Hold hands and march behind me, buckel up this is a new horror,
A living nightmare unlike anything you have ever seen
Looking at your hollowed out corpse over for the very first time
I saw parts Jeffery only wished while committing his crime.
I'm the piper tricking you along the way; I got you in my trap
And there’s now no escape from my funeral pallor.
Quincy, CSI Miami and even Dr. G,
Could have never prepared me with only what they show on TV.
Downed played and minimalized to the max,
Read my works I'll paint for you all the true facts.
First things first I need for you to stop staring at me
With eye caps and a quick squirt of glue I broke the trance
Good, now I can begin the process and start this slow dance.
Like always I shake their hand and tell them my name
This time was different I got my first squeeze back
For on your right forearm was stained in ink
The first two verses of Psalms one hundred and forty four
After I finished reading I had to get back on track
With an instant snip a stitch is then cut apart
Adding another three ***** to your collection
Pulling them apart I go in first reaching for the clear viscera bag
Holding it up I fondled it all around in the bright light
Looking for the brain I felt it and then saw it come into my sight
Laying out all the puzzle pieces I start with the center first.
So smooth and slick the inside walls of your cage
Everywhere else looked like a time bomb burst.
Feeling all about searching for your iliac artery
Once found you’re now connected to the vat
Using sufficient pressure filling your tissues to full capacity
Injecting first your lower extremities I now see the veins swell
After a six point fill you should look like you’re getting well.
From under the flap and at the root of your neck
I reached in your head and into the hollow space
Because it is now time to try and firm up your mortal face.
With a pair of clamps I kinked your spinal cords fountain flow
Massaging your headless face and then the head *****
All the fluid went right where it had to go
After the fill you looked like you had a new mothers glow.
Now the suction of the liquid residue that smelled fowl
Then came the pressing of a paper towel
Very pleasant smell of wintergreen candy in my nose cause the
Shaking of the can of Bex embalming powder was now to follow.
Pressing here, pressing there, trust it was becoming a pest
Trying to tuck the bag with all your innards back into your chest
Putting the sternum back on top proved it was a perfect cut.
Folding down the three ***** to the point of origin
Was like folding a piece of paper into a paper airplane.
Almost at the home stretch we took turns closing you
And with it a perfect baseball stich and with it a coat of sealer.
Trying hard to keep a secret from for your heads crown
There is no way to do it I can't play it down
Holding the pieces of your skull in my hands
Starring where it has to go back now and back together with no glands
Looking just like what is, "Sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion?"
Me and my youngest son solved Samson's riddle in the Bible,
A seven letter word now needs to be added into the book of Judges because
Together we saw the answer written from a vision in the deserts sand.
Pulling down your face and all the way down to your chin
I lost sight of your eyes I only can see their other side
I now see a notch and the groove where this piece has to go
Gluing it in place I gave back to you your forehead
Tucking and packing cotton towels is your makeshift brain now
With a round file I score four half-moons in the thin bone
So the skull clamps can hold it together and hold it in place forever.
Pulling and stretching your face it was sewed together and with no space.
Now that it's complete you’re ready for a military examination
After getting the green light it's time for the fitting of your uniform
in your aurora steel casket you played in there
looking like the sailor on a ******* jack box.
one last trick to go; have to pull fibers out from the bottom
so your weightless head will look and sink naturally into your pillow.
out the back of a coach with plates that say livery
and into the belly of a plane your shipping container was stamped
Special Delivery.....

(CARSr. 10-24-12)

Gods, what a black, fierce day! The clouds were iron,
Wrenched to strange, rugged shapes; the red sun winked
Over the rough crest of the hairy wood
In angry scorn; the grey road twisted, kinked,
Like a sick serpent, seeming to environ
The trees with magic. All the wood was still --

Cracked, crannied pines bent like malicious cripples
Before the gusty wind; they seemed to nose,
Nudge, poke each other, cackling with ill mirth --
Enchantment's days were over -- sh! -- Suppose
That crouching log there, where the white light stipples
Should -- break its quiet! WAS THAT CRIMSON -- EARTH?

It smirched the ground like a lewd whisper, "Danger!" --
I hunched my cloak about me -- then, appalled,
Turned ice and fire by turns -- for -- someone stirred
The brown, dry needles sharply! Terror crawled
Along my spine, as forth there stepped -- a Stranger!
And all the pines crooned like a drowsy bird!

His stock was black. His great shoe-buckles glistened.
His fur cuffs ended in a sheen of rings.
And underneath his coat a case bulged blackly --
He swept his ****** in a rush of wings!
Then took the fiddle out, and, as I listened,
Tightened and tuned the yellowed strings, hung slackly.

Ping! Pang! The clear notes swooped and curved and darted,
Rising like gulls. Then, with a finger skinny,
He rubbed the bow with rosin, said, "Your pardon
Signor! -- Maestro Nicolo Paganini
They used to call me! Tchk! -- The cold grips *******
A poor musician's fingers!" -- His lips parted.

A tortured soul screamed suddenly and loud,
From the brown, quivering case! Then, faster, faster,
Dancing in flame-like whorls, wild, beating, screaming,
The music wailed unutterable disaster;
Heartbroken murmurs from pale lips once proud,
Dead, choking moans from hearts once nobly dreaming.

Till all resolved in anguish -- died away
Upon one minor chord, and was resumed
In anguish; fell again to a low cry,
Then rose triumphant where the white fires fumed,
Terrible, marching, trampling, reeling, gay,
Hurling mad, broken legions down to die

Through everlasting hells -- The tears were salt
Upon my fingers -- Then, I saw, behind
The fury of the player, all the trees
Crouched like violinists, boughs crooked, jerking, blind,
Sweeping mad bows to music without fault,
Grey cheeks to greyer fiddles, withered knees.

Gasping, I fled! -- but still that devilish tune
Stunned ears and brain alike -- till clouds of dust
Blotted the picture, and the noise grew dim --
Shaking, I reached the town -- and turned -- in trust --
Wind-smitten, dread, against the sky-line's rim,
Black, dragon branches whipped below a moon!

It starts like a beige tuft of fibre
Protruding from a large burlap sack.
As we pull it from the hidden source
It gradually reveals itself.
Simple and unassuming,
A uniform, coloured strand
Which we gather up into a tidy ball.

Sometimes another strand is tied
Onto the one we pull.
A different colour?
A change of texture?
And so we pull that one anew,
We build another coil,
While the original strand awaits.
The interesting new thread,
Reveals itself from the hidden reservoir.

The fibre slides through our fingers.
Slowly, when there is resistance.
Quicker, when it comes loosely.
Now coarse and wiry
Now soft and slippery,
Now thick and tufted.
Tough Scottish highlands perhaps?
Or rural Ontario?

Sometimes the hidden source seems like it may be
A hand-knit sweater that we are pulling apart.
The strands are still kinked and twisted in places,
Echoing a memory of a shape it has held for years.

We recognize bits here and there too.
Colours and textures from our own story.
"I had a pair of socks like that."
"Remember our scarves from those cold childhood winters?"

The collection of small skeins increases.
From a sheep's fleece, yes, but now too
From Alpaca, camel and rabbit.
Cashmere from Pashmina goats in Nepal?

But at last the final strand comes free.
You feel the weight of the coiled wool,
And see the diversity of the colours.
And for each coil
We remember again how it appeared
How it felt.
How the strands
Came together
And apart.

who re-marrowed this hollow tree ?
thought themselves of mythology ?
processed death into the dying **** ?
blunt   blackened hope
           buttering up what god ?
                                   what mischief maker ?
: Loki the crow with his promethean nose ?

covering his crooked actions
                          the defiling of a life
  murderer
  a coward of failed coupling
congress    a night down the pub
    the gender polar pair collided
            sottish upon their union
genitals bragging through urgent gaps in clothing
but that urgency deflated
it muttered away
he felt baited
and
  humiliated    
             he committed to ******

crude amateur throttling
  a ***** sogged brick  
an indiscreet botch up
    and a stolen wheelbarrow  
        to ferry her away

'The Mourning Tree'
           despondently sifts for nourishment
its gummy combs of branches
  sashing particles  from the night solution
the tree ; a cavity
too verrucose and fleshy to whittle the winds
                                               or fife a tune
a rubbery craggle     foreign against the landscape
should   rather   make out its' habits
                  off the floor of a deep sea trench

roughing in the corpse
head first   down the gullet thirstily
skirts up and claustro
between spread limbs
to ***** puckle in the hollow tree
evicting the bird of Minerva
      ‘whoing’ into the charged sky
  blooded over
             the night blackens further
               brooding on the event

who re-marrowed this hollow tree ?
married themselves to a mythology ?
force fed life   engorged within deathly seed ?
upended crime     in lieu of a sacrifice
           he offered a glass of woman
               to oder the night
he strummed teasing fingers
      raked them humming
         through the heady resistance of the air
electric creeping warmth   over the skin
                        erecting the hairs
   museum silence
   an arena    as fraught equal    between magnets
       clouds cut the moon
      moon cut the eye
    sinful kiting to mend a link
ramblings kinked
he makes sparking incantations to the gods

one scatting madman
one corpse woman


that same bled night
where the furrowed fields
            meets natures disarray
children approach this woodland border             
children with empty baked bean tins
      that they joined with lengths of string
trying to reach out their ears
    extend their timid range
       to sprites, nymphs, pucks or faeries
an older kid strikes up a cigarette
one of the younger ones squats to ***
         and be mocked

one brave girl of ten years
  runs a tin and the line into the woods  
it jerks taunt after about thirty paces
she wedges it in a tree fork and runs back
the children crowd the receiver tin
spooking themselves
eavesdropping   
        upon the hollow wisdom of small gods
            that mask their shame in the dark

I walked along the fence line,
hands in my denim-jeans,
headlong into the warm-breeze.
Windmill-blades spun,
squeaking through rust,
wildflowers fluttered
as the sun bore down.

A flock of birds hung
on the top strand
of kinked barbed wire,
scattering as I approached,
spinning up
into a spiral above.

Cool-sweat dripped
down my spine,
reminding me,
reminding me of her,
my dream girl,
the sweat we created
in fields of clover.

The crows cawed,
mocked me,
reminding me
it was now over
and I,
I was all alone
in these empty fields of clover.

It watches me, a single eye
Exaggerated to near ridiculous size
But its attitude is quite serious
A hunger there, that knows no bounds
 Behind it a consciousness delirious
An ill will emanates for miles around

Its guts churn but it has no mouth
Tendrils branch fractally out
 From dendrites linked and pathways kinked
To squirm into the minds of men

They sit on the edges of perception
A vague unease cast over the soul
Which then, recognized, grows deeper
Madness is born, a ghastly conception

The men of the desert tell tales of him
They call him Lie, Ahriman.
I know him well, and I know that when I die
I shall once again see the Evil Eye.

I buy the gluten-free protein bar, peanut butter and chocolate, because this is who I am now. This is me. This is me as a lighthouse of personal fitness, a man of discipline, of a principle or two. And I surf only the most densely populated dating apps, looking—somewhat feverishly, I must admit—for a likeminded woman, a scholar, a child of the moon, a frequent quoter of the Dhammapada, an insatiable and acrobatic lover, and I imagine her driving the dark streets seeking me. Polly in a Prius. My future muse, near but out of reach. We'll reclaim the arts district. She'll piggyback to the open mike, her ****-me shoes clicking in her hand. We'll spend a year politicizing every ****** encounter. Consensual assaults in perpetuity. And she'll say I'm a white man. And she'll say I think this is my privilege. And she'll say she's into leather and she finds my *** offensive and she'll hold my head against the wall. And at the end, if there's an end, I imagine our naked bodies wrapped in a stained comforter, all of the desire spent. I imagine our minds sober and clear, wondering how we could have ever been so kinked out, so on fire for something, and yet so ******* unable to remember a single ****** or whether or not we transcended. I'll vacuum the apartment. Polly will take her Warhol prints, pack up the Prius, and go anywhere, anywhere not here. Seattle. Maybe Portland. A few weeks will pass, and I'll find a note in whatever book I'd been reading before she left. It'll say: I loved you to the max. I loved you to the max. I loved you to the max.

I like to imagine my neighbors having ***.
Familiar faint squeaks catch my interest while ****
cooks red with my lips at the tip of the **** pipe.
First faint then foot to floor driving the grand prix
while exhaling and pale I stare up at the ceiling.
They're *******. That smooth and dark brown,
long black and kinked hair having, bare hairy
belly in leather jacket wearing strange and
tasty cut of chubbed up muscle overpowering
with his plowing, the the soft plump curves
of her in alabaster white, coif cut long but
both the sides, inside her just so open walls,
pounding deeply in snycopated beating
rhythms, in love or lust, it's left to be wondered.
My favorite balancing act, knee wobbling
daring to throw me from the one legged stance
where I perch with my ear in a glass, glass to asbestos,
living vicariously through them as if it's my sole chance to live,
Claire's mystical 1/8's  blare in the stale air from
the lone speaker on my TV and my breathing flickers.
Huffs to gasping puffs to sighs leading to huffs again,
I can't help that I spend time inside my head. I want it.
I dream of my neighbors *******.
Open. Bent down. *** up. Deleting the question marked
space between faces I make outside and in heat, alone under sheets in a bedroom.
I want to be ******.
**** me. Pound me.
Press me down and wrap your hand around my ribs.
Touching. Taking.

A lowly wooden bench lent itself to a lonesome aged narrow man in a common garden in the smallest hour of the day’s beginning. In the thick haze of the summer’s waking light the common is thinly met with the company of others. Just an old man and his acquainted bench who came to give his eyes sight to the grass and trees, and to rid himself of thought.
He and the bench creak as he sits back; clutching at the satchel veiled among his dull drudged garb that bleeds into his pallid slack and cracked skin.
The wiry hairs bushed around his nostrils recoil to the deep inhale before the sigh, his yawning blue eyes sliding behind a milky glaze follow a bushy tailed rodent hurry into the confidence of a tree.
Through all nonchalance a pair of hobgoblin lugs under a brown woollen hat slides up the flanks of his head to outlying drowned tones of laddish laughs and lewd levity, an unseen clutch of kids filling the common’s spread with their foolish louting prances. Intimidating the preferred and performed with their innocuous idiocies; a mere asocial array of follies without the thought of good manner.
The thoughts of the old man are only briefly drawn; his ears leave the sounds of reckless recreation and back to the hushing song of the swaying grass, the rustling shake of the seasoned leaves on gorged and drooping branches. To his own wilted waning heart, the tremors, quiver and shivers within his own cage, his thoughts turned to his own temporal passage and to the re-joining of his love, of whom no longer lays her head on his shoulder, whom no longer wraps herself around his arm on the lowly park bench.
His lowest lip gives to an emotive tremble as he heaves himself over to the hem of the seat, his hands without any other part to play; frenetically tickle one another with frail kinked fingers.
With what little his body has left to give the eyes well to the upmost point of a tear, as he feels the weight of his wallet in his side trouser pocket against the rough of his skin. Where there within lays an image of a most loved face in a prized time, so that it may be remembered so it may fetch ease to a remittent floundering morsel of a man who could justly with the dead.
The photograph within his keeping need not be looked upon from under the shine of a laminated holding; it needs only to be there, only to be known that it is there.
The satchel was undid and fetched from within the clutter came an elderly notebook now held in his hands. A phlegmy husk of something said breeches his gummy chops, and he spits as he spat shouting out at the still of the garden.
“You should always write more than you do,” she would say, “you are better for it when you do and it lifts me as it does you, when you do.”
The old man reads from the notebook with a weak hate for the world.

“Am I for the worms yet? Am I to be from this rock?
Am I not yet too mad for this mad maddening world?
Four corners of an empty house, a homeless place of curling wallpaper and aloneness for company.
A room in a vagrant house with no light to fill it with a decrepit fool for a keeper
His stink stinks the walls for days as the blow flies form a speckled haze as they feast in filth of his unnoticed demise
With no manner of intention and for relation or friend, there is no cause and no mention for any to attend
He will rot with the house and his memory with it, with his memory does his love die and together they are ghosts in a world where ghosts do not exist.”

The old man pauses as he forcibly triggers one finger to his temple and ***** in his lips. His empty cries fall to a mumble as his hands tremble with his dear notebook in their grasp.

“Take me now cruel are the fates, take me now and rid me
The worms will welcome me, my flesh for an endless night
My life for a world without this life, for a life without his world
I would hold with a brim smile if it was not for my memory of her, if she was not to be lost at the close of this stint
I know not or want knowledge; I seek not of a design and not of meaning
Just a cure for this affliction for my must to her who brings me so much sorrow
Through blissful ages I can no longer hold, and can barely recall
We are all just people who will soon be once living, to be unlived and to forget is a conflict in myself
I have no answer as I have no question, you can have no answer to a question you do not seek nor ask
I dare not speak but I have no end for this, I have no solace and I have no end.”
The old man; the poor old man began to close his dear aged notebook and find the need to bring a smile, perhaps a moment of lunacy to calm the tightening knot beneath his breast.
He pulled a scratching cackle from the pit, wild and uncooked wiping the drool from the crook of his maw with the back of his blotched, mottled hand.
The old man found some seconds of a stoic amenity as his wild eyes grew gallant for those mere moments before the grey metal heft of his sullen vesture fell to his shoulders, he became heavy once more as the world retook him and cloaked again in the present - the light ebbed from him as swiftly as it came. The old man reproached his satchel to humbly return his dear old notebook.
There was a crack like a pick to ice with a hollow thud like a boot to wood as an immediately dissipating claret mist fizzed above his head. The make shift found-about cosh still swinging through the air and over his crown, the old man’s wilted body twisted and slumped to the floor face first. The concrete path before him tearing at the skin of his chin, his frail bones cracked as the meagre weight of his body forced itself into his neck. Laying perverse and unnatural the life was soaked up into his woollen hat and out across the concrete, to the grass – to the worms that writhed below the muck. His eyes were as lifeless as they were when he lived.
They did not wait for the gentle hiss of the spray or the bubbles that popped in the pool that surrounded the old man. They had snatched the satchel and ran off into the spread of the common until they were nothing but outlying drowned tones of laddish laughs and lewd levity.
Crazy old *******.
A lowly wooden bench has lent itself to a lonesome aged narrow man in a common garden in the smallest hour of the day’s beginning. In the thick haze of the summer’s waking light the common is thinly met with the company of others. Just an old man and his acquainted bench who came to give his eyes sight to the grass and trees, and to rid himself of thought.

Fear the Mobius
strip mind: one continuous
loop severely kinked.

One day, we will live in a little house.
                                 The color of buttermilk.
                      And we will plant a tree in our yard.

           There we will savor summer
               Sipping sugary lemonade
With our pinkies up, pretending we’re British.

                                                               Gram will visit in the fall          
                                                To can peaches and make homemade jam    
                                                         I’ve always had homemade jam        
                                          “You spoiled thing,” you'll say.  I know, I know.
                                          She will fill our tiny kitchen with nectared steam.

There we will shape snowmen with kinked carrot noses
                 Until our noses are nipped.
                   We’ll warm each other up.

                       There we will delight in spring and urge the buds to bloom.
                                        “Grow, little guy,” we will whisper.
                                                       There, the tree will grow


                                                             *And so will we.

Warped tree, kinked man

Today, I will not argue with Walter on Facebook or Twitter.
I was reading poems from my last collection and was surprised
to find an internal rhythm.
To my horror, I find Walter has unfriended me my friendly thoughts
burned into insignificance.
When I had a motorbike, I often visited the crooked tree
I said:” you look better today, my friend.”
The roots of the tree curled in bashfulness.
At the entrance of the village, an old olive tree they came with an axe
wanted to cut it down, replace it with a signpost.
I protested, so did the other villagers.
The tree is perhaps 500 years old, and we are not
brutish settlers.
But someday, people with no sense of beauty will axe it.

Fear the Mobius
strip mind: one-sided, closed-off
and severely kinked.

as she feared ritualized **** that tribal slavery did entail
Her bloated lips, bowed legs caused Scotsmen to snigger,
while a nose wishbone marked her as a kaffir lily Negress

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.

Put your ear against the day
lub-dub beat slows
throttle hand gives
deep breaths release
kinked shoulders
and the tears that come could be
for anything

this is when
we keep on keeping on

our fingers laced and kinked
to some incited cold

gives us no unction – i leave
you with irreparable harm

trudges across flame, guesses
the assailant of aches.

when these crosses straighten
within the whelm of your mouth

i will curl them again in sweet,
successive manners of graceless joust

and then when you come before i,
or is it i before you — whichever,

this music is never a notice of
ease — only rescue without warning

or attendance, seeping underneath
pallid floor work, lips puckered

pursed to attenuated form of bow
and mine eyes arrow through

your triple deeds arraying
and i can never ignore how immense

the moon is in the river of the same vein
riverrun, away, wayward—

lisps of white and red
and soon obliterated when both our

avenues close and we walk
home, hands separately yearning.

The distinct click-clack of rustic red leather cowboy boots were what first captured my attention. She had her nose in a well-worn book as she shuffled down the parkway to a bench. As she turned the page, I could see an indentation of her fingers on the cover. Although she must have poured through the pages numerous times, she was chewing on her slightly plump lips as if she wasn't sure what fate were to become of her favorite character. The frames of her glasses were not intentionally big, but appeared bulky due to her small stature. The black lenses would occasionally slide down her sun-kissed nose but would soon be readjusted without notice. Her skin was pale enough that her old and slightly frayed jeans must surely still stain her legs blue. As I was about to tear my eyes away from her innocent demeanor, a slight breeze rustled through her kinked long hair exposing a symbol of defiance inked in the form of an animal between her shoulder blades. Her presence was a foreign pleasantry.

How can you be free
links in a chain of command
run far as you can...Kelly McManus

Why cant we do more?
Be more?
Reach for Babel!

All stories told.

Yet we remain cattle,
Chained like links,
Tied by bonds,
Kinked.
We CAN do more,
But first we must unravel,
Travel the infinite highways
Of the mind,
Rewind the needle
And pull the thread.
Shed the unnecessary
"Necessities"
That necessitates a clarity,
Individually,
Away from the herd
Toward the ultimate
Enlightenment:

To do more,
One must first,
BREAK THE NORM

The jet blackness of lives topple matted into a rigged sail
because Ma's Afro locks kinked on the Saharan lion trail
as she feared ritualized **** that tribal slavery did entail
Her bloated lips, bowed legs caused Scotsmen to snigger,
while a nose wishbone marked her as a kaffir lily Negress

Loll in a realm of no regards, shuffle the game of life like
a deck of cards — playing into the quest to uncover who
you really are. Each life begins with a question:
“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Will I be a nurturing mother? A father who can provide
for their all,” each life begins with a question – especially now,
as we ponder this curious phenomenon called life; is it still
worth it, at all. Cloaked in whispers of our cherished dreams,
the most fragile among us are those who beam brightly, even
with kinked teeth.

The gentle craving for a richer life is as tender as the insides
of our teeth — revealing everything we risk on the overflowing
platter of those we disdain; initially, it was a pleasure to meet.
Yet, I was lost in my role in this world at first – bestowed a name
at birth, still grappling with its significance in a titled world –
entitled!

Don’t we pretend that’s what we deserve even from man’s great
fall, who inherited their sin galore. I question it all. Don’t we
all act as if we deserve it all, even after humanity’s great fall,
which bestowed us a legacy of sin?

                                I question it all.

There's a child who's youth is no longer marked by smooth skin.
He's calloused beyond recognition.
His mom can't even see the boy she once knew

She is plagued with worry
Drowning it out at the bars after work
And sobering up when a court mandate  allows her  to see her son
But that's only on every other weekend and alternating holidays.

Parenting party "a" shall receive the child for Christmas on even numbered years.
Parenting party "b" shall receive the child for Christmas on odd numbered years.

There's a child who's spine is no longer all that it used to be.
It's carried the weight of decimated families.
It's been stretched past all tensile capacity
As he's tried to pull himself together
Over and over.
Constantly being shattered, but always being able to stop the pieces from hitting the floor.

[insert jarring onomatopoeia for child abuse here]

The intensity from the hand that feeds him is no comparison to the gnashing teeth of the emotions driving it
As the hate, rage, and blindness is compiling
So is the doubt, fear, and confusion
A young child is left disillusioned
As his world is blown apart yet again
But the fibers of his spine reach out, hanging on to every glass-like shard

Refusing to let even one piece of himself go
Parenting party "a" may not love him but Jesus does
At least the Bible and his grandpa told him so

There is a child who's eyes don't sparkle
Except for each time tears refract the light of truth that's shining in
And It's blinding, searing, cauterizing the wounds
He is unwanted
He is abused
But even if that's all a result of his father's sin
He counts it as a mission failed
So the burden rests on him
If there was an easier yoke
the Bible and his grandpa left it all too hard to find

There is a child who is not care free
He has been indoctrinated as an employee
“Shut up!”
“Yes Sir.”

His stress is crushing his mental health
He can't move his feet fast enough
His resolve is crumbling to ash and dust
He's breaking
There's no faking anymore
He will never be able to do it right
So he starts looking for other doors

"Dad has a gun in the garage, I could...I should"

"No. What would Mom say?”

"I'll just run away" he says

"How far are you gonna get?
The shoes on your feet are mine!
The food on your plate is mine!
All you have is that coat your mom bought, 
that's plenty to get you through winter time!"

If only that little boy knew a way, truth, and light!

There's a child who's been in locked in a prison
It was a mold built by his father
A man who refused to listen
Just pushing his son even harder
Conform to my will!
Contort to my mold!
But that young boy is too broken to bend anymore
And he will soon be too bold
For He found the way. 
He knows deep love
He is God's son

There's a kid who is dead as of this day
His thick calloused skin lies in the ashes
His kinked spine is laying there in fragments 
His self is glass dust blowing through the plain
All of his tears still could not quench the flames
They sit upon the ash in pools stagnant
The prison stands strong as a crude accent
The child is gone but the mold for him stays

There is a man rising up from the dust
He cannot and will not fit in that mold
His back is straight and is made new again
Finally he knows the depth of God's love
Purified through fire and shining like gold
He's a new creature and now has smooth skin

The old woman warming her hands in her armpits.
She stretched her cold-kinked spine.
When she could feel the blood moving in her veins,
Sluggish though it was,
She bent to collect the scattered sticks.

she saw in a bush a few feet away
perched a bird,
its head raised as though in song.
It was white as the snow,
and as she approached
it didn’t fly away. It didn’t move.
The poor thing was frozen solid.
Carefully she pried it from the branch.
She cradled it in her hands and admired its perfection:
feathers as delicate and precise as plumes of frost on a windowpane,
eyes like icy dewdrops.
A tiny icicle of tongue protruded from its beak.
Perhaps, she thought,
if I take it home and warm it by the stove
it will sing to me.
She slipped the frozen bird into her pocket.

Back in her hut,
the old woman built up the fire,
then settled the frozen bird near the stove.
tucking the bird into its folds.
She nudged it closer to the stove.
The room grew warm; Yet the bird remained frozen.
She lifted it gently and held it on her lap.
She dribbled some broth into the open beak.
But the bird didn’t swallow.
The soup spilled from its mouth
and froze into a tiny gem that fell into the woman’s lap.

The old woman squeezed another drop of soup from her finger.
This time, the bird’s song held memories of first love,
of lash-lowered glances and blushing cheeks,
of clasped hands and furtive kisses.
Tears brimmed, and when she wiped them away
they froze on her cheek.
She looked at her.
The song ended and tinged one wingtip.
color and life returned to the bird.
Its feathers reddened to pink and then a brilliant scarlet.
Its eyes grew black and shiny.
and its beak stayed white and cold.
The bird sang of soft golden light
warming the world.