I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She threads off the sap and needles, blood and bubble
Casts to the pine roots, raising man like a mountain
Out of the naked entrail.

Beginning with doom in the ghost, and the springing marvels,
Image of images, my metal phantom
Forcing forth through the harebell,
My man of leaves and the bronze root, mortal, unmortal,
I, in my fusion of rose and male motion,
Create this twin miracle.

This is the fortune of manhood: the natural peril,
A steeplejack tower, bonerailed and masterless,
No death more natural;
Thus the shadowless man or ox, and the pictured devil,
In seizure of silence commit the dead nuisance.
The natural parallel.

My images stalk the trees and the slant sap's tunnel,
No tread more perilous, the green steps and spire
Mount on man's footfall,
I with the wooden insect in the tree of nettles,
In the glass bed of grapes with snail and flower,
Hearing the weather fall.

Intricate manhood of ending, the invalid rivals,
Voyaging clockwise off the symboled harbour,
Finding the water final,
On the consumptives' terrace taking their two farewells,
Sail on the level, the departing adventure,
To the sea-blown arrival.

II

They climb the country pinnacle,
Twelve winds encounter by the white host at pasture,
Corner the mounted meadows in the hill corral;
They see the squirrel stumble,
The haring snail go giddily round the flower,
A quarrel of weathers and trees in the windy spiral.

As they dive, the dust settles,
The cadaverous gravels, falls thick and steadily,
The highroad of water where the seabear and mackerel
Turn the long sea arterial
Turning a petrol face blind to the enemy
Turning the riderless dead by the channel wall.

(Death instrumental,
Splitting the long eye open, and the spiral turnkey,
Your corkscrew grave centred in navel and ******,
The neck of the nostril,
Under the mask and the ether, they making ******
The tray of knives, the antiseptic funeral;

Bring out the black patrol,
Your monstrous officers and the decaying army,
The sexton sentinel, garrisoned under thistles,
A ****-on-a-dunghill
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity,
Dust be your saviour under the conjured soil.)

As they drown, the chime travels,
Sweetly the diver's bell in the steeple of spindrift
Rings out the Dead Sea scale;
And, clapped in water till the triton dangles,
Strung by the flaxen whale-****, from the hangman's raft,
Hear they the salt glass breakers and the tongues of burial.

(Turn the sea-spindle lateral,
The grooved land rotating, that the stylus of lightning
Dazzle this face of voices on the moon-turned table,
Let the wax disk babble
Shames and the damp dishonours, the relic scraping.
These are your years' recorders. The circular world stands still.)

III

They suffer the undead water where the turtle nibbles,
Come unto sea-stuck towers, at the fibre scaling,
The flight of the carnal skull
And the cell-stepped thimble;
Suffer, my topsy-turvies, that a double angel
Sprout from the stony lockers like a tree on Aran.

Be by your one ghost pierced, his pointed ferrule,
Brass and the bodiless image, on a stick of folly
Star-set at Jacob's angle,
Smoke hill and hophead's valley,
And the five-fathomed Hamlet on his father's coral
Thrusting the tom-thumb vision up the iron mile.

Suffer the slash of vision by the fin-green stubble,
Be by the ships' sea broken at the manstring anchored
The stoved bones' voyage downward
In the shipwreck of muscle;
Give over, lovers, locking, and the seawax struggle,
Love like a mist or fire through the bed of eels.

And in the pincers of the boiling circle,
The sea and instrument, nicked in the locks of time,
My great blood's iron single
In the pouring town,
I, in a wind on fire, from green Adam's cradle,
No man more magical, clawed out the crocodile.

Man was the scales, the death birds on enamel,
Tail, Nile, and snout, a saddler of the rushes,
Time in the hourless houses
Shaking the sea-hatched skull,
And, as for oils and ointments on the flying grail,
All-hollowed man wept for his white apparel.

Man was Cadaver's masker, the harnessing mantle,
Windily master of man was the rotten fathom,
My ghost in his metal neptune
Forged in man's mineral.
This was the god of beginning in the intricate seawhirl,
And my images roared and rose on heaven's hill.

Dry rock and blank pages these are what  I feel

Vague wages and dire ledges these are who I am

Turnkey solutions, vapored positions,

Petric places mournful faces, these are plenty

Much of what I am says who you are

He came home to the ordinary sounds of his everyday life. The phone would ring, the teapot would whistle and his parents would talk and argue. He closed his door, discarding his bag to the side and laying down on his bed. He laid there quietly, his computer beeping and blinking with messages from friends, those sincere and those insincere. Reaching out for the **** of his nightstand drawer, he pulled out the music box he received from his grandfather before he passed away. He flipped it over, carefully holding the lid and wound the silver turnkey tight, letting go. The familiar whirling of the mechanism inside came to life and the tone music echoed the room.

As the music played, he took the turnkey out and attached it to the lock on the side, releasing the lid to the hidden jewelry case. He didn’t have any jewelry to store there; he folded up snippets of letters and notes into tiny squares and dabbed them with color on the edges- each color meant for an experience or a person he favored. Purple was for his grandmother who wrote him little notes every two months… while she was in the nursing home. Red was for the girl that waited for him after school every day… before confessing his love for her. She reciprocated that in later years. Blue was for his own private notes of good times and the good things that happened to him… there were seldom few of those. Black was for the bad things he experienced… and it was in full abundance. The whole case looked much like an obsidian beach with rubies, amethysts, and sapphires hidden within. He looked at them one by one and placed the case back afterwards, then placing the music box back on the nightstand. One day, he’d turn the beach into sparkling gems with few obsidian stones buried below.

He placed his hand on the box, feeling the insides run and imagined the whole process. The spindle turned, rotating the cog connected to the metal drum with raised bumps. The thin metal comb came to meet these bumps and each bump struck a harmonized tone. Inside the mechanism, the pneumatic drum turned and hummed along as the gyros twisted the cogs, seemingly indefinitely never ending. To him, they felt young and ripe at the start but grew old and bitter after a while. The keys would slow, his head would ache from the loss of tempo and his heart would resonate with the soon to fade tones.

In that moment of solitude, his eyes would close, his breathing slowed, and his body relaxed into sleep; and one by one the little bumps would cease to exist on the music sheet, simply melding into the flat mundane roll which began its birth.  The roll just turned and turned silently, never touching the flat metal comb or anything else again. It became like any other music box- silently playing with no purpose. It became his life in sleep… silently living with no purpose but to dream.

not exactly a poem, sorry.

The turnkey was the fumbling sort, the sort that could be taken advantage of, Carver never thought about it more than a passing fancy. The kind of thought that was dangerous, it wasn’t a ten-year stretch after all. Popping the old guard and making a break could work, would work.  A couple of years is nothing in this joint, they told him, once you get a few connections in the yard, get on a baseball team, two years is a breeze. You might even miss it all. Carver was hesitant to heed the trappings of these old relics, they were just counting the days to nothing. He knew that very well might’ve been their prerogative, but for him there would always be that something. A lonesome post-office box, containing the culmination of his life’s worth. They didn’t know about it, none of them knew, his brother, his slick-*** lawyer, not even those rats, those ******* rats that got him in here. At the time he resolved that he would part with that secret of his post office box for no less than his life. Whatever dissent had marked him as the fall-guy passed him by. Complacence led Carver here but it would never happen again. No more concessions next time.

Cellblock B wasn’t devoid of small charms. The periodic mewing of this crooner or that, with what seemed like a common intonation amongst them, all tapping from a collective unconscious. The window with a view of the yard, although mostly obscured by another cell block, was still something. Lately he had been privy to comparative bliss, his erstwhile roommate having to nurse off in the infirmary the sepsis resulting from a shiv wound after an ill-judged altercation in the mess hall. The daily motions had long since become routine, Carver thought that in many respects, this was not too dissimilar from his army days. Avoiding the unsavoury types was the key to surviving both.    

Conversations which abounded lacked privacy and tended toward the trivial, but listening in did occupy a sizeable chunk of Carver’s day. Someone, Carver was fairly sure it was Fuzzin two cells down was wondering why he was growing more hair in his right underarm compared to the left, and was resolute in uncovering the mystery. Sal in the cell to the left was perpetually reciting his conquests, ****** or otherwise, to anyone that would listen. “I was in Maine for a year and a half. Lobstering up there. I mean, what else is there to do. In Maine....” A collective murmur took the cellblock suddenly, stirring Carver out of his reverie. Sal dutifully motioned and whispered “cell inspection”, Carver did the same for his neighbour. The deputy warden for cellblock B was a short rotund man Williams, who as appearances go, looked like he should be better acquainted with ledgers and stock tickets than prison walls, but was a lax sort, permitting what modest allowances someone in his position had the leeway to do. I have heard harmonicas and guitars chiming after meals regularly, unheard of in any other cellblock. Thomson’s mattress was tossed down the way...of course every now and then a few examples had to be made to appease the warden, Thomson’s codeine addiction not doing him any favours by way of effective concealment. I exhaled a sigh, not so much in condolence as boredom, as even the strewn mattress and its assorted artefacts was becoming as familiar as the yellowed walls and the evening chill.

It was the 14th and Carver was due for a visitation. 9:30a.m. and already in the throes of being worked up, he was sure to be getting worked upon soon enough. Carver cracked his knuckles against the edge of the table in the visitation room, an apparent thick black line bisecting the table with ‘hands behind the line’ mirrored on each side. “Hello Maurice.” Carver winced, knowing that she was purposely diving into ways to put him ill at ease, commencing with the upperhand, by calling him Maurice the name he hates, not Maury. “How’s life treating you?” The smirk barely contained in the pinstriped pencil skirt, her hips less so.  “Yeah okay, it’s okay. Great to see you here.” And he meant it. Not that her presence normally roused anything like that sort of sentiment, their domestic life was a burned out cinder even before he was busted.  But there was a particular warmth in her notes, just an untouched civility foreign in place like this, tending to be drawn out from the inmates one gesture at a time, often for good. Carver thought to 8 months prior, camped at opposite ends of the house, their wares might as well have been labelled ‘his’ and ‘hers’. Evenings were carefully orchestrated, where arcs in their lines of vision only merged for the briefest of instances and only as a measure to avoid any dreaded physical contact. The prospect of *** was a joke, Carver well aware that she was ******* at least the grocer and his broker, but felt better for it. One less unfulfilled expectation he had to relieve. “I’d ask how you’re dealing with the weather, but I guess you’re keeping pretty warm these days.” She half-stifled an involuntary scoff, “You know I don’t need to hear this now, Sam is due for the dentist at 2.30 and I want to get him all washed and ready, I’m not here for your games.” “So who is it today? Talbot? Someone from the club?” Carver questioned without a hint of animosity. She breathed a defeated sigh, “You know I’m not going to talk to you about this here.” Carver jolted, the seat raised an inch or two on the linoleum, “I’m just asking if you’re ******* around, and you don’t give me a straight answer so what do I have to assume huh?” The guard was giving allowance more than he had any obligation to, but Carver’s voice was raised enough to disturb a few of the surrounding groups. He moved his way over, “Hey, what’s the ruckus here Carver, keep it down okay. What’s this box up here, move your hands back, c’mon, you know the rules. Diane piped up, “It’s just a taint, sir.” The guard prodded it with his baton, quizzically. “hmm oh yes? I thought those were seasonal, okay just keep it down.”

Carver motioned to the box, “Why did you need to bring that here? I don’t need you parading my taint around. You know I’m trying to get parole in three months? What have you done with it?” “It’s just a taint.” “Yeah, but what’s with all this purple and green stuff here? All these spiky bits, I don’t remember that.” “Well, two months ago you asked for the taint and I’ve got it here, so what else do you want from me.” Carver listened to her speak but looked passed, to the frosted glass, wishing that a window was all that really kept him between here and there. “Christ, I’ve had enough of this, I come all the way down here, spend fourty minutes caught in that dratted excuse of a highway, and you won’t even thank me for bringing your stinking taint along. AND, just last week you were all taint-this and taint-that, why do I bother.” She flung around just slow enough for Carver to observe her figure it in all its majesty. A drop in his stomach, as she moved off with authority. “Wait!” He flung himself towards her. “Please...I’m sorry....please....just...leave the taint.” “Here just take your **** taint, I hope you’re thinking of it when Sam and Eliza are eating that canned **** and asking what their father is doing so I can be sure that I’m explaining what a worthless **** you are and be accurate about it.” The words fell on heedless ears, Carver and his taint. The taint and Carver.

Fuzzin was moving back to the cellblock alongside Carver, “Buddy, your wife has some ***, you better hope my parole don’t come through before yours.... say...what’s in the box.”

the sign on the railway station says "Common Destination,"
the ties of our tracks are uniform, creosote covered, splintered,
spaced uniformly as is the wont of the arm-in-arm soldiers,
different regiments in the same army, though as they march,
some on the high, some the low road, in defense of the values,
right, right, right.

no believing in forever land, dreamt of poems forever burning,
real life farenheit bonfires lit by brown uniforms and such, thus,
now, when a poem completed and shared, 
it is instantly disfigured,
by flames harnessed to lick
the slate page clean, immediately, 
presenting yet  another opportunity,
to protest, persistently,
endless be my own turnkey hands renewing,
my write to right.

my write to right,
my pupose; my only intent, even in love poems,
ogdiddy witty ditties, long dialogues with the creator, all purposed,
all written while standing one on left foot, are we not all
poets of the ways to increase the sum total of
righteous and kindness in the world.

'tis right to write,
but go further and farther,
write to right.

to ease, comfort, shoulder and hand extensions, be the lean-to,
the shelter when there is no shelter, for there is no
owning words, and no limitation on clear vision and
the right to write.

The most beautiful poem is written on a shroud,
As if the stars closed their eyelids at seeing the gods die,
But still-gauzy foundlings like cities of dusted sunlight,
Bound so long between the pillars of Athens and Rome,
Disconsolate remnants in after-golds and winding sheets of stone.

The most beautiful poem speaks only to death,
So it may know something of our loss, our bereftness,
And like the turnkey of afternoon to evening
Under the warm-felt pressure of our reminiscing hands,
We too shall pass like long-limbed sunset along the barren grass,
Like so many solitary walks bundled up in Autumn mists,
And eyes filled with someone once there and absences to come.

The wind howls my name,
whispering loudly for me to come home,
beckoning me back to the place where I’m from,
reminding me that nothing stays the same,

Moon in the sky my only friend,
on this Highway living life my way until the dead end,
I do not ignore death I’ve even tried suicide before,
but it’s not my time to go yet there’s more emotions to explore,
more words to write more messages to translate,
so sorry I’m not sorry Death will have to wait,

it’s late,
it’s early,
head in the clouds,
mouth taste all earthy,
the winds howl for me to come home,
whispering my name out loudly,

as I write with this anxious uneasy feeling,
from a mind that can’t settle and just keeps writing,
head so hot whole mind melting,
but emotions so cold that they’re biting,

bought the whole farm,
but at least it was turnkey,
to himself he’s a harm,
should be strapped to a gurney,
use me please abuse me please,
do anything except hurt me,

the winds howl proudly,
whispering loudly for me to come home,
beckoning me back to the place where I’m from,
reminding me that nothing stays the same…

∆ Aaron La Lux ∆

Drive by the roads
I had slept on
Life's become a blessing
Turn on
The lamp
That starts the cars

Ashes of the Wake
==================================
I would like to tell you a story
Of a young man born with a power
To channel the sun

His name was Regan Noel
And he was born in the light
His destiny written prehumously

Foretold to end the destruction
And oppression
Of a tyranny called The Wake

Yet his ability was beyond control
He hurt those closest to him by proximity
Causing the prophets to denounce him

Fortunately for Regan
There was a saving grace
A solution to his madness

A drug or drink
Dulled his ability
Allowing him to think

As the war raged on
His vision cleared
He'd do anything to be a hero

So he stepped onto the field
To face The Wake
And free his people

In a blinding flash
His presence was known
Replacing evil with beauty

As the glare receded
Regan stood alone
His destiny complete

Later he announced
To his people
Theres only ashes of The Wake
===================================
Waking The Fallen
===================================
This is a continuation
For the story of the sun born
Regan Noel

For after his victory
That left only ashes
A new Wake formed

Sour from defeat
Craving to regain control
Of slaves recently free

They ambushed our hero
Then threw him in a cell
Blocked from his light

He felt powerless
For the first time
But he was not alone

Chained next to him
Was a wizard of dark ability
Named Nicklaus McCanter

Like Regan
His power was foretold
Deriving magic from the moon

"We must do something"
Nicklaus pled
"Rather than sit here virtually dead"

So together they formed a plan
A way of escaping
The ties that bound them

Absent power
They used their minds
Tricking the turnkey to set them loose

Once free
The new brothers set a course
For vengeance against oppression

In tandem they lay waste
To a fallen army risen
From the ashes of The Wake
===================================
Fall of The Wake
===================================
This is the conclusion
To a far away trilogy
Of magic and revolution

You see
The Wake could not contain the sun
But it could control the moon

So it sought to separate the two,
Regan and Nicklaus
In an attempt to disrupt balance

They turned the moon to the dark
Alienating the light
Of brotherhood

Pitting friend against friend
In a battle to the death
Poised to retake control of the aftermath

"Look into the light Nicklaus!"
Regan implored
Yet only hate looked back

"What have they done to you?!"
The hero begged
Not wanting to hurt his partner

"They awakened me!"
Nicklaus screamed
As black ink consumed his flesh

Knowing the battle was at a ******
He had no choice
So Regan summoned his voice

Like a white hot bar of iron
He flashed an image to his companion
A last ditch please for reason

In that instant time was frozen
Two men forged by prophecy
To restore balance

As blinding radiance met absent black
The opposing forces
Canceled out

Restoring sight to Nicklaus
Long enough for a noble sacrifice
That can be seen at night

'For he was a hero too
Giving his life for destiny
By destroying the moon
...

So everytime the moon is new
Just remember it symbolizes
The fall of The Wake

MOTECUHZOMA
            If, past this moment, you persist in lies,
            Know I shall bury you beneath my halls,
            Pull down your house till sludge seeps through the planks,
            And wipe your family name from off the earth,
            Yea, to the unborn fragments in the womb.
            Now, wouldn’t you recant this little fib?

FISHERMAN
            Forgive me lord, but what I tell is truth.

TLACAELEL
            Most like it is.

MOTECUHZOMA             Then know, you brave, bold slave,
            These spectral archipelagos you saw,
            Were giantlike canoes, with alien crew.
                                        He gestures to a servant, who produces a trunk.
            One year ago, the waves cast up this trunk
            Of jewels, foreign frocks, and silver swords:
            Most like, the precious jetsam of this launch.

FISHERMAN
            May my aviso aid your eminence.

MOTECUHZOMA
            One see him nobly boarded in our suites.
                                                                  Exit Servant with the Fisherman.

                                       Enter a Majordomo.
                    
TLACAELEL
            Well, watch, where are your hocus-pocus wards?

MAJORDOMO          My lord, command that I be cut to pieces or whatever you wish, for you should know that when I reached the cell, there was no one there. I had my best sentries there, trustworthy men I’ve known for years, but none of them heard the sorcerers escape.

TLACAELEL
            Then how, pray tell me, have they flown the coop?

MAJORDOMO
            Perhaps they flapped away.

TLACAELEL                                       What, gallows-meat?
          
MAJORDOMO        They can sprinkle themselves with fern-spores, and
shimmer into invisibility.

TLACAELEL
            Buzz, buzz! These twice-told tales upend my trust.
            Rope’s end-

MOTECUHZOMA          No. Suffer him.

TLACAELEL                                             As you see fit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Some say such wizards take wing every night,
            And soar unto the fringes of the earth.

TLACAELEL
            His majesty’s broad magnanimity
            Has spared you this time, turnkey, but repair.
            Not all wards will be such skilled hide-and-seeks.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Now: Torch the hovels of their families,
            And witness if those new lighthouses’ beacons
            Will call their wandering rooks home to re-roost.
                                                                                     Exit Majordomo.
TLACAELEL
            And what of these vast dugouts?

MOTECUHZOMA                                        Time will tell.
            Our steward Teuhtlilli eastward creeps,
            To see what tricks are offered from the deeps.             *They exit.

mo-mo is 4, a tiny inmate
we live in max security
her secrets already hidden like tricks
me, the unwilling turnkey, the hack

stash of blood polish for her walls
spells out forbidden messages to  ?
stealing everything with a "no" on it
social graces create master thief

society has never worked for me
why push it on her, in her wild grace?
let us set her free, free of false rule

free to hear the pulse of her true
nature

I’m finally back on track just like Jack Kerouac

The open road goes wherever the wind blows

And who knows, where each tributary flows

Its all turnkey, wake up to find another journey

Sleep when we’re deceased, too much to see

Keep your hair greased and always stay ready

A potential future memory with every moment

Thee sacred open road, my voluntary enrollment