Below the surfaceless
looking above
under the furls of wavering clouds
all you'd see is that untouched stare
an absence of warmth disclosed
elapsing over,
collapsing over
you

Shallows edges so elusive,
as obscure as a serpents nest
anonymous as the rest,
intrusive like these dated feelings

and yet those eyes like minds wander
wonder as if it's ever been to lie beyond
those gated passages to Edens flowers
a pocket of hours been laid before you,

Ghosts.

And the continuance to roam
inside of these channels
left empty and vacuous

so out of depth,
with filtering essence of memory
faltering lights of ambiguity,
letting the pieces drip upwards

you’re alone together with what ties are to be had
you speak as through the pith
of this insecurity,
the plight of this immaturity

a footstep in the waters
spilling from your tongue.

Venture from the beginning
a start to finish
as though time bounded in ripples
your tinted sight lines
undesigned and impalpable
even through strategy

under the palms, your hands,
the happens mind of another kind,
settling not in stones but
in sands
a habitual mess of ingraining
always draining and seeping

never enclosing,
fostered only by a feint solace
in the flooded catacombs of yours.

A participance of midnights moons
in these swimming conversations,
cycled discussions
the rising tides of snake eyes
with one onerous touch
submerging your voice

into a fragmented drowse

burning notes left from pictures
choking out all that swirls
the delirious magnetism of weight that pulls to you
creating an astringent terrain,
as your blood is spilling down

a pipeless drain.

A manifestation of ego's brain bubbling down
under the masque of self-worth and integrity
into a thick mud
painted with entitlement

across a dotted line

the deeds of your fascinations
possessions to another
inclinations unbeknownst to you,
against the black skies
opposing truths of deflection

you find yourself with silkless ink
writing what you think it to be
beyond your skin

and the closer the pen drips
the tighter the bolts become
on the grips over your perception
a darker rainstorm

straining out
lifelessly.

Pressure slowly eased
into soothful washing
though cliffs eroded from memory

cresting the hall
that remains beneath

as a little boy
with glassless eyes
and a mouth full
of rose thorns,

Greeting you

To the welcomes of goodbyes,
until the shrill whispers
of the sirens of deception call you

once more

threading over your faces
elapsing the rims of reality,
overgrowing its garden
into a shipwrecked valley

warped by tainted reveries.

What the **** kind of artist am I? I say I'm a poet, but you wouldn't know it if you saw me through my eyes. My whole existence is just a guise. I compromise my way through the day, wasting away what little talent I may possess. I'll confess that I've been impressed with some of the things I've managed to remove from my chest, but it would be in jest for me to suggest that I've ever given anyone or anything anywhere near my best.
I grieve the death of communication, but with each anxious breath my verbal constipation gets gridlocked, words backing up and choking out, leaving me a broken stutterer, muttering to myself that I'm a stupid schmuck, a ******* out of luck, wasting time and getting stuck, with the most frequent word in my vocabulary being ****...
I'd be a sitting duck if it weren't for my sheer stubbornness shoving this struggling mind to rise like a hawk, terrorizing the skies with my fantasized verbiage and tantalizing turbulence. NO one else has a plane of thought that swerves like this, and when I crash land, I trudge across the tumultuous terrain to prove my worth to myself.
I create my own living hell, my own prison cell. My heart knows I excel, but my eyes only open when I fail, which makes it hard to tell if I've gained any traction. My prison bars have cut my vision into fractions, marring my perception and staring the conception of self dissension.
I spelunk through the sunken wonders in my skull, wandering from wreck to wreck, scouring the decks for hidden sets of similes to act as seeds for my flowering dreams. My dreams always seem just out of reach, but comfortably within my sight; and although I yearn to touch, apparently seeing is good enough to keep me sedated.
I'm compensated with overrated praise from those closest to me. I have to hold boulders above my shoulders to keep my nose to the grindstone as I blindly roam through forests of undone poems, revealing themselves to me as blazing trees, jealous of the message held by their burning cousin. Dozens of roots grew though my veins, ingraining my fingers as I walked through the smoke, groping with my broken limbs, hoping for that day to come when tires swing from my bows again!
But I won't settle for being one of them-- a motionless stem, potent with potential that lies latent beneath layers of sentimental protection. I stave off being rooted by stripping my bark bare and shooting my words into the air instead. The leaves bloom and blossom inside my head, allowing me to dream in color, compounding fantasy and reality into the blurring plurality that's governing between my ears.
My horizons delight my eyes with sights of blinding brilliant bouquets of vibrant prisms that could make prisoners cheer.
They give me hope. Hope that one day I can cope with myself, stop blocking my path with felled trees, and just be pleased to have been Me.

I open my lungs to the moist dirt between
sidewalk cracks.

Atoms severed  from the whole transcend
previous existence, take flight and enter my

body evaporating through tunnels, sinus
storm-drains built beneath my bones.

Particles intertwine themselves around
rooted hair shafts, excite neurons

electrical synapses, the sinew of sense
and memory ingraining fleshy shores of

my brain with cartography not yet understood.

So I too one day amputate this existence, navigate
to the peel covering concrete entombed earth

becoming dust, mud levees holding back waters
swollen by the pull of moon, slow earth thrown

to the casket. The comital of broken deadfall
in winter buried in un-named forests turned

black earth, turned home to black shelled
scarabs, turned nest.

Let the earth do this turning lament for me
let me be food for hungry worm mouths

the secret held between the hands of mice
warm within their family den, to the beak of young

howls turned night hunters, let me feed their
wingspan, nourishing fascia, the miracle

consensus between hard muscle fiber and
soft feather wherein miracle of flight is born.

Let the earth kneed me into nucleus seed
from where its hands are born,

forms sinuses from hollowed trunks and
lines its bones with me

If I need to write to forget your name
Am I really forgetting it?
Or just ingraining it more?

'I Am'

Not a boy, but a storm with skin.
I am torrential rain, a collapsing
     a down-pour of life undone, a schism of floods, living water, a death, & a rebirth after a ten-month drought.
I am sleet, disheveled, heavy, a frenzied tapping
frozen fingertips against snare drums echo within shockwave rhythms after a ten-month drought.
I am pouring,
ingraining caverns of joy, & pain
through broken dams —
     cascading into forest fires leaving
    only ash.
'I am, I am.'

I am the black sheep, and the sun's warmth on your cheek, drying your tears after a long winter's bite.
I am dying tree branches determined to rip down the skyline, stitch-by-stitch.

I am the Phoenix rebirthing in scarlet, enraged.
I am the fists through Earth's many graves.

I am the Black Phoenix that never rises, rotten.
Eyes sunken, a gaze that still hits as a brass-knuckled fist
~
a thousand faces, they all look the same, in a thousand voices they speak my name.

A thousand words — one lie
like a storm
I do not hide
feel me in the air.
tripping electrical currents,
& blackening clouds
brewing over,
the darkening, and the sea,
raindrops beating windows
like fists smashing bones.
mind my energy,
hurricanes, tornadoes, whirlwinds,
swirling tailwinds underneath skin.
Though I've never seen it before
I've fathered a soul, so apocalyptic
       Born by war,
continuously hushed
by the hands of others, so frenetic
Growing with age,
anything trapped eventually becomes unchained ~

My soul is cryptic
but when the storms have
ceased their weeping,
& my lightning has
left scorch marks of the Earth - a story.
I hold the gentleness
of a summer breeze
in my hands.
The calmness
of Heaven's seas
in my heart.
One Angel, or One Devil,
never far apart.

'I am, I am.'
a loose-thread tear right through the fabric of reality.
——
I keep trying to find my footing,
the walls are made of glass.
Trapped, here, in the enmity just teetering
           over    the        gap.


By: Ashton Conor Amstutz