The world is filled with division
Resulting in endless collision
Because we fail to envision.
We only use literal vision
Without a second of indecision
We jump to rash decision
And attempt to imprison
Those who caused the division
Without giving revision
To our lack of precision.
resulting in misprision
Which only adds to collision
And the terrible decision
To access our nuclear provision

The human soul, as vile as bile,
Savage Cruel disturbed infected and distort,
The human soul, obsessed with foul style,
Sinful confused mishandled and extort

Devoid of ethical human feelings,
Inflicted with raw sadistic hatred,
Grotesque depraved dismembered killings,
Ungodly occultism, unsacred

Sickness requires resolute treatment,
Stitches to repair ripped incisions,
Reducing the risk of dismemberment,
Catastrophe fractured by excision

Ceased decaying crippled in dreadful despair
Emerging from darkness, disturbed and aware.


William James

(note - This is a haibun; a Japanese writing form that combines haiku with prose.)*

Two days on the road, two thousand miles on my motorcycle. Hard miles; my *** so sore that every bump in the road brings biting pains up my back and down my legs.

I’m riding alone. No highways. No hotels. Camping in fields and eating in greasy diners. Seeing the America not available to the Interstate. The real America. I’m rough riding across the continent and this isn’t a mid-life crisis. I’m on a mission.

There’s been a ghost haunting me for five years. And yesterday, somewhere on the back roads of Nebraska, I left that ghost, the ghost of my cancer, behind. The specter of death that lingered on me, over me, and around me after excision of the tumors is finally gone.

Contrary to opinion, ghosts are heavy. With mine gone, I ride through the night – the stars and my newfound peace my sole companions. I stop only when the false dawn begins to turn into the real thing.

serpentine road
​curves into the sun;
  my throttle opens

The country diner I find myself in front of welcomes both me and the morning sun. I’m tired, sweaty in my leathers, and covered in road dust as I enter. And I’m deaf, the roar of the road is still loud in my ears.

I tell the waitress I take my coffee black – as black as my soul. My joke falls flat; what comes from my mouth is a rough growl, thanks to a dry throat. It earns me dark looks from the other diners. The ***** biker with no manners.

I have a moment of tired reflection and then I get a visitor to my table. An old lady, dressed in her Sunday best, moves with slow deliberation and takes an unexpected seat across from me. Her frail hands wrap my grimy ones in a cool and gentle grip.

Her eyes, framed by a wrinkled face that smooths as she smiles at me, capture mine before she bows her head and prays loud enough for all to hear. “Lord, please help this young man find his way. He’s lost, alone, and needs your guidance to help cleanse his heart and his soul.”

She kisses my hand and, without another word, stands again. There’s a reverent silence as we all watch her sit back down at her table and take a bite of her breakfast as if nothing exceptional had just occurred.

I look out the window as the rising sun reflects off of my bike, thinking that, here, maybe it wasn’t really that exceptional at all.   And thinking; lady – I’m not lost; I’m finally finding myself again.

red cardinal
alights upon my bike –
  notices me

Living in a different time zone, still reeling from past decisions.

Fighting venemous events to no avail,
not letting go of lasting mass incisions.

Excision of life's excitements.
Removal of my livers, kidneys, colons,
but still, I shiver in the coldness
of the living.

Admitting to the voices in my head,
that the Lord's mercy still extends,
into heaven for the choices of the dead,
who did the devil's bidding.

A foolish folly for a younger self,
to fall afoot amongst a rotten hell,
hellish landscape brought into the realm,
of mortals and the bedroom shelves.

All my dreams upon a table,
and in the dusty drawers there lies the pain.
Honestly I'm never able,
to entrust another lover with my reigns.

To fly I must begin to build momentum,
but something's caught up on me and instead preventing.

And slowing my ascension,

Also did I mention,
that every other moment that I spend here in atonement
is a ticking to a redder deathly sentence.

Repentance, with a mix of learned and unearned lessons, accuses those who lied.
Impresses extra stress especially when the ghostly men attend and lean up on my bedside.

I use to shy away but now I stare them in the eyes.

Fear's been long gone since childhood,
when crazy layovers in hazy places
played a part of strongly breaking bonds with those I thought were good.

I've felt my death a million times and dreamed it millions more.
And yet I never let myself fall victim to the final tricks of it's afflictions.

Meaning it's a situation still remaining unexplored.

I know what I lived for, and I know exists a future still in store.

But god ******* ****** life is such a chore.

Lord,
Give me strength and give me more.

I was in a six car collision
there was an executive decision made
to execute an evacuation of a body done with precision
by helicopter excision to division this family
and make a permanent revision to the vision held.

It's probable my daddy was being taken to a hospital
but he could have been going on a popsicle ride
to a proverbial icicle ride in the sky for that's all I knew of flying
volatile tears that never healed unstoppable fears.

Flesh and face and circumstance and
Cracked unlovely countenance--it's nothing to
Disappear when the stars dim down, still less to
Return when the moonlight slows. Ah, here it is.
The moonlight slows. Honour and promises and
Envelopes to birds, and now I'm awake.

I'm awake

I'm awake and my fingers
Seize in woven knots recurved,
Recurved and then recurved again and
Finally, recurved once more, my
Whickering prehensile claws unsheathe
From fingertip to elbow's lap.
Rotten cogs and motor oil and
Mince and copper wire, black
And tangled clockwork arcs in blue
Bouquets of ozone tracery--speaking presently,
Sleep never came and you never came and
This is so crazy but I'm virtually convinced I'm
Possessing of the incorrect number of limbs.

1
It was a past heart ache, and that alone
Set fire to the stake.
On it, a thief in very subtle attire
Two mouths and dressed in smoke,
It may hide its face, inviting my derision
But in allusion and courageous gaze
I knew it was me up there.
#2
Watching and waiting as he did
Before the crime, Time
Told him what was to come;
Still he stole, in misery, the hollowness, giving affection to an excision
(And then he was a saint)
So to faint in throes of his pining ways, bringing this judge
To bitter dismay
And a biting northern frost.
#3
And now I blame him, the othered me,
Condemning with a dissonant grin,
Satisfied, silent and quick to cry
From killing chunks of flesh born out of puppy-dog kid-stuff
Deciding each time:
Enough is never enough is never enough and whine when it is true.
It’s not a thief but ghouls of absolution:
I am the thief
Exist solely as this motif
And alief
It’s the heart that loves in all its strands
Sufficed to ****** innocent, then wash it of my hands
Each time I ignore that anguish
Ushers me on.

A little girl; so innocent

Broken, like concrete

Forsaken in this world

As God had chosen to replete

Forever damaged

Spare me the deceit

That I have long encountered

Mentally ****** and incomplete

I broke the mirrors

That distorted my vision

I am not perfect

I am far from precision

Just a judicial decision

To execute this excision

To ensure that this provision

Of unwanted unborn children

Remain broadcasted on public television

For the captivity of the elderly

Scorned, defeated and miserable

Left in utter decay

Salvaging day and night

Part of this twisted foreplay

That took place on Christmas Eve

For Chirst to be born

On such a horrible day, to entail

This sad story of evil

Demons from hell rose in this tale

But Jesus did nothing

Except to defy the Holy Grail

My exorcism, my ghost

To whom shall I toast?

To the one who left me to burn?

To define myself in these lies

God, I am flawed by your unconcern

Jesus, I am mocked by your reputable lies

For that you deserve a noble prize

Can't you see the concern in my eyes?

I have lost my allies

And I have become the worst

That I could possibly be

Part taking in these sins

Is that what you wanted from me?

You deny my existence

You hide behind pride

You force coincide

And you deny individuality

You force this conceited ******* to form

Or so you implied

Turns out the shock was worldwide

But that didn't stop you

From setting me aside

Sitting in your corner

Contemplating

Is she human or a mutation

Something somewhat malformed

Or perhaps just a devil

An ogre at best

Fine be that way

I am not one to detest

My worst side though

I do not advise you test

I am not blessed

For it is in black that I dress

"Satan's spawn!" they protest

Is it my fault that I am possessed?

Conniving and witty

I am sick of this mess

God you put me here

But nevertheless

I am obscene

And forever your mess

They say it gets better
but they never tell you when.

Isn't a breakup, after all, the surgical excision
of another whole person from your own?
Doc, gimme something to work with here
no post-op measures of comfort, no chemicals,
how long will these symptoms last?

Which day shall be the worst?
What can I eat?
How do I get to sleep?
Why is there so much vertigo?

I've lost my captain. I've lost my compass.

But forget North-

*what way is even up?

I should start being serious for a change
it’s not everyday that I get the chance to make my mark-
an eruption of countless warts- figuratively of course
they’ll remember even if they don’t want to,
like the stye that wouldn’t die despite surgical excision.

then there’s you
who wants to forget me
my girl, who did you **** last night?
I know we agreed to stop seeing each other
but I would love to hear your stories, inside you.

I’ll be gone in a few weeks
all this talk of seriousness has condensed on me
like the cold sores you leave me with
eye sores for coke ****** with daddy issues
I’ll be your daddy, I’ll even be your brother if it gets you wet.

Don’t slit my wrists yet
I can still manage a compliment some days
give me a hundred reasons to abandon my ways
and you know I won’t do it
you know I won’t even try.

I want a good **** before I go
maybe a cigarette after that
I quit smoking, but I’ll bump the easy one without warning
and ***, I won’t settle for anything less
I want you to watch as I take shots off your *******.

Wasted days that count down
quicker than your menstrual cycle
have left me wanting for time
I wouldn’t waste any differently,
probably, worse.

Preparation is turning out to be quite a grinding ordeal
late nights, empty pipes, lungs dry and well past ripe
tendons screaming for respite, finger tips peeled
your tongue- lets me know it’s time to sleep
If I wasn’t serious, I’d be picking up where you left off.

The words are deep and cryptic
All driving at something apocalyptic
Incense all thick and foggy in the room
We struggle to grasp our impending doom
The old lady watches us from the corner
Like a funeral with a condescending mourner  
She smiles a crooked smile
Her words invoked visions
Visions of humanities excision
Great fires will engulf us whole
And the great bells of the universe will toll
As we go insane for a little while
And it all seems to burst at the seams
And suddenly there are no sweet dreams
And we try to forget
And we all feel regret
But it echoes in our mind
And it destroys us in kind
Inside us was planted the seed of madness
The cold black women looked on at with a sadness
As we screamed and cried and laughed
The lady made use of her craft.
She disappeared
Leaving us with what we most feared
Knowledge of the future

cannot live by living
sublimate

intractable life the way
a poet of mangled hands burns away
incessant blankness
to a hot glowing moment wherein
his excision, sought after,
lives.

Whatever way is taken
a fire therein will burn

to majestically disfigure
the unfigurable in your life

the way a drinking straw made of
plastic transforms
in lips of flame

to curlicued ribbons and
blazing involutions, coiled springs and
brightly curled
imaginings of crimson.

Choose to run
and so too will the fibers in your hamstrings
curl, glow crimson
as under fire.

Sit quiet on the marble steps
of a dried fountain in Union Square
watching the looming arch through
the crisp distance of night

and so too will your eyes become
incendiary orbs
heating the air around
to transient veritable sharpness

as if suddenly, every piece of
stone or root of tree
has been released from
a hold
and could at any moment
flinch for you. For
just your witness
and nothing more.

Attempt to find the dream of death
hidden within the taste of
your one beauty’s lips
and so upon the kiss will she

burn, explode!
in quick high flame
to a pile of
shrunk dust and scintillating
strands of hair.

Whichever way, all can burn
to release its true form—hardly sweet
seeming unbearable

before curling
just barely sweet, just bearably, always just
necessarily so.

And slowly, you are already
curling in the flames.

searching for answers, written in the silences,
the blank walls, the vacant humming of appliances,
the saliva white expanse, of clouds across the sky,
contain only rain, no response to questions 'why'

the lines, that'd crease your face,
upon a smile when in my gaze,
still form patterns that i can trace,
that resemble, a completed maze,

i swear to god i called your name,
outside, and i heard you call back,
keep memories, like chips, in small stacks,
makes em seem larger than in actual fact.

they same time heals, but can it resurrect?
body stiff, unresponsive, the same as when you left,
through curtains closed, i can feel your silhouette,
laughing at time wasted, mocking lost bets.

--
[chorus]
and too many times i've raised all-in,
blind, not having seen the cards,
forgetting the house always wins,
left to pick up broken shards.

and too many times i've raised all-in,
blind, not having seen the cards,
forgetting someone else always wins,
left to pick up broken shards.
--

how can such vivid images fade?
i relive these moments scarred,
the rain tasting sweet in your backyard,
as if squeezed from saccharine stars.

when my eyes, adjusted to that light,
pupils wide enough, to embrace yours,
i made sure to bend the corners of every page,
never to forget that dress you wore.
(you wore blue)

in one second, with breath in sync,
with heartbeats identical and fingers interlocked,
our mouths pressed together, with perfect pressure,
i committed myself, all i had in stock.

regardless of how cool the element feels,
you constantly bubble over, spilling across the surface,
staining a slate that was once so clean,
with the semblance of a mistaken purpose.

--
[chorus]
--

excision seems so easy a concept,
removing that, which you wish to remove
if only emotions worked as such at the onset,
a scalpel and a strong desire to forget.

the wind seems to speak more than silence,
the calls of the distance, echo in its grasp.
your laughter lingers, sound unchanged,
stubbornly refusing to be in the past.

the unanswered questions of where and why,
pile up, ignoring desired simplicity,
whether another name can drip from your lips?
or whether, in moments of honesty, you still think of me?

searching for answers, written in the silences,
the blank walls, the vacant humming of appliances,
the saliva white expanse, of clouds across the sky,
contain only rain, no response to questions 'why'

--
[chorus]
--

The sound that emptiness makes.
The wound that disparity wakes.

Restrained.

If only I could get some sleep,
drowning in drugs, oh so cheap,
trying to destroy that complex machine
the one that haunts my dreams,
the one that burns me by my seams,
and everything wedged in-between.

Ingrained.

In time, we all die inside.
When hope becomes a dried lie.
When torture fuels the guilt.
The house infatuation built.

It lies.

Contained.

It cries.

If I knew what it was, how it went,
I would be brave enough for faith's leap
and I could start to make a single dent,
in the ideas keeping me from my sleep.

Nightmare vision of eternal division.
A cruel decision upon painful excision.
A stone provision on tragic precision.

Inside!

It lies!
It cries!
It breeds!
In time....
It dies!

Hey young man, nervously idling away the fresh blood the creator sent you,
Cowering, afraid of bounteous opportunity while blood turns stale and the keen head turns to mush,
Stop lying to yourself and to your love, desist in piling worries upon her tender frame!

Whilst the blood congeals in the veins
The eyes can grow dull and sickness can mollify the restless spirit.
Open the cells to mineral impregnation,
Calcifying the legs, then the waist, then the chest…

No need for anything dramatic.
No need to open up the veins in hot bath,
And bitterly expire beside the 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner
As unsuspecting house-mate knocks patiently on the bathroom door:
“(KNOCK, KNOCK KNOCK) are you going to be long in there?  I need a poo.”
Why ruin a good door-frame by forcing said house mate into shouldering door from hinge
Only to stumble across sprawled carcass bobbing softly in reddened lukewarm water
Wearing swimming trunks for modesty’s sake.

Why face the posthumous embarrassment
Of having your rambling, hastily scrawled farewell note;
Marred with emo clichés and syntactical errors,
Poured over and scrutinised by judgemental mourners.

Nah.
Just lock that bathroom door deep within your soul
And let the childlike ambitions and desires that defined you
Sink beneath the lapping waters.
Soldier on, mourning the demise of the inner self, for now
Where the excision took place is tender and red
But it will heal.
And you will be free from the burden of self-reflective expectation,
You can dine with the servants; **** up to the inept boss,
Discard the heavy crown of ambition
And walk with a light and merry step into the silence of the grave.

And whilst this resignation is all very well
for a piece of self-pitying prose
Maybe you owe it to that guileless infant
(who art the father of the man writing this)
To do better by him than drown him,
Letting him Go Gentle into That Good Night
Simply because
In the face of unwavering actuality
He has become an inconvenience.

I slept the cold night in my black sleeping bag
Quietly I slumbered, not removed yet the price tag
My hair caught in the teeth, yet I was still time did drag
I was of the notion of underdressed in just my rags.

Eyes wide open on the bench, oblivions vision
I was exposed for all to gaze upon eyes on collision
Was I wanting to be here? that was not my decision
Feeling I was missing myself as opened up for excision.

I was silent that whole time my lips never shifted,
lonely as my belongings now strewn and sifted
I gave others my unwanted, each hopeful now gifted
Death was a silence I was gone but now I am lifted

your dark past
casts long shadows
in your new light
lies defined
projected far and wide
in sharp relief
no protection
revisionist excision
cuts deep
inconsequential
exsanguination
for all to see

does your mind ever wander to me?
flash visions of my face
across the inside of eyelids
movies of slow motion embrace.

                                                       ­                                    do you hear my voice?
                                                          ­                         moan and giggle and hum,
                                                            ­             whisper profanities into your ear
                                                     and beat the pace of your chest's bass drum.

do your fingers feel my ghosting skin?
brush across those calloused tips
sliding closer, slinking clarity
calamity coincides with conscious choice,
i clutched the corners of certain collapse
clinging to clumsily curtained clues.
crawling cat claws over a carcass.

                                                       ­                  do you remember the very start?
                                         the moment when one of us - i'm still not sure who
                                                             ­     leaned in too close to the other's face
                                                            ­                and sealed the unspoken space
                                                           ­                                       with a deadly kiss
                                                            ­                             which dropped the rain
                                                            ­                                 which broke the dam
                                                             ­                             which released torrents
                                                        ­                            that had been held leaking
                                                         ­                               by tense bones creaking.

and when you gazed into my
melted honey eyes
with you piercing black pupils
and earnestly said:
"they were all mistakes,
but not you -
you
are not
a mistake",
were you lying through your teeth?
did the tumbling
kiss
that followed
seal your deceit?
grasping for my puppet strings
to dance me to your beat,
fog my mind with steam heat
to save your ego from defeat.

                                                        ­                                         i gallantly applaud
                                                         ­                     your flagrant charade darling,
                                                        ­                                                though flawed,
                                                         ­                                    your mask of interest
                                                        ­                             fooled me to blindly trust
                                                           ­                                              and helplessly
                                                                ­                                                            fall
                                                                ­                        into a bed made of rust,
                                                           ­                     glass promises, and folk lore
                                                            ­                              of men who transform
                                                       ­                                       in the womb of love.

does the last night haunt you
stuck on repeat
below the surface?
                                                        ­           do my words float through dreams
                                                                                 ghosting over melting trees
                                                                                       fleeting sinking feeling?
does your running
tug at you,
ripping loose seams?
                                                          ­   and did you feel the weight of my heart
                                                           ­                               as you denied my truth
                                                           ­                      and our harmony fell apart?

i feel i knew from the very start
that this would simply bring
seven layers of pain,
broken nails twisted into my brain.
but hammering down loose memories
and painting over fantasies,
won't cure the disease that sprouted in me.
i crave the impossible,
insanely desire to hold onto those who run.
i surely cursed the sun,
when i turned nocturnal
to answer your cicada phone calls,
because though i have returned to the daylight,
the blight of night-vision
engulfs me,
and i can only see your love's excision
and the remnant debris.

Sometimes you won’t be, oftentimes you will
see spots and feel lost. If they persist make yourself
an appointment with a quiet man with unremitting sentences
and cold fingers which will explore new fears, fresh cul-de-sacs
leading to excision by a woman with a practiced smile,
knife-thin latex and a distance
that prevents inappropriate contact.

Sometimes you won’t be, one day you will
and meanwhile you find a new lump -
don’t wait, make an appointment
with the quiet man and he may say something
you won’t hear above the screams swallowed by old nausea.

Sometimes you won’t be, one day you will
and meanwhile you let regret rise
and tell your daughter all the too lates
that wait unopened.

And one day you will.

The Evilness of the human soul
The human soul, as vile as bile,
Savage Cruel disturbed infected and distort,
The human soul, obsessed with foul style,
Sinful confused mishandled and extort

Devoid of ethical human feelings,
Inflicted with raw sadistic hatred,
Grotesque depraved dismembered killings,
Ungodly occultism, unsacred

Sickness requires resolute treatment,
Stitches to repair ripped incisions,
Reducing the risk of dismemberment,
Catastrophe fractured by excision

Ceased decaying crippled in dreadful despair
Emerging from darkness, disturbed and aware.


William James Stevenson

Splayed out atop the the table, stupefied,
Etherized, dreaming anything but excision,
Witness the specimen's unnatural habitat.
Life stains the whole of its existence -
See the sacrament of its entirety, its divinity,
Its flesh made manifest and merely flesh.
It mocks this menagerie with every breath
And, aping its peers, struggles, strives, dies
For the pittance this world lends it.
Confronted with the end, it spits derision.
Confronted with the start, it cries in awe!
What a nonsense of a creature we see here,
This enigma we recognize in ourselves:
The human, being.

No one is ever going to know you.
You will die with your soul achingly untouched,
And you will not be special for it.
Every day, we come in and out of the world together:
Doctors cradle babies out of the birth canal,
Hand them to their mothers, wet from excision.
Grandchildren hold the hands of dementia patients
As they lay in their beds flickering like candles.
Yes, these are good things. Yes, they are done together.
Yes, still, we are all alone.
You don’t really need to be accompanied,
You don’t need pure wordless understanding,
Your soulmate never did and never will exist.
It is ok.
You will not be special for it.

When the natural color of your lips
Makes Pantone’s list
And suddenly for the first time in years
the **** lipsticks in the drugstore reflect back at you
A bouquet of roses which compliment your hair and eyes
Suddenly, when you never wore pink before
Now you revel in it

If your skin bubbles up in pimples
Your fingers float up of their own accord
Dancing with the shared delusion of
A clean excision
Yes, it works this way:
Remove the thing of evil that has poisoned the water
Pluck it neatly from the tree and watch the flowers bloom

The face answers your fingerprints in a drop of blood:
No, it does not work this way
Your skin, your life, is not a lever
No two-step process,
No fulcrum to remove and leave behind a simple rod, inert
Not even a Rube-Goldberg machine
To be followed back end over end
The handkerchief chain from the clown’s shirt cuff
spirals out impossibly with no simple beginning

Welts on your face in dappled shades
Pantone’s colors of the year
You cover these over with foundation that
does not quite match
This portion of blood you seal away
And that portion you smear on your lips
Loving as much of yourself as it is possible
To buy in a tube