Is this not prayer?
is this tool not the tool I hoped for? The pen
filled by the ever-flowing flowery ink
that re-news old knowns
left to ripen under bald and hoary heads
in stoney hearts softened by seventy years worth
of salty tears
and sad songs

"great was the number of them,
wombed ones all, who sang of the victory to be"

Miriam and Hannah, Deborah and Jael, who
retold those tales by the rivers of Babylon?

And who fueled the furnace seven times hotter,
to signal the unbelivable fourth.
being likend unto the son of god, though the
analogy seems
lacking evidence that the likeness can be reproved.
Look again.

This magi-tech converged from all the poetic,
pathetic
ethos of logo marks making proper
ification of a rythm's
un legit singin' in public,
on the corner, wit' Willie and the po'boys
beat me daddy six t' the bar---
Oh
--- those ethnic poundings on my skull,
--- send those feelings, urging, grow grow grow
--- 'til the roofs cain't hold hope in

then

hear come them ol' time thought cops,
wee gray dominees preparing dominoes for

one reason,
dominos are never stood to stand, but to fall

touching one, touching one, touching one

whisper, rest
the waiting is over, this is the time
to start all over.

11:29 PM
how long has it been 11:29 PM i wonder
how many times have we leapt in circles through space,
and how long until it will be 11:30 PM i wonder

11:32 PM
how long ago was it 11:29 PM i wonder
and did my headphones say “small” or “smart”
sing it again if you please, i beg of you
i just can’t quite catch it
the webbing of my ears was built by a faulty spider,
drunk on success, he was
one too many flies he caught in a day, they say behind hands in soft voices
now his work is a mere shadow of what it used to be

8:24 PM
i can’t bare moving my eyes upward
and seeing 8:25 PM
it would make my stomach twist and my organs grow cold
2 minutes line my eyes with dark marks and i’m only existing on a plane of melancholy

2:46 PM
i
want a reason to be sad
i need justification
i need a reason
not an excuse
because the world is cold and my printer broke
and i lost my favorite stuffed animal
and i’m not a five year old anymore
because i ******* hate Nike so ******* much

somewhere past 11:23 PM
i lost the minutes in a haze of emotional speeches, never to be heard outside the blue-lined walls, and steam
a fuzzy 11:40 PM reflects a faint shape of a vessel,
carrying one soul,
destination; THE END
arrival time; unknown
eyes brimming with anxiety i exist outside my head only

i lost track of the time
i don’t know if it’s dawn or dusk or day anymore
i only know muted poundings and pathetic drops of water across the floor
the white white white white white floor
i should get a watch

I cannot do this.
I fear.
I fear repetition.
Repetition that I crave, yet also repulses me at the same time.
An internal battle between neurons and ventricles and atriums.
My chest burst open today when I recognized the face
under that mocked brim and,
for two moments,
the Doppler effect was just something scientists invented to make themselves feel better.
But it all came crashing down without
the connection of soul windows.
Blue? Brown?
Who remembers.
Remember is such a simply complicated word.

I fear the anger
and the holes in the wall
and the murderous screams.
and ripping church out of ears and heart and mind.
cause that hurts.

I fear November.
My best and worst two days in heaven.
And how badly I would...do...want that to happen again.

Next I fear the eyeless,
lipstick,
lover of hands.
The shallow one with a faux deep soul.
The hypocrite.
Her acid words that burn through screens.
They rip away the moment they penetrate my skin and touch my heart.
I fear her disapproval.
because she will disapprove,
this I know.
Silver tongue like the snake.
Venom pointed at me, her sister.
Betrayed.
So she will disapprove and that means much.

Then I fear giving half of my heart,
that is his,
away.
Well, it wouldn't be half, because is it still dipped deep in love.
So a sixteenth of my heart-his heart- and that is still much.
For us.

It is just a crush. and that is it.
But isn't that how everything starts?
Tender pressings on your heart until they become the pulses and beats and poundings and crushing sensations.
Once.
Once.
Only once that has happened to me.
Still is.
And even if it is unrequited,
I fear losing that.
I fear fearing.
I fear rejection.
I fear losing the one thing that I care about.
and I fear not finding something.
Or finding it to only lose it in a few months time.

So I will refrain.

I stitch myself into your solar plexus,
red stringed within the
overlapping archways and
runaway buttresses of the body.
It runs white and gray
along the plain of the corporeal,
spires and towers reaching out to form
the webbing of white.
Wandering through the ruins
of the body collapsed,
could you hold me down and
could I make it last?
As a speck I pass
beneath the gates
of aggressive,
bony spears--
fangs ready for the ****.
The teeth frame the horror
that hearts often belie,
the nervous flutterings and out of chest poundings
that grab the floor out from under you and
plummet you into a beatless abyss.
The heart is a special kind of stomach,
a power plant ready for digestion
of rolled eyes and recycled emotions
to power the city of the body
and the spires of the soul.
If we carved into that untouched ivory,
that still-hidden treasure
that cowers beneath the flesh
would it be as satisfying
to sew myself to you
and create one of two?
A frosted, glassy figure
encased in a glassy shell,
suspended in its prison,
its home,
its island and
its Hell.
Are they questions only when
pronounced without the period?
Its the subtlety of language
that always tricks me up.
It always starts with
hurried statements and
broken glances
but ends up being
up to chances.
How well do we stack up
when there were never any odds to pile?

I hear you say
you are hiding
this inside of you,
but can’t find
what rises; the
colored bubbles
give strange poundings
to your brain.

Every day
moon, sun and stars
lift without your
understanding,
doors open and close,
spilling heat.
Your face is lost
in busy streets

You go to empty
work all day,
and to God
in evening moments,
where the anger cannot hide,
where dreams
whitewash
until morning.

First light opens
steadfast hatred
that you always feel,
the way sips
of wine spin you
toward old death.
Emptiness again
says hello.

A quiet day
among common
villagers
would give much relief–
frightening beasts,
unending storms;
you feel vulnerable
as babies

and the poor,
the robbed, the widowed,
the filled grave sites
in warring lands;
victims of an
unseen torrent
that rolls beneath
your very day.

A wave of cruelty
enters you
from deep
and desolate places,
your eyes swollen,
thirsty for tears–
relief you need
found in crying.

Your hidden room
is filled with heat
and decorated
in carved masks,
as a rumble
underneath comes,
allowing
slow catastrophe.

Your body image,
shocked by anger
and hatred, makes
your room stifling,
the pillow retreat
of hard moments
swept in
recurring lava flow.

Your beating *****
wants life back,
rather than
rolling, burning stone–
a pathetic rhythm
inside,
expecting
magma cruelty.

If only helpful
sleep would come,
overlook the
smokey darkness,
the madness
that is still rising–
oozing mountains
badly singeing.

A heart–
a new colored bubble
helping tortured ribs,
screaming flesh,
settle and
cool a lava bed–
brings soil and seed
to the old flow.

Sorrow is a hot flush of prickle
salt filled pearls that spill over
the dry reds of your cheeks.
Sorrow is the swollen ache in your
throat that tugs down on the corners
of your mouth:
gravity that seeks to bring
nose to grass,
forehead to gravel:
the little razor
that dig into your blackened flesh.

Sorrow is the way your own arms
seize themselves:
freckle to freckle,
hand to hand,
all identical and opposite.
Sorrow is knowing that
all sounds coming out of your
own mouth and all self-caressing
comfort is utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably  
vain.

Sorrow is the cool glass
you smash your brow against
in reflective attempts to cool
poundings in your temple
and calm the only constant of life:
drumming, hot-blood pumping
four-chambers that will one day
Fail You.
Sorrow is dirt you inhale
into your starved lungs when
it buries your head in
earthy embrace
awaiting your thrashing to grow still
as you’re shushed like an animal
before butcher until
your hair blows gently
in the wind.

Sorrow is the way pain like fire
licks every crevice of your sweet skin
until molted scars like old corpses
swallow you whole
making you utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably
unrecognizable.

Sorrow is the eyes of your friends
refusing to meet your own
until the flicking of blues and greens
and browns and blacks
to any place besides
the empty whites of your own
is dizzying
is numbing:
an electric buzzing of static
in grey matter.

Sorrow is an invisible hand
wrapping gently around your neck
pushing you under the oceans
of your own briny making
until your foam kissed lips
are blue and cold—

parted slightly in a dead hope
that someone will revive them.

Sorrow is the vice clenching
bloodied tissue of
your battered
and bruised heart
tightly

and tighter still.

Until it is stagnant.
Until it is inconstant.

Until it’s too late to tell anyone


what

sorrow

is.

I granted you a couple of more steps than I thought I should.

Measured out in open ended questions

that define the distance between each step across the ground beneath you.

Wishing I had enough strength to keep you, I run.

Far for darkness and strung out on broken memories,

I hold self doubt like slaughter house cuts left festering;

spite filled infections lessening the will I have to go on.

Like this, I know you too well.

And like this I sink in the wells I dug for your endless love.

Not so endless after all.

But the fall…

was much farther than expected and harsher than I had hoped.

So I sing songs for ravens

hoping they turn into crows.

Death crows crowing so that death can find me.



“Death crows crowing so that death can find me.

Long lost negative breath inside me

Shaped to fit the curve of my crying

lungs as they collapse in from rotting.



Dark light of life take what you’ve given me.

Collect the space between my lungs and split me

from my center stillness and let me be free

and know the release of this thing called breathing…”



Oh, the weightlessness of forgetting that burden

is first even to the solace I've found in your departure

and the hope that I will continue to find Love after death.

I join the stillness that you have yet to discover

as I find all that I have ever needed in whispers of my own heart.

Pulsing its poundings long after my chest has withered away.

Drug company antidepressants for breakfast with
feelings adrift at the corner of
Armageddon and Vine then
four cups of plundered coffee beans
bring heart poundings against that
swollen old surgery scar but hey now I'm
finally able to focus -
Ignore throat tissue issues that
issue forth acidic ******* bile
to navigate
mirrored command lines cut in
neat little rows -
They tell the machine what to do while
music blares and
****** I wish they'd
stop playing the ******
version of Blinded by the Light
for once -
Agitated and hurting -
But intrigued -
Like watching the jaws of life
wrapped around a car crash
you can't look
away from and
sometimes I just want to go
back to yelling
"Go **** yourself!" at everything
but it
didn't do any good then
why would it now?
An old friend's chaos algorithmic
paintings bring strange
comfort from mass media assault
and pepper spray -
Recall he was dead set on
a jukebox demise but maybe he realized
following linear models of
progression will
derail when spun
across time as a wheel
that breaks the back
of all who push against
it but that doesn't stop
hired guns from hitting
heavy pipes
in the park
after dark
and it's all over now baby blue
because I can't stop thinking
of desert roses even when a thorn
adorns their last names -
If you figure any of this out
let me know because I sure haven't -
Welcome to my stream of consciousness -
Fishing off limits -
You already took the bait.

The train's boxcars traveled in skullcap colours.
Tired and lonesome beats ascend to the platforms.
Reflect back on the worlds past, a deep breath... a sigh.
Regalings of thunderous poundings,
Lackluster imitators

There is a twinkle in the eye
of a head held high

No matter the surroundings
the embraces or the poundings

Inner dignity shines bright
and finds its way to light

The twinkle in the eye
of a head held high

It's a rhythm,
Pounding in my brain,
For words to match.
That's the aim.

This poem has rules,
For which I make
The words to follow
Or the rhythm breaks.

Four lines a verse entails.
The rules are clear to me.
Lines second and last
Must have synchrony.

Some call this rhythm poetry,
To most a simple rhyme,
The words are much more to me.
They help improve my mind.

With every verse I write
New words come to me.
The rhythm and good luck
enhance my vocabulary.

Like the pulsing of a drum.
The rhythm has a beat.
The words, they march to that.
With measure and repeat.

Now the poundings stopped.
The words all written down.
I can rest a while
Listening for that sound.

Last night I noticed that I'm dropping things
far too often.
Papers. Keys. Small plastic toys.
Even round lemons.
So far nothing fragile or important but still
this worries me.
I'm thirty-seven: not young anymore
but, also, I'm not old.
My first thought was: am I forgetting to hold them tight?
Perhaps, I'm not grabbing them right.
I sat for a while diagnosing my own mental health.
No. I am not becoming forgetful.
I can reason fine.
Relieved, I put my worries behind me
and went to sleep.

Darkness hurts my hands.
When I close my eyes
the pain starts.
It shoves itself like a clattering elevator
clawing its way up to my fingertips.
Poundings and tensions and strains
begin to disrupt my languid limbs.
In my dream, my palms feel like lead:
infinitely heavier than their normal weight.
My fingers start curling in.
But it's in my joints where the throbbing emanates.
The discomfort becomes insufferable.
It hurts to move my hands.
My fists have turned into numb bricks.
By now the pain has disrupted my sleep.
I take my sore hands and place them on top of me
as I turn my back and face the bed
letting my hands soak the heat guarded between
the sheets and my chest.
This alleviates some of the pain.
This is how I hope to get some rest.

Though I'm fully aware
that the pain in my hands
will never really go away.

Time to engage with your surroundings
Don't deny the violent sounds that are your own heart's poundings
Deal with all life's ******* no matter how bleak it may be sounding

i love you
don’t ever say i don’t
because it’s when i heard the poundings and screaming and shattering glass windows when i was 12
it’s the constant reminder that you’re the reason your parents aren’t in love anymore, that all their problems came from you. i was 13
when i was 14 i finally watched him walk out the door, i watched my mother fall to her knees. she balled for 3 days straight. now she’s killing herself with cigarettes and liquor.
at 15 i realized that i matured way faster than i was supposed to. i also realized my sister had been taking my antidepressants to shut the bullies out at school. i never knew that someone could be so hurt.
it was at 16 that you finally came into my life. showed me what love is. and that what i grew up with wasn’t normal, all the mental and physical scars that i had to tell you about, but you didn’t leave. infact, you were the reason the nightmares stopped.
flash forward to 23, we got our life planned together. we are a match, that has yet to burn out. you promised me something once, you promised me that we wouldn’t be like my parents. and you’ve held that promise for 8 years. i can’t thank you enough.

this most civil
civilization’s educations
educate through
poundings in

Educate: To Give Instruction
Origin: Latin: Educare
Educare: To Draw Out, To Lead Out

The writing on the wall is not graffiti.
It was not put there by rebel hands.
It’s written in an obscure language
Few will take the time to learn
And even fewer heed its warning.

The writing lists the reasons
For the coming of the Horsemen.
The steeds that carry avenging riders
Wearing mantles made of
Fire and flood, earthquake and war.

The writing on the wall is flaming
With incendiary anger at the people
Who will not read what’s written there,
Having armed themselves in black chain mail
Forged from avarice and greed.

They shed no thought for fellow man
Or for the world that holds them all.
They lust for power that money brings
And dollars are the only God they worship.
They’ll never read what’s written on the wall.

There is a whinny on the rising breeze
That carries smoke from nearby fires,
And subtle poundings on the ground
Foretell the coming of the herd with
Flaming brands that match the wall
ljm

head poundings
thick broom tidings
jovial jungles
standing atop
little dark city
white shoe brings
moon death to
vesuvian-whipped
crater polis.

Look at my face and
you can't help but notice
my captivating eyes.

Their refinement was well crafted
after many poundings of my head
against the stone wall of lust.

Beauty In beauty
Beauty has its charm to enlighten surroundings
Love extends all attraction to make the show great
Heart with all its idiosyncracies start all poundings
Wonderful sighs and cries are enough to but state
Sparks of beauty is to make entire place to spark
Her charismatic charms and graces are all around
You have to embark to put your sweet love mark
As an emblem of beauty I just found you all around
Let us my love your love to surpass any other beauty
Please give me your hand and solace to my soul
Let me kiss you and embrace you as a real sweet diety
Let me place my lips on your lips and on the mole
Colonel Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright Nov 2020 Love Remains