who are you?

You
upon whose skin comedies are written
in bruises and scars like graffiti on your heart
scrawled upon the walls in the language of
maddening imperfection.

You
who exhumes the bones of demons
from the graveyard growing
inside of you
the cemetery where you bury your grief.

who are you?
who rebels at the crimes,
self-inflicted, yet
cannot bring yourself to bury the hatchet
(a hurricane that refuses to be named.)

You
who has learned (to your sorrow)
that the world has teeth
and homes cannot be made
out of human beings.

You
who cannot help but idle
on the question
"what parts of me still function
properly?"

.
She rides, a silver circlet on her brow.
Wearing the Green of the forest.
Eyes of hazel hold a proud gaze.
Child of the woods, beautiful and fey.
Her name is Leaf, Maiden of the Glades.

She sighs, a longing look in her face.
Yearning for her Lord of Green.
Heart in love with the King of Trees.
Born of the forest, body and spirit.
Maiden of the Glades, the Lady Leaf.

She waits, for Green is far away.
Watching the changes in the woods.
As seasons wax and wane cascades.
Woman entranced, by the living Trees.
Her name is Leaf, Maiden of the Glades.

She cries, a moon daisy in her hair.
Filling the lake of mystical tears.
His absence exhumes an eternal grief.
Body and spirit, beautiful and fey,
Maiden of the Glades, the Lady Leaf.


© Pagan Paul (23/06/16)

Darkness consumes,
Terror exhumes ,
I have nowhere to go.
Lost, so lost,
No light to be found,
I've never felt so low.
I'm scared,
I'm alone,
Out here on my own.
No one to help,
No one to hear,
Only my own two terrified ears.
Oh god!
What was that?
What was that sound?
Is it help on the way?
Have I finally been found?
A rustling of bushes,
A crinkle of leaves.
Not help,
No, they're hiding.
Could be murderers or thieves!
I stay silent,
I listen
With oh so much care,
Care so they don't
See me standing there.
More rustling,
Louder now.
Such loud, crunching leaves.
They're coming! They're coming!
Those murderers and thieves!
Eyes wide with terror,
Into action I leap.
I run, I jolt forward,
So fast on my feet.
I hear footsteps behind
Gaining speed as I run.
They're coming!
They're chasing!
Oh god,
What can be done?!
Danger!
Danger!
Danger, I fear!
With my ear, I hear,
That danger is near!
Oh I pray,
Will help come?
No no, I think not.
No one is near
To watch me get caught.

Have you ever watched the stars fall from your eyes?
Not many have, it’s a terror that masks itself as blue
Once the stars fall they reveal the darkness beneath
The absolute
That’s what I call it, it’s an immenant force awoken by madness
It exhumes itself from a dusted space and collects the spare thoughts
It feeds on my lungs, it rips pieces of my soul
Dragging them down to the plunging tides to be washed and preserved into a formulation of unbridled torment
I have not the slightest to why my heart beats in two awful tones
Maybe it’s the excitement, maybe the moans
I need not worry for breath falls short
I always reconcile back to the night it made itself known
A dwelling creature beneath my stomach
Risen from the ashes and buried in self pity
The sad clown of desire without as much as a tear I stood there petrifical in glances
Watching the bottom of the glass come closer, it snuck up on me as it’s fragments plunged into my chest and brought with it the terror
Frozen in silence I heard only the wails of my lungs

This day, the grand commander refused the opened door of the corridor that exhumes National odour,
The iconic gallant lamented “good harvest is impossible with rats in the rock’
The Grand commander is right, isn’t he?
Giant rats with two legs and ***** claws caused us wounds yet to close up,
The pig fight they played us in tough dirt
let the Atlantic be a stain remover yet it won’t cleanse us
Let us take the hands of the Clock to dance the moon walk,
You see these rats are black flames in a dark room,
An illumination of appetitive explosion
Oh Clock, the thorns on your feet, can you see?
That the rich green land broke your rich green  blood,
Wait, can’t you smell a dead rat?
The beautiful rat who at a time was the pilot of the crafts
who went so far to bury legality in a pit latrine,
I guess, it smells too nice.
I am sorry oh Clock, I know you hate the moon walk,
I see they make your old wounds open to new grief
Should rats hunt rats for if rats hunt rats then who pants?
Twenty shekels of silver awaits you in twenty’ 20
Take it and let the times get sweaty *****
Oh Clock! Your prophecy talks in time
Should I seek vengeance from the grey sky?
Should the thunderstorm strike and the gullible grey hair die
Rats of bungalow minds in elevated ranks
We trust their word yet they ****** the sword
It is this organizational madness
Let me stop here before the mad dogs bite me

I have found myself beneath
Rocks turned up away from me,
And
I have found myself behind the door
             home alone
And
I have found myself beneath unfolded
Laundry in the basket,
             eyes squinted, keeping warm.

I have found myself in smaller forms -

Between book covers,
A grey dust exhumes at the turn of
             each its leaves,
Just as I have nestled away
             former inspirations -
Now as I
Open them up the
Fine powder fills my eyes, a dreamy
Lense reveals the dark skyward chasm
And its endless fires.

If only I knew how to reach them,
My old flames and I could reminisce
And I could
Close and put away all the stories
I never finished.

Sometimes I don't know
Why I write
Or if I spend the right time
Doing the right things -
I've bartered and I've borrowed
Argued plaid lawyers into tomorrow
Became sharper from the sorrow
harder as it narrows
This pyramid scheme
Lain against a sunset exhumes
Perfect contrast.

Listen to my mind wander,
Silhouetted footsteps
Echo through the doorway,
Smoke exhumes the body,
The trial is about to begin,
Carnivalesque a mockery,
The laughing ends with reality,
Seeing for the first time,
That the wandering footsteps,
Innocent intent,
Caused ripples in the tidepool,
Wings flapping,
Utter chaos,
Order within the universe,
Faithful to the fear.

Trying to catch a slice of thought process;
Like capturing lightening in a jar
            Only to smell it's exhumes.

It's a blessed freedom, to release
  an experience; an imitation of the world,
or an imitation of how others wrote and expressed
    the world, and at constant conflict to lose it's voice.

It can be enjoyably difficult (the best hobbies
    usually are) or flow smooth as blood thru vein.
   Pulling blood from a stone and unexpectedly
    heaving rainbowy rainwater can be it's own virtue--

    An idea caught half undeveloped
Only to shed cocoon to join the white blankness
And forever tarnish it's history--

A gorgeous priveledge in it's constricted freedom
(As is existence,although we're too modest to admit it)

Writing is a piece of you and you belong to the human race,
and doubleedged a sword as that certitude is,
Writing is a piece of us left to the world.

Fragrant fields

invoke your opening shutter:

you build stamens into white resonance.



With the tilt of the lens

you hold back your breath

to halt the photo-blur.



The army of slime mold cells below

silently begins its glacial escape

as your mouth softens in anticipation

of capturing a pristine moment.



The scattered forest tops

shade your eyebrows

with the vertical upheaval

of decades-young canopy.



Can you see? In the clock-stop

stillness of a camera’s blinking eye

you tighten your grip on yourself

while still kneeling lightly

on the floors of nature.



Thus you open places that appear

all at once before you,

and culminate in the narrow beak of a winter bird

that rests momentarily on your shovel

before gratefully returning

to the archeological dig near your feet,

where it exhumes, then eats,

its breakfast of worms.

I can talk to you about the stars and the sun.
I can talk to you about Technicolor and the different shades of gray.
I can talk to you about the heat from the earths core.
Or the freezing temperatures from the vacume of space.
I can talk to you about books and their scent.
Old tomes with stories of love and heartache.
I can talk to you about war and peace.
Politics and race
I can, talk to you about most anything.

What I can not do is talk of Love and the drugs it exhumes.
I can not talk of longing for all the things this world teases us with.

But I can talk to you about desire and suffering.
For that is what you are to me.
What others are to you.
We desire
So we suffer.
One of many lessons taught by the great master.
You know this to be true.

Cryptography prior to the modern age
was effectively synonymous with encryption,
the conversion of information from a readable state
to apparent nonsense.

                Wikipedia: Cryptography

Berryman, Bishop, Plath, Sexton, et al
(whose verse preserves badly in alcohol)
distilled tepid poems full half-throttle:
Not-so-wild turkeys, jiggling their wattle.

I strive in vain to uncover meaning
though such dry fields are barely worth gleaning;
pompous hackademics of brave new verse
have shown, through their scrawling, it can get worse;
wordsmiths of dullness for grad students' gain,
grant scholars trading in pleasure for pain
with each odd word choice or wretched refrain.

Berryman, Bishop, Lowell, Sexton and Plath
prepare me for rest in their tepid bath
as I try to read them—but fall asleep
the book upon my breast, my boredom deep.
A soporific tried and true, such dreck.
(Amazing they could even cash a check.)

Did madness excuse them to make a fuss,
force meaningful discourse to languish thus
in obfuscation and cryptography
submerged in rarefied verbosity?
What frumpy muse, nose in her thesaurus
hoped to, this scholarly way, implore us
while putting on airs un-deliriously
to study such silly screeds seriously?

Berryman, Bishop, Plath, Sexton, and Lowell
lured me with poetry into their hole.
Lord, how these clowns made a good thing boring;
they should have set earthbound souls to soaring.
but turned it into a master’s thesis,
fracturing verse to erudite pieces.

Berryman, overrated mass of sheer
vocabulary overload, unclear,
seems more to justify modernist doubt
than to show what real poetry’s about.

Bishop, cryptic identity-monger
(America’s Vassar-girl no longer)
wrote vaguely accessible verse, sometimes…
and some of her poetry even rhymes!

Plath, prima donna, boring semantics
failing to compensate for her antics
blathering bitterness, head in oven
might have been happier joining a coven.

Sexton, pill-headed prophetess unchained
half poetess of half-sense, half-brained
departed with zest,  from her own garage.
(We’re still decoding her cryptic barrage).

Lowell, left quaking in his unstoned grave
more interesting—but still a verbose knave…

These self-absorbed nerds, when not at their shrink
checked out in adultery, pills and drink.
Such sad celebrants of depraved excess,
no vanguard at all, are more a regress
to endless jaded pointlessness and dope,
their abstract verbiage void of all hope.

Who canonized these unexploded shells,
these duds, these fizzling scribes of milquetoast hells…
must we hail and applaud such labored lines?
Instead, make them pay some posthumous fines!
They withered awhile, these funereal blooms;
let REAL poets turn over in their tombs;
call spades on what my ringing ***** exhumes.

Cream of lyric America. I yawn.
It’s late now. White moonlight exalts the lawn.
The world sleeps on, lulled to death by dull verse
May their ghosts, fully exorcised, disperse…

That I was alive: I suppose,

there was a certain eager meaning to
these moments–wide and short–these
hours–fat and narrow–these years
long and deep–

the stars, the lunging of my breast, the
turned curving of a sunrise, the rapid
expulsion of blood, tunneling suddenly through artery and vein;
I guess.

Looking and wondering; I turn my
hand over in a spent beam of sunlight. Its span tumbling with that heavy glow–it iridesces.

(I love you.

Knowing I will die–I love you.)

I am walking in some hall. There is the fast purring of a cat. Easily my breath inhumes and exhumes the space within my chest. Heart beating. Air and flesh exchange.

How easily it is to be–it seems these
hands are mine over your *******. I put
my fingers in your mouth. Your tongue
tousles their fiber. I make and unmake
myself in your hips.

The thick leaning of this chair into my back–where are you?

(Reading this perhaps.

And am I alive? And where?

Or dead?

Could be.)

And what is death?

Dying after all, it is, I guess, what I am.


There was the forest today. And five minutes ago I kissed you.


I am incomplete–I can feel
the way this shirt turns over the skin of
my arm. Somebody is speaking French on the radio.


"I will be dead someday." I want to whisper.


(I will be dead someday.


I love you.)

Whenever the thought crosses of this faceless humanity

And their poor excuses of this forgotten morality,

Hate exhumes what emotions left residing in me,

Love is dead and gone, hatred is the truth in me.

-

These creatures in the abyss, the depths of me,

Are the breaking point inside my reality,

I will never escape abandonment and purity,

We are to remain, solipsistically.

-

Each and every day, we walk mindless in the void again,

Questioning our own beliefs and trepidation,

We wonder why the endeavors never arrive in the end,

All the while, we do everything we can to break them.

-

We are the reason we will never achieve perfection,

We are nothing, worthless and in need of correction.

Remembering a forgotten past, fast.

Memories flowing over each other in riveting technicolor.

Gushing forward, a flood of things not seen, not heard.

Populating a seamless void, yet a question has one cloyed.

How have these riveting delights burst into life?

Alleviating strife, dulling the sharp knife.

Pressure of an incongruous blade, striving to extort, to be paid.

Cutting deep, but wait, behold! A gate, and through it a luminous river of gold!

Flowing and changing an effervescent river, so avid a giver.

Presents presented in the present, limited to subjective perception, how pleasant.

But what isn't. These days brain makes the big plays, stifling the mythos, the old ways.

Some hold on to the secrets, some stay behind rather than get hit, or so they say.

Recollections running rampant, scant happiness ******* clad in an orange sun dress.

What a mess, this cluttered web of needlessly intricate excess.

Social pariahs claim possession of tired desires sired in the filthy minds of professional liars.

Majority vote totes a certain permanence broken only by explosions of unyielding opulence.

What springs from lips holds power untouchable to fingertips. Though remnants trickle through, as if taking sips from the trough of knowledge...perhaps once we knew.

Full exposure is supremely reprimanding, as to leave one no longer standing.

Not in the sense of senses deemed supreme, not in this bizarre dream, the way we place ourselves into these pseudo-sensical roles all day striving to derive meaning from the needle, not the hay teeming with nutrients to sustain life as we know it, pleasure and pain.

Vanity must run through our veins to think us able to ordain a solid truth from any plain, or that linear reality reigns.

Comfort is a salve and a vice, when offered one doesn't think twice, but blind acceptance won't negate price.

Contrary to popular belief, popular belief is a contrary beast that consumes the strong and exhumes the weak.

A contrite appetite, a gaping maw with teeth like pikes and satirical satyrs playing in the inimical reeds in which it breeds.

So goes an old saying, early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise, but does sage not grow as sage unless it is left out both day and night until old age?

What makes a thing sagacious, wisdom, growth? Spacious tracks are needed to cultivate both.

As to the memories of trees, what hides within our lives and within the breeze? Sometimes little is less and best. Lessons learned to our behest are not ignored, we just can't seem to find the door.

Within the confines of life's insistence, all beings act in accordance to their existence.

Ive come to the conclusion that even though i always wear my running shoes, it doesn’t mean i can outrun everything

The roads
they lead to somewhere
You don’t know where you’ll end up
you might not want to end up anywhere
your always going to come face first with a dead end

I burnt my hand purposely the other day
so that i could feel a tiny ounce of emotion for a change
all I’m left with is irritated red skin
A reminder that despite the amount of pain i have stored inside
i still feel nothing
Laughter cascades from my lips
pleasantries tumble through my slight smile
The truth perches itself on my tongue
idly and patiently waiting for the day when i let it out
I hear its sighs when i speak
i feel the disappointment radiating from it in tsunami waves
Its a constant bad taste in my mouth that no amount of lyrsterine can rid of

“aren’t you tired of holding me in?”
it whispers after every conversation

I cover it up with more futile words piling on top of each other till i don’t even remember what i believed in at first
ironic how the thing that exhumes me is the one that buries me
Rip my chest open and haul out my insides
I’m afraid all you’ll find is a note saying
“ no one home, been gone for a while”

Cut along my skull with a scalpel and expose my brain
I’m afraid all you’ll find is little workers packing up their bags, glancing up and saying
“ Your efforts are nugatory, theres no sign of sentiment here”

Cradle my heart in your palms and feel the beat
I’m afraid it’ll crumble and disintegrate into dust
Sifting through the remnants you’d find a crumpled paper saying
“ If found, its too late”

The word Unhappy resonates through my head
pounding at my brain
oozing from my eyes
unhappy
morose
doleful
the list goes on

Im afraid of change
i’ve been unhappy for so long that the thought of not being terrifies me

Unsure, uncertain,
Torn apart in infinite directions,
Head a jumbled mess,
Mind never to be made up...

Sadness consumes,
Depression exhumes,
Confusion at every turn.

Help?
No one hears the call.
Please?
No one to help at all.

Falling, falling,
Down
Down
Down
    •
    •
    •
Crash

Rock bottom.

Pain overcomes.
No feeling left inside.
Pound of the head,
Like a bullet to the skull.
Blacking out,
Fainting quickly,
Light leaving the room.

Eyes cannot see,
Ears cannot hear,
Hands cannot feel, let alone move.

...help?
No.
No help.
No one left.
No one there.
No one to care.

Literally shaking from the feelings
Tears rolling down my body
Sadness exhumes me constantly
Nothing helps, not even sobbing
My soul burns so hot
I'd rather touch fire
Scorching my bare skin
Instead of my emotions scorching my bare heart

imminent distance looms
but naught to fear
though I shed an easy tear -
like flowers of April, love blooms
a growing gap, empty rooms
a lasting tie, I hold dear
love won't wane but wax by year
my guarded heart, he exhumes
enjoys me, accepts me, deciphers my art
wrapped in embrace, I'll forget never
healing, security, warmth - tranquil heart
inexplainable and sincere, leave it there -
a love that enjoys when together
and endures when apart

A subject of a black disinterest
from the corrupted mind of perverse ******,

he's a key that's opened up my sorry thoughts
a narcissistic God that warps and distorts

a pale tyrant absent in the cold light of day
instead he leaves me only with sorrow to play
it's when the sunlight dies and the darkness consumes
that his spell awakens and fully exhumes

abstaining filthy needs I meander to the pool of obscurity
in the dark corners of the Web seemingly lies security
interacting with my dark desires, I cannot think,
from the cup of a personal Judas do I slowly drink

everyone around is dying, my ego I have hidden
everybody makes mistakes but can a God be forgiven
for unable to punish others I'm punishing myself
terrified of the future that is confusion and ill health -

if I succumb will he be merciful and grudgingly help
steal the other's pain and inflict it upon myself?

Or will he plunder my soul for my most lurid temptations
and fill my world with the void of his true destructive intentions?

O’ my lord, Do you see
What my naked eyes see

Healthy bodies, shining faces
Glittering eyes, crooked smile
That’s how the rich look like

O’ my lord, Do you see
What my naked eyes see

Diseased bodies, pale faces
Wet eyes, no smile
That’s how the poor look like

O’ my lord, Do you see
What my naked eyes see

The empty stomach of poor
Keeps burning, turning into fumes
As it exhumes

O’ my lord, Do you see
What my naked eyes see

The filled stomach of rich
Keeps working, generating energy
As it digests and absorbs


O’ my lord, Do you see
What my naked eyes see

The rich utilize their energy
To exploit the poor
And to support capitalism

O’ my lord, Do you see
What my naked eyes see

That’s why, I declare war against you
I know, I will lose, I will die
But still I choose to revolt

Pour more sugar on my wounds
in the mid of night your face still exhumes
thought I'd cut the cord, forget you exist,
but even bleeding my desire insists

inside I hide a heart of pure arsenic
the most poisonous persona, nobody denies it,
but now you've turned against me I've tasted the pain I spread,
obsessive dispositions I can't get out of my head

it's like an itch under the skin that just won't go away
I've got to have you, in every way -
thoughts of your body lingering upon my lips
a ravenous dog that just wants a kiss

the taste of your flesh, of your hair, the feel of your soft skin
this jittery malevolence that hungers within,
I'll devour your beauty, taint and manipulate your trust,
oh baby, I'm just a filthy predator led by lust.

When did I become so foolish and fall into the despicable trap of love?
I wander now, angry,
But still haunted by the ghost of lust and loathe.
I can see it sometimes wander into my room and stare at me as I sleep.
It's fore long glare exhumes ignorance and sabotage.
It analyzes me, selling false narratives for the cheap price of $5.
I wonder you know, how you feel, how you sleep?
I sometimes wander the prairies of dreams in search of that oh so delicate ring, that I will never find.
They call me Sisyphus now, my absurd attempts squandered as the boulder I am so
Determined to push, tumbles down
The hill and into the abyss.
I had faith, but now in the frigid darkness of a cold winter storm,
I feel alone.
Marooned upon an island and eaten piece by piece by piece.
Slow roasted like a pig.

You are my flower, that bursts from the seams of reality and tells me that their is true beauty in this world.
My one.
You are the cool breeze on my neck in the deluge of a summers day.
You are the warmth that brings life back to me.
You are my green light at the end of the dock,
Childhood to my Holden, fate to my Oedipus.
You are love that will pull me out of the inferno and carry me to the banks of a river.
You are my essence.

(The permafrost will thaw.)

hope runs its fingers through knotted hair
and exhumes hearts that were laid to rest

a gravely thought surfaced in the head of
the ones who once did pirouettes
with their words, risked reality for the sake of dreaming,
everything's normal you just can't get hurt

hope runs its fingers through our lucky days
and assures us in time another will come
out of the bushes straight our way

it's the caboose, the last fall, the remainder of it all
it nests in hiding, look up
higher than you think possible
its dust has marked park benches
you wont see it until you put on glasses
you wont see it until you move one step forward

some days it doesn't come out to play
but it isn't a game, it's the key to
a door that has been locked for ages

look, I have closets full of combinations
that were destroyed under the flames of
pure misfortune,

I really do believe that through this quest, we will find that individual key

Once we do,
we come to life

you're always welcomed

A stony gaze wanders as a buoyant breeze
But sorrows blinds blow in a storm and the solemn bust outcries
The thunder cracks
The lightning zaps
Childhood flashbacks
Scream inside my gut
I've been rejected enough
The hardened boy plays tough
And stubbornly pushes away
From the shores of a living grave
To a ship with a drunken crew
Floating as ghostly imprints play
Wailing to eclipse my pain
But on shore life remains
With no wings on which to escape
And in the cabin below the day
The frightened child hides, afraid
Its beaten soul whimpers requests
But the sunlight doesn't reach the deck
Blackness exhumes an awful stench
Eating at my bones in flesh
- I look toward the door
With a ball of fury raging red
Playing repeat inside my head
My body turns to heavy lead
What more will it take
To finally make the step
From the tears I've never wept
To the love I've never kept
The exploded shards I've never swept
Shattered pieces of empty concepts
The broken mirror I defiantly reject
Satan laughs while Angels detest
As I fail once more to accept
The man staring back at the child

Is this a muse
or more reasons for abuses?
Truly clueless,
mind exhuding a slew,
a room full of excuses
to continue
this stupid and futile nuisance.

Sapling seed of spruce's,
soil spews like vesuvius
erupting abrupt and exuberant,
earth quaking magnitude rifts.

Sprout shoots up
and exhumes it:
mute and fugue,
bereft of youth missed,
solitude's dirt entangled tomb lifts.

Roots, feuding for nutrients
desperate to consume it;
sunlit view askew,
tree grew incongruent,
boughs barren, fruitless,
few nectars and juices
soon turned putrid;
ichor oozes,
residue strewn
as autumn blew kiss-
how could I choose this?

Blue bruises bloomed
crimson wounds
cut contusions,
red rose petal plume proves this;
skin and sinew fixed anew,
akin to knotted, rotting bark;
subdued and losing, I withdrew
as deja vu gripped.

Branches bones
hand hewn and grooved
with last protruding tooth,
Ive pruned all
but that which can't be removed
once I'm through this;
after all I'm only human
in a wilting garden of quietude
who never even knew bliss.

Clear skies of white
         Darkness consumes
Life exhumes
                 The angriest parts of humanity
The blight of the people persists
    Meager Goose can not suffice
                 to say what is needed
and yet
              belligerent behaviors build boastful tendencies
to fill that void
                          left by last lovers leaning on opposing walls
of the singular mind

I have this new light about me
It glistens
I listen
No single memory can stop me
From freeing my feet at night
And driving through my mindscape
Empty
Yet full of color and every
External Sense I could
Imagine to be true
So it must be something real
My images are projected senselessness
Rich and simultaneously void of
Feeling
So touchable this
Ungraspable and malleable palpable void
Exhumes flavor.
I awake unmoved
Having been everywhere presented
I recall half of nothing
And each day goes by
Where I pass places I’ve been
Changed, structured beyond definition
I’ve been there once before
And it was not in this waking life
It’ll have this recognizable feel
Of Complete void demolished
Beyond my ability to comprehend anything
But what I know it to be
In a place where my feet haven’t touched
The ground
And I’m quietly obtaining ability
To create a world outside of my knowledge
Of what is true in
This waking state
I’ve been here once before, and it was different
My senses are not immune to the trickery
So I fall back
Into another dream
And wonder where I’ll go for the first time
That I’ll reunite with tomorrow
Only to find it’s honest form
And I won’t be able to help but smell the air I created just the night before.