"immolated" poems
Strong currents flow different ways
From where the bridge was, after the first plunge
Soothed the sun-burnt skin and the hay-splinters
Loosed the straw stuck in ears
After I left you under the porch light
Alone on the other side of the night
Where poplars reached for the moon and stars
And the cows chewed on bits of memory from when
In the cobwebs and calf pens
They were brought to life by your gentle hands
You crossed two worlds to find me in the darkness
But I was not the one you were searching for
You prayed for miracles while
God stood by, arms crossed
Just taking in the sunset and the clouds
Like an old tree beside a grave carefully fenced
To keep it disheveled amid tended fields
Thus the cancer had its way and I could not
Fill the void left in your heart or mine
With no more tears to soften dry leather
I put our hearts on skewers and held them
Over the bridge's burning planks
Too close and they were immolated
Not carefully spun to stay golden and warm inside
So I packed my own hollow heart full of nothing
Filled the passenger seat, until
There was only room for me and the steering wheel
And no way to turn
Mar 5, 2019
Mar 5, 2019 at 6:55 PM UTC
You slipped your tongue past my lips,
clawed your way down my throat,
and buried yourself in my stomach.
You ripped the humanity from my skin, tore it off with your teeth.
Your fingers burned roads across my chest, and immolated my earlobes.
Every inch of my body was yours, and you plunged your way into it as
deeply as you could.
Between my legs, you grunted, and pushed further into me,
ignoring my face, imagining someone else. I let you paint a picture over me,
and I let you kiss her instead. Tears soaked your pillows, as you had me face down,
taking all you wanted to give. Blood dripped quietly onto your black sheets,
as ignorant to the stain, as you to any true feelings.
You made me your destructive portrait,
pouring your self disgust all over my back and face.
There was nothing left for you to hate.
You purged yourself endlessly, taking another chunk of my humanity with each bite.
All I wanted was a sense of wholeness, a sense that my body was used for your self discovery,
not a shack where you could throw away your hate.
I'd stare at the rain through your window,
and will it to wash away the mess you'd left on me. It never did,
and I would have to settle for the rhythmic breaths from you,
floating over the empty space between us.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 9:57 PM UTC
Powered by a thirsty rush
I seek to destroy an innocent touch
To tear apart the thickening rust
Sharpen my razor against everlasting love
Fumed with pale malice, a sickening lust
I rip the flesh that harbors my trust
Cringe at bleak stares as my knife thrusts
Passion immolated, heaved and crushed
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 9:12 AM UTC
“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” ― François Rabelais
You didn't notice when it happened,
but with age death has found you out
and stalks you like a mad cassowary.
Wherever you look it looks back.
You think of your mother,
slobbering, shrunken, demented,
dead long before she knew it;
the father you haven't spoken
to in years, alone in a nursing home,
rotting and uncomprehending.
You recall the perfect ******* of
the wonderous first girl you loved,
become an old woman, then immolated
by cancer, chemo, radiation,
reduced to a heap of ashes in an urn.
You hear of a friend's son's untimely
passing and though you haven't
seen your friend in 25 years your
spine tingles with sorrow for a full week.
The smashed white cat on the blacktop
you would not have noticed 20 years ago
brings your heart to a full shivering stop;
the wet half fallen leaves sway like
fragile tombstones in the darkened
autumn trees, whispering your name.
Doom sits upon you shoulder
like a pirate's parrot and sees all
through your eyes.
You lost your fear of
dying 45 years ago in a forgotten war,
believed it meant nothing, it didn't,
but now the reaper has returned to cast
his chill on everyone and everything
before you.
He scatters his reminders everywhere.
And you know that once again
you find yourself trapped deep within
the valley of the shadow of death,
alone, but you are no longer the meanest
************ in the valley.
It's enough
to make you want to believe in a god of mercy,
but it's far too late for divine intervention,
god is dead and mercy is granted to no one.
Soon enough you will stumble into that
final ambush and the bullet with your name
on it that has followed you since birth
will find you and come to rest and the
contract made with your first breath
will be fulfilled.
In the end,
we all look
into the Tiger's eyes.
~mce
Oct 29, 2015
Oct 29, 2015 at 10:41 AM UTC
morning dew causing (un)due inspiration
flowing out of cowards head
i see you there,
looking in as if to say
why can't i have a piece
where is my cake
yer cake is in the dumpster with
evidently unyielding unborn soul
all garbage to be taken to landfill at day's end
to be cubed by crushing collapsing compressing cuber
to be rolled over by great heaving garbage dump cesspool machinery
left to decompose and rot
like magnificent little ghandi trash
all dignified passive resistance inaction
what good is cake to the self-starving man anyway
what good is life to the self-immolated tibetan monk
is that who you are
all in flames sitting there
blue hue'd blackened bone
Aug 31, 2014
Aug 31, 2014 at 9:04 AM UTC
I remember, however long ago,
My friend called me an unsung hero.
And he said it in a tone of voice
As if to comfort me,
To console me for not being played
In the ballads of far-gone legend
Or in the soft-spoken stories
Told solemnly around a fire,
Smoke billowing in the air
Like immolated lost dreams
And falling, wistful pride.
And I just looked at him,
Unsure of what to say.
In those moments,
It's rather common
To be gracious, to be humble,
But I didn't respond in any such way.
It's because I didn't feel like the title,
Didn't feel as if I'd earned
Something to be proud of, since
I'd just been me for as long
As time had coddled my existence.
But when he said that,
I felt the world cave in like a tunnel,
Felt my ego dissolve as if it were
Being bathed in acid, and I realized,
Maybe too, late, that being a hero
Doesn't entail boundless wisdom,
Doesn't entail haughty accomplishments,
Doesn't entail inordinate hubris,
Doesn't entail selfishness like he believed.
No,
Being a hero, an intricate warrior
Is being a dragonfly soaring
Across a meadow of lava,
Is staying silent but
Loud enough for all to hear,
Is defending the passions
That bind your soul,
Is standing on two feet
When one's been broken,
Is guarding your heart
With a well-oiled pen,
Is fending off harpies
With an eager chuckle.
And I won't ever pretend
That I'm an "unsung hero",
For that would mean my path is destined
For a hero's end, a conceited flaw,
A predetermined death governed by
What I'd been trying to hide from all along.
And if I have to sail across glacial tundra,
Trek across scathing plains,
Dig my feet into caustic quicksand
Or walk along the surface of the sun
Just to prove I'm not the hero you perceive,
Then so be it,
I'll pack my boots and papers
And meet you at dawn,
Atop heaven's summit, somewhere
Far out in the distance, beyond
The twinkling stars and mystifying blackness
That swallows everything whole,
That makes heroes tremble in fear.
But I will not shudder, not falter,
For I am no hero,
But a well-heard whisper.
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 5:19 PM UTC
Baptized to be a martyr
of sour lyricism, I am
immolated to the lavish denial.
Inconceivable,
waiting for mid- September,
hunting season is open,
here in the limbo of jade falls
I’m a prayer of not allowed harmonies.
No use in trying to exalt
every single bit of black twinkle.
Enviable,
devoted to light,
the glaze rainbow prays,
shocked by the fantasy
of so much epic adventures,
in which, repentant,
feeling terrifically safe.
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 2:56 PM UTC
The fires are still burning, the sounds of slow destruction all round
this battlefield is quieter now, still but not silent
the crackling of flames, the stirring of ashes in the wind
sobbing in the distance, almost to far to hear
instantly recognizable
there was no enemy here, a war raged all the same
a screaming brutal conflict of brothers beyond control
all that is left now is a broken, barren idea
an immolated emptiness
I know this field, i know it all to well
this is my mind, my soul - the place i return to endlessly
there was laughter here, once, i think. I cannot be sure
for time, betrayal, loss and pain have made it...
made it something else for so long i can no longer remember
what it may have been before or if there was a before
i must like it here, i feel, this field of empty ashes and dying fires
of cooled anger and forgotten grief
i must like it here, for i return constantly
to surround myself in the freezing, burning contradiction
of emptiness
I think i do like it here, for i choose not to leave
only here can i be
immersed in the self immolation the hurts me so.
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 3:40 AM UTC
Can you believe?
I almost let a ******* job blow my brains out
steal me from my kids and love
this system rots us inside out
it makes us dissolve and **** our selves back through a straw
and say we still aren't enough
the catharsis of it all is slipping
oozing through life not on our terms
this capital is rot incarnate.
Death encapsulated in a hermetic chamber
I breathed my last labored breath face beneath a pillow
and woke up to failure
a failure that could start the rest of life
failing up for us
is giving into the quit.
Brain unlocked, heart bound in broken promises
to children and now fear of lack of value
and resource to feed them full.
This prison immolated
crystal chandelier impaling
only pretty to them
when stained with our blood
soaked geometry splattered
tessellated across the porcelain walls
they only smile when we weep
staring at us in our cage
as we writhe
and they dine
on the blood of our infants
on their labor not yet
realized.
Eating our children and us
right before our eyes
out of the sunlight
they only laugh when we have nothing
they only feel when we hurt
they're only full when we are starving
only sated when we need.
monstrous predators of money
and greed
they only smile when we bleed
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 10:22 PM UTC
An empty page. The insufferable debate.
An infernal task? The everlasting trait?
A blank check? A clean slate?
The inkwell pond. Pen and nib. Rod and bait.
Over-caffeinated.
Under-appreciated.
Anger encapsulated by the shortness of my replies.
I'm exasperated by the amount of attempts and all the tries.
Code Scrambled. Wires crossed. Software and hardware not integrated.
Emotions and objects being wrongly correlated.
Places and faces being traded.
Thoughts and feelings segregated.
Process of progress imitated.
Utterly inundated.
Brain cells being immolated
So that my mind and my soul can become assimilated.
Self-worth: Underestimated.
These points are not to be debated.
Swoon confused with brood.
A smiling clown dances around the center ring.
Inside he's centering his self around the latitude and longitude of
The highest hilltops of Mt. Pisspoorattitude.
Without the slightest shred of gratitude towards any good deed done for him past the 5 minutes of thank you that he spouts off at the peak of the mountain.
If at first you don't succeed, just cry and cry again.
The concept rocket pulls the cap off the the pen sprocket
Ink spews everywhere. A shiny black geyser erupts from the rig.
Men shouting back and forth to one another. There's no way to contain it. We've sprung a leak, the oil is in our water. The oil is our blood.
Erasing, no, smearing. No control. No Z's either. Analog fuck-ups.
Chasing my tail, driving the same circuit.
Racing as Yoshi with a broken control stick
I've had a hell of a time on Uncle Sam's dime.
I disappeared behind the words written on my mirror long ago.
Am I a wreck or is this the requiem of my dreams?
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 8:32 AM UTC
Dog tired eyes heavy the waves of the lights keeps Her mind open
Closed closets keep inside the ones that cannot forgive
Their supposed sins of a supposed Lord
Freedom is a fact few ever truly seem to grasp and understand
Even me
I am the ant in the middle of the hill trying to reach the sun
For when I reach the summit
I will be immolated and annihilated to the point of
No recollection or resurrection
I seek a death that is of nature
Of spirit
Of man and of the pounding hammer made of blood and bone
We are the sinking ships whose anchors
Drop through the drifting white clouds above our puny little heads
Run walk ride trip skip tip all the way to work
To make that mad little dollar
To feed the squalor or
The daughter
To fight to chipped and shredded tooth
So at last peace arrives when one plops down
On a blackjack players booth
Leaves ripple like the sun lit feathers of a hawk
Which eyes their prey from a mile away
When the word is right
There is
No word
At all
Aug 3, 2011
Aug 3, 2011 at 10:21 PM UTC
Flickering like a tentative alpenglow corraded from profaned time
A whisper jostles through a crowded rumpus prescient of teleology and design
Jolting with pangs of panic a screech emanates from the brontides of tomorrow
A chagrin outpaces the gingerly apprehension of a peevish sorrow
Among the ruffled plumes quaffed from pedigree and put to disuse
A banausic electricity galvanizes the ****** of the amalgamated acuity pinched from the sordid, the obtuse
Refracted like off a darkened moon that clenches the darkness in an abstruse tomb
Combs through sentience of Saturn presiding over ineluctable doom
A silence louder than a plangent ****** of phantasmagoria debased
A looming victor erodes with the putrefaction of sworn and utter distaste
How to obtrude on the evening with triaged fulmination
Is an affront to the rudders of a piecemeal civilization in tatters with exacting doddering calculation
Graveyards bustle with the eidolons of scurrilous spite
Congregating around a blackened epitaph on an alabaster palace gilded in the swanky pinnacle of light
Scuttling the outmoded flanks of an abortive war
Against a henchman of state too ostentatious to hardly ever ignore
We clamber with insistence hoping on fortuitous deliverance
Yet we are deranged of the clasped distance between the crevasse of the clerisy and the satisdiction of futures passed with meticulous diligence
Absconding with furtive furrows on a wizened guild an entrusted world we helped build
We witness the silence creep over us like a trepidation contained as lethal killers of the cartel willed
That which frightens a self-fulfillment is a fatalism gone awry
Someday soon omens excavated from immolated tombs will beseech a more universal backlash, an alienated sorrow that will one day cry
But until that fetched disaster occurs
Let us meditate only on the process of emanation among wayward words
That dance with a destiny that the hegemony of momentary circumstance much prefers
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 2:19 AM UTC
Her vision steeped before we crossed
but no more to ignite the eyes
losing track of what was behind, I didn’t bother.
I carried concern on my chest, no boulders on my shoulders.
I parlayed with my self, negotiating control.
A small taste of freedom beckoned,
to feel and smell and crave the fancies I fancied.
Natural impulse, artificial dissolution.
A leading discourse to
dry this saturating boredom
with sponges more righteous than martyrs.
And burn these tears of impassive self pity
in the fires of a desert immolated.
A frozen face on my stone like heart.
Inequity realized and resolved.
Silence is a drug of the lazy and the wise
I am neither, but I despise them both
and too, the darkness with which speaks, my mind.
Slip into a corner, watch the echoes play.
lest luck has its day;
before I bite the cold earth for good;
I will see the martyr walk from the pyre
and witness myself burning with desire.
Jul 1, 2013
Jul 1, 2013 at 1:05 PM UTC
cinder rains from the sky,
a past life immolated.
my soul was ignited,
by the fire in her eyes.
the structure built is now aflame,
crumbling to oblivion.
and like all change,
there is accompanying fear.
are her feelings real? are mine? does she regret asking? why did she ask? how do i act? am i not caring enough? am i too caring? am i scaring her off? does she really want to spend time with me? am i fit for such a blessing? can i ever meet her expectations? leave her satisfied? happy?
i don't know
i don't know
__i don't know__
but what i do know,
is that there is a sulfuric cloud looming,
ready to engulf me,
if i am to ever fall
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 11:38 AM UTC
I remember not looking for a place, but a home.
A home in which i wouldnt live in, but feel alive.
If we can say as such im much more the interior architect at heart.
I see the foundation for what it is and if it needs it, i fortify it by all means necessary.
You are my home and im in love with your walls.
You allowed me to cross the threshold of your hearts door….understood that the previous tenants once had keys but youve changed the locks every time they stopped moving you.
I understood that you let your lawn grow freely cause you never thought id pay a visit; ill always look through and into the shattered windows to your soul and ignite your sides with roses.
I remember after i saw the foundation, all of my attention went to the roof; the most imporant part of the home, your dome where everything roams:
The squirrel who only wants a nut.
The flowers you give yourself.
The light as well as the darkness you let in.
How you feel so immensely yet you couldnt help any of it at the time.
Its fine. So i grab my toolbox, park my car and live in within you as i rebuild you.
A haunting.
These walls talk.
I am not frightened. Im grounded in my own spirituality that i can light my blunts with self immolated monks and still kick funk for the **** of it; im enlightened and delighted to work in you with you.
Now….ive cut myself on shattered glass.
Ive fallen through your floors.
I couldnt get doors to open and wouldnt close the ones that kept opening.
I smile and do my work.
I encouraged the dinners by candle or lantern light, just to show you how beautiful you truly are in the darkest and loneliest of times.
I slept on your floors while the ressurection of your heartbeat gave me reassurance that you found out you werent alone.
To me you were an apparition i wanted to know and give peace, to you i was the uninvited looking for thrills.
We saw one another and the possessions again.
Your walls…..neon majin buu vice grips with lips i love to kiss.
Your walls and eternal hallway of life id give my own to live in.
Your walls where we will ultimately hang up family potraits we are creating right now.
I am proud to say i live here now, within and with you.
I see old tenants saying how beautiful you look…..asking about how much work i put in…..how much they missed the memories they had with and within you….wondering if their key still works.
The thing is…..i never got a key and wouldn’t need one.
And although you changed all the locks, you let me in for an eternity.
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24, 2019 at 11:16 PM UTC
No
There wasn't any
Heartbreak
There were
Not too many
Tears
I was surprised
I was astonished
I was feared
And loved
All at the same time
The crowd saw who
Was who and who
Was not
When the cards are down
And the eyes finally clear
Who is remembered
Is the thing
That matters most
We forget the ones
Who died in the trenches
Who were immolated from within
Who sounded but were never found
We forget the ones
Who died for this and
Who lost a limb for that and
Crippled their minds for them
Love stripped from their souls
Replaced by the dark horror
Of man's humaneness
Who are we to ask for such a sacrifice?
Who are we to send away the living for death?
Who are we to shake our heads in feigned understanding?
Who are we?
The dust will never settle
The sun will always rise
And fall
On the foggy eyes of war
And as the bayonets lay scattered,
Their bearers
Bearing no resemblance
To their former selves
And try
To
Hear
The echoing scream
The rippling shot
The cursed' crying corpses
Try to hear
The frankness
Of death.
Mar 25, 2012
Mar 25, 2012 at 6:25 AM UTC
**paper trails and octopuses
***** buses and bisecting angles
fragile dancers fail to tell their story
this dreaming is a faculty of insight
a soliloquy of sunlight
sunglasses keep the eyes safe
from burning retina love
the iris is immolated
clinging demanding needing
its bleeding you slowly
selectively they were bought
her mind is aflame with such thoughts
diverting this delicate imbalance from toppling upon itself
what is the way to keep the dogs at bay
i remember you showed it to me by the fire that day
sloven sitcoms
arrows and bows
whoever hungers for eternity
must remember the words
of whatever divine mystery
that they hold dear
as confounded sounds
and shades of hope start to appear**
Oct 23, 2017
Oct 23, 2017 at 10:53 AM UTC
We lost the game.
No scores to be had.
Living was copying motions
of same old ways,
from bygone days.
Immolated landscapes
Unconsecrated ground
Land now sand
Silence the only sound.
People as mannequins
shackled to consumerism
now free to be human
humanity is dead
turned to dust and ash.
Charred trees, charred bones
Libraries and ossuaries
Rock, paper, scissors
Sinners, readers, builders
All on bended knees
Pillars of salt blown away on the blast wind.
Flame extinguished.
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017 at 9:24 PM UTC
The lit fuse of her lips touching off
A din in the black powdery night:
Illumined and immolated am I.
Mar 1, 2020
Mar 1, 2020 at 9:09 PM UTC
From brisance condensed in hatred
ignition came,
like the dormant dust of ages,
from careless words and truth-less history,
it came.
Some unknown, immolated, evaporated, disappeared.
Others reconstituted, pulling limbs and minds together.
Whilst the lost fragmented to darker corners,
into the splintered flash of a moment, screaming for eternity.
Thunder roars silent in their dead ears.
The grey carpet laid randomly where it fell,
its fabric now woven into mine.
I wait for the second wave
to wash me clear,
away from the expanding storm,
to an untouched atoll.
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 5:57 PM UTC