Write on the bathroom wall this:  


Diligence is probably slaying rebellion

Dreaming comes out of an atomic bomb

Your girlfriends in a gang that’s lead by prostitutes  

Cavemen getting punched in the face by men  

Werewolves developing a crush on skinheads  

Soldiers experimenting with martyrs  

Your nextdoor neighbor pretending not to know a *****  

A gypsy writing love letters to a villain  

A guy you once dated driving away from a distant memory  

Your mother at a funeral with an executioner

Mind control freak making eye-contact in an elevator with a flight of birds  

Gleefully bulldozing gigantic flaming embalmers underground  

Ferociously inspiring detail-oriented museums in the dark  

Painfully sorting through stainless steel students backwards  

Electronically sorting monophonic apparitions in the shadows  

Faithfully inhaling Armenian scorpions at tea time  

Briskly hovering above loud controlled substances eaten by America and spat out  

    Dream about this next time you sleep:  

Quizzically exquisite keyholes inside a sunken ship  

Wearily alcoholic skeletons invading our love  

Sharing sternly precious lithographs with Charles Manson  

Adoringly high-pitched frescos out on the streets  

Wildly crunchy affairs with reckless abandoned hope  

Her boyish handymen is like Mona Lisa without her brows

Sensually cuddling big pistols  

The AntiChrist finds the cure for cancer in the local pet shop

Mary Magdalene can sometimes lead to your soul’s desire  

*** can (and often does) lead to motherhood  

Absolutism has never touched cooperation  

The Tao Te Ching manifested properly may ease the destructiveness of Christ  

******* is hindered by believing in motherhood  

Nature encourages rebirth and recycled courage  

Ashtanga Yoga is more important than victory  

An inspired mind isn’t always The Bible  

Energy must always conquer evolution  

*** is a decent alternative to nightmares wouldn’t you agree?  

Electricity is a manifestation of mercy and Tesla  

Pleasure feeds on Gandhi’s sweat ridden bald head  

Candidly breaking dormitories brimming with joy  

Barely used unstable translators outside the lines  

Enjoying calm lavish casino hotels with the electric eager manicurists of tomorrow  

A janitor burying a troop of apes while nature contributes to death and new yesterday’s  

The unknowable comes out of knowledge  

A ***** mind finds the cure for ignorance in patience and the aloha spirit

Education contains traces of drugs and alcohol and also combats drugs and alcohol  

Satan always enjoys Richard Dawkins.

Someone once told me that love was blind.
Youth is wasted on the young,
We are all going to die.
After un-clutching scraps of what I'll never find,
This is all that I've brought.
I am all that is mine.

Don't ever, ever, little girl,
Listen to the old.
The world of those who
Raised them were as dark as
Devils compared to the
Funlit days we live.
To them, infatuation came
In work's way.
To them, romance was
Mind's comfort; the
Substance of fantasy.
In our world, your heart's
Every beat for another
Rings as true
To Love's ears as
Her own
To herself.

Yet the cloak hangs so heavily
Around all of these scenes.
Each notion a portrait,
Undistinguished and vague yet
Littered with details strewn in
Alarming
Array.
I take with rock salt
All that they've had to say.
For how does dim
Memory
To a feeling
Compare?

Let us forget to look back
And listen for
Wisdom.
Let us forget to ask
For opinions; vantage points.
All fingerprints blur
In time and fade forgotten
Into their surfaces; the
Grip they once formed
Long, long released.
Love, if only for a second.
Love, even if you know
That it's wrong.
No love ever was.
Love.
You'll have bigger
Regrets in time.
Only we know
What it means to be
Exactly this
Young
Today.

Only I
See through these keyholes
Carved upon my Face.
I am free from pre-conceived restraints.
I am a beacon
Of naïve wisdom,
A sponge for all feelings
Un-hardened by fate.
Suggestions
Directions
Instructions abound.
I am free from these shackles,
Boundless heartwaves
Resound

I see not your keyholes for the
Key in my eye. You are
Divine Feminine expressing Herself
Through yourself; as yourself.
Quill dipped in own wisdom.
Heart's blood and history.
Afloat in eternities of
Utter female
Warmth.
Someone once told you that love was blind.
That youth was wasted on the young.
I don't want to hear you
Sounding that old
Ever again. Notions.
Heartwaves. Manifestations.
Art saved. Inspirations.
Emotions.

Marooned  land-locked
    on  island  earth

Born with an orphan’s
    unknowable ache

Born with an empath heart
– always feeling too much –
mystic receptors wide awake
    in a highly sensitive soul

It’s as if I've walked along
      forever alone,
    one step at a time,
    lost in a restless nebula
from the earth to the moon

Consciously dreaming
      to steal away, 
bearing the weight of the sky, 
upwards over the mountain,
away from these chains
         that bind

    The maelstroms echo
behind silenced, probing eyes
with an unsated thirst
      to be wanted
    dead or otherwise:

Never understanding
    the reasons why,
spinning around in my head;
where "once upon a time"
        was hidden,
        buried alive              

A lifetime spent trying
    to unlearn the things
    I wish I’d never
    sought to know,
    clinging to the love
I've touched in my life
  evermore enwombed
       in my heart

    Passing milestones:
walking another barefoot mile
passing so many locked doors
    without keyholes
– way outside the lines –

    Choking on all
    the latent words
      lay fallow, 
      left unsaid 
Always looking for
something dreamt
but seldom manifest 

Growing so tired and weary
with no one standing by my side;  
no one to lay down beside me
    to take a rest for awhile

Just another chapter
in a timeless same old story;
  another dark star
      burned – out
      – vanished –
into the utter obscurity
of a sky so close and yet
       so far away...


Jesse Stillwater ... August 22, 2018

Ears are like keyholes
Words are like keys
If what is said doesn't fit,
it won't go in.
If what is said is denied,
the words will be changed
to fit the ears.
But every notch you fill,
every carve you make,
is only hurting you.
It's a pain that is subtle at first,
but the reality of it sets in;
you crumble to pieces.
I've changed so many keys
to fit so many ears,
but I can't stop,
even when every tear is like acid.
Ears only want specific keys,
and will turn away anything else.
It's about time someone listened
to the raw words that mumble in my mind.
It's about time that I force the key in,
instead of shaping it to their liking,
instead of leaving scars on my cheeks.
It's about time,
for them to
face reality.

I downloaded my honest expression of feelings for you
but it came as a zip file
and I’m hardly tech savvy
so It sits in my hardrive with the other long lost files
like that first bike ride without training wheels
and christmas back before it all got so painfully awkward
two spaces above it
is the memory of being chased by angry farmers on tractors
and the file I edited last
was my self-image profile picture

I want you.
but sometimes wires don’t connect and the connection tends to
falter - lag
so I sent my mind to the pornographic district
where the lights flicker so red, like your favorite shade of lipstick
and for a few minutes there I committed biblical abomination
which is a fancy ******* way of saying I jacked off
before checking my local news site for the five day forecast
rain, rain, rain, rain, but a hint of sunshine

Woah! That’s a risky site! Are you sure you still want to continue?
not really. But last time I checked I never asked you for anything
so I’m buying the ingredients for happiness on ebay
two parts forty ounces of malt liquor
three parts resin stained smoking apparatus
two parts the wrong crowd
and ten parts stupid *** decisions
now I’m stumbling upon locked door keyholes
to see bootleg copies of your next summer blockbuster
they’re worth the ten dollars a pop - I’m just broke

I tried to upload a **** shaming video of you to youtube
but it was taking too **** long to process
so instead I tweeted all 140 of the characters I have played
and wrote you a bittersweet, scathing review
4.5 stars out of 5 - would not recommend
#FuckYou
I would still swipe right to your front door on silent nights
smelling like a bad rock and roll cliche
saying the same one liners over and over again

I listened to your swan song on spotify
and yeah, I’ll admit, It had me swaying
but that might just be the new “Twenty dollar a week diet”
I was forwarded online
so skype with my self-esteem
and IM me your holy of holies
and I’ll pretend whichever God you follow is up there somewhere
maybe I am just a post on your blog
maybe I’m just the virus causing you to curse at low speed internet
but I think you should leave your ISP a nasty voicemail
because this headspace is corrupted
and this computer is crashing towards an eternal shutdown

God loafs around heaven,
without a shape
but He would like to smoke His cigar
or bite His fingernails
and so forth.

God owns heaven
but He craves the earth,
the earth with its little sleepy caves,
its bird resting at the kitchen window,
even its murders lined up like broken chairs,
even its writers digging into their souls
with jackhammers,
even its hucksters selling their animals
for gold,
even its babies sniffing for their music,
the farm house, white as a bone,
sitting in the lap of its corn,
even the statue holding up its widowed life,
but most of all He envies the bodies,
He who has no body.

The eyes, opening and shutting like keyholes
and never forgetting, recording by thousands,
the skull with its brains like eels--
the tablet of the world--
the bones and their joints
that build and break for any trick,
the genitals,
the ballast of the eternal,
and the heart, of course,
that swallows the tides
and spits them out cleansed.

He does not envy the soul so much.
He is all soul
but He would like to house it in a body
and come down
and give it a bath
now and then.

~

gold-encrusted jewels dance
on sun-drenched ocean stacks,
his rugged rocks etched deep
by her waves from far beneath,
and Pacific’s gusty breath;
his wind-swept islets burn,
aflame in sunset's dying embers,
like a lover's siren call.
his chiseled keyholes waiting
for the ciphered piercing rays
to collide in rushing tidal spray.
unlocking sunset's golden hour...
surging forth then quickly fades,
as sunbeam fingers slowly slip,
beneath horizon's sultry lip;
dusk unfolds in magic hues,
molten rose turns scarlet blues,
night descends as one by one,
we raptured star-kissed lovers
disembark this ferris wheel;
the curtain falls again,
with sea and rocks
rehearsing lines
to play again another day.
this their theatre
of the night,
performed by two alone,
beneath the moon
and starry sky.

~

*post script.

our last time through in 2004 was a blur on our way through to San Diego, an exhilarating ride for certain, with all of its bends and curves experienced top down in a convertible, but hardly doing justice to Big Sur’s stunning scene in mere hours; we told ourselves we simply had to return.  

it took eleven years, and this time we spent a full five days and nights along Highway 1, towing a camper and slow-driving south from Monterrey all the curves to Morro Bay, exploring just about every hike and lookout in between; and in so doing, validating our return in a most satisfying way.  Big Sur is officially off our bucket list!  her sunsets were particularly rewarding, especially two... one enjoyed at sea level, from the sand and keyholes at Pfeiffer Beach day use area, the other delighted us from high above the ocean waves, seated at the picnic table of our cliff-side camp site at Kirk Creek Campground.

a most refreshing time to recuperate and recharge our spirits; five glorious days of disconnection, reconnecting to nature, each other and best of all, life at the speed of sunsets and star gazing; evenings spent round the campfire with no cell, no i-pad, no laptop, only the light of the fire, the stars and that sparkle in each other's eyes!

Some where he sits or gorily sleeps
The blank stare behind a rigid cut
Eyes of a seductive Mongoloid
Offering nothing for the poison of the sea

The arbitrary swirls of mechanical time pieces
Add  heavy track to this an
already shady beat

all the While A reproduction of some Germanic doll
Shrinks smaller into the keyholes
of his frontal lobe

A pleasant amnesia of the purist kind
This anglo doll she is now just a capsized pin
Her black and white knee socks mold into a geosed canvas
Ready to be re-painted with all the emotions he has left

What if I told you I loved you?
By the stairs with the works of post-modern misunderstanding
But it will be just a whisper of shear for the racket builds upward
The spinning mechanics joined by the school busses stopping forever

Yes that statement of old is clearly devoid
Merrily a swallow’s anthem
An absurd tangent of malfeasance
Almost a monosyllabic destruction

Only some misshapen coke spoons remain
As well asthe hands of a man who is much safer out of bed
The saline was much too dodgy
And the sheets…..Well they were never clean

I have seen the boy tear at the stitches his shadow sowed,
You are an old man who I have neither a need, nor a want of anything,
I have seen lungs gasp for air while the stupid ******* drowned you,
Hidden in the Old Mill, left to drink Complan and ***** nightmares,
I have seen your mother dying whilst she was making the children sandwiches from her bed,
The Lost Boys forgot, grew old and had Lost Boys of their own,
I have seen you try to fly from the world which is now on your shoulders, whilst the eagle circles in the sky you dreamt of,
The storm of madness continually crashes against our walls of concrete and imagination,
I have seen failure after successive failure wave to me from those eyes,
A father and a husband locks himself alone when the sentiment kicks his guts,
I have seen a head wrenched back to the barrage of pills and pain by wretched Ephialtes and his like,
Running from the hospital because they want more blood,
I have seen you scared, naked and drinking toilet water,
Everything went blue and time slowed down in riotous Belfast,
I have seen ****** and *****

We nursed our bruised bodies and mutinous minds from themselves,
I have seen late night talks of tears but freeing none whilst brooding on Dundee benches,
You misunderstand my intentions but I do not blame you,
I have seen petrified thoughts begging for company, abandoned to fight the lonely nights,
In dark rooms full of empty Coke cans and never-to-be-used condoms,
I have seen the miscarried baby and the aborted foetus and I have wept in secret over dreams of their lamented birthdays,
Prodigies of stardust and walking infinity,
I have seen a baby boy born into dyslexia, depression and death,
Reflections meander on the television with maddened eyes and religious fists,
I have seen the bite marks on my own arms as Fenrir knaws at his chains,
Graveyard whispers cry of Elliott Smith and James Dean,
I have seen the suicide note torn into pieces, but put aside ready to be glued back,
My brothers Icarus, Atlas and Prometheus all shake their heads in dismay,

I have seen friends and strangers and imagined all lives unlived,
Felt every tear I have not cried, cried every tear I have not felt,
I have seen the life that will never be and thereby choose not to live,
Sing a requiem for futures lived,
In the present now passed into the past,
I have seen prison bars,
I have seen closing doors without handles, hinges or keyholes,
I have seen the invisible voice,
I have seen beaten tracks leading nowhere,
I have seen blue eyes stare back from the abyss,
As soon as see me, gone,
I have seen forests of my mind burning,
I have seen the scorched mattress,
I have seen a lifeline on your wrist dying to live,
I have seen Ragnarok,
I have seen too much and felt not enough,
Though I could bear no more

Holy Trinity of death, divorce and debt,
Haunt the adult-minded children,
Manifest the shroud of sorrow around you,
As if a shield of darkness unto all light,
My legs are not yet buckled but do sink with every blinded step,
I have seen words upon pages but not felt the anguished breath slap me as you scream them in my face,
I have seen everything and nothing, that which has and has not,
I have seen things never to have been, be,
I have seen things never to have happened, happen,
I have seen a woman **** for feelings that never come,
I have seen her undress me with her stare and then blink,
I have seen a forgotten man escape his crazed mind by losing it,
I have seen him in love with ghosts that are not dead,
I have seen children fading from photographs that do not exist,
I have seen them lost in a Neverland that never was,
I have seen; now please let me see no more, not ever,
Now I am lost,
Now I have seen enough,
Please no more, not ever,
I have seen enough.
I have seen enough.

Everything (physically) erased, nothing ever forgotten. Every word spoken or written is engrained in my brain, I will never be the same. Unlike no other you came you conquered you (changed). Seven existential hours that would change my DNA and internal making, making, making what I knew up until then surprisingly malleable. Your words your actions your face your voice filled up every millimeter of me that everything else inside was pushed to the brim and seeped out of my pores. Everything I once was became everything you ever were, ever are. There is a chair in the back of my mind that is reserved for you to sit there and continue to hotwire (my mind) and thoughts into something much better than I ever could have fathomed. Your puppet strings control what and who I am and it is impossible to think there is any other living organism that could possess that undeniable ability. There is a keyhole somewhere inside myself. There is a key inside of you. Keyholes the size of pinholes as vast as Sirius. Small, believable, existing. Keys the shape of orchids and birch as natural as the metamorphosis of roots (into) trees. I never knew what (my) purpose was until you. Or maybe I always knew what I was before you and you opened the windows to the (soul) otherwise known as brown eyes so timid to everyone besides you. The smallest organs became so (full of) nothing but visions of you. There is a special place in my slowly beating heart perfectly executed to fit all of you. A twin bed that only holds one girl has an infinite amount of room for whatever (love) you could continue to bring into my life. The impossibility to (for)get and erase has left me with an endless amount of hope to see you again. The possibility of knowing that you are still somewhere out there and I am still somewhere down here, although unsure where. I cannot ascertain whether or not feelings are reciprocated but I know I know they are. I know you know where you are. I know you know I do not know where I am but you could figure it all out for me. You had it all figured out for me. Plans stretched farther than the 3000 miles separating my red string from yours. Our strings are still connected. There is nothing in the world that can cut them no matter the distance no matter the people no matter the time no matter the place. I know and somehow you know fate will bring our two oceans together. One calm ocean full of creatures so logical and tides so serene they make a beautifully flawed human being known as yourself. One ocean plagued by waves and uncertainty as to what is below the surface that makes up a human being, me. Both oceans surround land full of love. Our continents will merge. Our love will emerge. (You, only you.)

small hour memories
of childhood corridors
from witches in the rafters
to lovers, spied in keyholes,
full of grief and laughter

When my grandfather passed away, my brothers and I held my dad with slanted eyebrows and stiff, silent upper lips. Because we are young and foolish and still learning. Because we’d never really had to do the holding before and, as far as we knew, this is how men mourn.

We dusted antique left-behinds with delicate, moth-wing hands that fluttered here and there and never stopped trembling -- dead giveaways that within the corridors of our arms our heartbeats went stampeding, arrhythmic. We couldn’t quite bend them into the proper shape for prayer, so instead we ran them, with touch somewhere between float and feel, along every ashtray and age-stained picture album. In that moment I think we each wished that memory read like braille, but no one ever said as much. Because this is how men mourn.

We honored our patriarch with whiskey, hidden away for what must have been twice my age, between the carved out pages of old stacked books.
We drank like secrets. His portrait played witness.

We promised between our teeth with tinged lips tight, keeping words in that might otherwise crumble us like great ancient empires.

We singed and smoldered in a burn that coated our throats, quelling a choke that kept climbing its way up from a chest that never quite stayed sunk. Boys grow up loving the clinking twist of unlocking deadbolts but men peek through keyholes. Because this is how men mourn. Silent and straight with head only slightly slanted.

But when my father betrayed his rigidity with words that clicked clean like unfastening locks, we traded this stale air in for wind laced with the electric taste of thunderstorms. We forgot how men mourn.

When my grandfather passed away, my brothers and I held my dad with lightning behind bleared eyes. Because we are young and foolish and still learning. Because we have umpteen days left to dress in bittersweet vestiges and, as far as we know, this is how men live on.

it is a strange practice, learning to understand someone
it begins with a rough sketch of 'the way they feel about
their parents' or 'what happened to their siblings'
and it progresses on with a Myers Briggs evaluation
sometimes taking their mental pulse in different subjects
marking what they care about and what they don't
enscribing the single sentence of their
self-worth, their desire, and their motivations
on whatever it is that binds the two of you together,
and growing with them and learning the way in which they grow
you know their crystal lattice and you know how it forms
a molecular structure in fractals, in fractals, in fractals
that builds and changes but is always quite the same,

I know what makes you laugh,
I know how to make you cry,
I have learned you and I know
which keyholes can be pressed, slid into, or clicked
I know of all your crevices and your breakages
and I know how to fix them or how to
drive a wedge so deep inside you that you splinter
I can map when your breath is short and I can chart
your secrets on the walls of my heart, kept there
like a case-file in a robbery- you have stolen
me, my very existence,
and there is an arrow and a pin and lines drawn
to every single bit of who you are
I have learned you, I have measured you,
you have been weighed and found wanting
and I know what it is you are wanting in the depths of your being
but the finding of these things is difficult and rocky and awkward
for you have taken what it is that is me and you have
patterned it over the immense and layered texture of you
breaking and filling holes, pouring into a mold
and I am invested, now, for I am made for you,
but there is no turning back and we must go on from here
I learn and change from the people around me
but first I must learn you.

It is a strange practice, learning to understand someone,
but once I understand you, then
now, now we can begin.

Smiles locked away behind doors
Tip tapping of feet upon the floors
A closed up room for two souls
A love seen only through keyholes

Laughter heard through the walls
As two hearts tumble down the halls
A slight change to the pace of my pulse
And an emotional reaction of convulse

I realize that my heart has speed up
My mind can't seem to shut up
Not sure if you and I are a thing
Or is this just a little something something?

- E.A.F

beads of salt and sweat edge
the Cuban sandwich zest from
the tip of my tongue
flavors of my own theme song
echo in my throat

I'm merry ******* footfalls
on hot concrete snares
and the groans swinging
between my thighs take lead
singing cat whistles
along Main Street

snakes will be snakes
and tight cotton shirts
is asking for venom vial shots

don't worry though
those are my brother's loosened trousers
I'm a sweet gardener
I hold doors open
and voted for Hillary
I'm blinding reflection
standing over the hill

but don't shake my thoughts
with your pepper singed howls
cleaning you up messes my stride
dress like a lady and
monsters look for prettier things

oil stains dripping through
the elbows of my shirt
writes working man sonnets
across noir alley doorways
named Touch But Don't Tell

keep quite and use the suggestion box
and don't blame me for chromosomes
genetic randomness isn't my fault
biochemical cocktails don't drown babies
you just fill your bathtub with them

why do you need life jackets
to fill my shirts
empty your oil can and get a promotion
so you can buy your own

I'm tattered sheets stuffed
over hotel window rails
you're a frail damsel selling dreams
I won't buy, I peep keyholes
save digital copies and call the cops
stop screaming and let me save you

your fingers compress a sweaty glock
rioting my stomach
your tones too ******* loud
remember I loaded the bullets
so at least credit me the shot

beads of blood and sweat
whisper cat o' nines tails
see I'm your martyr
but only on favor street.

plot out distances between freckles
and count the amount of hairs;
in a beauteous analysis
a cold witnessing
of)a featured lifeless gaze
projected onto windows
refracted in time with the pounding
from lost soulless ghouls
in a dank puddled basement
as we stare through keyholes

the length of life waits to rescind
to wash up on the shoreline
anew, once refreshed
with Angina on

wading in cyclic waves
in deposits of reveries
stale orangeade sonatas
and dull area tirades


the purpose
economized

every axiom
americanized

and as your atoms become depersonalized
tension is materialized, in ornate ivory
shattered brass instruments rusted by
novels written to god
in a
fractured light
and range

cramped in a curtailed distance
a brickwall deadend universe
gnashing with frustration
****** yawns of futility

closed viaducts
and vacant lots
deafened eyes, grey
glimmering in retort
to their own expression


blind sight was squandered by the snapback, of all the
strings of the orchestra as they were simultaneously snipped
by sharp prying eyes, listening to the mixing of paint
to smell the music, its arms limp, vivid
wishing to pull you back (in hindsight)
with dreaded, deadened incantations
a dithyrambic liturgy to the drunken thoughtless night
of slurred litanies and unappeasable, irascible deities
lonely and immaculate, all-powerless and deft
in irksome quarrels and arguments
glossed over by the fine print of another
exalting the vainglorious self-inscribed paragons
and revelling every inadmissible mistake

gazing past to a solo star
dumbstruck and dead
from an evaluation
and dehydration

dying to know
forget it.

I am love's Savant
Of perilous divining;
No simpering hierophant,
Of the desperately climbing.

For love arrives naked,
Sans cloak or cloche,
While love's finger beckons,
For me to come close.

I'm privy to his prophecy;
To the keyholes I tiptoe,
Where I see the aristocracy-
In flagrante delicto.

As his scribe, I'm resigned
To write impassioned words;
Still, desires will not rewind-
Even though they be absurd.

dead soldiers swing from the tree branches behind my house
and i can hear crevices of ice being formed on the lakefront
as the ice cracks in the agonizing cackle and slow mournful croon of a dying animal or a small child

romance me around the tables and kiss me between the bars
hide all the ******* in the keyholes and don't let me forget this keycard

i told you, officer
she went to get ice for some drinks and when i woke up she wasn't here

She has had enough
Of looking through the keyholes
of her own apologies
observing  silently
like the tiniest of dust particles
that nobody truly sees
She has had quite enough
of being that shadow that lurks within her own soul
She is sick and tired of the flag of "sorry"
Flapping high above the breeze while she is stuck
down below
just waiting as the world passes by
She has had it,
so sick of hiding within that small silent room
as the colors fly in whirls outside the tiny window
gracing the touch of her fingers
as the flutter of butterfly wings
She is ready to break down those walls
with the one sledgehammer
that she now
discovers is in the room
Rusty, standing up
In the corner
Unrecognizable but for the cloak of dust.

Dust and rust aside somehow,
she can feel it and it is unstoppable
pushing back the cobwebs in that prison cell
that she herself created
She is ready to unfurl
Fly out into the light
The horizons of her world
are already exploding
Shards of glass fly from it…
from where she's not sure
The walls pushed back through an invisible force
that simply was there
all along.
Here, feel that dance of multi-colored
Light
Coming in with each breath
As the heart and soul expand
Now there is no way
but up and out.
Timid hands open the door a crack
And like a magnetic force
She is almost ****** through
The time tunnel of freedom
Almost….
Like the tiniest of snails slides back into the
comforting shell
But then she wields it
taking charge.
Pride is on the shelf
and courage large
Sledgehammer roars through the air
and smashed walls
lead to freedom -
not slippery as the black ice she once tripped on
but as smooth and graceful as the stride
of a delicate wing
as it licks the sky
in her rising.

I am rain streaked windows that cake with dirt, showing time veins from beneath itself, in rivulets on it's surface.

I am screaming. I am screaming. I have no voice louder than the ones in my head.

I am a stutter step tap dance down long streets that I would like to walk again because I think, but don’t know for sure, that they will lead me home.

I am dancing. I am dancing. I keep time to the rain, like millions of heartbeats on the tin roof, ticking away the days until I hang in the air.

And then we find the little cracks that let light through the dark parts of who we are and we press our mouths to them and drink the light like air. We are drowned sailors who believed what the sirens promised. We believed we could drink enough light in, to make us holy.

She is keyholes to peek through at the woman *******. My sight is the skeleton key that will open new worlds when I see that she can be more beautiful when she is uncovered. And more beautiful for not being afraid to be uncovered, because she doesn’t know I am watching. But I am. And she is more beautiful for not knowing.

And her face is a tear streaked looking glass, with make up showing the time lines from beneath the lies on it’s surface.

She is crying. She is crying. I have no way to calm her anymore.

Then is the promise of midnight love making and forever kisses that burn onto your soul and will never go away. And some will cover themselves like a tattooed man on a carnival pier, right between the fire eater and the fortune teller. There will not be room left for true kisses soon and no way to make room for them.

He is coloring book scribbles that stray from the lines with bad choices and noble intentions, autographed on it’s surface.

He is lonely. He is lonely. I have no way to teach him to trust.

Then the white sheets. Bleached and boiled in copper pots. Starched and straight and folded. She is the pillow case at the bottom of a constantly growing pile of untouched linens. And save for the closets occasional open and close, there is no light.

The pile dwindles, top down, but those at the bottom will never make it on to the bed, it seems. Just locked away in the linen closet. White and pure. And unseen. But the bottom side is darkened and settled in dust. And afraid.

And she is thread barren, white cotton that wishes to be held to the sun and seen through for all of it’s darkest stains.

She is trapped. She is trapped. And I lay my head on sheet less mattresses unable to make her my own.

I thought you should know. I thought you should know.

I am a magnet for surrendered breath and wasted youth. I am open arms that wrap you in and hold you as fanciful clothes to shield my nakedness. I am whispers of comfort that nuzzle your fears that are really just harpsichord bleats to silence my own.

I thought you should know that I am lying. I am lying.
But never about my intentions.
Just about what they become.

In a blanket of breath now pleasantly swathed
Our bodies made broken; prostrate in the fog
Exhumed from the boughs of tree-tops so balmy
On alabaster bones that tremble quite calmly
With thoughts of tomorrow, our miasmic today
That in wistful contemplation is thoroughly dismayed
Like the sullen, windy chimes of a church bell that rings
In the hardened heart of winter, on frost-bitten strings
Which frail, arboreal appendages, with nimble purposes pluck
To indulge the dulcet beds, in which our thoughts are tucked
In a licentious yawn that drifts, from scentless, sleepy shrouds
Like azure ships now sailing, through lofty, lilting clouds
Our pendulous hands still pawning these passionate decrees
With fervent fears to consummate your swiftly slumbered vestige
Atop my flesh, all slick with sweat, and in shadows sorely rapt
The mellifluous hum of reverent sight, through keyholes quickened pass
My heart is estranged from the banal constraint of this stagnant mortal coil
Held aloft in the piercing plea of love’s unbidden toil
All visions captive to the subtle sway of your chest now undulating
Like waves that crash, in rhythms vast; my thoughts, they are invading
Urgency deemed, from unconscious form, in sharp pangs of desire
The crease between your lips, the hand heavy on my hip: the nuances in which I am mired
The idiosyncrasies of you like a poem that is repeatedly folded
And jettisoned into my open mind, where these precious admissions molded
Taking form in tangible caress, to envelop with silken shivers
On the sill of windows wide where lonesome flowers withered
Thus proffered throat, in porcelain quiver, where stilted lungs concealed
In tear-wrought arrows, tempered and true, fly with errant zeal
To pin my ruminant heart upon this ragged, beggar’s sleeve
And chain my weightless body, from where it floats among the eaves

lost in a strange world
  only sense we can find
Is in peering through the keyholes
Of locked doors
we bang our fists
and spread the spark
hoping its sent down wind
setting smoke to the answers within
were drawnto the fire
like moths to a flame
Unwilling to be tamed
by the safety belt of the world
smoke seeps from the lock
and we inhale deep
ravenous for
the taste of something
real
the burn we feel
goes undetected
among the drowning men
In this shallow pool
Of lukewarm genuinity
and over-chlorinated sincerity
but we breath the fumes in
with a whole new strength
we break down the door
unleash the deamons
begging for more
than this
unless
we become one
With the fears,
we become none
so we rise with the deamons
and we rise up
above the conscience
dont give a ****
because we never could fit
Within the boundaries
Of a newborn dying man
these unatainable boundaries
never could never will never can

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were telling me how you visited the zoo;
spent an afternoon watching the zebra graze
and the lions lazily roar at civilians with digital cameras.

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were visiting the zoo, crying on the phone—
How can they keep them in cages
Locked away as if they don't feel like we do
You forget
there are people in cages without keyholes
there are blistered eyeballs scanning a lightless horizon for a lock pick or a clothespin
that may allow them to puzzle their way into the gears
There are people who die searching

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
We chit-chatted about sunbeams and lawnmowers.
We were happy, careless.
There are no cages here.

Only keys.

Swarming in the incense, this part  of “The City”
looked like a Turkish bath, and the books, old & cold,
shivered in trays as they awaited their faux leather,
While a wet winter wind whistled in the keyholes.

By the fallen, balmy cloud the fruits of cactus
lay in a red cart like porcupines colored, tired
of being on guard all the time. Their hues stirred
the hunger of the centenary walls, so their fissures
oozed and their latter-day hieroglyphs began
to crumble.
(c) LazharBouazzi

as i travel across strange plains
along bumpy roads
bouncing on my seat
as i look past my window
focused through the maze of
branches ... through tiny keyholes to paradise
searching for creature iv only seen through glass walls
even with reflex i cant control
the accidental blink of an eye
could rob me of treasures
i cold carry till i die
yet again luck fails me
yet again iv tried
then again i wont be gone
yet gone for long again
i will be back with sparkling hope
to search through the maze again
those tiny gateways to paradise
where creatures beyond those walls dwell in blinded bliss
happy as they are till an other traveler
same thought as mine sees past the ordinary
into that world that untwines