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complexity
is your beauty
simplicity
your mystery
interdependence
sustains you

once upon a time
we dipped bowls
into your waters
and brought up
draughts of life

now
Skipjacks go
fathoms deep
into endless
depletion

charting
entangled
dead zones
broadening
into a sea of
inertness

your delicate
eco-essence tips
toward oblivion

effluvia farmers
layer mechanized
blankets of
nitrates on your
sunset shores
weaving
green tendrils
of algae blooms
strangling the
entanglements
of all links in
your miraculous
food chain

the EPA
proscribes
a Jenny Craig
pollution diet
to halt the
slaughter in
oxygen
challenged
dead zones
where rockfish
are garroted,
oysters get drilled
by screwworms
and azure tinted
soft shell *****
dance soft
shoe taps
lifting a tinny
chorus of sad
Piedmont Blues

the flat-lining
watersheds
voiceless
warnings
tremble
rocking the
purged nests of
screaming ospreys
in vocal protest
of a sinking
Tangier Isle
anointing it’s
tombstones
of unvisited
cemeteries with
multicolored
guano

fitting
alkaline
tributes
to the lost
inhabitants
and forgotten
languages
sinking into the
brine of gray
brackish tides

Delmarva’s fine
intra-continental
balance skewed
by the oozing
industrial swill
of Frank Perdue
chicken farms
ruling the roost of
sanctioned sustainability
tinging clear watersheds
of finger lakes
set in splints to
repair dislocations
and complex
compound fractures
that may never heal
again

Music Selection:
Taj Mahal: Fishin Blues

jbm
Oakland
6/7/12
Peculiar Spring
Seeps through my skin
Invades my soul
And garrotes me within

Unhurried strangulation
My spirit weakens
A rush of horror
At the sight of the Warden

He's cloaked in death
Speaks with decaying breath
"It's all foredoomed
I'm threading this path"

Limbs frozen stiff
Hasten, flee … if
Death travels swiftly
Radiating a putrid whiff

A nipping hoarfrost
Spring slays those embossed
Come Summer, come
Before I completely exhaust

This peculiar Spring
Its nature - bristling
Beneath a flaccid quiescence
I'm being garroted within
Like a pack of dogs lounging
  in minutes, minutes, minutes, eyeing an endless treacle.
it’s worth the shot.
     what is?

I heard he went into a crash,
    and that Rey went into the deep blue dreaming of
    fins and fish – that *******. Brenn was up in the hills.
it’s a wonderful day to fill this space with the electric frill
               of laughter. Open that Emperador held loose in that
   cheap, slender bottle. That’s worth the stipend, in exchange for
    light – clarity, be it crass, and unsoundly. These ungodly hours
    will form a God, trying to go home, slurring, shaking in his gait,
      hailing a trisikad or a tricycle back to Philomena’s arms.
  it was a magnificent day – you know it is. The squalid canals
     are filled with the ******* under the care of a tyrant.
        Jon looks like he’s cut up for matrimony. We jeer and give out
  no jell so as to ridicule him into chaining himself to a passing.
       Empyrean is the mood now: all primed for the blackened chapel’s chase
  down the pews towards recognizing the smallest children inside ourselves.
     This moment is far from over. Like a skipping Betamax. A gramophone
        clamped in the kinked note lost somewhere in the sound byte,
  try this matrix for the forgotten. Tomorrow we will curse ourselves
      for the proud challenge, rivaling ourselves in the process.

    Like dogs in heat. Like dogs aching to ****. Like dogs
      garroted by the selfish hands of the neighbor. Like old bones
                 sleeping in troves we have forgotten.
for my friends back in college, and the way we killed ourselves.
Rachid Oulamine Nov 2017
Deprived of the spirit,
Left split,
Bit by bit,
Amid death and life,
Left impeded,
Disabled,
Unable to help it.
The body is vacant.
No life is inside.
Only emptiness rules in,
And so does it outside,
Darkness is the inhabitant,
And I'm drifted on its tide,
Loneliness is the occupant.
Salvation is what I bide.
No part is any longer mine,
The sight,
Mind,
And the heart,
All are dwelt,
And so is every part,
Grabbed,
Can't be felt.
My being is hung,
Horribly Burnt,
About to melt,
I'm condemned to longing,
Constantly yearning,
Eying nothing,
But the reflection,
Of one thing,
Taking shape of everything.
The angelic shadow,
I try to flee from,
Yet, It chases me, though,
Omnipresent are its traits,
At which I glance,
And gain temporal fits.
Such a trance!
Thrown by its lance,
And had me on the ground,
Groveling,
And writhing,
Of permanent wrench,
Flinging me into non-existence,
It garroted my presence.
In each vein,
I've stroved knives,
Awaiting the hand,
To take off every knife,
Awaiting its touch
To put me back to life.

RACHID OULAMINE
Maniacal Escape Aug 2020
Colour on canvas with the Crimson crayon.
Pure art, the world is stained red.
Frame it. Murderous masterpiece.
Jonathan Moya Jun 2022
It wasn’t
all the popcorn, hotdogs, candy
eaten in the dark that killed her.
Those things just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all the boxes piled high
and then tumbling on her that cracked
her head and made her a corpse.
All that junk just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those clothes hung up on clotheslines
strung through her small apartment
that garroted her red, white and blue.
All that designer stuff just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all the pots, pans and dishes in the sink
that needed to be scrubbed squeaky clean
that drowned her in less than a foot of water.
All those cookbook recipes just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those mops, sponges, buckets and brooms,
the bleaches, ammonia and other chemical cleaners
that gouged her lady parts and asphyxiated her too.
It’s just all that housekeeping caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those books in floor to ceiling IKEA cases
that bibliated, Dewey Decimated her away.
It’s just all that knowledge caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those fine soaps, shampoos and conditioners
that shrunk, desiccated and dissolved her away.
It was all that cleanliness that wasn’t next to
godliness that caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those un-filed files that shocked
her coworkers, just her decapitated
head rolling on the company floor.
All that work just caught up with her.

On her tombstone it was etched:
LIFE FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH HER.
Maniacal Escape Jun 2021
Curled wrists
Hung spine
Garroted feet
Twisted hands.

— The End —