speaking to you as if i'm speaking to the dead
don't believe in any woman besides you
think and say i'm a disaster, you're probably right

first words spoken since i turned 16
wonder if i stayed home i wouldn't end up
like a longsword made out of dents

i'm moving quiet through the rain and the night
creeping but i'm not shy, just not interested
these days, just that my mom is the only woman
who can change me

He rolls out of bed
He drops out of his rack

He puts on his armour
He zips on his flight suit

He buckles his spurs
He laces his boots

He grabs his longsword
He grabs his helmet

And walks out to the stable
And walks up to the flight deck

To his steed
To his plane

He saddles the beast
He pre-flights the beast

Mounts
Gets in

Rears up
Kicks in full burners

And gallops forward
And takes a cat shot

Lowering his lance
Arming his missles and guns

He looks for dragons to slay
He looks for dragons to slay

The second hand a rapier
The hour hand, a longsword
And the minutes are my claymore
Armored with the twelve as I push forward
The face is the shield
The gears inside by my command spin or yield
My arsenal is time itself, ticking as I walk
Slaying all of my fears with each sound of a tock
The seconds are my soldiers, loyal and true
The hours are my guardians, great, but few
The moments are precious, hold them dear
Time is the ultimate force, weild it to control eternity
Take control of your destiny
Reinforceing dreams considerably
There is a person and future for which I weild tick and tock
And I have the aid and power of an ever revolving clock

If all appears to be harmony and coexistence in this garden enclosure,

All that means is terrible truths have not yet suffered proper
exposure,

Might you wait a little bit and watch it completely lose its
composure?

Intruding into this once peaceful garden,
digging down in the soft tissue of the mud, is absolutely
the most maniacal bug.  There he goes, he jumps he dashes, he sets devastating fires, but not the kind that leaves behind ashes.

Note that this heinous invader is white and black,
spots of red pepper this raider’s back.
Small with spiny legs ending in sharp claws,
his eager jaws ooze venom that chews and gnaws,
as he ravenously feeds on the garden’s flaws.

Faking harmlessness, you haven’t seen what lies beneath,
like a longsword hidden under its sheath.
This insect is a minion of discontent,
the harbinger of torment.

Every day he lurks there among the tangled grass,
sinking his teeth in unsuspecting plants,
to make them into his loyal sycophants,
He corrupts them farther and farther,
to the point where they even despise being watered,
because his new instruction gives them a thirst for
mutually-assured destruction.

Can you see the garden deteriorate fast, the green turns
brown and the fibers that hold everything together
cease to last?

Toxicity courses through the vegetation,
and now, plants with no evil inclination
are being swallowed up by fear, hate, and indignation.
This once beautiful botanical cultivation
has become a ******* abomination.

Every vine and leaf slowly becoming decayed and grisly.
Has excising the infestation become far too risky
because the plague has manifested and spread,
and the first wave of his victims are already dead?

Definitely people will wonder, even though he’s turned your garden over and under, how could such a little insect make you go completely insane? Well because there is no garden, he lives in my ******* brain.

4/11/2015

Today I woke up
after a long tribulation, got up
found my way down

and remembered how to
make myself coffee.
I couldn't help but feel

a longsword in my lungs
when I looked over the ridge
and started to see green colored oaks.

The powerful man
Pitchfork-armed, chasing the girl
Tine-first, ready to strike

She is today’s unfortunate rage object
Hapless, wrongless victim
Weaponless, shieldless casualty

He is blind privilege righteous
Incandescent from his
latest, baseless, graceless
gotcha!

Forehead veins pulse sickly blue-green
Gas giant magnitude pupils
Each aperture an onyx void
Irony in sympathetic nervous system arousal

If he can wound her
– really break her,
he will quiet that feeling
The one that creeps and gnaws
Whisper screaming
Especially at night

Impossible conscience
Poor Jiminy Cricket
Eyes sticky with tears
Best efforts in vain

How do we retain compassion?
Scaffold empathy?
Bolster sanity?
While absorbing the violence
Of the man who flattens his beer cans
   with a hydraulic pancake car crusher
who cuts his delicate finger sandwiches
   with a restored 1790s guillotine
who sets his table
   with longsword steak knives
   and matching pitchforks
   a set, for special occasions

Vast energy required to remain soft
When distant and diamond hard
Is the path of no resistance

All this energy
Feels wasted
Why can’t we collect it?
Battery store it?
Pitchfork narcissist anode
Empath cathode
Could power a city
Energy crisis solved

the sequence is always
lurking on the tip
of my tongue:
vintage film that
tastes like bottom
-less honey
     mead.

three eight year olds hover on the front lines,
each in their own corner of forest. an older
boy throws his rusty longsword
with a frustrated, huffling yell into the
blackwater. a summer god doused in
sun dips an ear into the stratosphere
and listens through the trees, his
presence crawling through the dirt
as he watches the three children
fight lovingly against each
other.

three cousins draw a
treaty in the mud. they’re unsure on
the details. their hunched forms
murmur against the sunset. they meet between
tree forts. they hate each other a little bit still,
though they’re not entirely sure why. the sword
of the blackwater is a rusty pipe:
sleeping in liquid tar,
tangled in seagrass.

we finish our alliance written in mud.
fingers later smell of pine smoke
and homegrown moss.

three explorers linger on over
trembling planks of crimson
wood, peering through the
docks. they seek a longsword
made of backwoods and amethyst,
dozing somewhere in the murky water.

(even now
i don’t think i
could pull it out).

valiantly
(like some kind
of fantasy novel)
we tip toe across miry sand
and velvet rockweed. (small
fish probably sleep in it now).
we give up, and every summer
i scrutinize the cloudy water:
nothing there but sunfish
and unresolved tension.

before the war we swam beneath
the crimson planks and we were
mermaids, pirates, knights - all
at once and one at a time. the
years blend together and we
hate each other in different
ways. now we’re so old (none
of us taller than the sword
still). we’re never here at
the same time anymore,
and the summer god may not
have his ear to the earth
as he did so long
ago.


i hear three eight year olds
back at the docks, voices rising
from beneath warm obsidian.
there’s yelling through a dense
thicket: we’re screaming our
heads off - (they roll into the water,
turning into fish made of sunset
and memory). some summer god
somewhere rolls over in bed.
we listen in our daydreams
for another battle cry, galumphing
through shallows and ocean shores
until we surrender, making ourselves
forget about swords and tree forts
made of earth and twine.

yet i still hear three eight year olds
howling their heads off
somewhere in the back
of my mind, arguing in
sing-song voices
over who had won
the war.

You're hopeless.
Completely utterly lost.
This bizarre abyss of feelings is haunting,
Even your councillor has no idea what you're on about.
Despite this you charge head on,
Armour strong longsword drawn.
Then you shatter into pieces,
As anxiety strokes your face.

"I AM NOT afraid, i was born to do this" please, jehanne la pucelle--
here, humming, the constant
burn whilst he--inkspinner--mollifies and
****** ****** skin
I AM NOT
afraid--the hum, epauliere lying
heavy, cumbersome--my shoulders are broad and
moth eaten, trembling, waste;
mom, my canines hurt; i have to
show my teeth.
there are gauntlets in my skin, mom, licks of
fever-heat beneath my heels.
I draw the Weary longsword.
"I AM the drum." see: i too spit blood, raise the banner; are we the drum, all
you and i? watch the masses close in.
conflagration inferno round and round;
the sting of flesh, the weight,
the ache in my gums; the
drum, which GOD beats out HIS message please, mom, it
hurts. please, jehanne, it hurts please beg me BE NOT AFRAID

“don’t do it,”
I say, to the brown eyed best friend opposite me
“don’t ever love anyone. Not ever.
It’s how people get hurt,
Believe me
I saw what happened to the others.”
Her brunette waves bounce in an agreeing nod,
“just,
just promise me you won’t.
Okay?
just, promise you’ll focus on you”
there’s a stunted wavering, to my tiny voice
as I try to find the words to match my conviction
“Don’t get distracted.
You’ve gotta make something of yourself.
Something real big okay,
I know you can.”
her chin drops and she averts her eyes at my praise
as though she doesn’t know yet, what she’s capable of
“You’re going to be something real big,
Just, you can’t do that with anyone else
Okay?
So, don’t love anyone
They’ll only get in your way”
Your better than me
You can’t let anything get in your way
You’re supposed to be something.”
At this,
Her lips turn from cupids bow to longsword
And she scrunches up her freckle frosted nose as her eyebrows knit themsleves into a sweater
“So promise me,”
I say, scooting closer,
“Promise me you won’t care for anyone.
Not even me,
Not even me. I’m not good enough.
no one at all.
Just be the best.”
She nods, defiantly agreeing
To the plan
though looking away in discomfort
I catch her eyes, not done yet
not satisfied with her response
“Pinky promise?” I say, Extending my nail polish chipped baby finger
To hers
an unbreakable pinky promise
to be doubly sure no one will break her

she extends her
Nail polish chipped baby finger towards mine
And I reach for her,
crossing the distance between our hands

until I hit the mirror

Before moving,
I left my apartment spotless -
no soap **** in the tub,
no hairs or crumbs in the carpet,
not even the linoleum had a scratch or scuff -
spotless, I can assure you.
Yet, I got a letter from my landlord
stating that my security deposit was being withheld.
O, the injustice!
O, the villainy!
Four-hundred dollars, that swine!
That crooked-nosed knave!
If this were 14th century feudalist Europe,
when men still had a fighting chance, mind you,
I would have half a mind to
drag his very name through each tavern and inn,
through the street muck,
don my longsword,
dress my horse,
ride through the dawn,
into the walls of his squalid garrison,
lay waste to his livestock,
enslave his first-begotten,
canoodle his wife,
torch his hens and roosters,
shave him bald,
form a rope with his filthy hair,
tie it to his filthy ankle,
and yank him along
from the back of my horse,
spitting in the eyes
of those who dare oppose me!
Nay, who oppose justice!

But, alas,
I merely read the notice letter and sighed.