a connotation of infinity
sharpens the temporal splendor of this night

when souls which have forgot frivolity
in lowliness,noting the fatal flight
of worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dream

down eager avenues of lifelessness

consider for how much themselves shall gleam,
in the poised radiance of perpetualness.
When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought

is like a woman amorous to be known;
and man,whose here is alway worse than naught,
feels the tremendous yonder for his own—

on such a night the sea through her blind miles

of crumbling silence seriously smiles

Waiting for spring to return this winter’s day.
Straining to touch warm breezes of the past.
Caught in this prison of gray and white.
Wishing to break these dark chains that hold me.

Remnants of fall, crumpled like brown paper on the ground.
Straws of pale brown growing up through the snow, ******* it dry.
Seeds and freeze dried fruit lay scattered about under trees.
Bare limbs and stalks drip with liquid glass.

Trees hanging bare, gray in lifelessness.
Winter birds call out, single in their pursuit of leftover meals.
Tracks of animals unknown dot the landscape with patchwork.
Waves of ridges etched in white lead off to nowhere.

Sparse, sun filled days bring brief glimpses of hope.
With the promise of warmth waiting to banish the cold
that holds me to my past and this existence;
waiting for spring to return and thaw this frozen heart.

You tell me that you love me
Then leave me for your friends
You make me feel so happy
Then you do it all again
I’m left here lost and lonely
A feeling that I’ve known
I say that it’s no bother
But you of all should know
You say you understand me
These feelings that I get
But you don’t seem to realize
That I don’t get them yet
You say that it’s not my fault
That I’ve don’t nothing wrong
But everything you say and said
Pointed at me all along
You tell me that you love me
Then why do I feel alone?
It’s me, my books, and poetry
My lifelessness set in stone

I was first born a solar system.

Living in a realm where I wheezed stars and suns. My eyes, black holes to a new universe.
It was a time where planets burst from my belly and latched onto my ******* - no longer hiding in my vortex of a womb.

The world swung around my neck heavily. Steadily, I adorned my fate gracefully...

...because I was born second a mountain.
My hips creating hills and heaps while my tears birthed oceans. I carried the crescent moon in my left eye - Venus in my right.

And often times, I’d shape shift and kneel to the ground, grabbing the soil of the earth.
Its mud, dancing under my nails and knuckles. Its dust, smouldering the creases between my palms.
Sand, caressing and matching the tones of my skin. Accenting hues from the palette of eternal life.

My mouth, birthing spirits and spells. Souls - mining from my ribs.
My womb, carrying ancestors and avatars - Coloured girls glowing in browns, blacks, purples and blues.
Their nebula personifying secrets from Zion as they break through the realm between my legs.

As I continue to carry my message in the wind; breathing life into lifelessness;
narrating stories of hope in times of hopelessness; morphing my magic across the abyss.

I was born third a Nubian.
A Maasai, I am the one they call MAKEBA.

Walking these townships streets as though diamonds lay at my feet.
Gliding on gravel from the ghetto to Greece. Leaving behind a fragrance so sweet.

Blessing the unblessed even when left distressed. Honoring the feminine power that flows within me. The roaring lioness! Smell the audacity of my celestial essence. I am the first to bleed, but last to fall – the S forever embroidered on my breast.

For I am you and you are her and we are She! MAKEBA!

Inkosazana. The melanated fruit that you seek. You stare in disbelief at these words that I conceive.

Sheba!

Ke mang a tshwara thipa ka bogaleng? Ke mang afang botho mo batho ba hlokang motho? Ngubani le mbogodo elingabambeki?

Beka!

My eyes, carrying alchemy.
My smile, a treasury. My skin, reflecting the origin of humanity.

I am, MAKEBA

I like the way you destroy yourself. The way your corpse-like face, with its sunken in cheeks and hollowed out eyes, smiles a crooked yellow smile at the thought of being buried in the ground, rotting away. I thought it was beautiful the way you'd force your fingers down your throat with spindly fingers, "look a rainbow," you'd say, "it's so beautiful," you'd whisper, clutching a slow burning cigarette between the two yellow fingers of your other hand. You'd flush the toilet with such grace. The whole process would've been that of a maestro conducting Beethoven’s 7th symphony, and for all you knew, it was.

I loved that time we were lying in that figurative gutter of morality and you handed me a sharpie, "wanna play connect the dots?" you rolled up your sleeve.

I still remember that day you stole that wedding dress from the Salvation Army. it was out of style and it's still up for debate whether that stain was red wine or blood, but you waltzed right in there, a needle still sticking out of your ******* neck, took that dress in your own two, scab littered arms, and walked right out the front door like you owned the place. I could've kissed you.

In that dress you looked like a princess, with your stringy hair and frame so malnourished that it hung off of you like you were wearing a pair of drapes, you looked like a something out of a bonafide Disney movie.

With my hand in your right hand, and a bag of speed in your left, you pulled me around the corner into the seclusion of the alley.

"I look like a princess"

You looked beautiful

"And that makes you my prince"

A homeless man stirred from behind a dumpster, peeking over the top, his eyes - though showing clear signs of many years deep in any bottle he could find - showed realization. His hand disappeared in the downward direction, his eyes were wide.

“And you know what princes and princesses always get?"

My hand was around your fragile throat, your neck read like Braille, you smile, such a beautiful smile.

"They always get, a happy ending"

And from there, I can't be sure, but I think all three of us finished at the same time.

But of all the days we had together, of every self-destructive tendency you had, I will always remember the day, all of your endless hard work finally materialized into everything you wanted it to become.

“I am the **** of the ******* earth”

This was the day you destroyed yourself. You told me why.

“I turned to self destruction for solace, solace from everything I was expected to become being shoved down my throat, I wiped my *** with morality and dogmas, and I became the antithesis of what I was supposed to be, I ******* won.”

And with that you dropped to your knees in front of the coffee table, the transparency of its clear glass surface obstructed by five pristine white lines. Like perfect little white picket fences, surrounding perfect little yards that perfect little children would play their perfect little games while their perfect parents would do not so perfect things behind the doors of their perfect little houses.

And this is when I understood.

Your *****, messy, clumped-up hair offered a half veil for your face. A $1 bill hovered above the first line; your practiced anticipation was beautiful. God, I loved this part, because you loved this part. Just before that first hit, just before the euphoria expanded, washing over you, blanketing your lanky figure and troubled mind in bliss. Your last seconds on earth.

And this is when I understood.

Before long, all five lines were absent from the table, and making their way through your system, you were glowing. You raised yourself up and teetered on your 6-inch heels, your stick thin legs threatening to snap in half and cut you down. You wrapped your arms around me, you didn't say it, neither did I. Your eyelids fluttered and you batted your eyelashes. I don’t know if it was on purpose, but it was ****.

You walked to the balcony, I knew you wouldn't jump. You just stood there, impossibly high, in your impossibly high heels, at the impossibly great distance to the ground. Your tiny frame, illuminated perfectly by the glow of the electric bug zapper, it was the perfect analogy. Your spotlight was a killer, and your beauty was destruction.

The sun fell behind the horizon lines, and the crescent moon rose high in the sky.

“I’m going to lounge on that”

The stars were faintly visible though the light pollution.

“I’m going to find the flattest stars and skip them through galaxies.”

You had a bottle of ****** in one hand, a bottle of ***** in the other.

“I’m going to visit every planet; I’m going to live in their gutters.”

The bottles were both open, you set the ***** down, shaking out pill after pill into your open palm, you smiled.

“I’m going to meet an alien; I’m going to dance with him.”

A mouth full of ****** and a bottle of ***** to wash it down.

“I’m going to meet God, if there is such a thing.”

Hours passing, felt like seconds. You’re starting to slip, you’re starting to float up, up to all those promises you made to the moon, and the stars, and the aliens.

For the longest time, I couldn't tell if your lifelessness was figurative – conjured up by my perspective of what you are – or literal. I may have sat there for a long time, admiring the beauty of everything you worked so hard for. You looked the same, and I think that was beautiful. It was beautiful the way you epitomized ruination. How you massacred every conventional idea of what it meant to be alive and well. How you taught me that a sense of loss is only relative. I think it was beautiful the way you destroyed yourself.

Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they’d crawled (with others that they’d brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities selling postcards of your thoughts,
Though offered for a penny piece, not even worth a jot.

They mused
               “How are you feeling? What it is you want, you’ve got.
               The words you scrawl on calling cards: ‘I AM – the others NOT’
               Shun wisdoms of the Seven Seas: ‘Salvation can’t be bought’ –
               Your fathers tried before you and your fathers came to naught.

               “You started out by gelding goats and then by casting lots
               Of bodies to the battlefields, contorted, tight and taut,
               Then wallowed in the wake of trails the dervish devil trots.

               “With marching bands of fatherlands, and drums of Hottentots,
               You lure your legions in harm’s way like giant juggernauts.
               Like Tweedle Dum your minions come (the sober and the sots,
               The troglodytes, barbarians, and mislead patriots,
               The Vandals, Huns and Hannibals and seaport Cypriots,
               The Japanese, the Congolese, Americans and Scots)
               To vanquish bows and arrows, spears and catapulted shots
               Of those who hide in bamboo huts their families, pale, distraught,
               (Their withered wives with dried up *******, their swollen babes in cots)
               Who swoon, engulfed in poison darts and vats of acid hot,
               Consumed by magic mushroom clouds, atomic megawatts.

               “In churches of your deities, your Holy Huguenots,
               Your Imams, Rabbis, Voodoo Dolls and Mitered Lancelots
               Lit wicked kindled candled walls in temples (while we fought)
               (Used pins and needles, magic spells on makeshift mock whatnots)
               And mosques, cathedrals, synagogues have blessed each new onslaught
               With prayers for pipers, puppets, pawns, your rigid armed robots.

               “Upon your knees in golden naves, while peeking through the slots,
               You horded thirty silver pieces, downed a whiskey shot,
               Then crossed yourself and wrapped yourself in furs of ocelots,
               And danced on cleated cloven hoofs in purple polka-dots,
               Then drank His blood from chalice cups with pious afterthoughts.

               “You’ve treated men like mongrels chained, like little flies to swat,
               By doing what you wanted to, instead of what you aught;
               You’ve wiped your nose with dollar bills and paid your serfs with snot,
               But when you’ve paused to preen your pride, you’ve scrubbed a scarlet blot.

               “In ashes of our victories: the diamonds that you sought,
               The crock of gold, the Golden fleece of bogus Argonauts -
               In mirrors of your lifelessness, the evils you begot.
              
               “The haunted winds strew leaves of time across a shallow plot
               Where now, beneath the frozen stones blanched bodies bathe in rot,
               Disintegrate, return to dust to feed Forget-Me-Nots
               Amidst the bane and pits of pain where broken bones lie caught.

               “In fields above the catacombs and tombs of Camelot
               The black and withered tree of Death arises from the spot
               Where oft beneath a bleeding moon you hid your gold in pots
               Embedding doubts neath barren bogs where roots of wormwood squat.

               “While waiting at the river Styx, in twisted time untaught,
               From branches of the gallows tree, in recollections wrought,
               Your soul, a beggar’s blanket, hangs in crazy quilted knots,
               With dangling pearls and diamond studs mid dripping crimson clots
               And gaping wounds with bulging eyes like fouling apricots,
               For wrapped in chains around your throat, the Reaper’s grim garrote.”

Yes, that’s the fate of all your kind, disclosed by Wise Men taught.

But that was, oh, so long ago, by now you have forgot…

No more guises,
Just look into my eyes
Every word said from now
Will not be a lie
But every word about to jump
From your lips shall die
Because your carnal cravings
Will eat them alive.

I’m slowly dissipating
But I know you can revive me
A fallen tree, I sleep here
Slipping into lifelessness
But I feel so ravenous
And I know you can feel
The thumping of my heart
It’s eager; deeply.

You crawl up to me
With a different face
Different intentions
Breathing different air
I inhale your energy
My longing embraced
I want every trace of innocence
Completely defaced.

Overpowered
By this yearning
We want, we crave
And we’re still learning
I cannot feel a thing
But a burning hunger
You cling to me
I invite you in

Of course, I do, I crave your skin
It’s a liquid I wish to immerse myself in
Your scent rinses me
Keeps me within your carnal hold,
Let the numbing begin.

I sit here on the Edge of Reality
Lonely, searching the Galaxy
People think I am losing my Sanity
Or my Mentality is something to not be entered

Everything seems bleak and hopeless
and my body is trying to pull my soul from lifelessness
When the world heals; my scars shall not
The world  covered in disdain and “grace”…
The saint like people are ignored by the famous
Cookie cutter everywhere, Originality is nowhere
Where everyone is money hungry
Where everyone is *** hungry
Where everyone is hungry
Two are fueled while the other is left in the dust
I’m not trying to make a fuss maybe some just

Trying to allow people to think, with their own mind
to see what they can find
to open their heart and be kind
With limited time
We are at a bind
How Can we see when we’re blind
So Tell me what you know about dreams
Tell me what you know about feeling something can’t even touch
Tell me what you know about reality something you can’t see
While the bumbles bees bee and the tree throws apples
When the Govern govern and then Reality is ****** into pan
And When people act like you’re Stan
When addiction isn’t a fan and you're
Trying to stop the Cars
But you’re being held back by bars
as the Cars fall off the Edge of Reality
you realize all the duality but its too late
Your head is being ripped off...fatality

Now when the World's Ablaze and you feel Sub-zero
Courage is their doing charades trying to show you their is more
So get up and grab the stars and nothing is stopping you
As more people get up and grab the stars left by you
So Don’t be the bad guy thats make fun of people that die
Be the person who can show the message of truth
Be your own person
The person who is not manipulated by things like the fox
as the Donkey and Elephant duke it out
for the final bout, The person who thinks of something higher than reality
With the People who sit there on the Edge Of Reality

+-

Yes, perhaps 'tis true.
Everywhere I go-with all t'ese dwindling thoughts on my mind-
'tis always the same shadows that roam, and moan-
before my eyes: and t'eir never-ending business.
Crawling on t'eir lips,
poisoning t'eir bosoms, chins, and hips-
but unrelenting in their unfolded shades;
with a swamp of bruises like mazes-tangled mazes;
likening them to spoiled, yet uncherished, little pearls.
How despairing-such views I obtaineth, on my every journey!
But shalt there still be space for us, to be outstanding;
to understand this world from a pair of eyes
glistening like unquestioning gentleness; but learning simultaneously
its unvivid perspectives
with such comprehension t'at is crystal clear;
such wit t'at is far from recklessness and greed-
salutations that are pure, and distant from any blighting threats
of equivocation? For t'is world is, in spite of its minuteness,
was framed and brought into life from
awesome darkness, abysmal cells of lifelessness
and hateful ambiguity.
How terrifying!
And often have I enforced myself to wandereth into those shades,
with unmolested poems boiling up in my brains-
and t'ose windy thoughts toppling out into th' paper
on my hand,
jostling through my veins like some ghastly, furious power
t'at's unseen, invisible as it is to th' human eye-
frail and susceptible to th' weather's surly temptations-
and entrapping me in the shrieks of its wondrous grot-
so I could never wane it any further, in my guileless brambles.
How I have dreaded t'ose sights-and t'eir dormant treachery! Lessons of
guilt, teaching of such guilty flakes of harm
and abomination! And how in my following quietude have I pondered-
t'at t'is would be just a balmy prelude to some far bigger strains of
mockery, obstinacy, and destitution. Hark to how those powers
shall arise! And that will indeed be th' abjuration of our splendidness-
everything shalt stop at a halt-everything will become flawed,
and no more poems shalt be liberated-from living souls, and t'eir undamaged
blood, as t'ey still are now! How I shiver at t'ose possibilities, as soon as our
latent enemies be on th' loose-free in t'eir ruthlessness, traces of dark,
unperturbed miseries, and brutal savagery.
And shalt we shine no more-like those summer flowers that are waiting for us-
to be fed daily like th' hungry morning doves;
with their thorns as sharp as love, and innocent gladness
in the arms of their lips-'tis but a scent so dear to the heartbeat
of oureth salubrious mornings.
But t'at danger, danger indeed! And its eyes of glaring monstrosity!
And 'tis just of substantial profoundness t'at we should be
cautious-yes, cautious, my dear fellows, towards t'ose signs
of th' upcoming storm-th malevolent storm of human rage, t'at shalt attack us
one day-at one perilous night, unpredicted and unexpected is its fate-
especially when all th' battling footsteps areth
peaceful in their slumbers-and no more palms dancing around
piles of paper-in th' holy procurement of continual wealth.
How t'at moment shalt be our early Armageddon-awakened shalt be
all rivers of terrors, and waves of hatred. How t'is beautiful solitude shalt end-
in th' fierce burning, brimming death of t'at flame-credulous shalt we be,
disempowered from th' heat-which shalt bring us but our dead feet.
Thus I but sincerely hope t'at gloom shalt not conquer our race-
the noblest of all creatures on earth-on t'is dull earth, fatigued as it is
from all th' uniformed battles, hatred, and anger-t'at untiringly sneer
at th' faces of those dying soldiers.
Peace, peace, my dear mates!
Ought to realize thou now-t'at swords shalt shed blood only if instructed.
So tranquility is but in oureth hands-yes, we are but th' key to our own salvation,
and since it is so, shalt we move forward and be the charms of t'is world's
new foundation: for it is our own life that we shalt save.
Peace, my friends, shalt but break all t'ese unseen boundaries amongst us,
and enrich our fathom of t'eir unspoken presence; so t'at th' small world is but
th' most dwelling of comfort, and aught but ease to our hearts-
our very dear, dear hearts in t'is life.

I'm hopelessly lost without you, Lord
For I know that my life has been an utter mess
And, with You, it can always have new beginnings
New life breathed into the lifelessness that I've felt

Sometimes LIFE stands for
L-lifelessness
I-irritation
F-futility
E-emotional disturbances

On the streets of heat and movement
lie the evidence of pain,
she walks, he talks, the children run
throughout the burning rain.

I can smell the smoke of lifelessness
along the living death,
we talk, they walk, the sirens wail
today may rob our breath.

In the rooms of waste and apathy,
sit silent the insane,
she writes, he writes, the samll hand ticks
the hours fast away...

It’s a race to the bottom of the bottle
between sanity and sober realization
to every impaired negation and how to
alleviate and mediate the dependancy I
place on finding new routes to the
end of the flask. —
The hands of the bottle hold
dreaded burdens above my head,
bringing life to each morrowed breath,
and write hyms towards yearning
a long awaited wish for death,
sobriety weaves this addiction
of solitude through each thought of
halted life, and pushes it’s back
as it’s heels leave crevices to follow,
a view of darkness to come,
with turning back placing another knot
down a throat with attempt to swallow.
as each run of whiskey drips down the
walls of my throat the sinking ship within
my veins finds strength to stay afloat.
a Wiser whisper tickles at the anticipations
towards taking another sip,
the Hennessy tendencies stutter
a ****** equilibrium captivating
and inching my sanity towards
a shot of sequel librium. —
As ***** spews and consumes
the inhabited ground, a paroxysm
of unconsciousness feels
mentally sound,
blacked out with the following
morning full of acts to repent,
the monetary blackness
proves to be nothing but content,
recollection of priors
seem to fade with the desire of
sobriety and eliminating any hope
towards thoughtless propriety. —
Momentary happiness through
intoxication provides no mediation
between a sober fight for death
and a drunken one, the wish for
lifelessness is just subdued by
stumbling to bed and the inability
to steadily hold a gun to my head.

The Natural World is not so benevolent.
Though, I don't mean that it is malevolent,
but with things like Disease, Entropy and Radiation,
I would say that the odds certainly are not in our Favour.

Yet, here we are.

An act of sheer Defiance
to an otherwise inanimate Reality.
A Being of Reason, Creativity, Interpretation, Intuition and Consciousness
observing the cold assumed lifelessness of the Crystallization of this Epoch of Energy.

I speak not of the benevolent and malevolent Energies
which perhaps permeate and flow through this Reality,
but those, to me, don't necessarily qualify as "Natural" in this sense;
they are super-natural, para-natural, or hyper-natural. Pre-natural, even.

I speak of tangible, scientific, here-and-now "Reality"; whatever that means.
Matter and the Energies we know of that are subsets of it.
Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces.

This Physical Prison of Godself; like a physical Dream
from which One cannot awaken until Death.
Perhaps not even then? Who knows?
Who are we, who yet live, to say?
Maybe it's a case-by-case basis;
but, in any case, I digress:

The Natural World is a Force to be reckoned with;
it holds the Powers of Sustenance as well as Annihilation
yet we so take it for granted and ****, pillage and plunder it evermore systematically

That's just bad form.

Conciser Reverence
though not religiously so;
merely giving Thanks to
the Forces which sustain us.
Respecting
the Forces which sustain us.

Earth. Sun. Water. Air. The interplay of these things.
The Plants that give themselves to us as nutrients
as well as the Animals that do the same.

The fact that you have a left and a right Brain. A Body and Mind.
That the Sun rises each Day and you're born anew with it in ways.

If we truly give Thanks
for all of these things and more,
our perspectives will enlighten a bit,
and Reality will become wholly Holy;
Holistic:

and we can finally begin, again,

to move on.

a connotation of infinity
sharpens the temporal splendor of this night

when souls which have forgot frivolity
in lowliness,noting the fatal flight
of worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dream

down eager avenues of lifelessness

consider for how much themselves shall gleam,
in the poised radiance of perpetualness.
When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought

is like a woman amorous to be known;
and man,whose here is alway worse than naught,
feels the tremendous yonder for his own—

on such a night the sea through her blind miles

of crumbling silence seriously smiles

E.E. Cummings

We are not scarecrows.

We know this, and yet
we can be mistaken for them, on
dark nights when legal actions ****.

We are not scarecrows, because
Scarecrows are used to scare crows and we
are used to scare someone - ourselves - into staying silent.

We are Not scarecrows, but someone passing by would see
both in an equal light, not quite human but trying.

We are not scarecrows, because at least we can
Vote where scarecrows only stand but Scarecrows are not told they
Can't serve their country or use the correct locker room.

We are not scarecrows because scarecrows can't hear
Slurs and whispers behind them like caws of a bird who only needs to survive.

We are not scarecrows but maybe we are,
Reduced to sacks of lifelessness that may as well be hay because it's a lot harder to find a story with me in it then a story with scarecrows.

We don't want to be scarecrows.

She looks at this stranger across from her.  Who is this man?  She searches for some sense of familiarity.  There is none.  She is struck by the grayness and aging she sees in his face. She closes her eyes and tries to remember the man she once knew.  The boy really.  She was 17 and he was 21.   He was her first true love and  her first lover.   She fell in love with him or maybe fell in love with love, or maybe just fell, through the door that lead out.  Out of the war zone that most people call home.  She is a survivor.  A survivor of abuse, with all the battle scars to prove it, and a survivor of marriage.   It’s rather ironic, she thinks of them both in the same way now.

She tries to remember  the moment their love stopped, or that she just stopped loving.  Like marking the milestones in life, there should be a marker there.  Maybe it began in the first few months they were married.  She was 7 months pregnant with their first child, and a bride of only 9 months.  So trusting, so naive, so full of wonderful hopes and dreams.   In her 7th month of pregnancy, her idealistic, childhood fantasy was destroyed.  She found the man she had walked down the isle with, sworn to love, honor and cherish, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, with another woman.  Oh, “they were just friends,”  of course.  “I only lied to spare your feelings,”  of course.  “I just needed someone to talk to,”  of course.  Sad isn’t it, 9 months into a marriage and she didn’t understand him, he couldn’t talk to her.  She should have known then but she was young and she forgave him.  It seemed to hard to do anything else. To stand up for herself  meant to admit failure.  Like somehow she had failed to meet his needs.  So she tucked away the pain, burying it deeply, right next to the pain from her childhood.  

But she survives.  She knows the price you pay for survival.  You learn to live with the pain.  The physical pain and the mental pain, they are not so different.  They are destroyers.  Destroyers of  the person she wanted to be.  Stealing her hopes, her dreams, and finally her soul, one piece at a time.  

He never hit her, he could never have done that.  Besides, she swore no one would ever lay a hand on her again.  Her mother had beaten her enough for a lifetime.  For many years he never even raised his voice to her.  He just left her alone.  It was the loneliness that became her prison.  

Time moved on and they learned to coexist.  He avoided confrontation and she became a master of manipulation.  They would always mend the bridge but they could never repair the dream.  Months turned into years.  She tried to regain the newness, the trust, the feelings.  Constantly needing, no demanding, reassurance.  Only to watch her needs build a river between them to deep to cross alone. The bridge had been repaired to many times and was to shaky to stand on.  There was only one boat to reach her and he owned it.  Unfortunately, the only place he took his boat was fishing.  He never came to get her.  

The years passed.  She gives birth to another little girl.  This precious gift, life out of lifelessness.  She pours all that she has into her children, trying somehow to fill the void. She tries to reach him every now and then, tell him what she is feeling.  But he never understands.    Then one day she stops.  Like the death of her innocence, she finally concedes to the death of this existence.  Like a cancer victim, the disease has consumed her.  They are no longer husband and wife but two people who live together for  the sake of the children.  The only joy she knows is the joy of motherhood.  

They come together now and then to relieve their needs.  Even that is more mechanical and at her pleasure.  Sometimes during  that moment she let’s her guard down, desperately groping, praying somehow he will look at her and really see her for the first time.  The ache is pounding so loud she can’t believe he doesn’t hear it.  How can he not see the pain that is swallowing the woman she used to be and leaving this empty shell of a person behind.  From somewhere deep down, a tiny light of the person she used to be shines through. It is quickly extinguished by the darkness and his snoring as he falls asleep, oblivious to the emptiness she is feeling laying sobbing right beside him.

Morning comes and she waits for the words she has memorized so clearly.  He smiles, as always, “ thanks for last night.”   He says it no differently than he says “thanks for breakfast.”  Knowing that only his need was fulfilled.  Her aching to touch, to connect with this human being still remains ripping at the very center of her being. She puts on her practiced smile and accept his kiss on the cheek as payment for a job well done.  He walks the dogs, showers and heads out the door.  He says “I Love You” the same as he has a thousand times before.  He doesn’t notice that for months now she has not replied.  She cannot bring herself to listen to the empty hollowness of her own words.  

Then the predictable happens.  She met a man.  He was not a very handsome man or rich man or out of the ordinary man.  He was just a man.  But one day he reached out to her.  He paid attention to her.  He catered to her every need.  He was experienced.  He knew the fruit was ripe for picking.  He said he loved her, and wanted to marry her, and she believed him.  How naive she was.  She looks back now and cannot help but laugh.  A married woman, having an affair with a married man, who asks her to marry him.  She should have known better.   It did not take long to learn the truth.  She was not the only “other woman” in his life.  She had ended it long before her husband found out.  When he finally learned of her betrayal, he showed an ample amount of righteous anger.  His male ego had been damaged.  But he forgave her, as she knew he would.  She never felt guilty.  As a matter of fact, deep down she knew this would happen.  She felt justified. Like somehow she owed it to him to show him how it feels to be betrayed.  

And when the smoke had cleared, she took the easy way out, again.  She said she loved him.  She wanted to make it work.  She wanted him to love her.  It didn't sound like such an unreasonable request.

sometimes I think my dad knows.
sees the lifelessness in my eyes,
sees the pain inside of me.

but how do I ask?

"daddy, do you see me?"

he'd probably say something like
"sure, possum, I see you.
you're beautiful and smarter than most people I know, even adults."

wrong.

he'd never understand the depth of the question.
too naive, too oblivious.
not like me at all.
so I wait.
one day he'll bring it up.
one day, I'll deny it again.
but this time,
to my own blood.

I wandered in on a world of dead rock. I laid with it. Smelt the essence together with carbon and metallic lifelessness.
To create a place of pretty. A sadness overcame.
I came to feeling. To knowing. Sentient.

A rootless contusion never ending.
A bottomless chasm of void.
The pit follows deeper and deeper it travels,
To the hollows of sorrow contempt I’m born.

I grow to feet from the ground where I lay,
As my body draped the floor sprawling and loose.
Upon these legs I rise, and so rise my eyes.
The hollow void I have lingers yawing in my stomach. Ulcerating my mucosal cavern.

What I see
Before me
On this road
On this desert of the necropolis:

Metropolis mass grave,
A mausoleum for civilization,
Möbius of war.
The reflective glint in my eye was of no mans eyes at all.
The death of hope.

Sea of sky scraping spires.
The dead hollow bones left after a city extinguishes.
Millions of towers with red glowing eyes, where blue life used to flourish, now twinkle in and out of this plane.
These giants graze, on the concrete and sway...with the wind.
Colossus of marble, petrified forever in granite with the internal flora that haunted their bowels.
They now have no agenda...city percolates to extinction.
They will forever amble with no purpose.

Once they housed the hearts and minds of microbes that built them.
The builders of hero worship.
They died in the 20's.
Left are the shells of a dream and a forest of buildings.
New York died circa 1900.
United States crumbles: 1776

it's elon musk
his stiff, frozen corpse hurtling toward the earth
looks like space flight wasn't as grand as an idea as previously thought

the virgins have gone galactic
branson's body as cold as his icy heart
and eyes to match his lifelessness

the bald headed freak's gone bug-eyed!
clearly unprepared for the speed his amazon basic space shuttle hurtles at
as shoddily made as the rest of their ****, the cabinet begins decompressing

why go to the stars
what do you think it is you'll find up there
peace or contentment
are you trying to prove something

you'd think if you'd really want to help humanity you might start on this rock before trying to jump to the next

oh you'll succeed
while the planet you so desperately sought to escape is in the throws of death's spiral
i'm sure it stings your pride to know you'll die before that though

Cold between my lips
Warm inhale, heated exhale.

Clicking fingers to create fire.
Burning scent, sweet and complimentary.

Elegant smoke, pouring from the mouth.
White, thick, warm, alive.

It makes life bearable when I'm without you.
The sense of lifelessness, but of life.
My body is just a vessel
for the music and the visions I see.
I'm in the clouds, above the pain
Behind the wounds
Across from the aches.
Away from the life I am a part of.

I see what I desire, and yet
I cannot have it yet.

So I sit here
And I create an escape for myself.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
And all the pain slips away.

Begin anew.
Start afresh.
I want to go
to a place
where there is nought
but my heart
splayed out like
waves over the rocky beach.

My emotions will flow as
the waves caress,
gently,
each grain of sand,
every grain of sand
in the teeming lifelessness
of the sea
that cannot be
fathomed.

The tides ebb
and the tides
flow;
but the water moves not.
It is still and will be,
for change does not
skim the beach.

Begin anew?
Start afresh?

You try it first.

The waves will,
for once,
wait
and
watch.

Rotunda of doors
Select an arbitrary gateway
Rotate a frigid bronze **** and dislodge
Gaze into an opaque, stone encircled realm
Proceed through the division
Inhale damp, stale earth
Hesitate in a moment of hair-raising atmosphere
Ignore and tread slow
Ignore the echo of the sole warmth emanating in rapid succession from within
Ignore the nagging to turn back
Do so anyways
Realize pupils dilate when the entrance is not visible
Debate possibilities
Feel pointless muscle movement pulling white eyes for stimulus
Exhale tension melting air
Whine and tread against small stalagmites
Extend palm forward and to the side
Grasp for sight
Grab nothing
Constrict throat down
Acknowledge and accept the situation
Continue onward
Stumble against a solid
Release pain
Trace the direction of hopelessness
Follow with purposeful motions
Brush against another impediment
Successfully avoid
Allow air to flow against dry tongue
Taste lifelessness and potential
Release resolution and determination
Gain momentum
Allow ears to beg for rays of sun
Decide resiliency
Pant and expend time
Sense vision assimilating
Investigate the environment
Crouch and take in the floor
Gasp and whimper
Behold bones
Three sixty and engage all faculties
Cower as truth speaks: labyrinth.
Lift chin and only stone above.
And collapse, collapse onto knees in dramatic fashion
With back arched over, hands grasping and pulling at hair
Fight against reality.
Terror eviscerates.
Submit on to the parasitic solid inorganic void.
Become more bones.

Quite a draining journey
traveling through this drainage tunnel
groping my way through the disorienting darkness
arms of lifelessness reach out from the walls
constantly tugging at my shirt
it's my health that they hurt
when I try to run
they grab and stun
forcing me to buy movement
at the price of energy
they hold tokens in their hands
inscribed with the drainage brand
like the hair from the drain in my sink
or the phlegm drained from my sinuses
I wade through the **** of stomach minuses
moving through a drainage tunnel death funnel
aches develop in my feet
as well as my back
I can't handle the heat
or how the inside is black
I start walking slower and slower
as the ceiling gets lower and lower
the backbreaking pressure
makes my height lesser
so I crawl through the filth
of all this drainage I built
the hands that hold me down
are now my only company
their frustrating grabbing
now feels like a lulling caress
coaxing me to stay in this tunnel
all other voices are muddled
because of the drainage in my ear
blocking communication with fear
a wall of wax
that won't collapse
creates an axe
to cut off my head
from suffering dread
wondering when this tunnel will end
because there's no light to be found
in this tunnel I crawl down
gagged and bound
from the hands all around
grabbing at my brain
to push it down the drain.