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J J Jan 2020
I pose high my chest of ragged ribbons
And unravel a fist to stretch out fingers in search
Of a hand glimmering pale like a lantern
throughout this grey
        empty space. Once a pavement, now as good as

Cloud. Frozen lake. Dust. Boiling ashes. Skeletons.

I am walking on the slashed frames of waves
As jesus once must have. Propelled to a miracle unwitnessned
To anyone but myself. I am impelled to corrode
Into a statue; to remain a rigamortic rotting jade jewel in the sun
Until I no longer can.
Until they found me...

Perhaps they'd dust me off, thaw the ice from my shoulders,
Rehydrate me and gorge me,
Restart the blinking light in my brain
And refrain me evermore from having to seek.

But seek I must, for the lonliness weighs me down
Further by the day. I take half as many steps now as when I began my voyage.
My memories are like ghosts of flames that play
Snakes and ladders and hide and seek.
I am the lighthouse man and I sail drunken--
A rubicund mishape of bone and scuffed thoughts,
I can feel every soul which once embodied and huddled this place.

It's like they are trying so hard to posses me but even
Their souls have been smouldered to whispers
So thin they ring as mutely as the surrounding mist,
So soft they vibrate akin to an infant’s pulse
Throughout these walls, these scrapyards, these crumbling arcades, this sandbox grey that begs for a scream.
The spirit of a tarantula trembles along my back and grazes it teeth against my shoulderblade,
Praying that I turn to confirm it's being –but it's a game I’ve long grown sick of–


I am the lighthouse man and I ceased having a face long ago.
What I recall of my reflection was a child so young and so sure
Of a different life that

I cannot be sure it's even me.

I am the lighthouse man; a puckered bulb balancing on too-big shoulders, that walked
  through barren flat closes and exited empty handed, the lonely poltergeist,
a bitter flab of skin.

I am the lighthouse man and I am the final Aspen leaf in the pond of the universe,
I see myself reflected in a sole star twirling underfoot and overhead
rowing my ears so thick with disfigured silence so that I wished I was born deaf.
I am the lighthouse man and my mind is a spinning fragment
    my eyes can merely follow and my floating steps merely trail.

It never changes tone here, I can only vaguely trace the time
By the occasional moon. Tonight it shines half chewed,
  Befitting the levelled star a sideways crown.
It is beautiful but I mustn't stop to admire, lest a survivor
Scavenger loses patience withholding the last of their scran.

I am the lighthouse man and I haven't eaten in years.

I am the lighthouse man and I bled for the first time yestardy.
I am the lighthouse man and my bulb ricocheted off the base of my skull
In a telling fairy tale dream. I felt static in my head
And my light's ink spilled across my hands and for a minute I thought
My light had gone out. I tasted blood,
Trickled down from my stinging nose and I had never been so scared.

I am the lighthouse man and I never knew I could die.

I am the lighthouse man. Once the world danced with magic and I was
A walking satellite that grew to want to dissapear.
I am the lighthouse man and my decrepitude is casted in my hands:
Black as the night from the dirt collected over the years.
The few slashes of skin clear enough to see look rust-like and obtrusive, outdone only by
My veins like wonky bruises that vine across the silhouetted bone;
Bridging gear to gear, clinking shivering knuckles
         That want nothing more than to surrender.

But I am only frostbit, not frozen.
Life was and thus must still be.
I am a raindrop, not the whole ocean.

I am a walking lighthouse inspecting and guiding empty seas,
A form without virtue
That ceased feeling it's metallic steps too long ago to recall.
A cubist teardrop falling down a grey giant's cheek,
Waiting to be captured and swallowed.

Or perhaps I am climbing uphill, slowly along the circumference of his forehead.
So slowly I cannot notice the rise. Perhaps I was destined to amble in hypnosis,
En route on this colourless limboid curve until I forget the concept of
             a destination, a soul, a matryr jester to rouse me awake...
             and perhaps it is then that I will be blessed with the heavenly bulb

Of the weeping giant on whom's flesh I disturb.
I am the lighthouse man and I dream of purpose.

I am the the lighthouse man with a penchant to levitate
I am the lighthouse man and I am a God without tool or reason.
I am the lighthouse man and I'll walk this limbo until my feet dissapear.

I am the lighthouse man and I am cursed.
I am the lighthouse man transitioning between lives and never knowing
Causality nor the answer. There are no questions to have;

I am the lighthouse man and I must have been a murderer in my past life.
I am the lighthouse man and I can feel my inner fuses twist,
Falling fainter and fainter by the second.
I am the lighthouse man and I will not make it another night.
I am the lighthouse man and I am a memory-bank full of nothing remarkable.
If I felt this months ago then perhaps I would make do with the my sojourn of an empty house, atop a parked car, and perhaps I would be content with rotting.

But now the moon shines so luminously bright and full and close! So very close!
I am the lighthouse man and I chase the moon.
I am the lighthouse man and I vaguely recall my mother saying 'do not eat the moon,
It will give you nightmares!’ and it all suddenly makes sense now.

The stars are all out tonight and they await my company. I am the lighthouse man and now I run.
I run run run run for the sky in ode to the rest of the bodies that abandoned this place.
J J Aug 2019
Cresol dusk imbued to rustic hypnosis,
The civic stroll outside,zombified with
What must be glorious ataxia.

The masquerade hosted by dust,
An implicit surrender to the elements,
Basked in nocturnia-- lo,

The elements ceased having meaning
When I learnt I could not hold control
  over them.

See the sky ramp and shiver,shuffling stars
In a showcase to those loving,an augury to those
Self-appointed sinners--

And see me,disconnected and without a care,
I surrender my breath as limboid tangents
And the elements do not rebut.

I am homed in becoming alone,
I am possessed in converse and I am lost
  without the choice to be otherwise.

I watch the gimcrack mannerisms loop effably,
Understanding the road to omniscience is tipped
In ego alone--

One must not surrender,rather accept
And work a way round the system.
The cosmic map is eidetic,it's lanuage
  dares not pander to speech,
  it's sleep is one day needed
  and complimentary to our own--

I listen to the madrigal and no longer seek to compose it,
I choose to believe that nothing is chosen.
(LONG AFTERWARD) I began posting here under a different name years ago and decided to revisit the site only recently after a string of publishing rejections,despite an urge to abandon poetry all together. What's amazed me most is the growth of talent,particularly one S. Olsen,looking through much of my older work(few of which ive published here) I've found a lot of similarities,from similar phrasing's,vocabulary,format's,viewpoint's,etc. Despite not knowing of him until recently. Simply put,he is the poet i aspired to be when poetry was what my life revolved around,the best of his kind. I would rank him among my favourite contemporaries and if not for this site I'd never have discovered him, this poem shows more of my voice than his,I think,but that is a further example of his own unreplicable voice. Keep strong,brother, whatever helps helps and your writing has helped me greatly.
J J Aug 2019
Autumn,with the force of rapid thunder
Dawns the sky, clawing the lake asunder
  Beneath our steps
As we leapt
  To,fro,and to again;

Here we burn, trapped to our limboid sojourn
Gasping for air as the Daemon sits without a care
Tracing and chasing the ends of his thinning thread
Connecting to our voodoo dolls, laments of our death
In silent whispers only existant at all by the dents
Where our mouths should be.

This dreaded haunting, this memory looped
With crimson nails the Daemon draws hoops
Pliable as a smoke ring from laughing lips,
The Daemon strings us by his fingertips—
Reminds us we alone created hell on earth—
You can taste it in the kicked up dust,
The unlexical powder that remarks our birth
In this stale heat, our skin starts to crust.

I called you my best yet, you said I was a settlement in a lost bet,
I called you a ***** and wished I drownt you in the wishing well
Where you'd only have other mute spirits left to tell; I set

Out on a ****** scheme that night--
To slit your throat as you awoke and watch you fight
Without a chance.
I watched you in your contorted dance and felt you lift,
Shiver and go stiff
Dying in my arms. But as I sighed I felt invisible red eyes
Settle on us from the willows
Behind the blindness window.

I heard a needle scrape, a scornful moan and a bat's descry.
I knew then I truly was the pawn in a wicked game
Who's evil was signatured in our name.

The devil netted your soul dear, and already had mine.
And as I sat straddled over your limpid frame, frozen in time
And feeling his nails, like worn toolbox screws, along my spine
I oddly thought pleasantly of better times:

Of our first meeting on that autumnal day, when caught in the breeze
And kissing discreetly
Amongst the trees
and along the lake we simontaniously compared to the mythical  Lethe.

I loved you then, oh how I did,
And in return, we'll love forever—
Us, the looping dead.
J J Sep 2020
My safehaven,my compass, my stone!
eschaton binding the teeth which the clockarms
     strike their fangs along like useless submissive matches.
Patchy skin blent with herself from her dream
    the other night;
                               a scale no flame could level or waters be heavy enough in mass to drown, merely flood and freeze in time
    
               --hovering in limboid quantum silence--
A gift for the next lifeform to discover and make-believe a divine structure
left by some macerated God that has hitherto gone about  
unspoken.

— The End —