I turned on the news tonight, and saw a familiar face
Maya Angelou speaks of Nelson Mandela
“His day is done, our skies are leadened.”

It hit me then,

Forgiveness is more than  “Oh…it’s okay…”

If a man, a single freed prisoner, can change a whole country,
can forgive oppression, and depression, and apartheid brutality,
Forgiveness is not simple.

Sorry is not simple.
It’s a chance, to open the door to redemption,
Entire countries have forgiven the inhumanity of the past,
And yet all of us, each day,
Become angry for such small matters.

If nations can rebuild,
If Polish person can love a German
After the Holocaust,
We CAN forgive.

Forgiveness is the key to our self-imposed prisons.

My heart was leadened
a frozen feather
in dense ice
spiraling in a tornado.

I grew colder building
a shell to weigh me down
so I could stop spinning;
I dreamt of shattering,
splinters on the ground.

You were a single ray of light
that pierced the storm,
calmed the grey-green tempest,
and my shell began to melt.

I finally saw rainbows.

Your warm breeze
took hold of my heart,
carried me,
taught me to dance;

But even feathers hit the ground.
So I tied myself
to the cobwebs in your heart
and became your dreamcatcher.

Dream easy now,
our nightmares have disappeared.

I.

The pen
Taps
Against my leadened desk,
All reverberating echoes and
Roaring staccatos:

Something to keep the soldiers
Rooted
In the chalkboard trenches alive-

A cackling reminder of
Freedom.

II.

Peeled away is the blissful world of
Morphine-addled haze
And round edges

The smell of pine trees
And Monday Vendetta.

Up in smoke.
Offered to the gods.
The great big furnace in the sky—

I carry them with me in an ashen urn.

As the days pass
A rhythmic stutter
Lumps
At the bottom of my throat.

Leadened yet floating
Arie to the eye
Awry to the soothing whispers,
Of the mother’s cry—
Once beleaguered without volition by self
Now with intuition wrought
Of memories of invisible battles both of fighting and of fought

While the sun shines ever bright,
The bustle a lively hue
Behind the fleeting colors lie
A darkness most uncouth

Oh these vivid pangs of the heavy vast
Seem to forever lie
Within the weightless acquaintance of the ever azure sky

The chains so heavy bite the heels,
But ever do the fated wheels
Spin towards the sun in the East
Towards the lively, the impassioned, the Peace.

The choice lies not within the sky,
Nor in the mother’s tearful eye,
Nor in the darkness of the cloud,
But in the fire refusing the funeral shroud.

at a glimpse i clock the sky
a curtain's been draped
     and we are all shaded
all of nature shares one direction
     narrowing on the horror :
a munking and blotted violation
     the sun has filled with dark ink
an embolism out of the order of life
     voiding over us
                     over the city
                     the world described beyond
                       all voided over

i fall
         dropped
         and shucked
the people around me go simple
dumb and bound with crimple gawps
     we are mugged by the sight

i feel like a farmed over minefield
              furrows being turned
trotted out
             anointed fears climb my throat
it is a show sung ill
          sol
       darker sunk
     than its surrounding leadened soak
yet ringed tightly with an annihilating halo

practical thought becomes clotted
   and my primal processor is tinkered with
evil witterings squirrel about in my thinker
my being is topped up with depravity

i must surely **** someone ?
but who..
(that kid with drool ? /
that business suit with brand name trainers ?)
   and for what reason ?

i madly stare about
look at them ; so human and null
potential victims all
                   raking in snapshots of this ecliptic venom
                     adding to the vat collective online
Prune The Brutes !
it is The Eighth Day and I know my role
Ha !
        such livid thoughts scheme

i shall wait out this exposure looked down upon
take some pics with the others
perpetrate goodly behaviour
mimic the tossers
pass through the ordeal
        with communal protection
                    and live another day
             happy slapped
                       with fresh mad
                               thought

Everything is gone now, just a jack-in-the box that scares
money's already wasted, **** it I never cared,
as usual this life has leadened, sped up my sorry death -
a song written for the heartbreakers; sung upon my last breath

bloated and black, happiness not as it seemed
destroying the gift that for years I've dreamed,
she gave me her heart and I slashed it wide open
for its clear to see I cannot love, it's clear to see I am broken -

who needs love and it's pathetic excuses
a gnawing feeling both corrosive and abusive,
thy gargantuan question looms with a killer in it's eyes -
had I been in a relationship built upon lies?

Flowers of abnormality bloom upon ashes of mistrust
as my tortured soul frantically flounders in the dust -
down
down
down
the downward spiral again I am shoved,
forever asking if I can ever love, and in return be loved.

Cold, freezing, stinging, sideways rain
catches me off guard

A grey, leadened sky; it falls;
wisps of raincloud; swirl twist,
mix. Somewhere thunder echoes through
empty, flooded streets, brazen and cold

A few children in a narrow alley;
half naked in dark puddles, among broken crates
and trash and a wet, decomposing smell. Smiles
at the cold water between their toes

and numb feet

Shrieks and cries at distorted pictures
in the muddy water. Freezing water splashed
in each others face, until they are blue, or
their mothers call for them;

they playfully run for cover

Thin layers of cloud, pulled back like velvet
curtains. Pulled back, revealing a brief sunlit
puddle. The children see it, face first to the
icy water, but the curtain drops,

a thud on the empty stage.

most nights
you decant into my head wounds
you suggest my makeup
orchestrate my being
and sometimes
for fun
prank me with ridiculous ideas
that inspire some absurd social pratfall

lure

you make me warm and sure of myself
struck and sense numbed
but
floss in the memory

tide

i am a Diving Suit
but in misuse
i am a suit
the pressure
the deep ocean
filled from the inside
cold
darkness
and nutrients  
but
i am filled from the inside

pipette
you tap drops
into special valves
along the sides of the aquarium helmet
you decorate my inner-scape
with harvesting monsters
and phosphorescence
you deteriorate the textile of my sadness
a thorough jettison

lull

via your Vegas
your adolescence
i follow your string of lights
deep sea
skiving mortality
embracing your malady
with no ill effects ?
sink deeper still
i am leadened
to your charge
and plumb to your will
deeper

My body is weak and restless
Toys scattered, sweated brow
Been working at tiring myself out for hours
Nothing gives
****** after mind blowing ******
Still hungry
Ravenous, without satiation
Unable to keep my hands to myself
Therein lies the problem
Want and need **** a fine line
Between my ability to control and my ability to let go
Breathe it all in, in one great gasping breath
Your scent ribbons through the chaos
Single minded focus on Northern winds
Edged with snow capped romance
Gets me going, gets me hot
Too hot, drop it
Butterflies join the descent
Crimson splashes behind my eyelids
Oxygen deprivation presses in with heavy, leadened weight
Just. A. Little. More.
Yessssss
Echoing cries as back bowed, muscles wound tight
Explosion. Atomic fire ball. Liquid.
Catching air from the landing
I curl up into a self-love hazed ball
Ready for the next round

Shaded trees
please cover me
twine and vine have
started unwinding
my limbs are hanging
they wax
they are waning
and you won't stop
I'm still complaining
you tempted me into branches so thick
their fingers dipped in sap do stick
to my sagging thoughts
my leadened mind
I just want your gaze
my worries to bind
want my moods it to raise
and my secrets to find.

it is much like rain this hot evening,
          prompt in arrival to assuage default
                  settings

   like most days when in the intimate dark
          which love I clutch and whose
              hands i ****** shatter before me

    between the moment just arriving
        and the press of disappearance

     this body that dartles onto the leadened
          cathedral of  your heart, the jaundice
     of your repeated self accumulates

           to harangue this true evening yellow
    starting a burlesque of moon, flushed

         in the punctuation of mildew. grass
   its fragrance the first time and the last,
         translated - a revision of wind's gesticulstions. else it was strangely always
      pure dusk, wide-eyed, awake in futurity

    dare the hands clench and the feet
       mingle with swift pace much like
    rain    this   evening      forgetting
      a jammed, rusted   parasol
  
          your first time underneath the world,
       Summer ending in a blink of an eye,
          a stab of bated breath.

From Publius
To Livia

I'm writing to tell you
I will no longer work your fields

For too long my sweat bled to make you look good
Mine harvest fed the entire eternal city
For months!

Yet you'd eyes only for the leadened ***** of
Gaius
And
Marcus
It's a wonder you haven't gone blind yet

Or mayhaps you have?

It would explain your complete and utter ignorance
Of the goings on right outside your window!

Those furrows
I plowed
That terrace
I built
Those grapes
I grew

I nurtured this land long before you
And Marcus

Originally,
It was just myself and Gaius
Charged with taming wild Ceres
Transforming forest to field
Then field to farm
A cornucopia of plenty

Then you came along
Your drooling dog in tow
Salivating the discord of Discord
While gorging yourself on Gaius' selfish lies
Taking credit for mine own efforts
And treating me as a mere shadow on the wall

Invisible to all

Well,
I prayed to the Capitoline Triad
I offered a white bull to Jupiter the king
And asked him to command radiant Sol
To shine bright on your shade
And bless me with brighter horizons

I begged jealous Juno
To send windy ****** to blow you off course
Along with your precious pets
Hopefully you'll crash on Sicilian shores
With only furious Polyphemus for company
For this I burned frankincense and myrrh

To ****** Minerva
A libation of mine own wine
So she might reveal your true arachnid self
A punishment for your self aggrandizing arrogance
Thinking yourself wiser in the art of cultivation
Than the goddess of wisdom herself

Dear Livia,
You should be worried

Already my horizons brighten
As yours begins to dim in mine absence
And slowly, your guise of perfection is slipping
Revealing six sinewy legs, dagger tipped
And fangs dyed red with innocent blood

The Gods have heard my prayers
And your web begins to unravel

Praise Olympus

Signed,
PERTINAX

Meaning the corporeal complex edifice
housing these lovely bones,
where linkedin logorrhea ably
strives to break out
in meaningless song
yobble hum hum ****** dee dee
and dance courtesy
an unexpected burst of energy
helped fashion a second rate poem
heaving up from deep within the key
of Matthew Scott's ideas – née
Harriet and Ozzie
stereotypical 1950's family prithee
i.e. unexpectedly manifesting que
cull lee coalescing, butta not three
endeavors crafted since quota we
kind to exhaust passion before zee...

land revisited, when
a call for shot eye
guarantees, a plethora of ideas
wordlessly will take flight
into the cerebral realm will fly
necessitating exertion from this guy
will necessitate me to type
briskly before hie....
forget what dreams are made
when supine I restfully lie
otherwise once fully awake
I would be forced to pry
remembrance of things past
from the night before trying
to scour subconscious
with plentitude, whereby

ah...whew...just when
I felt at a loss what to write...
bitta bing bitta bang
(optional chitty at no extra cost),
lo and behold ear splitting,
appalling sounds did invite
until dusk hands clapped
over each ear tight
to muffle noise pollution spite
fully generated by
rambunctious youths,
who know no right
that rosily gunning engines quite
obnoxious, and that conviction
edited (by me) tubby polite
buffer this chap hunkers
down for the night
after switching off the end table light.

The following constitutes the e-man
soup pay wanton declaration
emphatically, independently,
and obnoxiously
transmitted thru ether
these loathsome roar of dirt bikes
punctuates the formerly quiet air
where local high school
teenage mutant ninja
male turtles blare
(an educated presumption)
at top notch threshold decibel
definitely inducing deafness,
which will soon be clear
to those motorheads
flooring accelerator scaring deer
and other sparse wildlife,
whose engines I hear
miles away, cuz this bard ****
got extreme (ear river rent)
hypersensitivity to sound
perhaps linkedin
tummy predisposition,
could allow ma

self to expound,
whereby scrawling how painful
eye experience,
where 21st century
urban jungle doth abound
to exacerbate anxiety and panic,
aye noticed round
about puberty, and plugged up ears
to dull the nerve wrack
king Breitbart cacophony
even family pet
dogs (part Border
Collie and Hell Hound)
barked with shrill torturous yap,
which reverberation did
assault and pound
analogous to round after round
of ammunition being fired
making an audible sound
within mine delicate constitution
evidenced by lower gastrointestinal bubbling,
churning, and gurgling
kickstarting what feels
analogous to molten lava
rumbling from ore face leading
within mine leadened belly.

Presenting written access to
excellent outlook powerfully pointing
to the Inferno as Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri
and also a best seller titled fiction
written by author Dan Brown.

Within underworld vastness
Beelzebub, formerly known
as either Triel, or Yophiel,
a former Seraph turned
high-ranking demon,  
considered one of the Seven
Princes of Hell and oversees
the Order of the Fly.

He, alongside Satan and Lucifer,
forms the triumvirate of Hell
and  one of the supreme
monarchs of the Inferno.

Audiological ***** of mine
impossible to avoid unwillingly
being part of loud
buoys George culture club
emanations impossible to dub,
thus helplessly bombarded, exposed,
and subjected to discordant
damaging noise found
yours truly to flub
attendant tasks, especially grub
bing to earn chump change
to avoid mingling at social hub
rather remain hermetically
sealed, where nub
body cant see me, hence
that concludes thine literary rub
a dub dub with three men in a tub.

All this shouldered weight
keeps me on the ground.
I do find I come alive
When the aching thoughts enshroud.

My thoughts come wordless
and more in the form of imagery.
Floating moments of ideology
Engulfing down to the core of me.

I get lost when I let go of
that weight ache,
that cementing, sobering,
oddly comfortable state.

Maybe what I desire
is yet to be portrayed
in the limits of language
and thus ensues
a dramatic cranial display.

Envisioned arms splayed out to connect,
to coalesce,
But finger tips never touch.
Here lies another image of regress.

So I guess
I'll reinstate that woeful weight
to recreate
the fondly familiar leadened gait.

At this I am best.
Yes,
I believe I am self-made depressed.