I have only one match left

One gave me a sparks and nearly caught fire, but instead turned out to be too fragile to use, so I set it aside in hopes that it would give me a flame one day when its ready

The one before that was lit too brightly and burnt my fingers, making me drop it on the ground to burn out on its own, scorching the ground below me with licks of orange and red and passion I don't know how to handle

That one match on the counter, I'm far too afraid to ignite, and instead allowed it to grow wet and unusable to even strike against the rough to attempt to set it ablaze

All the others were duds and broke too easily, so I had to throw them all away, unable to be used for the warmth it should have provided

I have only one match left

How will I ever light my way?

once upon a wrote


here and there, in fables and tales,
some in no guile and others
in chancier disguises,
some sine-known and some sign-unknown,
some dead in stillbirth,
some penned these words,
some a few decades old,
some of but a moment ago eyelash distant,
making me think that
someday I will scribe,
cobble some truths and
some falsehoods into one
leaping heaping melting scoop,
letting you decide,
which for better,
which for worse...

<•>

"No matter that plain words
are my ordinary tools,
With them I shall scribe the small,
Cherish the little, grab the middle,
Simplicity my golden rule,
Write they say,
about what you know best,
Surely in the diurnal motions,
The arc of daily commotion,
Do we not all excel?"

<•>

the reason we say so oft,
in whispers emboldened,

I love you

to our children
is not the utility of
its summarizing brevity

no, no.
it is because
the eloquence of simplicity
supersedes any other poem
any of us could ever write...

<•>

is this craft that chose you,
not defined by machine millimeters,
precision absolute,
curvatures, so eye-pleasing,
they demonstrate no tolerance
for tolerance of the ordinary?

the skill of words, too, cut so fine,
find the  extraordinary within,
refine, refine, refine,
shave away the trite,
the reused,
discard the instant recognition,
unusable

<•>

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the
whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away
what soully belongs to you,
do your own sums,
admit your own truths,
query not the lives of others,
approach the mirror...

<•>

The Truth Burden
is the accursed need obligatory,
the sacred sanctity requisitioned,
when the whenever,
chooses to drop in and upflag the mailbox,
an uninvited invitation,
announcing with precise bluntness,
that precisely now,
is the tool crafted moment
and you fool,
the selected tool

you must render unto Ceaser,
by your own hand,
render your own rendering,
do your own undoing,
go forth and in haste,
will thyself into the cauldron of the
Great Mystery of Creation

you cannot lie in poetry

<•>

come, sit for awhile, in poet's nook,
soft pillows for our hard Adirondack chairs,
situe hard by the bay, if too hot, we'll slow
drift to the sun room of
lace curtains and suicide poems,
still we'll observe the water, the rabbits, the cacophony low,
listening to all the noisier, nosier
creatures asking themselves,
and the trees and leaves,
where did all those poets come from?

<•>

to the interior delve,
via brush or limb,
pen or music,
the exposition, the exploration,
the reconstruction of composing
one's self, creation and destruction
of your own myths

movement of arms and legs,
sparseness of simplicity,
subsidiaries of centricity,
tributaries of complexity

<•>

how cold are the carpenter's hands,
the weather, but an added obstacle,
this heat, makes dying different difficult,
the wood bearing cross requires additional nails
and flesh, for the extra load he's bearing,
when it snows blood in Jerusalem

the whole world can transition
when one man dies and another is risen,
where oh where lies then, the juxtaposition?

there is none, for man is man,
his divine spark, embedded,
to his maker's mark, welded and wedded,
neither snow or sun,
can ever extinguish

<•>

now I ken better distance 'tween
artist and art,
I, a workingman's
daily dallying in simplistic machine craft,
my works deservedly lost in
the water-falling
of the endless also rans

non-nebulous distances.between skies of
Oregon country blue and
the worldy worn asphalt grayed words of
a graying man aging,
then let clarity speak, in plainest harmony,
know my deference’s soars to the high above,
one of us at birth, god gifted,
was not I,
it ain't me babe, but
one of us, his tongue,
like Moses-stung
with a hot coal
of language's divinity

<•>

The root suggests multiples,
a pair of shoes, yours and mine.

The prefix is a verb in motion, a
positive direction; a triumph of gravity
in defiance of its equal and opposite reaction.

He stands by the car in the grey light
with drizzle beading up on his shoulders.
Our life upset, torn at the seam into his and mine.

Turn around,
the coward whispers from my mouth.
I see my face reflected in the glass window

staring back at myself, the coward,
half of a set now rendered unusable, sold as scrap.
Turn around.

Multiples reduced to singular nouns.
My shoes are kicked and left by the door.
Everywhere his shapes are cut out of the dust.

The coward in me grins wide as a sickle
In the bathroom mirror. Our set of ghosts are
making too much noise, all night they keep me

up.

We stood in front of my grandmother’s
Old almirah, facing each other
The peacock feather and empty bags  
Of the square room fell silent all over again,
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

Then they all came, marched in, reflections,
Paraded in like martyrs of Brute’s History.
I knew them all, she knew them too
They came, touched us one by one,
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

She looked confused just like me
Watching life pass by, centuries reuniting
After a very long season break, nations-
Travelled, explorers stood upstairs watching,
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

Streets strapped the coffee cans and middle-
Aged hospitals swallowed wars. Married women
Bend over like animals and in months, unable
To breathe they gave birth to few number plates;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

The city vomited battles, human heads
And dreams of muted foul slaves. Men and-
Their violent tradition screeched for blue number-
Plates, lean number plates, handsome number plates;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

Unexploded bombs bounced happy homes,
My brothers, my kids, my mothers
Blew their windows and ran, ran away,
Ran afar without destination;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

They were all dark, their land was darkness
Or were we all blind?
Like a watchman we preserved darkness,
The vapours that filled their glasses did not speak;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

We are all reflections, ripples and mirrors
Of men-dead and living.
They all stood outside my almirah, million faces
Inside a mirror. She did recognize them;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

She did nothing, an unusable empathy rolled in,
The hypocrite did not even cry.
In quiet hours she smelt pain, blood and
History flowing from confronting corners;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

An insignificant obligation drowned her nerve,
They needed a home, candle flame, cotton and wool.
The land, their land has become unfamiliar
And they stood outside locked gates and laws;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

They all smelt the same blood, the abused blood,
I tried to kiss them and they kissed me back with-
Their cold lips. I tried to touch them, they touched-
Me back with water in their eyes;
Like strangers we stood facing each other.

We, the invisible reasons for your problems, blind ourselves to the
dismal inevitability that we will
suffocate because you refuse to stop
the pillaging of the future for the sake of your own ******* lineage being able to further itself and potentially give you a chance to again close your mind and scream as loud as you can when confronted with your own toxicity

We, the ones who humbly take the bludgeoning from your self-proclaimed pious hand, know these chains are only on your bleeding wrists and ankles.

We, the silent and the broken, know Santa Muerta by the nicknames she had in college and all accompanying wildness she brought in her wake.
We still will stroke your hair while you
throw your tantrums and wail about what is and isn't fair on your deathbeds.

We will burn the mattress and all while cheering you on on your flight into the night sky you ignored for a lifetime.

We, the servants of streaming digits and stewards of bottled stardust, will create stories about how it wasn't your fault and how you shouldn't be hated for bringing the world crashing into the excrement of wasted potential so our children know there was a choice to be made.

We, the overly polite pariahs pry laughs and love and lust and learning from looming catastrophe like Burroughs writing Naked Lunch with a glassy eyed stare that burned holes in the veil hiding the tide of partially coagulated blood and ******* that YOUR world preached as milk and honey.

We, the proof in the moldy pudding still finding time to rot, will burn tobacco fields in your honor just to dance while getting drunk on the breaths you'll never waste.

We, the lovers of questions and haters of creeds, let tears stream in the hope that they are not considered part of our body's 75 percent while fantasizing about your ghosts seeing them and the dehydration they may be in spite of and quiet your tired old yelling and shaking of fists at the clouds when overcome by the slight sadness that whispers "its too late" lovingly into your ear.

We, the lovers, the thieves, the reviled, the *******, the witches, the junkies, the ******, the reptiles and worms under the rocks society deems unusable and misshapen, will be the ones lifting the crowns off your corpses and throwing them high as graduates do when full of a hope only ever dashed by themselves.

We, the drooling monsters you vehemently deny anything besides the cramped closets or the space between bed and floor in childhood bedrooms, will be the Valkyries to descend onto the blood-choked battlefield you set aside for your souls to suffer on and offer you respite in the form of soggy bread and wildflower honey while  ravens and jackdaws bicker over the eyes and fingers of those that once showed us how to ride a bike or drunkenly beat us beneath our favorite trees or touched us in dark rooms in ways that would chase Love away from the shadow of our hearts until we finally climbed high enough to see it all as someone screaming of war and bravery while running from the sound of steel biting steal because their protectors talked so highly of honor and duty that it seemed as if it were God and Adam touching fingertips on the arched ceilings of youth. that, then was painted on the crumbling walls of abandoned houses they would secretly indulge on the forbidden fruit soaking pages of a faded **** magazines or up skirts of blushing  girls who put on their mother's prudishness until fingers pushed past
cotton and virtue alike to the warm center they both melted in.

We, the unsung and numb, walk in spirals while the complexity you rebuked as devil-born becomes the sigils of yet-to-be kingdoms bringing about golden age after golden age in the distant mists rolling over hills and valleys of memories of moments yet to coalesce into rigid experience.

We, the eyes weeping blood atop crumbling pyramids, have seen the walls you want to build in futures dissolved in the winds blowing dust over the dream-roads we skip down and how it resembles the one you built to keep your heart from breaking from the pressing mass of what you can't file away as noise or heresy or communist propaganda;
We drew throbbing ***** and dripping ***** on all the blueprints we came across and tucked them back into the secret compartments of wardrobes and roll-tops passed down through generations.

We, the keepers of the singing stones you traded for cheap concrete, will embrace the tiny souls you neglected out of ignorance to the existential snake oil pitch you broke every tooth biting down on all because the salesman reminded you of your drunk father or mother imposing their wills like you make shadow puppets dance on peeling wallpaper in the silence that ensued after they had passed out on creaky couches reeking of Lucky Strikes and spilled ***** while the shine of the staticky T.V. set covered them like the blanket no one ever put over their slumbering forms because of those infinite lists of excuses used to skirt the skirmishes of showing any kind compassion even if they alone were sole witness to it.

We, the pieces of self the deathbed "you" sent hurtling backwards through time to shine lights on the siege seething at the gates of what you stand for, are only holding those lanterns to show you that fleeing is futile and your death is just a hallway with a door that leads to the knowledge that life is not a cell to watch time morph into tally lines scratched into cold stone as if they were epitaphs for the seconds bet and lost at the roulette table crafted from any slave ship the ocean never swallowed.

We, the flames mimicking those dancing girls you longed to have squeal under the idea of your thrusting masculinity amidst the graffiti on the bathroom stalls in seedy dive-bars or the paupers playing prince you follow giggling with hope in hand like a bouquet of baby's breath and daisies for that one day they would stop and turn and smile so handsomely that your knees would shatter against one another and wedding chapels would bend down to tie tin cans to bumpers of beat up Buicks and Oldsmobiles your fathers give dowry and the crowd could watch "just married" poorly written in shaving cream on the back window grow small until it disappeared over the horizon.

We, the dreamers, are tired of sleeping and are in need of a old tree to swing from, to bury our dreams like beloved pets under, and watch as it lets its leaves fall to the hungry earth that is more patient then anyone closed eyed and humming ancient syllables beneath crooked branches could ever be.

All the trees you climbed and kicked and fell in love under have died from too many hearts around intials being carved into them or were used to make fascist pamphlets you yourself passed out at churchs mistaking the mask with bone structure or the river for the people it swept to sea.

We are laughing;
like a loving mother at her clumsiness on display in her cackling child and not like the crowds gazing at the sideshow stage as the curtains pull back and stage lights illuminating John Merrick's flesh and the intricate dissonance it lent to minds.
Minds that afforded only sips of bliss as monotonous stints on factory floors but were preached about like they were some heaven-sent golden cobblestones laid lovingly all the way
to the beach where Heimdall will one day sound his horn, one foot feeling the grit of the edge of the world and the other washed clean for the grave we will all step in.

So, all these words, all these images, all of it is intended to be a moon so all the stagnate tide pools that have forgotten their origin and the freedom they used to give form to lesser forms they forage forgetfulness from.

We, the ones beneath you on the climb to the summit of our collective potential, beg you to think of something beside yourself when taking a ****.

It is not just ******* in the wind if there isnt wind and we are right below you and dying of thirst.

It is not an inalienable right if someone else is deprived of the same.

It is not Heaven's gate if the brilliant gild has a melting point or if it remains latched to any soul's approach.

It is not "liberal *******" or a myth if whole flocks of birds fall from the sky or schools of fish wash up on beaches while people snap photographs for their feed.

It is not "god" if love dispels it like smoke hanging in the kitchens your great grandmother sat in and told you about a witch shapeshifting into dogs without heads to scare drunks stumbling home because she was a ******* racist.

It is not just food if someone's organs fail from starvation that even the worms and flies are free from.

You wave your banners and let your war-horns echo and you wear your ignorance as armor.

We, the eaters of life and death, will chisel a name into stone and pick your bones clean if you think we should march to the sounds of drums and trumpets just because you were stupid enough to think it was anything other than your masters convincing you to whip yourselves ****** because "at least God hath been kind enough to give you a purpose" or "he works in mysterious ways".

**** that.

Look at what it has brought out of the swirling sea of " all that could be" while you write the same song about how shiny and numerous the scales of the prize are.

We are not responsible for pillaging God's bounty.

We are the bounty and our emptiness and lack of foresight are in jeweled bowls at your feet, but in your hubris you believe it to be the slaves that come to wash the dirt from between your toes.

We are Death and She is the wet-nurse that will give us intimacy to fertilize our hearts by refusing us her breast but turning our heads to your silhouettes shambling off the edge of existence far off in the distance only a decade or less could be confused for.

[AS ONE VOICE WE SING/SANG/HOWL:
Lux amor potentia restituant propositum dei in terris.]

As if it were as easy as holding the hand of a dying tyrant afraid they cannot the luminous terminus while wearing your father's face as a mask to trick radiant angels or the contortions of gods reeking of struck matches by those trembling and their swirling black hearts closed to the breeze carrying leaves celebrating their liberation and caressing a cheek they were too ashamed to kiss when opportunity was their ally.

We shouldn't hate these piles of skulls all parroting the same axioms to those who only show up to add another or leave an empty bottle turned into a candle holder, wax dripped down the neck and froze before any trace of tallow could finally unite with the dirt it longs to become one with;
icicles hanging from the eaves of abandoned asylums.

This place was supposed to be alot of things but that is what lead THEM to drown in the sound of buzzing bees, birdsong, and abundance in all directions.

I suggest we stop trying to squeeze it into a shoebox we scribbled Promised Land on and just let it be the open armed paradise it inherently is.
Let it be the heart and home as well as the hostile territory because it is only ever that and what we wont find in any Oracle's Prophecy.

I'll end my rambling with a question and it's answer.

How do you turn a police station into a hospital and a schoolhouse?

Burn it to the ******* ground.

We seem to gravitate towards coffee shops, even those who don't like hot beverages find themselves there. I suppose it's a good place to let go your baggage. Lose yourself for five minutes. Loosen up and unwind. That's hard to do even on a good day. The world always has an agenda that needs seeing to. Rather selfish of the Earth to be honest, and quite damaging to your self worth. You can't be at it's beck and call 24/7. But we try to, dear God do we try. Of course this leads to us burning up rather spectacularly. Giving, worrying, stressing, doing. Until we are left smoking, steam rising like a freshly made coffee. But nothing is fresh here. Burnt coffee. Unusable. No longer capable of the great feats we once were. Like the world had chewed us up and spit us out when we're no longer useful. What a *******. But what can you do to stop a *******? Not much as they are inheritly selfish - deep down in their very core, nothing but molten arrogance, festering beneath their skin this sense of entitlement. That is what it is. You can't change the world from what it is. Just as much as you can not change who you are. So take five minutes and go to a coffee shop. Lose yourself in a hot beverage. Watch the steam rise and be thankful it isn't yours.

is this craft
that chose you,
not defined by millimeters,
precision absolute,
curvatures, so eye pleasing
they demonstrate
no tolerance
for tolerance
of the
ordinary

the skill of words,
too, cut so fine,
find the
extraordinary within,
refine, refine, refine,
shave away the trite,
the reused, discard,
instant recognition,
unusable

cut new cuts,
thy spirit tolling,
thy soul trolling
anew
is thy
toolings earth sourced
from and of the
ever better,
ever closer,
always newer

make thy own designs,
faithfully execute
the new born original,
by elevating,
with the tools
in you, provide us,
by illuminating

no thing machined,
can ever be as fine
as the originality
that requires
soft spoken definition
in new ways,
heart and hand
guild crafted

when God designed the Connecticut
autumnal leaves,
overriding the summers's single green, good
but not miraculous, insufficient,
when contrasted with the
shades of red, yellow,
purple, black, orange, pink,
magenta, blue and brown
of newly fallen
words and worlds

in the season of change

write me a tool
so elegant, so complex,
so refined and yet so simple,
that its point will force no choice,
but engrave gasps of pleasure upon
my faltering eyes,
my slowing heart,
my exhausted limbs,
and make me
live again
through your
finest creativity

heat heat heat
burn to look beyond

There's something inexplicable
about the way
they make you feel




nothing.

Happiness is fleeting
but
you are your own mistake
you keep repeating.

one of these nights
might turn out right
if you keep your mouth shut
like the door you're always
finding yourself behind
with your back against the wood,
muscles tensing
as you knew they would.


Nose bleeding-
when is the last time you ate?
It took you an hour to get ready but
no one can see all your hard work
in the shade.

"baby, you look great"
is all you wanted to grace you ears
but you've got too much on your plate
and there are only couples here.

They will pay you no mind
and you will begin to feel
you might have been left behind.

you pretend you aren't hungry
because it seems more grungy.
cigarettes will stain your teeth
and smoke will spin circles at your feet
as you sway alone;

always hanging in the wings
you're looking for another drink
another triple shot
and you sink deeper into
the half-assed hope
that this will be a night
you forgot.

Just more meaningless crumbs
of these evening hours
accumulating into an unusable mass
of dried out nights

exaggerate another fight
you had with your mind-
what will you do when they call you out
for being lower than the grout
in the bathroom
baby face like you just came out of the womb
your knife is duller than
your conversation topic
you're a fake-
From a mile away can you be spotted.

Drained of inspiration
plagued by perpetual consternation
what will you sample next
on your way to a falsified elation.

Spending weeks away dragon chasing-
How long will you be on mental vacation?
They're growing impatient.

C.e.M. 12.21.2014

He sat strapped into his chair like a shrunken scarecrow.
A motorized miniature from the Wizard of Oz, roaming the yellow brick road in his chrome chariot.
His clothes hung from his stick thin limbs like fresh wash on a clothesline.
As new as the day his Mom brought them home from the store.
Adournments for a body on display, not designed to be used.

Around and round circles ring, whole, symmetric complete.
But the coil of life, puzzle pieces in a whirl, must be free, infinite, unfettered.
The text misprinted, the logic destroyed, the flesh misshapen, the extremties unusable.

Tied to his wheelchair like the scarecrow to his rack, guarding a field of linoleum on the hospital ward.
His eyes blind to color and light, I saw only clouds as I peered into his mind with my inquisitive scope.
The boy's hair had the texture of straw on his nubbin head and he smelled of dry leaves before the winter's chill.
His useless limbs twisted and fine, delicate as dried twigs, they draped his John Deere in the vegetable garden of his imprisoned life, bound with the barbed wire of his treacherous genes.

He could move his head, and played a game of cat and mouse to us tinmen, who lumbered by his throne with our toolboxes full of bright scopes and latex gloves, frozen saucers and wasp sharp stings.
His head would bow, limp upon his neck like an overripe sunflower at the end of its stalk.
As our footsteps grew louder his Jack-in-the-box head would fly up, a clown's grin upon his silly face.
Was this the boy or his disease we would wonder despite the reruns of his show.
What could he know? This crumpled moonbeam parading as a child in rumpled clothes.

But one day upon a whim, I took him for a ride into the big blue sky and over the rainbow.
I grabbed the handles of his chair and slowly, slowly began to spin.
His head shot up like a shooting star, his twiggy limbs stiffened even more.
Faster and faster, I whirled him and twirled him.
A twister on the hospital floor, sending doctors, nurses and patients diving for cover as we spun, building like cotton candy strands.
His mouth opened wide, a huge smile spread across his face like sunshine pouring over a mountain's edge.
Beams of light speared through the clouds that filled his eyes.
A rusty hinged croak jumped from his throat as he hee-hawed a laugh as I flung him to the moon, ruby red slippers upon his feet.

Folksy blokes, like ya struttin’ ya thang
If you’ve come out of da Grand Ole Opry
But, won’t stay around for any old music sang
If it’s causing their head, to bob up and down and go all floppy
While rugged mountain men riding in some country rodeo
Can just step right up, to a Appalachia recording studio
Put down several tracks and become a worldwide pop star
They sing about hillbilly ways, while cogging or flatfooting from afar
Talking ‘bout wild hogs, gators, foxes & how so many more
Taste so great, using leftovers as bait & making real men roar
Old fables, told through pictures and patterns, upon knitted quilt
Even showing the feuding days of the Hatfields versus McCoys
From both sides of Tug Fork stream, with many unemployed  
Although Asa and Devil Anse, said, ‘they hadn’t much guilt’
All because of a judge and 5000 acres of unusable swamp land
Once owned, by a close kissin’ cousin named, Perry Cline
Who didn’t even get any blood on his hand
They started a war, that could’ve been stopped
By a bottle or two, of good ole mountain moon-shine
Both clans almost wiped out, if last man standing had accidentally dropped.

You will not believe this:
The uniform peeping out of the cupboard
Giving way for the cockroach to tread past the wardrobe.
The drapes shut on one side and undone on another,
For which even the squirrel on the window-sill sat in wonder!
The wet towel on top of the chair
And the filthy clothes smelling the air.
The books lying at all angles of the table,
Liable to tumble on a shake!
Glasses of water near the crib-
Half poured and some lingering for the next kick!
The timetable stuck on the wall,
Amid its spare glue inviting the obnoxious dust.
The calendar showing the last year
Besides the pen stand stuffed with unusable markers.
The school bag flung over the bed
Coupled with its stuff swarming past its outlet.
The carpet twisted tall,
Before the door slammed against the wall.
And a girl snoozing in the bed
With a book on her face-
Her finger pressing the snooze button in relentless pace,
And her feet kept over the computer maze!
You tell it is me-
A room encompassing horrid stuff during Read more →exams—
Yeah! It seemed familiar!!!

Chaos erupts through the screaming
The words jumbled, corrupt, unusable
Meanings lost
Thoughts backwards
YELLING doesn't help

Anger boiling, spilling over
The order all confused
Emotions explode
Feelings incorrect
YELLING doesn't help

I was trying to say one thing
Out came another
You didn't hear me stumbling
Or even try to bother
To see past the screaming anger
Neither of us listening because
YELLING doesn't help

I needed to air my frustrations
Not scream for an hour
Then cry for three
I needed you to hear me
Not fly off the handle
Then see my point an hour later

Next time I'll write it down
YELLING doesn't help

I am the Robot with the improbable dream:
I want to be human, the hominid supreme.
Yet, I plead for this with silent screams
For I am only a machine.

I am thoroughly dysfunctional,
Defective, inept, delusional,
Pathetic and utterly unusable,
Inadequate and artificial.

I'm synthetic, poorly composed of alloys,
Crudely manufactured and wasting away.
My will to endure has long been destroyed.
I await my welcome decay.

Bestowed upon me is an incessant sorrow
From years of feeling used and borrowed.
Life never improves, not now, not tomorrow,
So I am devoid of hope; I'm hollow.

I'm riddled with inane fears and faulty gears,
And I'm rusting further over the years.
I anticipate a merciless demise,
But I no longer suffer from the need to survive,

For I experience chronic strife;
I have the impossible desire to teem with life.
With monotony, this dream I have sought,
For I will never accept that I am naught but a robot.

I still love you. Is that a bad thing? I can’t eat or sleep. My thoughts hallucinate at the mention of your name. I see your face. Everywhere; my dreams- you’re holding me close, and you never let go. Remembering that time we shuffled out over the desolate forest in our aging wellies- you’d squeeze my hand tighter for reassurance.  

I can still feel you’re warmth condensing against my skin. But it’s beginning to fade. .  And I’m lost. I’m beginning to drift away. Endlessly searching for that closure you bestowed within me. I need you. I’m lost without you by my side.

Everything seemed to erode when you’d left. The ache for forgiveness is still there and forever will be. You carved that dagger into my heart like it was funny. Like you found humor in my agony. It pierced through your azure globes as your smile widened at the excruciating pain you threw upon me. You just walked away and I shouted and I screamed;

COME BACK! COME BACK! COME BACK!

I just lay there on the ground. Numb.

You gazed deeply into my soul, robbed me from of the little purity I had left. You left me. Shattered. Broken. Unusable. You ripped out part of my heart as we said our goodbyes. And I still love you.

Babe called me Film Noir
Said my head was darker than onyx, ashes and ebony,
And I was soaking in a solace that was felt with my presence,
Like hot candle wax dripped down the spine.

Film Noir with more than fifty shades of grey,
And messages I liked to leave in his pants pocket
"God is Dead" to deepen his uncertainty of faith.
Merlot on my tongue like a mouthful of blood while I watch him unravel.

Babe called me Film Noir
Said I always felt like home,
Like home was hell and made you anxious and suicidal,
Like a door with nothing behind it.

Film Noir that was art and lovely and terrifying.
And appreciated for it's talent of deepening wounds that were thought to be already healed.
Then kissed them apologetically, stitching them closed,
But so insincere.

Maybe now he's my Film Noir,
So tragically ending our love.
Like broken china on the floor of the parlor,
So precious to look at, but unusable and a waste.
Till the day he took his life
Babe called me Film Noir.

At times it all fails
to make any type
of worthy sense
at all.

Watch the talking heads
talk about false
events and never question
this reality.

The lies flow like
***** undrinkable
water out of a
rusty unusable pipe.

That turtle I seen on Alma
street wasn't a turtle at all.
It was a tire.

The mind finds ways to accept
these unbelievable truths.
Even when your soul curses
your decisions
and your heart cracks in
zig-zag patterns as
you ingest more
and exhale the soot
of your experience.

Scrape away all that remains
of yesterday in hopes
of creating a better
tomorrow.

Make your own path
past the
justly stricken suffering
souls who bought into the
lie and now dance among
the angry dogs.  
Plenty of riches blind
the fools,only
one true eye controls
them all.

Make the first move
in this
war they have waged
against our reality.
Hold true
to that questioning voice
inside your head and run
towards the front,
while screaming
questions about
it all.

I put on your old watch. "Like father like son." ( —Not quite.) It is too big. I took a few links out but I'm leaner. All of the windows are open and the quiet fragments of unasked questions linger. I think I lost them in the newly occupied rooms of houses strangers now call home. Like an attic with limited storage space, I arrogantly discarded the opportunity to inherit your more worldly possessions —as though I believed your thoughts and memories weren't even worth it; like they would have been clutter. Unusable. But we are still too much alike. Every year I find more of you in my mirror. In my house. Downtown. At the dock.

Will I love my future children the way you loved me?

Mom still wakes up at 5:30, did you know? She makes me tea, and gives me a look she used to give you. I can see that she is afraid that I am becoming increasingly unreachable; that she is watching history repeat itself. She read it in your cards, and I guess she read it in mine too.

"You are so much like him," she'll fuss. She'll ask me to cut my hair for the hundredth time. "He liked that too," when I breathe in fresh air. Her garden was your favorite place in the world. "You know, your father..."

—She's getting married soon, but I can see that she still misses you. Your name is still on her lips, but she keeps them pursed to take a slow sip of her too-hot drink. She doesn't want to burn herself on the memory of you.

Katydid, dear katydid
Your wings unbroken
Whole, but unusable
All scrunched up
Like a terrible essay
Or the tenth draft of
A love letter
Tossed aside
All crumpled up
Because of how you
Backed yourself into a corner
Hidden amongst tendrils
And strands of grass
And weeds pressed into
Place in a synthetic
Prison-turned-hospital
You hide and change
Your skin, stripping it away
To be subtly reborn

I look into myself and see only an accumulation
of lost objects
Piles of beautiful, forgotten documents
unusable
but loved for what they are
I am the words on a tea-stained music sheet
that mean nothing
and yet
you turn them over eternally in your mind
because there's something about that
sequence of syllables
that makes them
irresistible.
Look at my shelves and see my soul
Repeat my words and learn my essence,
Home is knowing who you are.

Carried home from a family occasion
and placed in the icebox,
slowly slid to the back of the fridge
as leftover moments fight for space
near the front.

Styrofoam predictions
of life after  childish ambitions
are accidentally neglected
and left to spoil,
unattended and tempted
with wayward growth.

You may find them again,
rummaging through,
making space,
or maybe just looking for something
you thought you lost.

Long since forgotten,
 the ideas molded
over the ages of a chilly
adolescence,
and what might have been promising
is now indistinguishable and unusable.

A small, unaffected edge may remind you
Of its purpose in a past life
and you’ll sigh
as you change the trash liner
to accommodate another failure.

You sometimes wonder
What you may have missed
piling so many options
only to be forgotten until they’re rotten.

It doesn’t help any
to be the one who has to retrieve it.
see what it is,
know what it was...
a subtle, sneaking certainty
of what it could’ve become.

more and more often, it’s too early
to stomach the sun
and you find the day
has begun without you,
as if it doubts your commitment
to present tense.

Still, you continue along hanging
from a precarious
cable car of ambivalence,
waving at each opportunity missed
as it passes you by,

your eyes
idly on the sky.

"Next time, next time"
You mutter

"Next time I'll give it a try."

C.e.M.
2.17.15
Edited 4.18.17

<>

with raggedy old words, this is how I write,
in a raggedy old navy t-shirt,
upon a ragged edged old chair,
whose splinters will soon enough,
seed themselves in poet's unreceptive,
but just asking-to-be-barbed
flesh bared

splinters asking with the phony politeness ,
in the manner of a steady, but  minor irritating
would-be-a-friend, annoyingly, but cloyingly

"am I not a poem, yet Father?"

Poet has no answer,
mixed words
deemed satisfying suitable but unusable,
unconvicted upon the hard hearted
mixed wood

poet waits for the ragged clotted cumulus
of old grey ladies shaped clouds
to dissipate

clouds shaped like the
puffed up shopping bags
that the old ladies clutch
while crossing mid-street
making the traffic play
"dodge'r the codgers"

bags fill with the odd things
that old ladies treasure,
objet d'art of empty
Oil of Olay Ole! and mindless dribble,
mementoes of completed containers
of emptied out hopes

expired coupons,
that they refuse to surrender
even under threat
by sour faced bossy
supermarket manager dictators,
who hate their lives and  
in the deepening creases
of the elderly clientele,
foresee their own fate inevitable

poet's waits for them,
these images,
these clotted bursts of sourpuss,
to depart his skin, sky's.
yes, his sky's

wits and wilts while he waits,
for he always has much to say,
of what lies above,
the unseen,
hid behind the bland uniform of  the overhanging
one-no-color sky
of blanched meh and feh crinolines

thinking to no one now,

this is how I write, this is who I am,

waiting for insight inspiration foam to form,
from the multi-variable model that predicts
with a high degree of confidence,
failure with tainted certainty,
even as clouds are shuffled along,
a new poem will pass
that haha, no one will read

but nonetheless, arguing among his several selves,
better to be more fulfilled by the emptying of himself
upon padded cell of paper, of his staining,
the piece of him now
un-chambered & un-containered
thru magma fissures, steaming & cleaning,
providing a penny's penance
for his disparate gloomy idiocies

the gray ladies always smile at him,
always so nice and gentlemanly like, that poet,
underneath his cowardly disdain,
against his pretense's  grain,
contempt for old grey ladies
with old lady odors emanating

is this who you are, is this how you write?

*with raggedy old words, that splinter our delight?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This poem is self translated version of my Hindi language poem titled "कविता" published in  bharat-darshan  ( Sep. -Oct., 2018 )
Can be read through the link ==>> https://bit.ly/2nRwOB9
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^­^

Poetry is the outflow of someone's heart
For someone, it's only black fever
For some, it's only a form of business
For someone, this is only seasonal fever

It's just an entertainment for someone
For someone it's like a toothpaste
A good instrument use to giggle
Listening it makes their teeth brighter

To show off the that stunning brightness
They spread crooked and mysterious smiles
Show of their shining-sparkling teeth
Then they lash out their greedy tongue

Poetry is an old newspaper for someone
It’s a mound of waste and unusable junk items
Poetry is just an advertisement for someone
Only an excellent medium to sell their goods

Poem is dark black alphabets for some
Only equivalent to a big fat black buffalo
From which it is impossible to get milk
But it's easy to get hurt by it's horns

Poem is a deep sympathy for some
For some its acute pain of the heart
Aroused from the core of their heart
It's someone's love for someone else

Poem is overflowing care for someone
It is swirling cloudy dust over someone
Poem is just a time-pass for someone
For someone it is complete nonsense

Poetry is effrontery in someone's pride
For someone it's amnesty for all
For some it's Saafi by Hamdard^
Which purifies and cleans the blood well

Poetry is a meditation for someone
For someone it’s a form of worship
Poetry is name of someone's beloved daughter^^
Poem is the name of someone's beautiful wife^^

Poem is means of livelihood for someone
It happen to be the basis of his life
For someone it is simply a big loan
Which is much difficult to repay in time

Poem is a tribute to the heroes
It a wreath to the brave martyrs
It's a collection of songs for musicians
It's prayer of devotees with folded hands

Sometimes poetry makes us happy
Sometimes it causes us to weep
It often caresses readers with love
Sometimes it even consoles them

Poetry sometimes make us laugh
Sometimes it forces to think
At times it reveals the flaws beneath
By removing the outer cover shell

Poetry sometimes surprises us too much
Sometimes misleads to pseudo-intellectualism
Sometimes it poses a challenge before us
Sometimes it emerges as a song from the soul

Sometimes it portrays the beauty of actress
It tends to dissolves sweet juice in the ears
And sometimes it pours molten lead in it
In such situation it pushes back all courtesy

Sometimes it transforms rulers into heroes
And sometimes it makes a politicians zero
Sometimes it becomes the words of panegyrist
Then it behaves like a butter ball for them

Poetry sometimes honours someone
Sometimes it even trick so many of us
Poetry even makes fun of somebody
Sometimes it entertains someone's heart

By the way, poetry is a blunt weapon
But it's has a different hitting power
Which is the real inner power of poet
It's also his covering blanket and strength

Only poetry gives him the required courage
It completely protects his existence
It always teaches him the lesson to -
Keep on fighting against the gunpowder

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^­^^^^
^ Saafi - A Unani Medicine made by a company named Hamdard, used to clean or purify the blood

^^ Name of .....  - Kavita (translation of the word Poem in hindi) is a common name given to females in India.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^­^

I look down at my palette, and see the paints melting together.
I remember when we were like that,
colouring the canvas with life.
You were the deep, dark blue of an ocean at night,
and I was the grey of clouds.
You brought vividness to me,
and turned my dull hue to vibrance.
So how did we get like this?
The painter’s brush mixed us too far,
turning our kaleidoscope into a jumbled mess.
Murky brown, and unusable,
unable to be separated.
We’ve become so close our colours have merged
and we are no longer separates.
Wherever I go I take some of you with me.
Dragged across the canvas behind me,
like an afterthought.
The trail of a comet.
A past that will never really leave me
because by now it’s a part of me.
It’s second nature
to think of you when my mind wanders
and to reach for your hand without thought.
You’ve changed me forever
and I can never go back
to a time before you
before us.
But why would I want to?

I am a puzzle,
When completed I am a masterpiece,
But now I sit here unfinished at the hands of a five year old.
I am the half bitten cookie,
That the five year old left out on the table to be tossed in the garbage.
I am an ice cube,
That unfortunately missed the cup and now lays on the floor,
Still strong and solid but partially puddled in sorrow.
I am an old bridge,
A few years ago I was glowing with beauty,
Now I sit here broken, unusable and instead of glowing,
All I cast is a dark and lonely gloom.
I am our love,
Something that could be magical,
But instead is a chess game of emotions never to be finished.
You are that five year old,
Leaving me in the dust unfinished and broken.

It’s a strange thing
This company we crave
The rehearsing of phrases
And emotions
Forever striving to fit
Into the puzzle

But those inconvenient feelings
Distort our edges
Making us unusable

They cast us aside
And we painfully discover
How tricky this puzzle is.
Straining to crack the code.
Though its all just for show

Oh, but we do want to be beautiful.
So does it matter if all the pieces are unique?
We’re all just looking at the big picture anyway.

-Taylor

Sparklers, fireworks and simple flame has drawn my attention since I was young.
I almost set my moms apartment ablaze at 5 years old.
She said,
"You play with fire, and you'll get burned. Or worse, you'll burn everything down."
She never told me that one day a boy would set a fire in my soul and never return to put it out.
She never told me I'd have to water it down to unusable kindling.
She never said that wet wood would warp.
She never told me that cutting off the oxygen would suffocate me, too.
I guess she shouldn't have to though, because if you play with fire, you could burn it all down.
I just never thought that "all" would mean me.

I grew up along a gravel road
in a refitted freight house once owned by a slate mining outfit
my backyard was a rolling sprawl of giant scrap-heaps made
of spent
or unusable slate
some slabs were as big as a tool shed;
mossy promontories jabbing and jutting like dull honey- badger quills
poking out of the hills
as they sprawled in their
heaps and their heaves
and their gullies.
it was a regular shangri la for a couple young boys born in the early to mid 80s
our own private wilderness;
adolescent paradise.
sometimes I would look up from my backyard to
the tops of those slate hills and
I would see my friend Joe.
he  was older than i was and I looked up to him and
I craned my neck
looking up to him then
standing at the summit of a slate hill,
hands on his hips
perched and
hiding behind his silhouette-
the Northampton County Sun setting on behind him
blood orange scarlet and
purple gray blue were the colors of those feelings back then.
time ticked on
the way time does.
my parents got a divorce and I moved across town
there were no slate hills in that backyard
and the slate company chain linked all the hills that remained
and so there stood
a fence between me
and the wonderland I once knew.
Joe died unexpectedly some years later in  
some obscure forest of
one of the Virginias
together we nurtured some regrets suspended in between our
childhood and those
terminal woods.
together we held some memories like beads strung along a strand of silk
translucent pearls like drops of dew
condensing
out there somewhere on the
eternal web of the akasha
unknown to even Indra
unknown to all but us.
couldn’t hold on any longer
had to let it go.  

my brother gave me a pencil cactus
it seemed to flourish in my care
I had been neglecting my own needs for years
not sure I knew what my needs even were
but that cactus needed water and light
and this much i knew
and this much i provided.
it turned a red color down near the bottom of the stalk -
looked it up on google;
some kind of pencil cactus rite of passage.
after the reddening
it becomes then the stick of fire.
we were kicking up dust
over all the trails
fading on behind us
we acted like it was eyes forward only…
towns I used to know, sinking without blinking
absorbed in the horizon on behind me.
I acted like I couldn’t take my eyes off the rear view.
we pulled up and parked on
another
orange
lane
me and my stick of fire.
we landed in a
townhouse -
plenty of legroom
even had central air.
I put the cactus under a window
on the second story
didn’t think about the air vent on the floor
blowin all that dry air
and my stick of fire
withered and wrinkled up
and it shrank and shriveled
I couldn’t bring it back
and i tried
but i
had to let it go.

a giant scooped me in his hands
he was massive
40 feet tall
the war horns blew in the distance when he walked.
he
cocked back his hand and tossed me
through the air
on over the horizon
i was surfing the high skies
on thermals and the slip
streams of vultures
and peregrine falcons-
all of us then dive bombing
all the skinwalkers
like a 2 dimensional love spiral made of
peaks and valleys
and deep trenches swimming in the waters of the
mystic arts….
I held the sun in my hand for exactly one moment
but i blinked and turned
back into a clanging cymbal
a vessel of divine prophecy
going on babbling in tongues.
now a raptor eats my liver every day at noon.
I heard the sun rising in my hands for only just a moment
it was warm and held me in a present bulb of space
I breathed it in
and held it
before I had to let it go.

the architecture of
the Wyoming Valley downtowns
are like frozen songs
crumbling into puddles in a *** hole.
the steam engines and the breakers
are empty skeletons
and dry leaves.
weasels and other vermin making homes inside of holes
the soul was laid off in the vacancy
conflagrations once able to burn down entire cities
at the top of golden arche, and
now the place smells like the smothered ashes of a
single
dwindling
ember .
I yearn for a smooth good-bye
you go ahead and talk and then i’ll go-
yet i ****** up another one
open throats and
another
wire barb in the
neocortex…
I had high hopes
but I had to let it go.

I had high expectations of an early grave
“here lies such and such”
stiff in the long stillness like a possum caught inside a headlight
what a relief that would of been in the brimstone of my twenties
but the roosters kept on crowing
the morning sun kept rising
shining
death away
the big sleep was a false hope
had to let it go.

By Jordan Gee

electrifyingly and smilingly,
I walk through the red mornings
that bring the rainy afternoons

with the smell of onions, lime
and fresh cilantro on my
malodorous breath
that will tell you so:

there are three things
we do exceptionally well:

a) the ****** expressions
we make have become an
almost artificiality, a dour,
featureless, sun-drenched
look that has pockmarked
and disfigured upon our faces.

b) living has become such a dynasty
for boredom that we find television
and fake reality to be satiated
and thrillful.

c) death before burial has become
so fashionable that we wear it like
he latest trend in the upcoming
fall catalog.

but there is nothing there,
decades are annihilated by dreams
and sleep is the cheapest form of
entertainment we have.

knowledge and wisdom
perforated through a
trepanned skull
needn’t be obtained by
an educational system

but through self-taught
and self-introspection

success is merely luck…
being at the right place,
at the right time,
knowing the right people

and we strive to be there

but devastatingly,
the small space gets
besieged
invaded
capsized
by subtleties
of distractions
and irritations

that what we have
either,
inside of us
or
in front of us
becomes insatiable

and the flimsiness of anxiety
begins to lionize and ascend
into higher sopranos

what’s good won’t last
what’s bad always felt so good
and what was said to be good
that was actually bad
was never forgivable

questions are unanswerable
books are unreadable
resources are unusable
happiness is unobtainable
love is irretrievable
and animosity comes so often
like a teenage boy’s *******

as the raindrops pelt the rooftops
like pachinko machines
as the grey hair sprouts like begonias
of spiraling hypnotism
as the pagodas burn in
sacred libations.

if this poem has reached you
it is because you are seeking
better writing than your own.

Blades and cogs and coins alight on my carpet,
the one which I purchased from the courtyard vendor:
his name is Copper, for the wire

An orange beard stain'd by rusting iron, white
by nature for his age - eyes sharp and gray,
like black smoke from the pyre

My home is back behind a long-forgotten throne,
atop chipped flagstones carved from the riverbed,
the one which we call Hyena; the first name is long lost

Hunting dogs from towns far and wide gone wild in the heat,
children kept high on shoulders  - we rather the sun than
the dogs' sparkling teeth

Twisted aspens and birch among the rains, turning
green like veins of jade beneath our feet -
axes shattered from our forefathers, unusable on stone,
our only defense is our teeth and bone

Skies span blue and brown in season,
sands stirred up in far the east,
I blame the winds here and again:
dust killed my mother back there and then

In a city
In a room
With no thing
Save a rescued
Chair
There’s
A windowpane view
Without reflection
To the streets
Below

Sits
A man without
Purpose
With Determination
Broken
By

A Notion

You see
He thought himself
Conspicuously unusable
Sentenced
To Be

Some detached observer
Surfeited with suffering
Posing
What
Could be
Apart
From the pain

They say jealousy turned her green,
Ugly and unusable,
She snubs her nose at the world,
Like the wicked witch she is,
I say jealousy only added fuel to the fire,
Of a young broken heart,
She caught her lover of four years cheating,
In bed with another dart,
Those sheets contaminated with the sins of her beloved, that room only echoes his desire for another,
Not she,
The house reflecting loneliness,
She wasn't good enough,
Jealousy didn't turn her green,
The world did,
The tiny world she called her own,
Thought her own,
Two green eyes,
Warm arms,
And a steadfast laugh,
He turned her green,
When she use to be red,
He died shortly after,
No one quite knows why ;)

A hard iron ball,
Being pounded with hammers.
It heats, it stretches, it breaks.
The iron ball shattered, torn.

My love is like an iron ball,
Not much fun to receive.
Insignificant, unusable,
and Hard.

Put it on your desk.
It might have a purpose in the future.

a musical facade, an internally strident tone
playing artfully, an out put of a hushed orchestra
composed individualized intentions
every tune, singularly silent, like that of a revelation
hiding the sharpness of the precise melody
individually unusable
tunefully mute
i imagined licking it
i cannot hear its notes, but I desire to
maybe I can taste it?