A Poem in 3 Parts by Sara L Russell, 4/6/15; 00:51am*

I

There is a grey area between
this world and the next.
People can be foolish; they dabble in ouija, in
dowsing, in automatic writing;
and - wittingly or unwittingly,
they may open a portal
to the other side.
That is how they enter.
Beware of inviting them in.

Shadow people are there
where needle pierces skin; where the ******
sits, glassy-eyed, on the precipice of oblivion;
they lurk in unholy places where godless
politicians declare themselves to be
speaking for God;
they haunt the dreams of drunkards,
schizophrenics, junkies
and the paranoid.
But they are not spun out of dreams,
they are real.

Shadow people were there
when the ancient pharaohs of Egypt
were interred, with all their gold;
they took them to Hades
for also burying their wives
and servants, alive.
They were there
in **** concentration camps,
sitting on the left shoulders
of those who blindly carried out
orders of death and torture.

They subsist in underworlds of catacombs,
they lurk in the spaces between
our conscious and unconscious minds;
In blackened mirrors they seek out a vortex,
My friends, be the light that
keeps out the darkness,
Do not seek to question the dear and foregone,
No matter how much they are missed;
for there are others lurking in the shadows.
Be not the portal inviting them in.


II

Did I see you in Bohemian Grove,
smiling at the Cremation of the Care?
Were you there,
and did you have more than one shadow?

Did I see you in that Great Hall
with chequered floors,
where the Eye of Horus
watched over a pyramid of gold?

Did you lift a cup of
the good red wine,
did blood brothers drink each other's health,
gazing through a glass darkly?

Did we toast the Cremation of the Care,
and how many others were there?


III

Sometimes we visit Hell in our dreams,
though we may fervently pray before sleep.
There is no shame in sleeping with the light on.
Wear a cross, if you think that it will help.

Sometimes the citizens of Hell visit us,
in that stasis between sleep and wakefulnes;
they are only ever seen at the outer periphery of our vision.
It's never a good idea to look at them directly.

Sometimes they venture a little closer than the rules allow.
Sometimes the line between their domain and ours is blurred.
Occasionally, the breeze seems to whisper your name -
only, it's not the breeze.

Be vigilant.
Always try to see them first.

liminality;
barely there
ask if it matters
care if you dare
believe in impossibility

mind framing liminal spaces
places of liminal mind-frames
filaments between contexts
capturing subtleties as moths

liminally reaching inwards
map of a shady threshold
twilight netherworld border
between now & everywhen
cusp of crisp discovery
intangible as of late
  
liminal during daylight;
stars, fireflies, lanterns
night itself being liminal
colors need brightness
shadow for textures  

whispering worlds
peripheral vision
vibes and feltsense
inner underworlds
embracing hell
reversing it

Very early before the birds
the morning moon travels to underworlds
gathering stars and seas of glowing pearls
when swift the sweep of darkness goes
the night from black to indigo
blue in layers, the light unravels
then wends the coming day
the dawning sky of gold.

I have been insulted for sharing out
my peasant songs, pataphorical poems,
on the table of the cultural patriarchy
the insults have come in a serial flow
into my dark soul a basin of condemn,
it began as my duty to take my poetry
to the bottom of African latrine,
followed by volley of insults like ;
cerebral panicking insensitive idiot,
a gifted ******* of arsolian poetry
One other contumely went aboveboard
to announce me a better dead ******,
i wondered how much one can ****
without erstwhile duty of creation,
now i have been condemned in starkness,
to be a beautiful walking ghost
of William Seward Burroughs,
Uhm! folly of eugenics, No! i am wrong,
this  accolade, i seriously decline to take,
my innateness is not wounded at all,
by anything near to genetic disorder,
i am only conscious of my luckless past,
of Slavery,colonialism,wars,re-colonialism
Then poverty spiced by open ridicule ,
And partly trenchant and half-****** tease
firmly fuelled by racial intolerance,
i have now been mistaken in awry,
to  be a looming ghost of William Burroughs,
and i am not
i am  purely my self,
without imperious wide blood
any where in my by black veins,
i may easily have chimpanzee blood,
Flowing turbulently through my vessels,
but no tincture of white blood in my zoo,
Burroughs broke his virginity with a *****,
i have remained a ****** for three decades,
As African virgins marry only virgins,
Burroughs was the king of underworlds;
chasing lessbian prostitutes and  gays,
to quench his mad ******  appetite
the turf in which i am a  better sham,
Billy was a serial criminal, ever on the run,
my soul is clean as new pin,
in fact  gorgeously dressed
in the unique royal attires
of as a Bristol pin merchant,
Billy worshiped crime and drugs
my piety is anchored on freedom of all,
Billy went to Latin America for *****
i  have been there to mourn Gabriel Garcia,
the Nobelite who was alone in deathly  solicitude
Billy never lifted a finger against tyranny,
my arsolian poetry is center-pieced on nothing,
other than African chantings for  liberty,
freedom for the white and black peasants
perhaps to unyoke themselves,
from the yoke of vicious human avarice.

The roaring log-fire in the corner of the
Wooden hall crackles and hisses
As the story-teller strums on
On the lyre, his honeyed mellow voice
The backdrop to strings plucked and
Flames crackled as he sings
His tune, the tale of an age long ago, of
Heroes and monsters and good and evil
And black and white and adventure
And great terrible underworlds
And the end-days, and he sings so sweetly
And it hardly seems terrifying,
The end of the world and the voyage down, down, down
To the underworld where our great
And noble hero saves his true love who has died
And walks freely out with her bound in his arms
And she loves him so
And they love each other so
And he walks with her for miles and miles far and wide
And they journey together,
The journey goes on and on
Until the end-days,
When the thunder roars and God speaks and rages
And the flames grow higher
And the volcanoes erupt
And spew molten lava
And the earth shakes
And the earth splits
And fissures form, the earth groans,
The end-times are upon us,
And we tremble in fear of the retribution of the Lord
And we repent
And we cry for  mercy,
The mercy of the Lord,
The end-times have come,
And we are scared,
And we will die, we know.
But the end-times seem not scary,
No, not with the honeyed, mellow voice
Of the sweetly singing story-teller
In the mead-hall with the great
Roaring crackling fire, bastion of
Warmth in the corner, an anchor to this world that is not ending.

"the encompassment of these words is stunning; existential angst in a fruit, or section thereof hurtling into space. makes sense though, if i lived in a runaway time capsule, i'd want fruit too, perfect or no. nice poem"

Say what?
Take a noun and make it noun-er.
Take philosophy and dress it down.
Take a fruit, an orange, section it, throw it into space, then agonize over its rightness of being.
Thee musn't feel that one's overuse of semi-archaic phrases and punctuation lessens the actuality of the expression being made. Indeed, it serves only to encapsulate the soundness of thine understandingness and thine expressions of agreement-oneness with the effervescent  bubbliness needed to attract one's readers to continue with their reading of one's liturgy of the meaningfulness of the outerworlds and innertimes. Throw in Gaia, underworlds, swords and flames. Trees with names. socks with shoes. Oftentimes these travel through the continuum side by side, yet unencumbered with knowingness of the other, unembraced by the unembraceable.

mermaid purses,
vales of kelp,
swinging skyward with the swell

of nautic rhythms
- submarine -
with incandescent, algal green.

in underworlds,
cathedrals blue,
we waltz in coral halls anew,

adorned in silks
of woven foam:
forgotten cold Atlantic home.

AIDS IN AFRICA!
Did you read the novel of our uptimes: Confessions of an AIDS Victim!
Did you watch the films of our time: about Philly Lutaaya and Wangeci!
First filmed movies of victims living with Aids in Africa
And did you see humans like living skeletons: thin as threads  
Body emaciated-denied of any fond flesh and tissues: zombies with souls only  
Ribs lean like loose groups of marionettes glued sticks-countable
Skin stretched slender and dry like rotting drought carcasses
Like harvest’s bounty, daily on reed-mats taken outcasts to dry in the suns
Waiting, waiting, waiting for its delaying-about-death!

Did you watch the agony in the victims of the viral virus?
The emotional struggle with rejection and dejection
The sorrows in regrets and the sadness in the imminent eventuality  
Did you watch the scare in those inwardly suckled sockets of eyes?
The hollow horror-stigma, severe in their scrawny faces clearly drawn and written
The dryness of their fears and fates, daily as they awaits for the-no-coming-damnations  
The torturous anguish of hoping, hoping, hoping the waiting will soon be over-rested!

Did you watch them with sorrows?
How mùkingo, kang’eeri, kìng’ùki………….....
Had ruined and damaged their promising lives
Had you watched them with fears?
How deserted and dejected they were
Did you watch their burials, a polythene bag for a coffin as outcasts of the suffering society-Emotional families alone in the final procession somewhere faraway from ancestral burial grounds?
Rest of the society watching from a safe distance as hastily they are sent deep into their underworlds

Did you watch how havoc ***-AIDS had done to families?
Grannies alone grappling with swelling families of needs
To eventually warm loneliness of surrounding graves: a total devastating calamity
Terrible tombs of sons, daughters and grandchildren: forever wiped-out generations
Did you watch the wiping out fatality of UKIMWI in rural villages?
Where the most sick finally retreated to, to reconnect with their angered ancestors
Gray-Aged counting on the crosses and daily, freshly dug moulds of soils
Carrying-containing their loved-ones larvae-ravaged remains

O God! Why did you create this thing between our thighs?
And burnt in it a desire to rise-jump, romp, **** and pump
O Lord! Why did you put in place this dry well between our *****?
And installed in it an urge to die to be drawn, drenched and danced
O’ Almighty Father! Why did you generate in us a desire?
A desire only to be quenched by this sinful sickening act-***!

Oh! Lord! Must we all die atop the trap of death-the ball inside the socket?
With all the sick beauties and wealthy behind bellied fat fed ARVs bodies-
Humanity, must we pitifully perish this way-slowly but disgraceful!?
Clearly know your partner; holily respect your partner!
Chain your dog, lock your kernel, secure your cheque-
Abstain-protect your love: protect yourself!  

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.

Our home once so warm and comforting
our home once so safe and filled with laughter
has grown dark and cold since you vanished
into the winter night

i stand here at the window searching
for some sing of you
but only the whisper of mocking cold wind greets me
i know i must follow you
track you thru the beast of blizzard
into the fires of unforgiving underworlds

Hours now
and my footsteps drag as bitter cold bites into my will
thru trackless ages of snowbound darkness
following your weary trail

where have you gone lover
why do you linger there
i have come to bring you home
our happy home

I will take but a moments rest here
beneath this once green tree
and take but a moment to recover my strength
take a moment to sleep in the cold blanket of snow

now that spring will come
to wrap my bones in green blanket
and speed my soul to the shores of distant land
i will dream of you lover
where did you go
why linger so long

we belong to the starving places, the broken places,
the screaming, shattered, hallucinated alleys
of blood and smoke and demons of shuddering righteousness.
floating lovers running high and poison-drunk
into doorways and neonic windows crying out
for absinthe and holy, holy benzedrine
in glazed teacups of library cafés.
demonic siren-songs,
shrieking car alarms in afternoon machineries,
when all the righteous are sleeping
and the chosen come out to scream
in front of shutters closed down to the ******.

vibrations from the drilling drilling drilling
into the pavements of greying rain-tears and rainbowed gasoline
spilled carelessly from engines
releasing rotten and evil from the deepness of the earth.
those righteous-shutters blow half open
in the madness of waxing moon-winds.

beautiful, beautiful darkness,
beautiful, beautiful damnation,
golden deception,
golden lucifer,
golden hell,
golden lights straying off pathways of dark-deep forests,
golden souls in eager rivers of underworlds,
golden addiction,
golden smiles of torture,
golden wheels of death and birth
and dying, dying, dying for the darkness,
dying with blood running purple
into the indigo road- drains of night,
reflecting golden constellations and golden lamp-posts
and the golden windows of empire state and the l-train.

scream, scream, scream into your indigo death.
fearful, ground-sleeping, six feet forgotten,
fires below, regret above, redemption and tears from the righteous
with their closed windows far above the bodies now.

those starving places belong to us.
the dumpster-fainted concussions,
the vomited acids of last night’s drunken affairs in amber side-streets,
the hollow-eyed babies born out of terror and war
and atomic demises of love and perforated money,
those flawlessly created youths with their drugged immortality
shining broken-skinned from out of their eyes and mouths
those nothing-brained men of poetry and heavenly visions,
those meilleurs esprits,
those wanton dreamers of scotch and rosé
and pure ethanol gulped from glassware,
burning throats and minds and talent
and running genius into drains
with the purple blood of the dying.
the starving places belong to the starving,
and the starving belong to their indigo deaths.

When evening's
long shadows come shooting
swift as arrows piercing stars, darkening this world
leaving gold amber hills in underworlds, far until tomorrow.

How can we know the difference, but for light of day
and if the sun does not come, how long would
such a strange night be?

Just when the peep toed bear
tip toes past the sleeping yellow jackets
that stole their gold from the Sun's caverns;
Just when the cross eyed birds
sweat across the blooming icebergs
that hold insanities from the lost souls of underworlds;
Just when a tiger pounces
on a large gaping shadow
that can never be picked up by hands of man;
We will be free

Not long ago you were dancing

To the tunes of Paris, the songs of France
and the hymns of underworlds below
A heat. One which you've bellowed inside of I
to flames stoking to the sky

Now left with smolders and ashes
Now left with charcoal and darkness

Next you flew out like a phoenix /a bird/ from death
then a flower in the spring
then a mirror on the wall
and so so so so much more

Where are you now?
         A phoenix - a fantasy
Where are you?
         Not spring, but winter
Where
         The mirror. Is shattered

Today; and a few yesterdays ago
you return

but

I know you
You're no girl
  no woman
      no bird
         no bard
             no flower
                 no grave
                     no painting
                         no angel
                              no nothing

                                    no anything

You are /right now/
A spectre
    a ghost
        an apparition
Wailing through my very soul
            /a poltergeist/
Chilling my fractured person
My lost icon

Yes...

You haunt me

And like the thirsty ***** in the bowels of every woman and man
I beg you to once again

ravage me...

earth wakes like a blinking marble
worm cake
ravine of ravenous hunger
breathing bowl of fruit
and black hole cauldron
of spit and sediment
where life grows like debt

disembodied skyward souls
who's haloed ground
a funeral coif
of etched intaglio grim headstones
that remain arcane symbols
of refuse underworlds
sunken under black beds
shaped like centuries of tragedy
in moldering graves
and dusty trailer park archaeologies

cosmologies eclipse
open pleasures and sultry winds
that form charades of architype golden eyes
impregnating us with dreams
like animated tarot cards
while body-caged man-o-spheres
on apocalyptic mountain sides
crawl and claw in endless nights to thrive
with every breath and squalid gasp
                                *
we propel ourselves through this life
by sacrificing the present for the future
in arduous labors of discord
and glowering autopsies
of smoke & blood
until we remain
unable to live with ourselves

i vaguely remember
traveling disembodied
like a new sun
past empty hulled tenements
where the living dead
perform soap opera cameos
as sliding doors
open and shut
like switchblades
on withered clanking subways
of shuffling bones
all the way to Hades

time bruised and beaten
bedlam of age
we each fall forgotten
grey as pulping zombies
shuttering downwards
from primordial nuclides
of contagion and death

gossiping Doppelgangers
on tesseract winds
witnessed energized prodigies
teaching the dead to construct dreams
with drum stick rhythms
and flutes of savage craving
in meta whirls
that mobilize astral spitfires
faster than tachyons
in a forever extravagant next world
monster infinity

You are a Gypsy Queen
Fashioning the hearts of your victims directly on your sleeves
Pick up your trinkets, jewels, and memories
Travel the underworlds looping through centuries
You are my Gypsy Queen

Dance, lady dance, look at me
A body made of untouched clay slithering within my quiddity
Posthumously, oblivion seeks to dance with me
A ballet of mortal divinity

Pierce through my vengeance last I must grieve
Your borrowed light loaned to enlighten me
Smile through your stone-chiseled teeth
An unfortunate commoners sovereignty
Thou art mine own to thieve
You are my Gypsy Queen

just where did all the underworlds
find a map to mine? how did they come to fold space
and suffer no glimpse of heaven; only dead-on
into my living hell... placing a crease
in my placid infernos?

how did all the stars know i had no right to despair?
while i had every opportunity to love their corpses
and never looked up.

Still rising
And writhing
In bellies of beasts
Like a maggot-filled carcass,
In darkness
I feast
Beneath criminal underworlds,  
First come to serve
And just might
Get the labor force
Striking  
A nerve

Owning the empirical argument
is like a mouthful of marbles
Telling marbles How Cubes-
Think.

Meanwhile...

All the West is The East with its back to you.
And no one can say how pointless
a compass can be
until they’re born.

And that’s how maps
may never spoil
The Lost.

And how Paradise
remains

“ Here, There Be... “


CANTO II


we are half a bird in a sling
shot through with dark wings
and guillotines as precious
as an unyielding spark.  

we are dust where the flesh is not.
and bone where the
songs go.


CANTO III


yea, though i walk through... (The Other Side-
remains elusive.)

too many Underworlds; and all the doors are stairs.

Like a mad god signing your Yearbook
with your Name.

But for Realsies.

Like fireflies, shooting stars,
Snowflakes and faces
On the moon,
They pass easily beneath
Thin veils of underworlds
So are often mistaken
For fairy dust.
Sometimes they are
Left behind by
Reindeer and sleighs
Then blown in through
Open windows
Drawn especially to
Wind chimes and
Sleeping faces
Where if encouraged
Can ward off all manner
Of ills.
They are angels wings
And beyond imagination
Every child's playthings.

And later they are
Brooding reminders
Which if ignored
Will hunch shoulders
And drag feet their way.
They wake us at night
Greet us wide-eyed,
But leave us in
A cold sweat
With trembling hands
That forget how to touch.
They are tired
Restless demons
Impatient for release
And must be channelled,
Given purpose
Given hope
If not peace.