s profaned.
These nightingales will sing me mad!
The nightingales, the nightingales.

I marvel how the birds can sing.
There’s little difference, in their view,
Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring
As vital flames into the blue,
And dull round blots of foliage meant
Like saturated sponges here
To **** the fogs up. As content
Is he too in this land, ’tis clear.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

My native Florence! dear, forgone!
I see across the Alpine ridge
How the last feast-day of Saint John
Shot rockets from Carraia bridge.
The luminous city, tall with fire,
Trod deep down in that river of ours,
While many a boat with lamp and choir
Skimmed birdlike over glittering towers.
I will not hear these nightingales.

I seem to float, we seem to float
Down Arno’s stream in festive guise;
A boat strikes flame into our boat,
And up that lady seems to rise
As then she rose. The shock had flashed
A vision on us! What a head,
What leaping eyeballs!—beauty dashed
To splendour by a sudden dread.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

Too bold to sin, too weak to die;
Such women are so. As for me,
I would we had drowned there, he and I,
That moment, loving perfectly.
He had not caught her with her loosed
Gold ringlets… rarer in the south…
Nor heard the ‘Grazie tanto’ bruised
To sweetness by her English mouth.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

She had not reached him at my heart
With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed
**** flies; nor had I, for my part,
Yearned after, in my desperate need,
And followed him as he did her
To coasts left bitter by the tide,
Whose very nightingales, elsewhere
Delighting, torture and deride!
For still they sing, the nightingales.

A worthless woman! mere cold clay
As all false things are! but so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.
I would not play her larcenous tricks
To have her looks! She lied and stole,
And spat into my love’s pure pyx
The rank saliva of her soul.
And still they sing, the nightingales.

I would not for her white and pink,
Though such he likes—her grace of limb,
Though such he has praised—nor yet, I think,
For life itself, though spent with him,
Commit such sacrilege, affront
God’s nature which is love, intrude
‘Twixt two affianced souls, and hunt
Like spiders, in the altar’s wood.
I cannot bear these nightingales.

If she chose sin, some gentler guise
She might have sinned in, so it seems:
She might have pricked out both my eyes,
And I still seen him in my dreams!
- Or drugged me in my soup or wine,
Nor left me angry afterward:
To die here with his hand in mine
His breath upon me, were not hard.
(Our Lady hush these nightingales!)

But set a springe for him, ‘mio ben’,
My only good, my first last love!—
Though Christ knows well what sin is, when
He sees some things done they must move
Himself to wonder. Let her pass.
I think of her by night and day.
Must I too join her… out, alas!…
With Giulio, in each word I say!
And evermore the nightingales!

Giulio, my Giulio!—sing they so,
And you be silent? Do I speak,
And you not hear? An arm you throw
Round some one, and I feel so weak?
- Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite,
They sing for hate, they sing for doom!
They’ll sing through death who sing through night,
They’ll sing and stun me in the tomb—
The nightingales, the nightingales!

Lithia steals away at dawn
From this monolith of calm
No way I can control her
She holds pieces of me in her palm

She fights like a tiger
Drugged and dragged
You caged her and enraged her
There's another one you've bagged
Dragged her into your bag

She pleads in the night
The night becomes her plight
My hold on her is tentative
Listless and stringless as a kite

She fights like a tiger
Drugged and dragged
You caged her and enraged her
There's another one you've bagged
Dragged her into your bag

Lithia holds pieces of me
Lithia holds pieces of me
She's hoping for release
She's hoping for release

She cops to a plea of heart thievery
But I'm still calm and in her palm
She cops to a plea of insanity
And I'm a monolith of calm

She fights like a tiger
Drugged and dragged
You caged her and enraged her
There's another one you've bagged
Dragged her into your bag

Lithia holds pieces of me
Lithia holds pieces of me
She's hoping for release
She's hoping for release

Its tough to bring up a child on your own



You ser Roalyn joan Parkse was a single mum who every day, struggled
Through life, trying to raise her 3 year old daughter Katie, you see Katie's father
Was a ******, and yes,,Roslyn was ***** into being pregnant, she wanted an abortion
At first,,but then she was thnkimg, she always wanted to be a mum, so she decided to take
The risk and give birth to her daughter, but it's hard because, every day she went out
She kept looking at her daughter,,and then she'll have a horrible thought, that, what if,,she
Met her ****** again,,and she made a pact not to tell Katie who her real father is, mainly
Because, Roslyn wanted to make sure that Katie knows that she loves her.
The day after Roslyn gave birth to Katie, the father was sentenced to 45 years gaol, and
When Roslym heard that, she was relieved, because she can be at peace, and that made her live her life, making sure Katie is protected.
Roslym had her hands full trying to juggle raising her baby, on the little bit of money that the government gives her with the baby bonus, and she was told she wasn't eligible for any type of pension,,but if she, is willing to sit in on an interview with the men at centrelink, she might be able to receive the single mothers pension in 5 months, and Roslyn was a bit hostile about sitting in on an interview because, that's how her life with Katie's father was,
You see, Roslyn's parents hated Katie's father because they knew that he was bad news, and another thing too, they also knew that he was capable of anything.
You see Roslyn, as a child was easily led into any relationship, and also she was easily to be taken advantage of, and even if Katie's father appeared nice to her, he really was a really horrible man.
You see he started to muck with Roslyn, to keep her away from the family, and then when
He did that successfully, he will lure her into his bedroom,,and make sure that Roslyn was unaware of what he was putting her through, when Roslyn started to see sense, he gave her an illegal drug, which he said was a panadol after trying to calm her down, yes,  go felt better, but she was under a stupid dillusion that Katie's father was Mr Wonderful.
But she was drugged when she was showing signs of understanding that she is in the wrong relationship.
Roslyn's parents were frantic, as they were really worried that Roslyn was not calling .
them, and even when Roslyn's father died when she was 25, Roslyn was given another illegal drug to make Roslyn be really spaced out, so she can be too out of it, to attend her father's funeral.
And despite Roslyn's mother worrying why her own daughter wouldn't go to her daddy's funeral, she started to worry, and went on a mission to try and find and rescue her daughter, because, she was thinking that this is stupid, this horrible man, whose name was Jack Robsrts, was trying to force her daughter just to keep away from being a family person.
And when she eventually found Roslyn, of course when she knocked on the door, and Javk answered it, and when he saw Roslyn's mum standing there, he tried to shut the door into her face but as he did that, Roslyn's mum, used what she learnt in self defence class,,and knocked him out with one punch and she went straight up to the top bedroom and there she found Roslyn spaced out on the illegal drugs that Jack gave her, and when she was bringing her down the stairs, Jack got up and then grabbed the nearest knife and decided to hold a little hostage situation, but Jack was unaware that Roslyn's mum called the police, and despite the police sitting outside Jack's house for 2 hours,,they finally rescued Roslyn and her mum, from Jacks evil clutches, and they were put into an ambulance to be checked over, while Jack was arrested and yes as we told you, he was sentenced to 45 years behind bars,,but as Roslyn was being checked out by the doctors, which they saw she was drugged and also she was pregnant, and despite having an argument with her mother about it,,she decided to do what she wants and keep the baby,  because, Roslyn knew as long as Katie was unaware of who her real father was while being young, everything will be alright.
But her life was a complete nightmare, trying to raise Katie, always looking over her shoulder making sure that nobody was following her, and even though Roslym tried to keep a brave face, she was really suffering, looking after her baby, and she started to wish she
Listened to her mum when she said to have an abortion, but she wanted Katie to be unaware of how she really felt.
Each birthday that Katie had, Roslyn tried to make sure that Katie had heaps of friends to play with, and her first birthday Roslyn thought it was cute that Katie was doing baby talk with all her little friends, and she tried to make Katie feel so special, on her first birthday, and since then Roslyn struggled through life, trying to juggle her social chit chat with friends as well as giving her mum babysitting duties,,yes she started to feel good about her decision to keep Katie and at Christmas Roslyn met a man, and because of her track record with men, her mum was concerned even if she had met him and thinks he s charming but so was Jack, but that's in the past and Roslyn's mum told herself to trust her daughters man, and not think about Jack, because it will be good to have a father for Katie, so she kept it under her hat.
And on Katie's second birthday, yes she had a party and yes she made a lot of new friends, and Roslyn was happy because she was fooling around with her new man, whose name was Kenneth Kopland, and Kenneth asked Roslyn for her hand in marriage and Roslyn accepted, and when she told her mum, she tried to keep a brave face, hoping that she wssn't about to make a big mistake.
And 3 days before the wedding in November of that year,,Roslyn heard that Jack had escaped from prison with a couple of inmates and she was so worried she told her mum and despite days of putting it off, she eventually told Kenneth who made Roslyn feel protected by this man, and he told her, Roslyn, just stick with me, and you'll be safe, and after her honeymoon and then Christmas where  Kenneth dressed up as Santa for Katie and on New years eve, Roslyn was pregnant, with her second child but she was still worried that Jack was out to get her, and when Roslyn was out with her girlfriends, Jack noticed her with a little girl who looks like it could be his, but because she wouldn't touch him with a 30 foot pole, he had two arrange a little hostage situation for her,,and mate, if Jack doesn't get what he wants, he will ****.
So the day before Katie's third birthday, Roslyn and Kenneth were getting ready to go
To New York to visit Kenneth's parents but while they were doing that, Jack paid a little visit on Roslyn's mum, where he held her hostage, untill she tells him where Roslyn lives, and after 4 hours of yelling at Jack to leave her be, she told a little white lie, that Roslyn died in hospital that day, and then Jack left, knowing she was lying, but he will plan this little situation for her and then in a couple more weeks when Roslyn returned to her home town,
With Katie and Kenneth, Jack saw Roslyn in the car, and decided to follow her and yes he knew exactly where she lived now,,and it was only,a matter of time for him to make his move.
And the next day, Kenneth left for work, and Roslyn stayed at home and just kept an eye and it wasn't till she decided to go for a little walk,,she noticed Jack, and she suddenly let out a big scream and then had a yelling match, till Jack got out his pistol and shot at Roslyn, hitting her right in her chest and then kidnapped his daughter Katie, but after 3 hours of searching, the police found Jack nursing Katie at a railway station and the arrested Jack and put him back in prison and 3 hours later, Roslyn had passed away and she lost her baby as well and this made Roslyn 's mother and husband very scared as they move in to help raise Katie together because Kenneth didn't want to give her up, and when Katie was,,she was told the truth about her mother and father, and when Roslyn's mum passed away, Katie read the horrific story of how much pain her mum suffered being ***** back then, and after her grandmas funeral, she lived happily ever after with Kenneth and his new woman Josephine.

"Ahhh I scream, what is wrong with you?"
"Don't run around I didn't raise you like that!"
"Have these pills!"
"**** you, why are you not like the normal kids..."

"Am I really that weird?"
"Drugged beyond recognition"
"Head as heavy as the weight of himalaya"
"Drowned in medication"

"Always nice too meet you, I am James"
"Do they accept the true me?"  
"I am fine. How are you doing?"
*"Don't show them. Do drugs"

Just stick it in
Pull it out
*******
Gag her mouth.

Bound and fist it,
Cut zip-tied wrist then,
Bathe her in warm blood bathwater.
Watch her bleed out as an oozing cow mother.

This is how we do it.
This is how we **** ****.

Boiled **** and ***** nitrates,
Bonging buttchug, grease infesting.

This is how we ****.
This our mental state.

Disgusting epoch,
The party *** phenomenon.
Drunk girls, drugged *******.
Pearl necklace confection, gourmands,
in stitches

Plagued with itches,
Stemming from ****** abuse.

This is why I ****.
This is how I crutch.

******* on the inside.
******* on the inside.
******* on the inside.

Dopamine and acetaminophen.
Overdose and recoup.
Red and blues you can swallow like candy.
Controversial tests of trust and health.
Shiny coated treats to take you away.
Whichever you chose be careful.
It's chemical warfare.

Kiss me with poison
That poison we call love
Poison each other's purity
Like two dying doves

We'll hit it off with all this poison
Drugged up till we hit the next town
And when we both decide it's over
That poison will bring both of us down.

O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!

Halloween Poetry: Dark, Eerie, Haunting and Scary poems about Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Reanimated Corpses and "Things that go Bump in the Night!"



Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch

Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?

Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound,
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?



The Witch
by Michael R. Burch

her fingers draw into claws
she cackles through rotting teeth...
u ask "are there witches?"
… pshaw! …
(yet she has my belief)



Vampires
by Michael R. Burch

Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we dread the dark, but the light destroys them...
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross ― such common things.

Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we shrink from his voice.

Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.

We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he earnestly prays to find us...
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.



Styx
by Michael R. Burch

Black waters,
deep and dark and still...
all men have passed this way,
or will.

Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the River Styx to their eternal destination, has been portrayed by artists and poets as a vampiric figure.



Revenge of the Halloween Monsters
by Michael R. Burch

The Halloween monsters, incensed,
keep howling, and may be UNFENCED!!!
They’re angry that children with treats
keep throwing their trash IN THE STREETS!!!

You can check it out on your computer:
Google says, “Please don’t be a POLLUTER!!!”
The Halloween monsters agree,
so if you’re a litterbug, FLEE!!!

Kids, if you’d like more treats this year
and don’t want to cower in FEAR,
please make all the mean monsters happy,
and they’ll hand out sweet treats like they’re sappy!

So if you eat treats on the drag
and don't want huge monsters to nag,
please put all loose trash in your BAG!!!

NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.



It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams

of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!

If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise

to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,

while children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies...

it's Halloween!



Ghost
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell

Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.

Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.



All Hallows Eve
by Michael R. Burch

What happened to the mysterious Tuatha De Danann, to the Ban Shee (from which we get the term “banshee”) and, eventually, to the Druids? One might assume that with the passing of Merlyn, Morgan le Fay and their ilk, the time of myths and magic ended. This poem is an epitaph of sorts.

In the ruins
of the dreams
and the schemes
of men;

when the moon
begets the tide
and the wide
sea sighs;

when a star
appears in heaven
and the raven
cries;

we will dance
and we will revel
in the devil’s
fen...

if nevermore again.



Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot

born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,

dreaming of blood,
her fangs ― white ― baring,

revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring...



Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels ― winged,
shimmering, misunderstood ―
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full
and dream of us by day.

Their eyes ― hypnotic, alluring ―
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather...
to see, to touch, to feel.

Held in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, so old!,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch

He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s ―
quizzical, mesmerizing.

He ***** his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and while I hear everything,
he says nothing I understand.

The moon shines ― maniacal, queer ― as he takes my hand whispering

Our time has come... And so we stroll together creaking docks
where the sea sends sickening things
scurrying under rocks and boards.

Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes.
He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine;
my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.

His teeth are long, yellow and hard, his face bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.



Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch

Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes ―
the pale dead.
After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.

Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.

Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.

Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
only half-remembered.
Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,

yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
blood-engorged, but never sated
since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must...



Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.

Published by The HyperTexts



Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch

The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her...

How can they resist
her faint voice through the mist?

Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.



How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast ―
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch

Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:

Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.

They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.

They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.



The Vampire's Spa Day Dream
by Michael R. Burch

O, to swim in vats of blood!
I wish I could, I wish I could!
O, 'twould be
so heavenly
to swim in lovely vats of blood!

The poem above was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background.



Nevermore!
by Michael R. Burch

Nevermore! O, nevermore!
shall the haunts of the sea
― the swollen tide pools
and the dark, deserted shore ―
mark her passing again.

And the salivating sea
shall never kiss her lips
nor caress her ******* and hips,
as she dreamt it did before,
once, lost within the uproar.

The waves will never **** her,
nor take her at their leisure;
the sea gulls shall not have her,
nor could she give them pleasure...
She sleeps, forevermore!

She sleeps forevermore,
a ****** save to me
and her other lover,
who lurks now, safely smothered
by the restless, surging sea.

And, yes, they sleep together,
but never in that way...
For the sea has stripped and shorn
the one I once adored,
and washed her flesh away.

He does not stroke her honey hair,
for she is bald, bald to the bone!
And how it fills my heart with glee
to hear them sometimes cursing me
out of the depths of the demon sea...

their skeletal love ― impossibility!



Dark Gothic
by Michael R. Burch

Her fingers are filed into talons;
she smiles with carnivorous teeth...
You ask, “Are there vampires?”
― Get real! ―
(Yet she has my belief.)



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.


Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
― Michael R. Burch, after Plato


Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
― Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus



Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
lifeless at Thermopylae:
dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
― Michael R. Burch, after Simonides



Completing the Pattern
by Michael R. Burch

Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead
who kept life’s compact and who thus endure
harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds
and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure,
pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red
at last when sunset staggers to the door
of each white mausoleum, to inquire―
What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness?


Reclamation
by Michael R. Burch

after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley

I have come to the dark side of things
where the bat sings
its evasive radar
and Want is a crooked forefinger
attached to a gelatinous wing.

I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse
hooked to electrodes.
And night
moves upon me―progenitor of life
with its foul breath.

Blind eyes have their second sight
and still are deceived. Now my nature
is softly to moan
as Desire carries me
swooningly across her threshold.

Stone
is less infinite than her crone’s
gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips.
I eye her ecstatically―her dowager figure,
and there is something about her that my words transfigure
to a consuming emptiness.

We are at peace
with each other; this is our venture―
swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes
tauten, as love tightens, constricts
to the first note.

Lyre of our hearts’ pits,
orchestration of nothing, adits
of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes,
sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.

Need is reborn; love dies.



Deliver Us ...
by Michael R. Burch

The night is dark and scary―
under your bed, or upon it.

That blazing light might be a star ...
or maybe the Final Comet.

But two things are sure: your mother’s love
and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit!



the Horror
by Michael R. Burch

the Horror lurks inside our closets
the Horror hides beneath our beds
the Horror hisses ancient curses
the Horror whispers in our heads

the Horror tells us Death is coming
the Horror tells us there’s no hope
the Horror tells us “life” is futile
the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!”



Belfry
by Michael R. Burch

There are things we surrender
to the attic gloom:
they haunt us at night
with shrill, querulous voices.

There are choices we made
yet did not pursue,
behind windows we shuttered
then failed to remember.

There are canisters sealed
that we cannot reopen,
and others long broken
that nothing can heal.

There are things we conceal
that our anger dismembered,
gray leathery faces
the rafters reveal.



Duet
by Michael R. Burch

Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad!
How worn and gray your auburn hair became!
You’re very silent, like an evening rain
that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed
for days we laughed together, glisten now;
your flesh became translucent; and your brow
knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed
three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved,
but mine is not among them. Time has proved
our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said
I loved you once, how is it that could change?
And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . .

Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright
my thought of you remains, and if I said
I loved you once, then took him to my bed,
I did it for the need of love, one night
when you were far away. My heart endured
transfigurement―in flaming ash inured
to heartbreak and the violence of sight:
I saw myself grow old and thin and frail
with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . .
And so I loved him for myself, despite
the love between us―our first startled kiss.
But then I loved him for his humanness.
And then we both grew old, and it was right . . .

Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond
these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered
against the night, beyond this vale of tears,
for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . .

No, Peter, love is constant as the heart
that keeps till its last beat a measured pace
and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place
by beds at first well-used, at last well-made,
and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . .



Horror
by Michael R. Burch

What I ache to say is beyond saying―
no words for the horror
of not loving enough,
like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements
holding a lily aloft.

No, there are no words for the horror
as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes
and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ...

What use to me, now, if the stars appear?
As I moan
the moon finds me,
fangs goring the deer.



Strange Corps(e)
by Michael R. Burch

We are all dying, haunted by life―
dying, but the living will not let us go.
We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow.

With what animation we, shuffling, return
nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse,
till, living or dead, she is wholly ours.

We are the dying, enamored of “life”―
the palest of auras, the eeriest call.
We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall.

We have only one thought―Love’s peculiar notion,
that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means
night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams.

We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams
and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams.



Love, ah! serene ghost
by Michael R. Burch

Love, ah! serene ghost,
haunts my retelling of her,
or stands atop despairing stairs
with such pale, severe eyes,
I become another pallid specter.

But what I feel
most profoundly is this:
the absolute lack of her kiss,
the absence of her wild,
unwarranted laughter.

So that,
like a candle deprived of oxygen,
I become mere wick and tallow again.
Here and hereafter ...
gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame!

I lie, pallid vision of man―the same
wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim
on my heart
that I was before.

I love her beyond and despite even shame.



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone―unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat?
Fruit indecently sweet,
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ...



Outcasts
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson,
the very color of blood,
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers,
men have forgotten it now,
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.”

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there,
four horrid dark creatures―chattering, bickering.
Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair;

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

“We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.”
As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm.

“Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
“Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to shame.”

“There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .”

“But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.”
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . .
“Ah, but red is the color of blood!”

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight;
they tell him something isn’t right.
But No One is not one to rush;
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon’s roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men’s doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end,
that he’ll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then,
but worlds can be remade again.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming,
by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white eye,
through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise . . .
something lurks where the riptides sigh,
something old and pale and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye,
and with tentacles about it squirming,
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh,
knowing man’s demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring,
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.

Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair,
whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare.



Contraire
by Michael R. Burch

Where there was nothing
but emptiness
and hollow chaos and despair,

I sought Her ...

finding only the darkness
and mournful silence
of the wind entangling her hair.

Yet her name was like prayer.

Now she is the vast
starry tinctures of emptiness
flickering everywhere

within me and about me.

Yes, she is the darkness,
and she is the silence
of twilight and the night air.

Yes, she is the chaos
and she is the madness
and they call her Contraire.



Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch

You come to me
out of the sun―
my dark twin, unreal . . .

And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel . . .

And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.



East End, 1888
by Michael R. Burch

Past darkened storefronts,
hunched and contorted, bent with need
through chilling rain, he walks alone
till down the glistening cobblestones
deliberate footsteps pause, resume.

He follows, by a pub confronts
a pasty face, an overbright smile,
lips intimating easy bliss,
a boisterous, over-eager tongue.

She barters what she has to sell;
her honeyed words seem cloying, stale―
pale, tainted things of sticky guile.



A rustle of her petticoats,
a flash of bulging milk-white breast
. . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip,
a shilling more is yours,” he quotes,
“to wash your privates.” She accepts.
Saliva glistens on his lips.



An alley. There, he lifts her gown,
in answer to her question, frowns,
says―“You can call me Jack, or Rip.”



East End, 1888 (II)
by Michael R. Burch

He slouched East
through a steady downpour,
a slovenly beast
befouling each puddle
with bright footprints of blood.

Outlined in a pub door,
lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . .
mocked and brazenly offered.

He took what he could
till she afforded no more.

Now a single bright copper
glints becrimsoned by the door
of the pub where he met her.

He holds to his breast the one part
of her body she was unable to *****,
grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . .
unable to forgive or forget her.

Originally published by Penny Dreadful



Evil, the Rat
by Michael R. Burch

Evil lives in a hole like a rat
and sleeps in its feces,
fearing the cat.

At night it furtively creeps
through the house
while the cat sleeps.

It eats old excrement and gnaws
on steaming dung
and it will pause

between odd bites to sniff through the ****,
twitching and trembling,
for a scent of the cat ...

Evil, the rat.



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood . . .
we have that, at least, in common.
And it’s true that I found him,
shriveled with hunger,
shivering in the desert,
skeletal, emaciate,
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it’s true, I believe,
that I offered him something to eat―
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great “temptation”
of which I’m accused.

He was a likeable chap, really,
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God―
how hard He is to know,
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant,
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave,
imploring his “Master” on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)



Role Reversal
by Michael R. Burch

The fluted lips of statues
mock the bronze gaze
of the dying sun . . .

We are nonplused, they say,
smacking their wet lips,
jubilant . . .

We are always refreshed, always undying,
always young, forever unapologetic,
forever gay, smiling,

and though it seems man has made us,
on his last day, we will see him unmade―
we will watch him decay
as if he were clay,
and we had assumed his flesh,
hissing our disappointment.



Excelsior
by Michael R. Burch

I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . .
Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned,
complaining that I am no longer “pure?”

I threw myself before you, and you frowned,
so full of noble chastity, renowned
for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark

I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips
were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark
to light the cold dominions of your heart.

What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim
upon these territories, cold and dark,
do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light

my heart in death and leave me ashen-white,
as you are white, extinguished by the Night?



Liar
by Michael R. Burch

Chiller than a winter day,
quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams,
eyes wilder than the crystal spray
of silver streams,
you fill my dying thoughts.

In moments drugged with sleep
I have heard your earnest voice
leaving me no choice
save heed your hushed demands
and meet you in the sands
of an ageless arctic world.

There I kiss your lifeless lips
as we quiver in the shoals
of a sea that endlessly rolls
to meet the shattered shore.

Wild waves weep, "Nevermore,"
as you bend to stroke my hair.

That land is harsh and drear,
and that sea is bleak and wild;
only your lips are mild
as you kiss my weary eyes,
whispering lovely lies
of what awaits us there
in a land so stark and bare,
beyond all hope . . . and care.

This is one of my early poems, written as a high school sophomore or junior.



The Watch
by Michael R. Burch

Moonlight spills down vacant sills,
illuminates an empty bed.
Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates
wan silver circles, left unread
by its companion—unmoved now
by anything that lies ahead.

I watch the minutes test the limits
of ornamental movement here,
where once another hand would hover.
Each circuit—incomplete. So dear,
so precious, so precise, the touch
of hands that wait, yet ask so much.

Originally published by The Lyric



Keywords/Tags: Halloween, dark, supernatural, skeleton, witch, ghost, vampire, monsters, ghoul, werewolf, goblins, occult, mrbhalloween, mrbhallow, mrbdark

Published as the collection "Halloween Poems"

All I wanted was a cigarette.
We weren't allowed to smoke.
He knew where to go.

We swept sidewalks together.
Raked sand together.
Talked about life together.

His window was across from mine.
I think he saw me changing once.
Maybe more than once.

He was getting dishonorably discharged.
I didn't think he was a good man.
I didn't think he was a bad one, either.

It had been two weeks since I landed in Monterey.
I only wanted a cigarette.
He knew where to go.

I bought the Southern Comfort and bottom shelf gin.
He carried them with him to his room.
I didn't think anything of it.

We raked sand together.
We ate lunch together.
We watched movies together.

We sat on a makeshift bench by the ditch by the installation fence.
We drank and smoked and laughed.
I taught him Farsi and he taught me Russian.

Russian for "hello" and "goodbye."
Russian for "This is allowed."
Russian for "This is not allowed."

I think he saw me changing once.
He tried to kiss me on the cheek.
I told him no, my boyfriend wouldn't like that very much.

We smoked some more.
We drank some more.
We laughed some more.

It was 2130.
I had to be in my room by 2200.
He said not to worry, I'd be back in time.

I insisted and tried to leave.
I fell to the ground.
He didn't help me up.

I only wanted a cigarette.
He kissed me on the mouth.
I did not kiss him back.

I was immobile.
Paralyzed.
Drugged?

He kissed me again.
And again.
And again.

I did not kiss him back.
I had a boyfriend.
All I wanted was to smoke and drink and laugh.

He grabbed me by the ankles.
Pulled me over the ditch behind the army barracks by the installation fence.
I could hear soldiers coming back to their rooms.

I was paralyzed.
I always thought I would fight.
Fend him off with car keys stuffed between my fingers.

I looked up at the tree branches above me, my watch said 2147.
That was the last time I prayed to God.
There were leaves in my hair and dirt on my arms.

There was something less than a man between my legs.
It looked at me with hate in its eyes.
We swept sidewalks together.

God kicked back and swigged a PBR
     while I was ***** behind the army barracks,
     over the ditch by the installation fence.

He helped me up.
I couldn't stand on my own.
How sweet.

I vomited by a tree.
I was disgusted with myself and him and God.
I wanted to drown in Southern Comfort and bottom shelf gin.

He walked me to my barracks building.
How sweet.
I made it to my room by 2200.

All the girls watched me stumble down the hallway.
I was so violently alone.
Taps wailed outside the window.

I left my hat by the bench by the ditch by the installation fence.
He brought it to me the next morning.
How sweet.

It all happened so fast. Like most good things in life--the really monumental moments--it's like you float out of your body and come screaming back just soon enough to realize the moment had passed.

I didn't know how many miles were behind me now. It seemed like a thousand but it didn't really matter. I wasn't going to be one of those mindless wanderers--blindly probing my way through life's misery and defeat to one day wake up wishing I was young again.

I'm taking my youth back from the government, the bankers, the Wall Street gamblers and racing toward the horizon like there are commercial airplanes in my blood and skyscrapers burning in my chest.

You can only go to the same god forsaken place to have your soul ****** out of you for so many ******* days in a row before you either become one of them or make your own revolt and

collapse
                 *into a sea of ash
                                              slithering like snakes along the city streets.
You just run as fast as you can.

I chose the latter.
__________________­__


I'm going to do the cliche thing I suppose. Do as many drugs as possible, do as many women as possible, keep chasing the next good time until I get high enough to slap a saddle on my car roof and ride off into the Atlantic--fireworks shooting off in every direction to *** up the stars--refracting radials within the iridescence of the shimmering sea.

>explosions echo endlessly<
[wrap around the ambient rhythm of the TidePuller]

touch! caress! make love!--stare through eyes into deep blue souls and find something of yourself there.

That's how I'd like to go anyways, I don't know about you--.

That might just be this narcotic cocktail talking. I take my pills ground up in a wine glass mixed with cheap scotch. Then I chase with cups of watered down coffee--chugging until ceilings start to undulate and shake me loose. That's when I know I can start the day.

It's usually my most productive days when the ceiling tiles arrange into piano keys. Then I get to create my symphonies and soliloquies before I try to go get laid.

Now that I'm out here on the road though my mind is being blown.

Try waking to the same white black piano key ceiling everyday, to then finally feel the colors of the sky--for the very first time!

A never ending metaphysical canvas for the thoughts and longings of a drugged up DaVinci who just woke up in his time machine to start the 2nd Renaissance in the clouds. It all makes me wish I would have left years ago.
__________________­_


You see, I'm your typical twenty-something passionate kid trying to turn a ****** past into some kind of salvageable foundation for a chance at catching up with the rest of normal "adult" society. But I've got some problems with this whole "reality" thing people are so adamant at upholding.

Last time I visited my human family around the world they were all drowning in debt and poverty; trying with every fiber of their being to find that one bright spot. Stuck. In the deepest, darkest, most cavernous rotting excuse of a day to day life.

All because some meaningless number
on some computer
in some bank building
with their name on it
either is too small or doesn't exist.

Most of my human family know things are bad,

But most in the impoverished third-world are so deprived of basic human needs that they never get the chance to ponder who really holds the key to their cage.

So they are inclined to accept the status quo and the system and try to live inside of it. Failing to find sunshine within the deepest depths of an erupting volcano; mistaking the heat, the burning alive, for some kind of sign that the brightness has got to be somewhere close. So we will just try to sink a little deeper with the rest of them.

Here in America:
Sure, let's go on back to ringing registers for minimum wage all day until my ears bleed and my head wants to fall off so I can go home to watch some television!

Yes, God Please just let me relax here with my box of flashing pictures and scintillating sounds. The only truth I'll ever need.

Just let me relax here with my reality being defined for me by the volcano directors--telling me that I didn't just come in my house dripping with magma all over the carpet.

YES GOD, just let me relax a little before I have to go to my volcanic, skin searing hell again tomorrow morning. Where they tell me on T.V. that I'm going to find that sunshine I desperately long for. But It'll always

*collapse
                 into a sea of ash
                 to scar the sky grey, silence the sun's rays, blot out the stars, and darken our days*

You just sigh and say "Tomorrow's another day..."
_________________­__


Yeah, I was right there with them yesterday. I was with them for years. Getting brainwashed and ***** slapped by advertising--getting barraged with constant reminders that all I was meant to do was to work my life away--decide to be some tiny insignificant cog in this "economy" they call it.

Looks more to me like I signed up to be some mindless consumerism *****! Sheeping my way along... buying and wasting; buying, wasting; buying again, a bunch of **** I don't need and throwing it away.

We're Living in a society infected with some sort of capitalistic contagion that pretty much siphons off the Earth's life force.

We are conditioned into a reality that the richest & most powerful would like all to believe.

Art-full hearts are stomped on, told to get a job, and plan for retirement. Told to slow down and be reasonable rather than speed up. Velocity of the heart may as well be an act of terrorism unless it's for marriage--and LGBT is on the no fly list.

This is a reality set up predominantly for the endless profit of a bunch of trans-national corporations who won't be satisfied until they hold complete and utter dominion over their ***** and pillaged planet.

Perhaps then they'll be rich enough to fly away in spaceships to **** the next Earth and leave all us sheep here with bargain sales, social networking and reality T.V. as distractions...

Too bad for them some people still read. So I'll learn the different strains of herb from my local library and become a ***** of feeling good, freeing love, and accepting all artistry.

Have you ever seen a painting in the sky? Or witnessed windy symphonies in trees? Hey, don't judge me,

you're the one addicted to killing everyone and everything with your mindless dollar bill.

kneel before almighty god,
mind your founders,
adore their wise countenance,
looking up at you,
re-assuring you,
comforting you,
taking the pain away,
but DON'T RUN OUT!
you'll be back for more.
you'll come crawling back.
You'll do anything for just enough,
just one more fix.

It's got its hooks in bad,
don't it.
___________________­_


PRODUCT-XA110357: Capitalism
DRUG STATUS: Still in Clinical Trials
TEST SUBJECTS: Human Race
PHARMACEUTICAL LABORATORY: Earth
INITIAL FINDINGS: Subjects not receptive, keeps causing: Anger, Greed, Jealously, Oppression, War, Ignorance, Famine, Inequality, Imprisonment, Slavery. Environment not receptive, will cease functioning in the future. Time of Earth Death is unclear. Thankfully it does seem capable to last through the next few fiscal years. A relief, as this is what our stockholders are concerned with.


Symptoms of Withdrawal
Users who are addicted to money and are going through withdrawals may or may not experience a loss of food, water, shelter, clothing, transportation, education, free-time, happiness, fulfillment, reverence of nature, beautiful moments, relationships with friends or families, and love.


FDA Warning
If you are poor, lazy, and uneducated it is your own fault. Being poor and lazy may or may not result in Debt. DEBT may or may not lead to SLAVERY, stress, illness, and an early death.


Poison Control Center
If you have ingested too much debt, slavery, stress, illness, and are fearing an early death please do not call any corporate buildings. Access your phone, computer, or go to your local library to find reputable resources and EDUCATE YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY. Get some nice speakers and start exploring ALL GENRES OF MUSIC. Look at as many paintings, sculptures, forests, and gardens as you can--as often as possible. Lay under the stars and dream about what YOU want to do to make a positive impact on this world. FIND OTHER POSITIVE PEOPLE and AVOID NEGATIVE PEOPLE. If you know someone that is poisoned who you want to save please refer them to the nearest Poison Control Center

-->Smile at the sun--feel its warmth<--

----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------------------------------

happy hearts:--after love--not money--free from pain--sickness will surrender--
addicted to art, peace, compassion, and empathy--feel the sky get closer--.

-----------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------





­




























"In a state of enlightened anarchy each person will become his(her) own ruler. They will conduct themselves in such a way that their behaviour will not hamper the well being of their neighbours. In an ideal state there will be no political institutions and therefore no political power."
-Mahatma Gandhi

I’ve seen genius so fixed on itself
as to be monkeys, squealing
wicked-itchy
watching a record whirl
in the same drugged circle
33 and a 1/3—circa 1969

This—their eternal brilliant conclusion
their e=mc2
This—their Final Solution
their inner-spring
Their convoluted complexity
as the hands of their clocks
fly off, striking me in the face

Alas!
—the equation that would solve
the mystery of whistling “Dixie”
that would feed the dogs
and “seize the day”!

This penetrated groove
This—track, eternally diminishing
toward a point on a label
at which two ***** intersect

and then...
...cease to be....

In a strange mood - see/write art



in a strange way, disorganized but straight on,
light tinted magenta, issuing, in frothy large pours, from my mouth,
knowing what to say, and the meaning too,
I can more than walk, can write, on water,
where all can read weeping, Mary-miracles of seeing, living words,
themselves, on light waves lapping in a
shifting rotunda vision, color reorienting spatial senses.^

in a strange, strange stitch, seasonal spirits and witches,
Chagall, Baez, Dylan Thomas, Donovan, Richie Havens
doing their knitting in my brain, from Montmartre to the Midwest to Monterey,
painters and poets in lockstep head-messing with me,
imperfect clarity but still one voice,
see/write art,
so went and caught the wind, going gently into night
to banish the hodgepodge of uncertainty from inside out.

knowing well you don't understand fully, but jumbling tumbling
verses are sliding off my rusted tongue as fiddlers fly above,
roughened words, hewn from a paper cup, spilling diamonds uncut, imported from Sarajevo, Montparnasse, the Lower East Side.
wretched me, in the hour I first believed, this amalgamated conception conceded,
seceded from my mind into your palate for a tasting,
tho neither drugged, nor deaf and dumb, just slammed poetical-like, this write is
all I have to portend is your affections, your attentions, to yours, am beholden.

a *****, well respected man in daylight,
the hidden references accuse,
woke up to see Wednes-day Caesarian born,
askance glanced at the prior passages of the night before,
when my palate clefted,
when eyes chose not to distinguish
between right and lefted,
in the nightlight,
a ***** man disrespects language convection/convention,
and lays before you activating stanzas and his mind, prone,
but always the truth, speaking,
the visions, leaking, mind to eye,
recombinant, into our minds eye.




^ http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell


Rather than write extensive notes on the many references, inspirations in this poem, if there is a line that intrigues, ask me

Shouldn't one be punished enough by living through the dead?
Shouldn't one be punished enough by never again sleeping in their own bed
One should be punished, not freed

Shouldn't one be punished already by inhaling the  jail air and exhaling their sins?
Shouldn't one be punished already by taking away everything they need?
One should be punished not freed

And shouldn't they suffer from what they've done?
Shouldn't they live every day wishing they had somewhere to run?
One should be punished not freed

But killing the monster is quick
You see, the things the monster did were sick

But the monster only did what you're doing
It's different the monster killed for that and this,
We're killing for our justice
Justice means to  have peace, and genuine respect for people not death because it's easy

But an innocent man was killed on the street because someone was too drugged he didn't even know the difference from grass and concrete
So lock him up and leave him to suffer
Show him pain and teach him to be tougher
Let him think in silence, let it hit him at once,
let the pain that he caused affect who he was

Why give him the chance to change what he's done?
Why give someone who's gone mad only a hit and run?
Because everyone deserves a chance to change
We're the monster's by killing the mistakes that make them strange

1.

do Drugs because without Drugs
there is no inspiration
without inspiration
there is no Drugs

this is all said with wide distant looks
with swinging wrists
fingers comb the hair
fingers pick at the skin

without Drugs
there is no poetry

no music
no ambition
no sleep

there is no awkwardly standing there
as he tells you,

little bee, joust teen mean huts

there is no biased observer
watching the Drugged tumble
like laundry
down stairs.

surely this can’t be a good idea

don’t try to leave
don’t be awkward

surely

2.

do Drugs because you will see
finally see!
things no one else could ever see

so swallow that joint
eat that pill
smoke those shrooms,
but for the love of GOD!
not by themselves
place them strategically
in a peanut butter sandwich
like stars in a constellation

you will know better next time
he tells you to smoke shrooms

you will feel your bare feet
but you’re wearing socks!
you will feel like you’re crying
but there aren’t any tears!
you will see your curtains take the shape of your mother
folding her arms
looking down at you
wearing a dress
that isn’t her color
or her size
or her style
or even her at all

finally you will see these things
that you were never able to see before

question the experience
and he will sigh
with sighs of such size
that say you just don’t understand

3.

do Drugs because you will realize

Alex Grey paintings
in that pin-up calendar
will mean so much more

which painting is brightly looming over your birth month?
oh, so, the one that looks quite good
where the subject’s skin is transparent
revealing muscles and veins and organs
a stock buddhist symbol glowing on their forehead
their mouth agape
a misty sort of energy
radiating from their body
swallowed by neon

what a coincidence

mine, too

he’s a Grey-t artist, isn’t he?
don’t say this
despite how clever it sounds

4.

do Drugs because
there will be a moment
when that cartooned weasel
with his too-appropriate leather jacket
and lollipop stick ***** from a snaggled lip
and Nancy Reagan
her wild hair
her eyes that seem to be sinking inward
will seem like the same person

this is just your guilt
your incessant questioning
of what is right
and what is rite

your wanting to just say no
and to just do it
resting in the same swaying sweaty hammock

your waning spirit to overthink

and he will just look at you
as though no one feels
the way you do

you will never understand

5.

do Drugs because you must understand
because you’ve always understood
because you’ve always been understanding

intangible ideas will whisper vaguely at you
that you thought you knew enough about

you just aren’t feeling the love like we are
you just aren’t seeing the universe like we are
you just aren’t feeling the energy like we are
you just aren’t seeing the beauty of things like we are

love universe energy beauty
these things are simple
when gruffly whispered
over a slice of space cake

this space cake is out of this world!
don’t say this
despite how clever it sounds

6.

do Drugs because
you will have the perfect disorder
for your flaws

flaw and disorder

I’m out of it because
I might of inhaled a little
too much

I’m thankless because
of a pill I should not have
taken

I’m jittery because
I swallowed a couple
extra

I’m sleepy because
I would rather feel this way than look
at you

I fell down the stairs
because it’s Cinco de Mayo
and I can’t find my grinder
and I’m surprised that you’re sober
and I can’t feel my shoulder
and I’m surprised you’re not older

I swear I’m not always like this

I feel ******* drugged
I mean... yeah... I guess I am...
Artificial feelings
Laughing a bit too long...
Missing things...
Miscounting..
I’m just... scattered
But I feel okay
I feel better...?

Since I have no other way
And am in utmost need,
Painter girl,
I filch one of the eight lambs
You have made plump with
Green jackfruit leaves and
Thin gruel with paddy bran.

I will take it to the goat market
And sell it in a jiffy.

I assure you
I will not sell it
To any butcher-
The lamb you made chubby
With sweet sweet words
And much much petting
And nice lilting croons,
Mixing and mixing
Greens with browns.


Don’t be sad, painter girl.
I hear you come running
Searching for your lamb and
Cry out “O my dearest one
Who went grazing in the green fields,”
As the sun in your canvas
Sets in the sea and
The saffron blends with the dusk.
And, see your tears mingle
With the black that you wanted
To adorn the brow of
The naughtiest of them.

Painter girl,
It’s all because I have no other go
And it’s of utmost need.
I could have broken into the
Two-storeyedhouse you sketched
And stolen the ornaments in
Secret lockers that even
You are unaware of.

Or, I could have
Palmed the golden girdle
Of the beautiful ***** princess
Whose portrait you made,
The one with a nose stud.
Or, drugged her with my kisses
And plundered the harem.

Or else, I could have
Entered the snake shrine
Guarded by the dark serpents
That you often drew
And fled the country with
The precious jewel.

Or, I could have shot down
The birds that you drew
And sold them grilled.

I could have axed down the
Mahagony trees you nurtured
And sold them as timber.
I could have blinded your Kanhaiah
And made him a beggar
To become rich from the alms he earned.
I could have enslavened his Gopis
And handed them over
To the red light streets.

Painter girl,
It’s not for anything of this sort.
I take just one of your eight lambs.
Sell it for a good price
And fulfill my need.

Now, perchance,
If a new tenant comes to rent
My brain where nothing resides
And if they pay me a fat advance,
Painter girl,
Surely will I buy back your lamb.
And tether it in your painting.
Don’t you dare say then
Don’t you say then
That you have forgotten it.
Don’t you say then
You have exhausted your stock of
Green jackfruit leaves.


(Trans from Malayalam by Ra Sh)

I was sad.
So I told them.
I am sad. I said.
Is that so? They said.
Swallow these. They said.
So i did.

I was still sad.
And I told them this.
It's no better. I said.
Is that right? They said.
Well try these. They said.
And I did.

I got anxious.
I told them.
I am scared. I said.
You oughtn't be. They said.
Take this. They said.
I obliged.

I felt nothing.
So I told them.
I feel empty. I said.
Oh good. They said.
We're glad to help. They said.
And I sighed.

'Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain
consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to
discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable,
and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt.'

-Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor


Even so distant, I can taste the grief,
Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.
The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief
Worry of wheels along the street outside
Where bridal London bows the other way,
And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare
Console you if I could. What can be said,
Except that suffering is exact, but where
Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?
For you would hardly care
That you were less deceived, out on that bed,
Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair
To burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

I've never felt so much anger before towards anyone.
Have you ever looked someone in the eye and have them tell you that you should've kept the child that was planted in you by a stranger who drugged and ****** you?
Have you wiped the tears of a woman in despair because she was ***** and told she wasn't allowed to get an abortion?
Have you curled up in a ball, trying to figure out who to tell about your personal experience of ****** assault and ****?
Tell me, person who says abortion is a sin and that it is relative to the holocaust, will my ****** support me?
Will my ****** pay for doctors visits?
Will my ****** pay the medicals bills for giving birth?
Will my ****** pay child support?
**** no and don't tell me that I should always save the child.
Excuse me if I don't want to carry my ******'s child inside of me.
My body. My choice.
MY BODY. MY CHOICE.

I don’t have faith.  
I just know that I belong to my Savior Jesus.  I met her once when I was 11, at her humble single wide in a cramped trailer park and she made candied walnuts on a hotplate.  I didn’t find out until years later that she paid for my scholarship.  She had passed on by then; I wish I could have thanked her.

He arrived at Juvenile Hall at 7:00 pm looking like Mrs. Santa Claus, to take me into her home for a year.  I made some sarcastic teenage comment about the stupid country music on her car radio, and she tolerated it with a smile; saying ‘its not stupid, its simple.’ She showed me what a caring family looks like and didn’t kick me out for being a smart-***; gave me chores and a curfew to show me I belonged.

When I had no family or boyfriend in my life, I lived in a maternity home until my baby would be adopted.  Jesus was the stranger in the hushed hospital room holding my hand, after the medics couldn’t find the heartbeat in the ambulance, which was confirmed on the maternity floor, and I was taken to another floor so my crying wouldn’t upset the other mothers.  The room was small and dark and alone, and the clock on the wall took an eternity to move two minutes, for the entire night that I was in labor, the longest night in my life.   I didn’t remember someone holding my hand; I was so drugged for pain.  She showed me her arms two days later, so bruised because she didn’t leave me.

Jesus was the woman from Planned Parenthood on the other end of the phone, listening to me when I called the Women’s Clinic asking how I could find a doctor.  ‘ I just moved here, and I work at a minimum wage job, and I lost my baby a month ago, but how do I get a post-partum exam when I don’t have a doctor, or any money, or insurance?’  I was very matter of fact about it, I mean this was my circumstance and what to do?  She arranged a birth control exam because the state would pay for that, by a doctor who would give me the post-partum.  She also referred me to a support group.  I had been alone but she found me people who understood and could sympathize and help me accept grief.   I look back on that now; there were no sign-carrying Christians or Churches arranging the adoption who helped me, she was the only one who cared.

I am quiet, I am serene, I am wind and fire, I am, a queen. I am breathe and voice, I am heart and beat, I am sounds you cradle, I am the sole of your feet. I am carrier and word, I am thought and mistrust, I am heat and ice, I am *** and lust. I am fallen and hit, I am, sleep, I am dominant and stubborn, I am crushed and defeat. I am bells that toll, I am a philistine, I am hushed and centred, I am thou and thine. I am pulled, I am broken, and torn, I am consciousness and lost, I am reborn. I am woman, I am words and tongue, I am here and present, I am bullet and gun. I am wolf and fierce, I am protector of all, I am belief and faith, I am short and tall. I am fever, I am skin, and bone, I am a hug at night, I am a place you call home. I am sleep, I am dream, I am sufficient and loud, I am sewn and seam. I am lover and beauty, I am incredible and bereft, I am walk and talk, I am dumb and deaf. I am depth and substance, I am creator of life, I am misdeeds, I am trouble and strife. I am siren, I am power, I am forbidden fruit, I am the choir. I am fear, I am fright, I am creep and gentle, I am sense of right. I am tree, I am creature, I am autumn leaves, I am life's student and teacher. I am stop and halt, I am impe-tuous, I am starving, I am ra-venous. I am pelt, I am growl and claw, I am raven and rook, I am hammer and saw. I am flight, I am graceless, I am mercy, I am faceless. I am duty, I am bound, and enslaved, I am soar and breeze, I am story and fade. I am *******, I am almighty power, I am she, I am the tick, tock, tick, in your hour. I am beseeched, I am judged and shunned, I am a rough ****, I am powder in your gun. I am movement, I am forward, and pause, I am magic and mystic, I am the air in applause. I am brake light, I am crash and burn, I am wanton and demanding, I am 'when will you ever learn?', I am ex, I am honesty, and offence, I am lying naked and marked, I am dreaded intense. I am baker, I am cook, I am carer, I am all you took. I am forest, I am howl, and fang, I am bracken and bush, I am sung and sang. I am heave and sigh, I am a look of disgrace, I am tortured thought, I am disappointed face. I am halo, I am the barren chest, I am fortitude, I am armour and breast.  I am hot, I am spice, and flavour, I am between and in, I am reverence and saviour. I am bold red, I am bright and hue, I am sought and hidden, I am me, not you. I am the edge of forever, I am precipice and knife, I am forged steel, I am husband and wife. I am hedonism, I am beautifully free, I am arms wide open, I am everything of me. I am thought, I am prayer, I am darling, my darling, I am awake and aware. I am the trigger, I am a white flag of peace, I am the mother, I am desist and decease. I am climbing up higher, I am builder of bridges wide, I am swung high and low, I am by your side. I am cut grass, I am burnt toast, I am broken crystal glass, I am what you love to hate the most. I am a lady, I am a lover in the day and the night, I am restart, renew, I am a flame burning bright. I am gay and straight,  I am dual and nigh, I am man-lover undercovers, I am the apple of my eye. I am au-revoir in the morning, I am the last goodbye, I am something untold, I am the last time I cry. I am ******, I am drugged and tired, I am pain, I am high, and wired. I am level, I am calm and content, I am wink and thumb, I am the mortgage and the rent. I am fumble and tumble, I am drop and slip, I am smash and grab, I am slide and trip. I am laughter wide open, I am smile and teeth, I am depression and loss, I am the widow in grief. I am inner child, I am hurt and abused, I am friend and lover, I am wasted and used. I am survivor, I am strong in spirit and mind, I am a force to be reckoned with, I am resiliently kind. I am nature and nurture, I am tribe and race, I am society and people, I am colour and taste. I am within, I am without, I am shadow and hand, I am thought and doubt.
I am but, me. I am not.

Walking down the short hallway to the restroom, Laura was definitely feeling the buzz. She even had that chemical burning lovely shades in her digestive tract, or at least, that's how it always felt when she got high. That **** burned right through her inhibitions and her exhaustion; it made her watchful and ******, any touch felt like lightning. A GOOD TIME kind of time comes to mind, where merely a pair of lips and teeth scraping against her skin could make her come......a drug that was so disgustingly ****** to her it would probably have ruined her for a sober life. Forever ******* and trying to find the heights she had once achieved even with the most incompetent lovers. It was truly a drug for a woman. Always the ones expected to make someone feel better than they are, constantly begged to lend validation to the worn and make them feel new again with your love and admiration. It absolutely disgusted her sometimes the things she had done, but you could never deny her the title of success in that arena. She had traversed a pile of trash and made them feel golden and important, even allowing a man to **** her soul until it couldn't love anymore. Lack of responding was forever to be her kryptonite....but here she lies, Laura, the fuckingest of the *******, and queen of the ******* she ****** back to life in her drugged state- the only time she had ever been able to stomach being a "modern" woman. Covertly sneaking the addicts and the losers love underneath the table....trying to make them rise up and redefine it all. But her army would never come, and the war would never begin- thinking they would be the only ones who would fight for her, the ones she had bore into full men, but oh was she wrong. And oh was she stuck for good.

Ever since she has felt a dissonance from a pleasure. But back to her present past we were talking about...she is walking down a hallway feeling that nice fuzzy synth feeling. The sexiness and the sway in her own hips is even electrifying her...turning her on....getting lost in the restroom between her own legs and also a straw up her own nose....CHOP CHOP CHOP...then the sweet SNIFF SNIFF SNIFF.....circling her reflection in the mirror after each hit trying to see how it changed her on the outside....she felt so alive for the first time after a life that seemed to have been filled with oppression prior to this dark crystals reawakening of her senses. But she began to see shadows in the night; shadows of the past, shadows leading to the monster's locked away in the recesses of her mind that were only allowed out sometimes. She felt lost in the dreaming of this toxicity of her inner haven...even her psyche had been taken over. All she longed to do was ****, smoke, please, and be incredibly beautiful and feel wanting/wanted....desire in the purest form no matter what it was about or what it was for....forever spinning around looking for what was not lost, but definitely for something in herself and others that was never quite enough. That's probably why she lost that one man, or the next....she could never fully finish because it was an ongoing walking, uncontrollable stimulation....always on the brink of ****** and always searching for it. Even after feeling it it didn't seem to quite satisfy..."I can't get No Satisfaction" comes to her ear in these moments...blinding her ****, spilling into her overly absorbed and enlightened prefrontal cortex. She thought she was such a genius...planning to make money and run away into this lifestyle and never re-emerge again. Oh but she was cunty and ****** up and made too many fall in love with her....and after the only one she truly loved betrayed her....told her and showed her that he could never be the lover he promised he would be in prison, well....she got spun for life and hasn't been fully untangled since....It's a drought season in the year of that love....she could bring about all the desire in that man, even make him love her....for who she really was not just the doped up junkhead she had become....but it would never be enough because his demons couldn't be satisfied with anything but a jail life full of structure. Her ***** lips couldn't seal him in tight enough, close enough to home to stick.....and so as he disappeared from her heart willingly....so did her sanity. Going truly mad over this sick and constantly incarcerated beautifully disgusting soul broke her. Wanting to love him better, to love him the way she wanted to be loved so bad.......and not getting it not even once. . . Travesty in her heart...sobriety spinning her out into dope again, and the ten mile walk of shame after she couldn't find him again when he ran from her insanity that had been induced....well....she almost died just trying to stay in love with the one person in all her dope days that made her feel loved and celebrated....not just ******, symmetrical, and ideal.....she never wanted to be ideal, she just wanted to be enough.
Riding along with her own self hate on the coaster of her life into all the wibbly wobbly bits of life that could never be explained away....only tears could seal them far enough for heart to be so far from touching them she didn't even want to go through the trouble anymore

BY: Cedric McClester

Jurors would be asked to find
Probable cause
But who knows what goes down
Behind closed door
When you discover the man wasn’t
Who you thought he was
And you become victimized
In spite of the **** laws

They’ll blame you (the victim)
As they usually do
Then accuse you of not knowing
What you shoulda knew
When the sad reality
Is that you had no clue
You’d be drugged and date *****
Before you came to

His image is carefully crafted
On the other hand you’re someone
Who would get laughed at
So you keep your silence
Though treated like a door mat
Because he has the power
To make lies a fact
And then dare you to try ‘n react

They’ll blame you (the victim)
As they usually do
Then accuse you of not knowing
What you shoulda knew
When the sad reality
Is that you had no clue
You’d be drugged and date *****
Before you came to

So you wait for years
To get it off of your chest
And when you finally do
You’re vilified nonetheless
As far as they’re concerned
It’s no contest
Ya see he has no conscience
As you might have guessed

As more and more women
Come to the fore
The licentious allegations
Become hard to ignore
Which reveal he’s rotten
Right down to the core
And he’d go to any lengths
To cop or to score

They’ll blame you (the victim)
As they usually do
Then accuse you of not knowing
What you shoulda knew
When the sad reality
Is that you had no clue
You’d be drugged and date *****
Before you came to

Jurors would be asked to find
Probable cause
But who knows what goes down
Behind closed door
When you discover the man wasn’t
Who you thought he was
And you become victimized
In spite of the **** laws

(C) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester.  All rights reserved.

this night was different;
there were more moments spent looking back then forward,
panic always pulsating in the crook of our throat
like some giant, out of breath beast
waiting in the hollow sweat, and gnarled tree branches
reflecting black against the slightly purple sky.

it was too quiet to mask our
echoing footsteps;
boot on pavement
no rain to soften the blow.

we made it in thirty minutes to the gas station,
where we unzipped our jackets
and let the lace show out of our drooping shirts
blinking like a warning sign
to the drugged up cashier,
words mumbling over his body,
strings mixed up.

men entered and i saw that look
that i always see
in men who look at me;
its hungry, a type of lusting mouth with no
feeling,
**** trusted more than his heart.

the kind of look that says,
“i want you feeling my biceps in the back of
my truck,
and i want to feel your tightness all over me,”
the only problem is i play along,
pretending to be seductive
and then leaving with an agonizingly frozen stare, and
a quickened pace
just to show them who's actually in control.

a pack of Newports exchanged over the counter,
another lighter;
this time with a green and red flower on it;
dahlias of the night.
exoskeletons of black jackets and tights
like some shadow riding vagabonds,
inside guts made out of
swallowed cigarette smoke
and bravery.

we smoked and walked,
watching as headlights flickered toward our slim frames,
and men leaned out from trucks
with salivating mouths like dogs,
inviting us to their burning desire
in the cold, shrinking night.

under the layer of skin
that tells the girl beside me that it would be stupid
to heed to their invitations,
i admit to myself
that all i want is for a stranger to wrap around me
and kiss my smoke stained lips
with a different fury,
so i can whisper a fake name in the depths of their ears,
and show them that i will kiss
better than all the women that have
wrapped themselves in
their limp bedsheets,
and leave them wanting more as i disappear into the night,
leaving nothing but a longing burn
on the tips of their tongues.

but i don't give into my fierce desires,
and we simply turn around,
smoke five more cigarettes,
and climb up the fence
to **** her hand,
and run across the raging freeway
like the Klamath itself.

2.9.12
Memory oppression.
It never works for me.
They always come back eventually.
It hits me like a wave,
crashing around me and drowning me
in an ocean of regret and self-loathing.
I feel so ****** up.

The easiest defense,
is to feel numb.
Smoke until my lungs hurt.
Drink until I cannot feel anything
anymore.
Because the pain of my present actions,
sure as hell beats the agony i feel when
I think of all that I've done.

I am told I'm a good person.
I try to believe it.
But I can't let go of
the things I've done.
The people I've destroyed.

Montauges of the past
are like snapshots of
the truth of who I really am.

Relying on strangers for the necissities of every day life.
"Stay with me, love. Sleep in my bed. You will be safe."
"Snort this, dear. It will be okay."
Why did I listen?
Everything goes black then.
I awaken,
naked,
covered in sweat.
"What happened?"
No answer,
he just showed me the door.
It's strange,
I cannot even remember his name.
I will never forget his face though.

Snapshot.
Drinking a liquid drug.
Flashes of insanity.
Laying on the bathroom floor,
questioning where I was.
Who I was.
Slamming my fists into the wall.
Trying to make the pounding in my head stop.
Make the voices stop.
Make the people in my head stop asking me all their
******* questions.

"Would you like to try something new?"
This strange man was offering me ****..
"Of course." I reply.
"I'll try anything."
Carefully lighting the pipe.
"Careful now, light it for too long and it will explode."
Exhale.
How did I fit so much smoke in my mouth?
Give it a second.
Feel the rush.

The tight pinch of the rubber around my arm,
I enjoyed the rush of nervousness as she said,
"This will only hurt a little."
The bite of the needle.
The image of my blood,
tainted black.

Greg.
I thought he was so attractive.
I hooked up with his brother though,
while he shot up adderall in the bathroom.
He had a shortage of ****** at the time.

So many men told me they loved me in Utah.
They held me in their arms and stroked my hair.
They kissed my lips in a way that made me believe them.
None lasted more than a week.
Either I would not have *** with them when they wanted.
Or they realized how ****** up I really am.
Either way,
I was left empty and starving for love.
On to the next one.

Nothing compares,
to my ******.
I still remember
the sweet yet bitter taste of it.
I remember when I was a child,
I said I would never smoke a cigarette.
Who have I become?

Having *** for the first time in three years in a homeless shelter.
A twenty-two year old jailbird.
I will never forget
the swatstika on his chest.
Or the way he left the second after.
The sheets felt so cold that night.
And I felt so empty.

The man I thought I loved.
I knew him for all of a month,
when he was arrested before my eyes.
And it was all my fault.
I never saw him again.
His last words were,
"I love you. I'm so sorry."
I cried for two weeks straight.
We would smoke ****.
Have *** and never tire.
I thought I loved him.
I realize now,
I cannot fully recall a memory.
Or any feeling of affection towards him.
I hope he is okay.

Another,
his name was Tyler.
He housed me.
He took care of me.
I lead him on,
so I could have a roof over my head.
And I broke his heart.
And felt nothing.

***** Vegas drug runs.
With four men,
late 20's.
****** addicts.
I remember
leaving the parking lot,
looking to either side of me.
That day I saw true addicts.
Blood streaming from their drug infested veins.
I guess that's what happens when you
re-open old wounds.
I asked if I could have some,
after all,
I did find them a ride.
They said no to shooting it up.
But graciously let me smoke some.
The result?
Throwing up in the Vegas parking lot for an hour.
It's okay.
We went back to one of their place and did more.
Along with *******.
One week later they were raided.
10-20 years in prison.

One man I lived with for a month.
He was 31 years old.
Two younger daughters.
He always had a group of teenagers at his house
smoking ****.
Drinking.
The **** his daughters saw..
He kicked me out for not having *** for him.
It was my "payment" and I just couldn't do it.
It didn't feel right.
One month later his house was raided.
In front of his daughters he was handcuffed.
10 years in prison.

Wyatt called me a couple times.
Each time I burst out in tears.
How could he still love me?
I left him.
But I still loved him more than anything.
He was the only one who loved me unconditionally.

I remember Leavitt.
I have never met a nastier man.
He tried to turn me into a ******* numerous times.
He knew how badly I needed ******.
Why did I put up with him?
Yes,
he had a car.
But,
he molested me on more than one occasion..
Most likely because I could never remember it the next day.
He always promised me ****** if I stayed around.
Empty promises.
I tried to leave,
he stole my phone.
Called my parents and told them everything.
******* *******.
I did not want them to see who their daughter was now.

Brent tried to be there for me.
I used him.
And he knew it.
But he is a good person.
And he loved me.
So he sacrificed.

I had a friend named Tayler.
She was 15.
Dating a 27 year old drug dealer.
She was street smart.
Stole his **** almost everyday.
He was too drugged up to realize it was his own girlfriend.

My parents sent me money once.
Two hundred dollars.
It was spent on ****.
And what wasn't spent on ****,
my friends stole.
And I always forgave,
because they were all I had.

I am extremely grateful,
that many more memories have not come back.
I know some are terrible.
And I'm not ready to face them quite yet.

I have no idea how
I could associate myself with these people.
Let alone let myself become one.

Everything was so *****.
Every one was so *****.
I repress any dark side I have,
that I used to show.
Because I'm afraid to become that again.

I never want to be that person again.
I never want to live that life again.
When will I get closure?
When will I forgive myself?
When will I let myself be happy?
I think some people are just meant to be unhappy.

I don't think happiness is possible for me.