Trees hold the deep earth together way below with crooked fingers of the underworld and catches foul above
Upward to the heavens on finger towers,
clapping on winds they shake their dander
And the makers of green bras on mountain tops

They are the landlords of ground,and air beasts, and
incumbent giants of the ages
They whisper being puppeteered by winds of old
They are the alchemists of oxygen
They are dangling playgrounds
They are the Autumn crunches beneath our feet

Trunk etchings by bards, trees reflecting
cultures' dissemination
We walk under penumbras that deny the scorch of summer
as cool water douses fire, so too, shade douses heat

Watching trees in my pleasant reverie I observe how they
help break the carpeted land, bringing about a  certain diversity in moving tranquility and rustling of their songs

rain is running down your window.
its drops, akin to constellations, decorate the glass in clusters, running down the pane when too many join the group.
you watch the chase like a child, tracing each competitor’s path with your eyes until they hit the bottom of the windowsill.

each drop is dyed yellow with the light of the street lamps behind them.

the smell of damp earth is lingering in the air, present even through the walls you hide behind.

the storm outside wears a dark coat of rain clouds, heavy and full.
she touches down on the earth with every raindrop.
your neighbor’s lawn is overflowing with her gifts.

she is insistently loud; demanding that you acknowledge her, comment on her power, complain about her generosity that is flooding your garden, and take shelter in the wake of her downpour.

but beneath it all, the rustling of her heavy grey coat and the thundering of her many feet...


a siren sounds.


a song, sweet and promising, chimes through the night air, its melody akin to a lover’s embrace.
the ozone-heavy wind carries it gracefully and you can almost picture the creature it came from, honey bubbling up at its lips.


you know this sound. you hear it ring under every rainfall.


an urge grows, twitching your feet where they are planted to the floor.
your wrists, as if puppeteered, long to reach for the door.
a deep pull, hooked around your rib cage like a fish doomed, is threatening to uproot you from your chair.


and you wonder, if the rain were to touch your skin, would you be given the sweet salvation you were promised?

would it wash away the ache of existence, the permanent stone settled at the bottom of your stomach that anchors you to the earth?

you swear, if you could just feel the lines of rainwater drip down your skin that you would give yourself away for the promise of a new beginning.


a siren song, the temptation of the sea.

a distant fantasy in the streets of suburbia.

it’s singing to you tonight.


it’s the pull to go outside in the rain in the hopes of washing away all that you are and starting anew.
to watch who you were run into the gutter and feel your soul ebb and wave with the waning of the moon behind the storm.
to feel water running down your arm and soaking your shirt, prickling your skin with cold just to remind you that you are alive.
to surrender to the power of the torrent, to tilt your head to the sky and feel the drops hit the thin veil of your eyelids and run past your ears and trail back into your hair.

the chill of the air is weighted with rainfall, and you feel the urge to cry. you might already have.  

it would be hard to tell in the storm.


the sweet siren whispers in your ear, and her voice is made of rain-slicked tires and damp earth.


“Is this the rebirth you were looking for?
Have you escaped what you were running from?
Will you give yourself to the sea if she asks it of you?”



you ponder. silent.



a deep empty is beginning to settle where the stone was in your stomach.

how far are you willing to unmake yourself?




you already know the answer.


you can’t.




when you open your eyes, you have to blink the tears out of your eyelashes.
your ears ring with the absence of song, as if they’re aching to remember the echoes of a melody just out of earshot.

water beats on the metal cars and slanted roofs outside and you ache silently with the loss of something you knew you could never have.
the absence of it sits heavy, gnawing at the inside of your stomach and making its way up your throat in cut-off mourning.

the storm whips the trees around, as if berating you for ignoring her, for ignoring her gift of thinning the veil so you could escape to where you would always be unknown.

if you decide to go out, perhaps the siren would come back to sing her sound to you, delivering you to the ocean where you swear you belong.

maybe she'd sing you to sleep away from it all.


but the rain continues to fall and the urge comes and goes and you remain, glued to your window, tracing the constellations of what could be if you only step out the door.

"A holstered product secretly hunts after its own end product-"

                    "-not metal targets nor flying geese, but mortality."

A man, with graying hair and pursed lips, told me this. A well-trained and prayered piety had crept along, pounced, and overcome him. Like Edison, a creative obsession gripped his spine and puppeteered the entire body. It was a plague, he called it, or something like that. Even at a young age, gaurdian 1 & 2 lulled him to the steeple's hiding. He noted how the steeple was always at mast. His children would observe the same detail, live the same routine. I studied the curious character for weeks. A facsimile of the Word seemed permanently pressed on his brain, trapped behind devout eyes- For weeks I studied him, give me more time! Each biblical page was scribbled and creased, share and reused. -no longer. "My holster found its mortal tonight, friend. I'll raise the barrel and create a grand scene."

Slight pause, heavy breathe, slow speak. "Colossal at best."

by Kendra Cook

I will ignore all concepts of adherence and maybe, just this once,
be blunt about my fear;

I’m a stuck oriole in a window.
I’m a pedestrian somewhere in VV Soliven underneath the pouring rain
with my parasol jammed, won’t spread out.
The petrichor from the ground rises and like dust,
I settle and cave in, like an unsuspecting dagger making its slow crawl
towards the back of the next face I see in this deadlock.

They say when you stick it to the man,
stick it good, and whatever beating or punishment may follow,
face it like a man.

but what is a man to do to the higher man
when he has his guts spread on the floor like an inkblot
from a shattered glass?
this working classman status isn’t for the weak,
and it sure isn’t for the brave either – what will become of the fools
sitting atop our heads when we have learned to outgrow them?

Sooner than it is later, I will go back to the pit like some soldier
cleaning his Lee-Enfield in the endless snow.
I will be faced by inbreds, imbeciles, rebels,
dilettantes, proletariats who have their necks leashed, their arms
puppeteered and their voices mellowed down by some defunct ventriloquism.
I will crank open the mailbox of my home and see that there
are notices: some from the bank, the loans, and the bills – all of them screaming
pecuniary, all of them bludgeoning soul.

If this is what a man has to deal with when he comes to
learn that life’s no downtown street promenade, then I’m willing
to slit the throat of the next child that’s giddy enough and filled with life
to search meaning through the bleared image in front of him.
I see high-stake rollers and proletariats, bigshots, and darling boys
roll down their car windows and flick the smoke out in the **** freeway

while I am here, watching myself slowly rot in the cubicle mirror next door
wary of my somber entrails. I think of a pub somewhere in Magallanes, and I dream
heavily when I am awake. The beaded body of the Hefeweizen is waiting for me
like a paramour, but I have to clock-punch my way out first before I can reach
some sort of truce: as long as I have myself sign these contracts, as far as my freedom is
concerned, what keeps the ball rolling for me might be something I would
despise as long as I breathe in this disgustingly thick air of deceit and consummation.
There is no life in here. All of us are dead.
Buying things we do not need, doing things we don’t want, fooling ourselves
in the complete process, marry wives and husbands and breed children
who will do the same in this cyclically deadening circus. My god is filled with
cotton and the streets scream ****** ****** against the spring.
There are enough violence in the thoroughfares to cast me back to my
home and coil, fraught with unrelenting demand.

There’s no other way to look at it rather than simplifying the equation.
Some do it for worth, that’s your tonic.
Some do it for fun, that’s your senseless beating.
Some do it because they have no other choice: they are not looking far enough.
As long as you have yourself beaten to slave-bone and driven mad with
downtime, then you have yourself laid down on a silver-platter catching
the swill of such riotous rigor: to be shaken out of sleep and shove
meat down your throat and thank the Gods for a wonderful day when all I see
outside are streets blackened to the teeth with distortion and the automobiles
like limbless children leaving no trace.

Some take the easiest way out, but I am not crazy enough to bring
myself to sanity. I have other caprices to go with.
This is enough a suicide than it is on the other side.
Whenever I look at my superior, I see nothing,
and whenever I gaze at the surrounding scenes I see people
sticking knives at each other when backs are turned.
I see people swallow everything that is given to them without
the slightest inch of askance: to complain is the inability to withstand
the current situation – but I am no fool to close my eyes.
I have still the guts to face everyday like some old friend, death, in my arms,
singing blues from the 1980s. When this is done,
I will go back to where it usually does not hurt: in the silence.

where no faces bid me hello – they do well in their own discomfiture,
and I do not wish to see them any longer.
where no automobiles tear the streets and cleave the moon farewell.
where there are no sparrows outside, where there are no laughing children,
where there are no hollow men and women greeting each other tenderly
and blighting each other safe in the resignation of some dull home.

if I am mad, then what does this make you? better? privileged?
I’ve had other people look deep into me like some deepwell without
water and they tell me, “there’s something about you, something about you.”
and when I turn my back to search for some sameness,
I figure there is nothing else to find but the same trapping fate in this
burning cylinder of a home.

Waking up and filling in shoes and dressing up for nothing,
earning money and throwing it all at our own expense,
buying thrills and wasting away as time lounges like a cat
at the foot of the Victorian. If there’s better enough a fall than this,
I will sign myself to have my bones broken, my ribs opened

to let go of my famished soul while all the others
keep themselves clean, putrefying themselves viscerally.

Awakened by the rumble in the ground,
I stared unfocused at a rolling cloud
of smoke and black soot falling all around,
and startled at the thunder-crack so loud,
          that scared to lifeless sleep a thousand faces,
          which littered fields to the most remote places.

The rumbling, now with squeaking iron wheels,
grew louder as the iron beasts approached,
I stood  and reeled upon two aching heels,
the sight of monsters ready to encroach.
          I fell beneath the belly of one beast,
          devoured into its raging, trampling feast.

Awakened by the whooshing of my breath,
pressed out from lungs and skin so completely,
after the cracking, crunching sound of death,
where pneuma from its flesh finds liberty.
          As light as soot-less air that blows away,
          I bid farewell to me.  I could not stay.

Around the fields where soldiers came to slay,
some shadows danced their jig victoriously,
while others puppeteered warriors in play,
and bathed in blood-warm sin so joyfully.
          And white-robed praying men stood off aside,
          with faces deep in praying hands to hide.

And,  as if sniffing blood upon the air,
some shadows turned their heads at once to me,
proceeded to approach like floating hair
of one drowned, pushed about, under  the sea.
          Their un-mouthed accusations, gurgled screams,
          struck fearsome that I burned up at my seams.

Yet one warm hand upon my shoulder stayed
my tremblings, my accusers ghastly shrieked.
My fears, not fully quenched, were much allayed.
The white-robed man, in un-mouthed words did speak,
          in my defense, recalling all good deeds,
          at times when his advice I'd somehow heed.

The raging shrieks cast all I ever did,
from infancy until this very war,
all things exposed and all I ever hid,
my very being was bared down to my core.
          In minutes lasting for eternity,
          my every living moment I could see.

Both sides had piled my deeds upon a scale,
each deed a colored weight much like a stone.
When one would add his stone,  the other'd wail,
till finally I found myself alone.
          I looked around and saw no one in sight,
          as darkness overcame me with a fright.

In blindness, all around me, grinding teeth,
unreachable, beyond my farthest reach,
a heaviness, as trapped down underneath,
a chasm, somewhere, never to be breached.
          The argument had finished, I surmised,
          with my conclusion hardly a surprise.

(C)2010, Christos Rigakos

2, 12, 4, 5
spending your life perched on your plush throne
as the forest creeps upon your every move, every thought, every blink of an eye
never even turning to look back, only straight ahead, 60 miles an hour
but is that even a choice?
2 granddaughters
whom for every risk is taken
                   every turn
                   every go
                   every stop

12, 4, 5, now you're quite a distance ahead
living your life knowing exactly what's in front of you
that speckled path contains no surprises, only expectation
you know what you live to do
but do you even know what you are living for?
12 hours with a hand on the wheel
a toe on the gas
a spine slowly curling upon itself,
that which afterwards, you stay up a little
                                         do some work
                                         go to bed

i never get a good night's sleep anymore,
im too busy waiting for my funeral reception

4, 5
flaking first at your delicate edges, then straight to your core
trapped between point a and point b
puppeteered by the ******* who tell you what to do and put it on a sign
moving solely to move others to their futures
their 60,000 dollar futures
4 years until i finally get to retire
though, does retire even mean escape?

5
5 slips of paper at the end
5 faces, 10 pairs of eyes to bless you
i have never seen a happier man in my life.

The meek are in the pocket,
of the powerful,
The artist is in the pocket,
of the authority.
The authority; cops,
are in the pocket of the law,
The law is made up,
by politicians,
Their deceptive truths,
puppeteered by criminals; gangsters.
The ruthless tyrants are,
in the pocket of the
malnourished, emaciated, gaunt,
faceless demon,
Shriveled and terrifying,
pock marked arms outstretched,
Slithering up the back,
Recanted by the one,
Absolute wisdom,
Of the meek,
The beggars are in the pocket,
The vagabond fools and jesters,
The guru shaman mystic ascetics,
That journey,
Yet never set foot,
Whom hermitage,
Is a pilgrimage,
To where the Absence of mind,
Isn't Mindful,
It is just simplicity,
Sacrilegious ease,
The safety of the Pocket.

The leaves scrape mid dance
Encased into a joy none know
Puppeteered by gusts
A mouth of our own couldn’t exhale

Six moths linger soft
Wing dust fallen and lost
Luminescence calls
Even our smallest

We are all just scraping
Against the harsh urban concrete
Pulled by the wind of our own breath
Which will one day pause

And the leaves will settle
To prepare for the sun to beam once more
For the moths who are left.

Time and necessity
puppeteered its temperature to better suit
our appetite,
left it to linger in our peripheral vision
as if it was no longer a true masterpiece of  
the wild.

It blazed through forests,
pioneered and conquered,
destroyed.
Then, no longer mighty
and no longer feared,
was put into a box
to be mastered by a mother
lighting the neon colored wax candles
on a child’s blue birthday cake
or a woman
adorned with stockings slightly torn
and makeup slightly smudged
lighting a cigarette on a street corner
while waiting for the 8 o’clock bus.

Instead of burning,
it melted.
Instead of demolishing,
it decorated.
Instead of blazing,
it burnt out.

*October 10, 2013

on the phone
you talk and talk until suddenly
  you say you're going to let me go.

i stare out empty, filling in images
  over the blank wall, it's became a sort of silent mantra as of late;
the vague daydreams are bound to crumble back to memory
some way or another
if not wear it's bite marks like tiny wounded flags

i let grow swollen.  i only wish you never changed me like you did. i remember gathering rugburnt rashes
on our underthighs, making each other's jaws twitch
with the electric heater as our modern day campfire.
it's a good day for a warm shower, to burn my skin red and peel an unrecognisable face out of the mirror, a clense, a diy baptism;in the aftermath: i showered as many times as i had to,
i saw the outcome miles away (it was a certainty any time i dared to speculate on the possibility)
O why am i so sickened ?
i had to figure out if i had any right to be

and the days dragged on so long.

your eyes glowed like chasms once,
they've grown oxidated and cold since.
i hope i've done my part to change you.

Sometimes I've felt like a pawn being puppeteered to trapeze a thin string,
Knowing for sure that I'm drawing a noose but waiting to know who it's for.

Hot green tea
Lemons, bitter lemons in ******* everything
I talk and circle around myself
Avoiding distracting insomnia driving
Smoke clouds tonight.
My hands and finger tips sometimes
Late into the night
Or early in the morning
As if puppeteered by something
Stronger and more colossal than myself
I slice the strings with my bare teeth.

Sitting and gazing at the glorious southern sky
I spend too much money
Feeling like a modern day Blanche DuBois
My hair is so ******* blonde.

Lets discuss drugs and just how they will infect our veins
A big thought when inspecting a dead possum
Play possum in our front yard tonight
Little brother donned surgical gloves, a trash bag
Mama geared him up right
Its got rabies, everyone chimed
As I sat in silence in the kitchen
Stuffing chicken and too buttered for my taste
Broccoli in my face, come look at it, come look at it
Its so dead
I refused, eating with nothing but the TV
Warning of severe winter storms
And a mending heart
Staying away from what you should allow to be the past
On the news.

I wanna be thinner
Stronger
Braver
My hair longer
I wanna be invincible
I want to be able to see you in the room
And not give a flying ****.

But lets face it, Zak.
Our hearts will pound a little harder
We will drink a little bit more of whatever is in our hands
As we avoid and dodge thoughts
New Years Eve approaching
I place my phone back on my desk
To do just that.

Writing, so painfully seeing our story
My story with so many
Becoming fully realized
But how beautiful, how freeing
As I stood on that playground cage
My arms stretched out
I knew none of this would be easy

Looking and storming through an army of wrong faces
I painted the doorway of my art studio, so young
I saw it again for the first time today
In what seems like eons
I knew exactly what it meant.

Just as there's light, there's darkness in everyone's life.
It's stark, shadowing sunlight, and doesn't yield.
Just how is anyone meant to jauntily thrive
in an ostentatious world meant to shield
Beading, beating eyes from those that suffer
from vicious, bleeding lies?

A pawn cannot decide where it lies
in the everchanging game of fate that is its life
being puppeteered by monsters who make their pieces suffer
from their callous thrones that do not yield.
For they always use an invisible shield
to ensure that they always thrive.

In such a world, how is it we are meant to thrive?
Sinking deeper and deeper in blatant lies
of the quixotic dreams of old to shield
the simple fact that we are taught to live a life
where we stand subservient and yield
the abuses of those in power who make us suffer.

For such a long time we were taught to suffer
through storming skies. Beaten, impossible to thrive.
Time can wither our ability to yield
the pain inflicted by those who tell noxious lies.
A sunken arrow into our psyche to devastate life
worth living and love that cannot hide though any shield.

What else other than our love do they want to shield?
Without, there is no cure for those who suffer
and carry on with the hardships of life.
We live in those pockets of light and thrive
in a different world where we banish the lies
that our worth is measured in what we yield.

Despite my pride, there are the times where I yield
to those shadows in the sky. Yet you shield
the rain and I can see where that crescent lies
above our heads. Cease what we suffer,
the moonlight sonata within tries to reach out and I thrive
from your touch of endless life.

I know it seems we're predetermined to suffer
But take my hand and we'll thrive
as I try to hold onto the fragments of this life.

I am ugly woman’s man hands
Leathered to stringy flesh strips
dried by harsh cruelty of the sun
My pillows of porcelain skin
Transmuted into mother’s spider hands
Nicotine stained hide stretched across
toothpick strong bones like a
new year’s dragon
Puppeteered by her to squeeze a
tube of tobacco between two
knuckley fingers
Strong scales of keratin crown
each digit and serve to
flick cigarette or pick sick fleas
Now I’ve inherited those
one morning woke up transmuted

Of mankind, and marvels, and evil, and sin,
shall I to you tell, and conspiracies grand,
how evil did root and was routed again,
again did take hold, then assumed its command --

Humanity, meager, and ignorant, true,
prescribed, in its innocence, something unsafe;
"all actions observed, when repeated, are due
to occur in an otherwise similar way."

From hence did presumptions material grow,
as Earth seemed unbridled with secrets unveiled,
yet blind to the cosmic, which scholars can't know,
and quickly our spiritual growth was derailed.

Then renaissance brought forth a light in the dark,
and drove out the devils which long had made rest!
In warmth, mankind flourished, but death made its mark,
electing to put human wit to the test.

The satans, most clever, made icons of gods,
and puppeteered cruelly malicious didacts,
deceiving the world with a meager façade,
and in goodness' name did commit vile acts.

Thus evil, to men, seemed to make itself God,
and cleverly let itself fall 'gainst our blades,
from shadows announcing the death of the Lord,
and slyly implying all mortal debts paid.

But be not deceived! For this battle yet rages,
and now more than ever we stand to defend
from treacherous devils, and satanist mages,
so bear true your blade 'til this battle shall end.

On a constant fire watch
For corpses
And their puppeteered mannerisms
Like how they eat paper
And lay upright
With their very spooky postures