As I maintain the whip,
As I kneel upon the ground,
I strike myself, not in sin,
But as eternal man profound,
-
I grip the cat’o’nine-tails,
Ever it has been sharper,
I bless my back in welts and wails,
Until I feel no longer.
-
Fifty lashes strong now,
No sin had been committed,
The longing to feel just something,
For love to find, be fitted,
-
O’er and o’er I feel the sting
O’er and o’er I’m branded,
For the darkness inside of me,
For the sorrow I’ve commanded.
-
Ninety lashes, still not feeling,
Swelling, my tongue I’ve bitten,
Until the hopelessness in my heart…
Is dead and long be ridden.
-
Adrenaline coursing and still no pain,
I’ve conquered all but you,
The questions in my heart are somber,
Your face in my mind is glued.
-
One hundred and twenty strokes now,
And forever still seems far away,
Overcoming this paradox,
To curse this mental pain away.
-
I strive for physical touch of blade,
For emotionally I am torn,
I’ve felt nothing until you,
Since the day I was born.
-
A wretched sense of memory,
Caresses my cheek and I
Rip apart myself with malice,
For this nastalgia defied.
-
I wrap the shroud around me,
The thin linnen to my flesh fuses,
I tear it quickly without flinching
Off my gashes and bruises.
-
Still nothing has fluttered,
In the pain recepters,
I wonder how my life could,
Ever be this disevered.
-
It aches and moans with cracks and groans,
My whip, serrated, ne’er faulters,
My robe in flagellation,
Lays down my blood at aulter.
-
One hundred and fifty after the shroud,
I confess I could strike harder,
Perhaps it decidedly best,
If I think myself of fodder.
-
Nightmares are but where I dream,
Yet dream of this, I don’t.
If I were spied upon, I guess,
They’d beg me stop, I won’t.
-
The shroud now soaked with blood and flesh
And false hopes of years of rot,
This punishment is not what it seems,
It is not one to be fought.
-
The outline cry for oil dipped rope,
Has not this pain be stopped,
Moreso however I do fear,
That your love for me has dropped.

8:55 A.M.
Wednesday,
December 3, 2014

Eyes dry, stagnant like a box fan
in a windowless room in summer.
Del Monte plastic blades—black
on the serrated side—dice rotting
pizza tomato trash air.

Stomach like a battery acid pond.
Flannel, Dockers, hair slicked
tight like road signs, tossing oyster
crackers to acid ducks. The sky's
on fire.

Clouds textured like *******
and never-ending like Escher.

Jet planes carry ***** comatose
patients into the sun to burn
out like a light bulb
a few flickers of life gone.

Hands dry, faulted like missing
bathroom tiles at Exxon-Mobil/
Sunoco/Shell beneath the metal
sink where crabgrass sprouts
from the cracks like

cheap caulk from Second-Hand Hardware.
Bent nails, rusted patching trowels,
ants in the quick-dry drywall mix.

I'll never reach Nirvana.

Crimson drew down his arm tracing the serrated skin which once stitched me together.

When I left him, as a boy, I cursed him. Much as I do now. Hate heavy, black blood released.

The anger of the child was misread, miscalculated. How could they know? That I, insidiously twisted, corrupted his blight less soul.

From my prison I heard his cries, sweet screams saturated the silence as he trembled.

Frozen, the blade was unable to pierce his flesh, so I pushed him, and he carved away

The shackles broken, I returned to the mantle of deceit and buried him with the others, voices fragmenting into the night.

The serrated edges of the arc of reason cut deep
into the normal daily fabric of living
and strange unwelcomed thoughts spill over
into the uncontrollable urge to be
medicated and managed by those
who do not understand the demons
that reside within-
people not invited  stay longer than dinner time
and that which was once normal
becomes a cascade of fear.

It was time to take the pill
keep the cages locked
control the fright and frailty
walk in the sunshine yet feel the ice
wake in the morning and feel night
dance in the town hall-feel the distance
and wear my heart on a sleeve.

I know
She will survive the strange voices
worship after the sun and sand
and walk in the light from the shadows
and sleep in the arms
of tenderness and love
fly with the angels of happiness
when life is ready to accept her
into arms waiting for  the comfort
she so deserves.Be blessed.




Author Notes

To a very special friend, who fought these very demons, everyday, and is now rising from the ashes of a long, long nightmare. I just want to say to you-that there is hope in everything. You are blessed.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 13 days ago

- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11577005-Trauma-by-Marshall-Gass#sthash.f7Vpmdgv.dpuf

Do not let the faces fool you.
Every bump in the night,
May be the cruel figments of your mind
Hoping to ignite the illusion
of utter insanity.

Do not for one second
Believe in the spine-chilling moans
that seem to leak from every unsightly crevice
of your disfigured thoughts.  

Do not allow yourself
To slip from the serrated edge of sanity,
Even for a fleeting moment.
For the comfort is short-lived,
And the ***** is endless.

Do not stare too long
At the scorched bodies of men,
Contorted into the soot covered demons
That will unfailingly materialize
In your loneliness.

Do not take the threats,
Which echo in the
Impenetrable darkness,
lightly.
They are the fabrication
of your own self destruction.

Do not think
They won’t bury you alive,
Every chance they get.
Leaving the decaying scent
of wilting roses atop the mounds of dirt.
Where they will scrawl your name in haste
across a grimy tombstone.

Do net let
The voices sway you into madness.
For they will play your vulnerability
with the fingers of a skilled harpist.
Leaving you so intoxicated
with the sweet melody
that you will believe you asked for
your own demise.


Do not forget the flimsy nature
of your deteriorating mind,
when appealing whispers
begin to ring in your ears.
They are merely hoping
to glimpse your downfall.


Remember,
not to let them get the best of you.
that if you find anything salvageable
In the chaos inside your head,
or the tsunami inside your heart.
Grasp onto the little beam of hope,
and begin putting yourself
back together.

Listen:

for some reason (truly unknown)
people call me when their trips turn turbid;
when palsied limbs jitter,
and eyes (rolled-back) flitter.

Maybe I've got one of those faces.
You know, the ones that
(between forehead wrinkles
and laughter dimples)
let her know it's okay.

Maybe I've got one of those faces.
You know, the ones that
(between penny-sized pupils
and long-haired scruples)
let her know I've been there before.

I could hear, with jaws clenched,
a deep-seated anxiety born
beyond the scope of a point
or a dab; of a joint or a tab.

And I know that trepidation;
that unending uncertainty,
interlaced -- intertwined! --
intimately with self-searching.

So, I told her about the day I found myself.
I was in a cliff-side cave, at around dusk.
Conflagrant cloud-bursts bowed to the sun
and my battered being bent along with them.

Roiling waves, gnashing madly on the serrated shore,
met my gaze with an equally unnerving force.
A melancholy crimson bathed the frothing maw,
like everyday pitfalls surely lead into that jaw.

I rolled over, away from the ledge, to another surprise:
the cave in which I was laying was only a disguise.
Stars! All the stars! Spiraling macrocosms now no more
than motes of dust floating aloft and astray.

I saw the dome of the cave come unhinged at the seams
as the million billion myriad suns erupted outside, exposed.
The volcanic initiation left floes of iridescent star-shine
eddying, diffusing into a vague effulgence.

Then the moon billowed out, with her gossamer gown
flowing streams of silvered dreams behind.
And the flowers (though the fangs of winter's
bite clamped down into their nape)

bloomed in unison -- in unified exaltation -- to herald her return.
Rose buds burst, and the lilies -- the lilies, I remember the lilies!
Rose buds burst, and the lotus -- the lotus, I remember the lotus!
I saw them rise up in offering, only hoping to touch her feet.

But each, at peak perfection, could only unfurl their last petal
and fall back down, below other (faster rising) worshipers.
Again and again they rose and fell; and ebbed and flowed.
Between their birth and demise, they embraced each other

in a mesmerizing dance, around the stems of friends and older plants,
towards divinity with leaves grasping leaves, and thorns grating thorns.
Enwrapped -- enraptured-- in foliage sewn rags; enrobed -- enshrined --
in coliseums fanned with fronds and fragrance (sandal and cedar)

I found myself.

I'm leaving.
Less like, Peace the **** out,
more like, I gotta go.
I'm leaving the way ships are wooed by waves,
under the pretense of more promising continents.

I can see where countless hands have pulled at my shoelaces,
wrapped my arches in ribbons of origami,
left me second guessing how well holes burn through soles.
It's been a long day of finding breathing space between double-knots and bending
broken fingernails back into place;
the self-constrained chaotic embrace of something supposedly so
straight as string brings forth beckoning ghosts of
those figure-eight souls who laid themselves
horizontal
to waste their Sundays tracing the Hills
on the breath fogged side of some painted-shut window sill;
trading the promise of Infinity
for the Religion of Monotony.
Praying through agoraphobic day-dreams
raining across the night sky of their eye lids
with the brilliance of meteorites,
imagining how earth-shattering they could be
if only these tyrannosauruses would just look up.

I have come here;
Less like, conquest
more like, exploration.
--Abandoned the comfort of quaint, suburban
ruins of the American Dream, which buckled
like widows knees mid frail-voiced eulogy
mourning the death of their Salesman--
and wandered aimlessly into the improvisation of some story-book jungle,
wishing I was better rehearsed.

I have come here
to congregate with the snakes and beasts; to feast beneath
the din of carnal sin and primal instincts. I've chosen to begin jumping
from stump-to-stump like stepping headstones
in a graveyard of fallen trees, where men,
                     who grew up too quickly and forgot the importance of pretend,
                     who learned early on how to black-market trade
                              the need to imagine for something a little bit more
                                                      tangib­le,­
                     who, smiling through serrated teeth,
saw it fit to clear this wilderness for something a little bit more
domesticated.

But thank god, these brambles grow so thick!
For every hail Mary their metal tongues would lick
into the trees' skin, a hallelujah of vines and branches and roots
would erupt in confused medley,
and their finest mathematics couldn't begin to calculate
the thriving division of a place so ungoverned by logic.       
In a jungle plucked straight from storybook pages
I'll band together with these untamed brutes
--these feral barbarians and unbroken monstrosities--
to howl at the moon with the effervescence of a Ginsberg poem.
We'll forge a tinsel-town crown and take turns
playing king of Where the Wild Things Are found.

See, unlike concrete cities
The Wild of Atavism has never forgotten that
Tradition is a catalyst for change
and that nothing is permanent.
Hell, I've been having laughing contests with a mountain
because every now-and-again he will crack
A smile, and when a mountain laughs
He does so, so gutturally,
From deep within his catacomb chest that
the whole Earth quakes -- everything shifts--
And I'm not gonna lie to you right now,
I've sort of got my heart set on being a part of something so
significant.

So if you follow,
shipwrecked and mapless,
Keep your shoelaces strapped tight
and run off the infinity of double knots.
If you go looking for me, continue
past the paint chips, through
the open window;
Set your sights to the far treelines.
And don't strain yourself listening for
the laughter of mountains,
Because when that stoic disposition
Finally does crack, you'll feel it in your feet
no matter where you are.
And from the way his ridges are crumbling,
I think I've almost got him beat.

As I sat by the window sill
Decked in grey garb
Listening  to adumbrations
And other grey garbage,
My eyes were drawn beyond the room,
Out across an odd sea of serrated roofs
Till I saw,
On a sandy patch of land
Ten boys and a ball.

I sat between my passion and my profession,
Peering out the window of my profession.
I watched engrossed, my passion
Bib around my neck,
Boots upon their feet.

“LD/HCR/.... “
The court clerk cried.

I profess passion for another profession,
I’m not a professional at my passion,
But I can profess my profession passionately!
And so I rise...
“May it please this honourable court...”

And it was ******.

Shards of jagged words remain in my heart
A serrated reminder of my former love
For you consider crushing souls an art
Deceit punctuated by how often you cheat
Let’s touch cheek to cheek like we used to do
Arm swaddled in a parasitic embrace
I missed the way your blade felt in my lungs
A pleasured look on that pretty face
Don’t stop the evisceration just yet
Go ahead darling, watch the scarlet river gush
There’s no reason for me to fret
I’ve already been slaughtered once

Clouds at dusk, they bleed a song written by life’s blunt knife,
The ink of pain rains down upon me a sorrowful crisis,
It flows free from my veins serrated and sliced,
Sadness soaks into the dry sponge of my richly wasted life,

A chorus of starlings soars over the horizon dark and hazy,
Taking with them all tidings of hope and mercy.

She, who once sweetly sang the hymn of time,
Her song, which once echoed through my life and left a sign,
This music which was once the rhythm of our breathing rhyme,
It once more seduces me upon the purple twilight ridgeline,

The colours of the sunset bleed into the darkling land,
Dark depression leaks across my mind and stains my hands.

Grief, you rushed with wide open arms and kissed my once happy throne,
Your life changing embrace whispered secrets, laced with groans,
You cheated and robbed me, licked clean my weeping bones,
I know this world no more, only the memories now remain hot as volcanic stone,

All else is but a winter of my soul,
All now is buried in a cold graveyard hole.

Storms batter and sink my ships laden with yesterday’s screams,
The thunder echoes through the dead timbers of my dreams,
But know one thing, go chisel this on my headstone yet unseen,
Her spirit, her love, her words, all pure and clean.

Above the bitter eruption of tears
I hear a soul soothing voice which kisses away my fears.

*Her voice... I hear her beauty the night air fill,
It has her strength and it has her will,
As I stand on this silent grassy hill
I hear her still...

And she sings,
Her song dances and with truth rings.

...IIIIIIIIII......................I.....

in the killing meadow
serrated lips pink
and spread
coma fingers wet with
dread
jupiter red
and
saturn blue
i have all day to dream
of you

Silently
~I gasped for air~

Sapient for stagnant water to flow from unwanted eyes.
He could not see,
he could not hear,
each syllable a lash from his serrated tongue,
a jagged edge produced gaping tears...
A shredded heart lie whole within an acidic cauldron
as it plunged into the depths of my softened soul.


Then, he said good bye...

I never spoke a word.

perched in a thick mess of pine trees
my head rotates three hundred and sixty degrees
scouring for the vermin I make my prey
I own the night time skies
silhouetted against a harvest moon
death is coming in my dreams
and with it comes new life
wisdom of the self
aware of the lies which cover the world in its blanket of grey snow
the owl lives in my skull

The coyote stalking the empty desert highways
looking for roadkill
looking for the weak and alone
I cackle into the dead sterile air
for every pack member lost to poachers
manic laughter for every left turn which results in dead ends
stealthy patient
hungry and haunting
the coyote treads the territory of my atriums and ventricles  

The hawk circles in the blinding midday sun
a deadly serrated dagger with wings
arrow let loose from the quiver of the Gods
impossible to tether and domesticate
finding ultimate freedom in the vast openness of the sky
lock on,
tuck the wings,
nose dive deep into the waters of the ****
a creator
a teacher
a messenger of truth
the hawk soars in the infinity of my soul

ID
EGO
SUPEREGO

A beam of light
In womanly form
How warm and bright was she?
Until the boy
Who loved her pain
Took all that made her happy.

He cut her deep
With serrated edge
Just to watch her bleed.
And would not halt
Though to the sun
Most surely she could lead.
His life in darkness
She could attest,
Was not what it could be.
If he had let
The light pour in,
His eyes could finally see.

It was yours to hold, yours to keep
Blood stained floral dress
Death reaquaints this love.

Life but only a flash of lightening,
Love now a murky hue.
It was yours to hold,  yours to keep.

Holding jaggered shards within your hands.
Torture sweet;  a pain I longed for.
Death reaquaints this love.

Reeds now brushing along my *****
Muddy waters swaying this lifeless body
It was yours to hold, yours to keep.

Longing for your empty caress.
Now a dull red,  dances over porcelain skin
Death reaquaints this love.

Pale eyes stare back upon your face.
My heart you stole; serrated silver helped.
It was yours to hold, yours to keep
Death reaquaints this love.

Clicketyclick —

sickly screens,
shooting
sixty
picture-frames
per second

Tickety ticktock, rapid-fire
photon cannons,
ripping holes
through our
faces

rectangles,
riddled with anxiety ridden
read scripts

the resultant
retinal scarring

Wicketywicked, weary eyes,
dripping with serrated pixels

triple dotted,
typing-awareness indicators
create silly suspenses,
inducing temporal
dramas,
emotional
micro-traumas

every second a slice
through my,
now practically nonexistent,
patience

Am I a server,
or am I a servant?

Eyes, sunken, with
withered skin

I'm waiting for my fix

Ding-ding
Bloop!
Pinggg
Here comes the dopamine! —

—Clicketyclick

Once a flowing wound of words but now
Creative flow staunched and stitched
No bleeding of verse or prose  
Just an ugly scar of silence
                                    
The need and longing to inflict and cut
For the release of poetic flow                                              
The razor sharp blade of sorrow?
The serrated edge of loneliness?
                                        
An overwhelming desire to ****** deep to release
The swirling vortex of words
Bleeding onto the page
Thoughts, feelings and dreams  

Bringing sweet pain and pleasure
Of the written word
Baring our soul
For all to read

The pail hurriedly fills to its brim
From a gushing river, pure and deep.
Unsullied by the chrysanthemums and lilies
Which encircle the babbling brook.

‘Almost full!’ proclaims the Lark
Perched atop an aged oak,
As the wet trickles down the bail,
‘Soon, soon, soon’ he sings his song.

Down flutters the Owl with a hoot,
‘What say you, Lark?’
‘With your songs so sweet and pail bursting,’
Feathered talons grasp the neighbouring birch.

The tinkling warble resumes,
‘Not yet full!’ the Lark weeps,
In a melodic trill.
‘Still. More must be filled.’

Amidst the river stones and collapsed trunks,
The pail sits, engulfed in the serene.
O'er the vessel the Owl hovers,
As talons clutch the sopping bail.

Suddenly, the jaws separate, delivering a soft hoot;
‘To be bursting is no more complete than to be hollow’,
Warns the venerable Owl with its warm,
Serrated feathers surrounding its pale face.

‘Well, when shall I quit?’ asks the Lark in a daze,
Raising its beak to the Heavens.

‘You shan’t quit. For we all strive to be full.’
Asserts the Owl, bathed in divine light,
‘The water shall forever drip in this stream, as it shall drip in you.’
As he ascends in a flurry, the pail too flies,
Splashing upon the adjacent foliage,

Now it rests
    Neither full nor empty.

Once upon a time
we were just broken pieces
under false impression
put together
 
shards that clashed
crashed against
each other
 
(and we called that 
love)
 
spilled our our pain
from tarried pages
off empty screens
 
first we'd drink and smoke
so much so our 
serrated edges
couldn't pop the 
precious glass palace
 
I built around our fragile
naked bodies-
around my naked fragile heart
(and called that love)
 
blanketed oblivion
my swaddled shelter
 
out of a furl of smoke
our stories coiled 
in the cloistered air
of your room
 
and I'd cry on
behalf of your secret pain
 
and I 
called
that 
 
love.
 
sometimes,
our rage would swell
out of
a deep
 
someplace outside us
( ?maybe God Yahweh Jehovah The Universe)
something (w)hole
complete swirl
Surreal 
 
incomprehensible 
and we'd lash-
and retract
 
once I cracked her from
a small shell she'd curled into 
like a millipede 
 
she asked
"why do we do this to each other?"
 
Nothing has ever crushed me
so much as love has crushed me
 
I am still just a splinter
and so is she
 
except I am lost
somewhere in a
crack in the floor
 
and she glitters
 
this whole world
watches her glitter
from her small spot
on the sidewalk

Sword brashly drawn from scabbard
Gilded blade with a lucent polish lathered
Burnished to reflect the availing light on each side gathered
Conversely deflecting the pious streams pharisaically blathered

Weapon-grade mind steeled to cut through the broad discourse
Sharp point piercing each tangled, silken strand; puncturing each uncorroborated source
Serrated edges slashing through the syntactical pulp so coarse
Double-edged blade mincing then scoring lexicon that generational divide did divorce   

Vaunted crest advertising noble intentions
Brittle helmet to repel callous, vain repetitions
Dense breast plate to ensnare all heartless pretensions
Luminescent shield to deflect all trite inventions

I sit in darkness, soaked in Gin, I remember everything,
except all the things Tequila forgot,
I remember nothing except for the things left to rot

I forgot the darkest nights
most certainly in days light
I forgot you placed the drink in my hand,
is that how we ended up here last night?

A half empty glass we have mired our delusion dear
Do the stories just get better or do we simply fill in the blanks?
Trace our old lines again and again.
Weathered are my eyes behind a mask
It’s no place to breath but anything beats the grave.

As we recall the sunset from the shore it seems so far now
it is but a fraction of the truest sense and the most cursed fools delusion
a switchblades sting and you will remain my favorite scar?

Delusions are illusions with which we fool ourselves
with a magician’s eye and a sense of skill.
Sunsets upon a distant shore are our memories
retreating against our will.

The switchblades knife is rusty and it's only hope is to scar.
Do you revere or revile me?
The empty bottles that lay between us ask for little.
I ask us for more!

Will I be your scar, the one you rub when you’re alone?
Tracing lines that cut so deep but set rigid, like stone?

Perhaps the open wound you created
when you picked apart our past won't heal as quickly,
and like the final drink we had together won't be our last.

Painted is the portrait so far from the truths we all choose to ignore
and now I simply understand are regrets than the echoes of a shared view.

When we break the heart do we find solace in a statue like existence?
We all spill the glass sometimes and a candles view dim will only reflect the shadows we've become.

Tomorrows a dream and the nightmares become a friend far more than this dance
I care no longer to stand and the ice won’t bare the weight of this ego's crash.

Let's skate the ice so thin it cracks beneath the weigh of pain.
Let's dance the tango of wilted dreams and find no shame.
Let the broken heart of shattered glass
be a reminder of our pain
but you and I, we share a common lust
we mix silently, oil and water
blending in the same frame

For from the page to the far corners of this empty floor we have made our choices
Now we understand past regrets in silent reframe

Never doubt the passion for the lack of fire it simmers a volcano underneath the illusion of emptiness and so we find are paths twisted yet always brought back to the same point.

We always speak in shadows what is known in light of day.

Our paths are gritty dirt, pretty split and intertwined
broken cobblestoned nights and sun baked days to which we can’t deny
Shadows that come to play hide the demons
we would once talk to, but threw away
when we attempted to revive a life we weren't meant for
Our answers don't lay at the bottom of the bottle
nor do they rest behind the closed door,
They itch beneath our fractured skin and spill their secrets on the floor
dripping from serrated cuts that pump a life full of ****** memories
the broken bottle stands as sentinel asking always for
One More...
Please?

Maybe we found our muse in a mutual insanity.
Laid bare the vein I question what lingers when nothing remains beneath?

This last round stands only for the night my dear for its clutches are but a moments embrace and an overcast view.
Tomorrow I can never promise what fate hands us by surprise.

Insanity is a fickle Muse
that's sips from a collapsed vein
breaking bottles against skulls
looking for an idiot to blame

Personally I think our Muse
is a Mistress that flogs well in the dark
Chaining our souls to our demons
never shining light on our demise,
Demanding we whip ourselves hoarse
prying opens the oysters
of our murky world spilling pearls of stone into a world so stark

No, the Muse of you and I is an unruly *****.
She chokes our memories and forces our pain
with a flick of her wrist

I come to a bulwark
of quiet flesh, beating
to a hum of worldly
duress.  And cling, bare-handed,
to stiff ledges, bone tablets as steps.
And look upon irradiated, insular eyes,
bathing blue-bleached  irises
in wasteful drowned drops,
and find light-toothed ducts
emitting serrated levitations
of a tender sort of might.

There are women who stride
along on spherical streets,
and men who talk
to a range of idle watchers
and lonely listeners in a
dreamlike commotion
beyond.

Spurred whistles flow through
lunar clipped doors, and curtains are
drawn closely to naked blades
and are grafted as reborn skin
and contort into a breathless maze.

And the blaze blows wispy ash plumes
that tremble down my legs.
And scald the rest, my bare, bare form, pressed
inward, into another,

into fast entwining, shaking hips.

To tongue-bound kisses from red tile lips.

She romanticize the orchestra of her muffled cries, caught her canvases
bruised with purple and red,
Her bare chest was beautifully wounded by a serrated cage, arranging her disorganized open heart.

Her heart is malleable from tragic delights, she ripped herself open, willing to give it whole.

Will you take it all and leave it as it is?
Does it oblige you to wrap your arms around me like a tightening noose?

And as she draw marks of red stains and carve on her skin, her limbs were perched perfectly, as you adore it with a painful stare.

And her hands were pure certainty, remained untouched.

Building Blocks (Spoken Word Poem)
5/15/2014

I played with legos when I was young.
What I didn't know was the value of those building blocks.
Putting tiny pieces of plastic together,
all different shapes, sizes, and colors.

For what?
For fun?
For structure?
For a challenge?
Because my mom told me to keep busy?
Or because that was how legos were supposed to work - together.

As I grew up, I gradually upgraded.
My legos got traded in for classmates,
for co-workers.
for bar buddies,
and even for the occasional stranger at the mall or movie theater.

They started telling their own stories:
About their first day at lego high school and making new friends.
About falling in love with their first lego boyfriend.
About going to lego prom and putting the pieces together at the after-party, if you know what I mean.
About getting dumped, but then landing their first job at the lego factory.
About shedding priceless limited edition lego tears, on stressful days.
About going through struggles where all they could do is pray to lego God.
About dreams of a nice big lego house with lego children someday.
About lego suicides, resulting from bullying in every worst kind of way.

Eventually it felt like I had opened up an expert level pack,
containing a variety so vast that I never would have guessed anybody could piece them all together.

These building blocks started to feel pretty heavy,
like bricks building a house,
I could only carry a couple in a fistful at a time.
Except they've been worn down from a life full of misuse.
Their colors faded,
edges jaded,
teeth serrated,
like an adapted mechanism for survival.
And what's worse - no mortar to piece them together.
because it all got burnt up.
A casualty of angry tempers' crossfire.
The constant collisions of verbal bullets bullying the building blocks,
bulldozing them over.
With the strength of slurs,
societies seems to blur,
all the inadequacies faced.

Without solidarity to support,
these building blocks are beginning to contemplate giving up.
But Stop!
But I don't like that.
I'll shout, "Hey little legos, remember the plan?
We should work together with your manual instructions in hand.
You were built with a scheme to be put together.
So in unison you can create an amazing structure to cherish forever."

Building blocks are resilient anyways.
Remember that time you left a lego alone?
Detached from its peers,
abandoned out on the carpet,
without the safety of its pre-fab box home?
Well the lego didn't seem to mind, I mean it turned out just fine.

Remember when you stepped on that seemingly small, insignificant lego?
Yeah, don't step on legos.
I'm sure you remember how much that ******* hurt your foot.

You are
You are
a chiseled statue
a myth, animated under my gaze
tangible flesh under my hands
out of my closeted mind
you are
you are
in essence, a beautiful mirror
of a beautiful essence
For Adonis, I come to understand
my feelings are lulled under your tongue
patience
as my blind senses seek them out
you are
you are
a silent strength
owning to yourself
must I thank
you
this dance
of serpents of ether
smoothing feathery scales over the riddling bones of Lilith
I owe this response to you
For the things you stand for, the truth under which a fined tooth comb scrutinizes
grasps of tickling warm fire conjure my intentions
I am a smooth stone, burning by the illicit form and desire of this worldly hearth
under my arms you reach and you soothe
this idea from the small of my back, out of reach
I walk my thoughts further away from you
to objectify the sensations that pursue
Eros draws
his serrated arrow tip alongside my cool unassaulted skin
should I linger here, I'll find it sheared
and my sanctity tampered
use this silence to displace this feeling from outside of me
so I can take my leave
lay frozen still as I divulge and lavish upon you my disgusting intentions
to my absence
so I can leave
and rid myself of uncharacteristic traits
tempting
butterfly wings fluttering against the underside of my skull
I am not tempted
I do not regress
Eros is unwelcome here
when he speaks of this particular entity
under his outstretched upper lip
I am enraged
what can a boy-youth know of the complexities of the feminine spirit
to which the heart works in unison
my feelings are my own, in a shallow drawer where they aren’t tosseled
arent felt
I may feel the warmth of them under my desk
but I refuse to eye the key
where do you get the audacity
to touch and give advice to one as old as me
my feelings belong to me
not the wild underside of a rooting pig
hunt them mercilessly with your arsenal instead
as your mother-Aphrodite
inspires their sloshed pursuit of an obscured truth
put your maquillage on them
and clear your mind of mischievous foolishness
or vain undersanding

It's often the weak
And seemingly frail
That find themselves thirsty
Beyond the pale

The gutters churn under the strain
Blood rushes down through city veins
The streets ablaze with tinted moonlight
Devoid of any flame

As gods and heathens burn the same
The hearts all pumping without aim
No lungs to fill, and yet still choking
On the meat we flay

The needle drops
The records play
Everyone stops
Praying that the day might break

My iron rusted
Hinges combust, dusk bled
Swung open portal
Stifling chortle I open up
Progressing slowly
In soul or sprit
But running fast and flowing

Over strewn corpse cobbles
Harbinger paver, larder baubles
Stocking lye
Stalking eyes, new crime
Commit to the violence or ****** die
Perish inside then out
It's no use gasping or
Grasping
Stranger clout
 
Each new version a variant curse
Every cursed being awaiting rebirth
New age swift death
My time is little, I have **** all left
Gliding abreast
The beast glisten already
Peeter out slice and grip
My jowls are aglow
Siphoning light from the sky above
The creatures of the dark sky rip
Beneath my leather
Each new stab a death blow

I feast
**** them all
I rip out their ******* guts
And mash them
Flesh blood and bone complete
Cycles though my very being
Tearing rending breaking
Everything
**** these dogs

The heart of the city
A drum
Plucking tendon
Plucky young thing

My weapon is serrated
My steel is ****** already

I went outside for a cigarette
Sat on the step and
I see myself down the street
forty years from now;

Burnt like an ember in an ash pile
Ground into a particle by
the street sweeper to be eaten
by the atmosphere's tangled black tongue.

Walking up and down the
battered stairs tires my weary legs
with every trip I make
Lungs crying for air like a newborn.

A tool for procrastination
A tobacco fascination can lead to
a disastrous situation. Kurt
Vonnegut once said, "Cigarettes

are a classy way to commit suicide"
He must have been stupefied making that statement.

Like taking a blade serrated 1000 times
and nudging one more notch through
his flesh with every caramel covered kiss.
But he was too scared to take it out.

Exhale and apologize to Earth
for his suffocated statement. Breathing in
snakes and rusted copper.

The man down the street probably wishes
to be my age back in his day again.
My eyes frozen in space like Walt Disney's
severed head.

He catches a  a cloud of smoke
and his lungs scream through stalagmites
that drip with unwashed tears
that never fell from Vonnegut's stone face.