Black Flags are flowing
In the news;
inked in
or Not
The pulp slashes
Across my seared consciousness:

What say my heart for those
Who perish?
What Say My Heart
For Those Who Cry?

Peevishly My Heart responds,
in ****** Tears,
As in a nightmare:

Weep all the tears
For the Motherless Children,
Weep All the Tears
For The Buried Child...

Weep For Yourself, And Not Without Shame,
Weep For  Humanity And
Mankind
As it Slowly Dies...

Weep for Those
Whose Vibrant
Life You Adore.

Weep Not For The Cruelly Weak
Who, Knowingly,
inflicts
such
Inordinate pain.

J Eduardo Ramos©

The moon senses my glee,
And so in him I confide,
He peevishly teases me!
And his candour he fails to hide.
The naughty winds eavesdrop,
And spread the word like fire,
Carrying my secret from the top,
They take it down to the wire!
Soon the scattered clouds asunder;
Join in unison and loudly wonder,
"So this is why her scarlet cheeks,
Convey more than what she speaks,
And now it has widely spread,
the reason why she blushes red.
Like a bright and luminous flame,
She glows at the mention of his name,
If his thought should cross her head,
She is sure to turn crimson red."

With a teasing twitter, every bird,
Hops around & spreads the word,
The flowers animatedly sway,
And scatter my secret away!
Further smeared by the rain,
Over the hills and over the plane,
With nowhere to shroud and hide,
My secret spreads far and wide.
Thus making it widely known,
My heart in rhythmic beating,
Cannot stop itself from repeating,
His name, in an undertone!

OFF THE COAST OF WRANGEL ISLAND

The room was a frozen
block of silence

the out-of-love lovers
like two hairy mammoths

trapped in the ice
of their shared hatred.

Thousand of years had passed
since they had last talked.

Preserved like two rare
artifacts in a museum.

This the "invisible land"
an island of mists and fogs.

They looked like bad
caricatures of who

they used to be
and who

they could never ever
be again.

*

Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea.It lies astride the 180° meridian. The International Date Line is displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island. Wrangel Island may have been the last place on earth where mammoths survived.

The island is subjected to "cyclonic" episodes characterised by rapid circular winds. It is also an island of mists and fogs and is known as the "invisible land."  In literature Jules Verne has his characters trapped on a floating iceberg near here and Cassandra Clare makes it  the seat of all the world's wards, the spells that protected the globe from demons and demon invasion.

She was as it happened was reading Jules Verne's novel 'César Cascabel" whilst he as it happened was reading Cassandra Clare's "Mortal Instruments: City of Heavenly Fir", both entirely different books but both featuring Wrangel Island. I delight in such happenstance and synchronicity. I only knew of it because of the mammoth found there with hair and muscle tissue and blood intact. I was fascinated with photos of it and there was one where a scientist was bending down looking at it on a bench and they were nose to trunk as if having a chat about the years in between that separated them. When I originally wrote the poem I was looking at them in the mirror of their big fat room with the thinest of windows when they thought they weren't being observed and it looked as if the mirror had painted their emotional state and that time hung suspended forever in that one moment. They both could dispute angrily or peevishly about their state whether it be in the voice or even in silent thought. I called them THE WRANGLERS after the mirror's painting of them. Or indeed THE WANGLERS because of their persistent arguing or manoeuvering the other into the worse position so that the other could take the lowish of moral high ground. It was a bit like observing trench warfare back in WW1.

And so it was through all this happenstance that I placed them off the emotional coast of a stormy isolated island...in some limbo "invisible land."

And as to the right or wrong of my two too human artifacts where right or wrong are not all that easy to place? As Michael Pollan puts it "… morality is an artifact of human culture, devised to help us negotiate social relations."

All I knew is that I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in their peculiar shoes or that particular hell.

The room was a frozen
block of silence

the out-of-love lovers
like two hairy mammoths

trapped in the ice
of their shared hatred.

Thousand of years had passed
since they had last talked.

Preserved like two rare
artifacts in a museum.

This the "invisible land"
an island of mists and fogs.

They looked like bad
caricatures of who

they used to be
and who

they could never ever
be again.

I met him standing
In the middle of the lane, awaiting
For some silhouettes, apparently,
For he
Was gazing through the haze
Enveloping the ground of this intricate maze,
Amidst eternities of both
The one behind us and the one of forth
Acquaintance; peevishly there hotching
On his place, like pole earthshaking
Though with not a-lack of grace
This little figure strangèly reminded
Of my own wraiths I thought was far behind me; but never did they leave my soul’s abode,
No matter whether home I or abroad
I always carry them like plummet on a chain
With which all a-way down and down upcoming drowner fane,
Just like pale moon is setting to its further sleep
The same way future drowner does complete
The full life circle of eternal plan,
The one which you could not outran
In vacuous attempt to fool the time
In game that has been riggéd before thine
Name and surname were inscribed in list
Of papyrus and lost in spaceless mist

I find reasons,
I find treason in those who abide by no reason,
I think of means to inspire their demons,
To know what they do,
And desist in their heathenish
Lack of regard for the cause of their seething,

I push peevishly
Forth in my quest to relieve,
To gently correct all they do to achieve
The mess they attribute to forces unseen,
When I know in my bones they are living their dreams,

I acquire their trust,
By enacting their deeds,
I smoke and I **** with a reckless esteem,
And complain of my lungs and transmitted disease,
I say, "There's no love in the world." They agree,

Now I pretend revelations and steps,
Toward a new life, from a darkness, a depth,
And now when I speak they take pause and they seem,
To respect the same truths they once tore ream by ream,

Yea, it's a lie,
But my punishment's painful,
I can't stop pretending to be like the same folks,
That I've tried to save,
Now I drink and I claim,
That my money just slips through the holes in my seams.

All My Days

Suddenly,
     another morning,
Swishes the curtains
     without warning.

Portentous,
     with its ifs and buts,
It slashes my dreams
     like a million cuts.

Scarring
     my already scarred skin
Yet barely containing
     my nakedness within.

Apparently,
     I am disorientated,
Wandering, fumbling
     and discombobulated.

Trance-like,
     I carve out a window
To look out at a life
     lost in limbo.

Flitting
     from one person to another,
Wanting to be loved
     by somebody elses mother.

Same old, same old,
     a hand in face,
The lonely spectator
     of a strangers embrace.

Sunshine
     that I just can't see,
Perhaps the days
     were not meant for me.

Peevishly,
     I seek the shade,
It is a darkness
     that I, myself, have made.

Comforting,
     like all my hideaways,
Yet I cannot hide
     from all my days.
    
Reluctantly,
     I put on my disguise
And smile at the sun
     that dared to rise.

Incognito,
     I pretend I'm the light
Waiting, without a reflection,
     for the night.

© RJVHorton2015

This is a poem
about another
solitary shift.

There is tension
in my sore shoulders,
and a tender tightness
in my right knee joint.

The dark sky brings
the trifecta of
three rainbow hallow
having light bulbs
blazing.

Less than a quarter
of a block’s distance
is a pair of lights
that pierces the night
like irritated eyes
peevishly peering
out at the parking lot’s clearing
while pouting petulantly.

Near night’s end
I walk and listen
to the sound of the wind
moving through
the select few
scattered trees
that surround me.

The orange’s juice drips
on my dry cracked lips
while the sun
spreads its orange
glazed glory
across the dark morning sky,
a catharsis of narcissi’s sweetness.

Flags up
and then I am off
fleeing from
the forming day,
and going home
so, I can sleep
the rest of the
daylight away.

The uniquely introspective question every juvenile asks themselves during the excruciating course of an ill-prepared meal. Will I receive the confectionery goodies after and for my sufferance? Will it (and I) be worth it in the end? The answer however, by some freak misfortune lies, rather peevishly, aloft a menacing tower of retrospective terrors. When we kindle the flames of love it is never with the ebbing expectations of failure and dreadful alienation. When we answer the call only the implicitly irrational entities known as our "hearts" hear it is without hesitation (often times) that we go jumping and skipping at the very real risk of falling to our deaths. There's one question we should be asking ourselves and our accomplices: what then happens if and when Love dies? Who will bury him/her? Who will mourn them? Where will Love go after their death? Alright, maybe the queries are more numerous than I have been led to believe but my entreating stands and with veracity. Just as a child gobbling down the few remnant bits of a negligible dinner has his thoughts and focus trained on the prospects of a smooth session with a delectable treat, so too should the hopelessness of lovers be curated by a foreboding sense of the impending if not inevitable demise of affection.

To clarify, I am not a "cynic" nor am I advocating for the altogether culling of idealism and romance, a despot I am not.

alien ornithopters filled with pilgrims
sliding into snoring bedrooms
under a buzzing fluorescent moon
hubcap jockeys from artless galaxies
firing bursts of compressed methane
in wanton hypnotic quantities
ended civilization as we know it
the survivors reel in stupor
the land is barren its people wail
our women ******* exclusively
our men drool and **** themselves
except for a number of mathematicians
and barflies who did that anyhow
whoever said exile makes you smart
was a master of trickery and deceit
why did their science get them this far
then break down into useless tin
replacement parts are on the way
OK you can drive it just don't touch Turbo
well he did and became one of the new gods
commanding the involuntary muscle groups
and sundry media of mass communication
Koko the notorious hand sign gorilla
was his consecrated High Priestess
Koko want play peek-a-boo
discovered anarchy all by herself
using those prehensile wiggly digits
to construct a portable explosive device
but permanganate and peanut butter
must be mixed slow and her impatience
was set to fast so it went off in her face
leaving Koko beautiful as Aphrodesia
disarmed by wit charmed by unreason
a miracle of chaotic reconstruction
when all she wanted for her head
was a song and dance tetrahedron
proving that existence is open source
the alien visit had been productive
many messages were left with us
could time have a center
asked the almond eyed pilot peevishly
only peevish for him was rip your head off
and didgeridoo down your windpipe
according to recently extracted data
it looks like we all suffer from
the groping menace of
gambler's syndrome

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon