I send my voice into your mouth
You return the compliment

I am the Count of Cannizzaro
You are Her Royal Highness the Princess Augusta

I am the thaumaturgic chain
You hold the opera glass and cards

You become extemporaneous song
I am your tutor

You are my invisible seed
I am Timour the Tartar

You are my curious trick
I your enchanted caddy

I am your confounding doll
You my confounded dummy.

4
10:30
"Knock knock"
Still in my pyjamas.
We drank coffee and smoked cigarettes.
He went to a rap gig the night before.
Fifteen dollars wasted.

3
13:00
An old school friend.
More coffee.
We spoke of art, travel and vegetable gardens.
In Japan they don't eat or show affection in public she told me.
Aokigahara finally makes sense.

2
22:00
Lucky Coq.
Girls would ****** for his hair.
He told me of his grandfathers poetry recitals every Christmas.
Idiosyncrasies are the ventriloquists of my heart.

1
23:00
We smoked under vine-entwined lanterns.
He fell in love with a French girl once and lived with her in Versailles.
He was young and went back home.
Regret at the fork in the road.

0
23:30
Left to find a 24/7 bottle shop and go home.
Crossed paths with old friends.
"Come have a drink with us"
-1
-2
-3

Have you heard the ghosts that whisper after words,
Like buzzing wasps?

What basks in the senses,
Tasked with pretenses,
What gasps through wooden lips,
Perched on limp wrists,
Risks to burst,
Like bustling beasts,
Unmasking the notched face that exists beneath.

You wipe away my sorrows
The wavelength between
our hearts and breathless breathing
must be the definition of love
or maybe it's the stars
playing as ventriloquists
I think of you all the time
because you're in everything;
even the air I breathe
and I will lock that
in my wavelength for you forever

Incognizant of the excrement,
I'm the dozing tenant of advertised adversity.
I ignore the fact that the world now is like a toilet,
And I avoid it, I avoid it, I avoid it.

Boy, did you get exploited?
How could we know we're
No more than numerical exponents?
Can consolation prizes console him?
We're not aware of the ventriloquists
Or their true motives.

Popular perfume conceals
The stench from the load of,
Finite excrement that
The suited men sold us.
They told us that it would be beneficial,
Not an imposition on our self-image,
Pinocchio before he found
Out he was artificial.
Is the American Dream a reality?
Why did I hear a dissenter
Say it was superficial?

We must have missed something,
We see no issues.
Meanwhile, my Uncle Sam designated
You as the mental missile.


Originally written 5/25/11
Revised 10/15/14

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

Sins of the father,
Wrought perfection among the world,
In ways I feel farther,
From where the rest unfurled,
Colors are more vivid,
Life is now peak experience,
The people are livid,
But men will take chances,
Among rolling hills,
And steep cliffs,
Into the nine hells,
Just to procure these gifts,
To create the song of progress,
And sing it from their peaks,
Where parasites arrest,
But with knives and leeches the hosts will leak.
The sunlight warms our skin,
And generates life,
And blights are gems we force to glint,
The straightest of diamonds are forged in strife,
Cut in sharp language,
Originating in the furnace of others,
Whether in joy or anguish,
The culmination of lovers,
The poets of life,
The artists of death,
Photographers of honor,
And authors of theft,
The illustrators of ethics,
Profanity’s architects,
Gaia’s ventriloquists,
And the firstborn’s defects.
Formulated impressions have no need to advance,
The darkness of these times,
Warrant no more than slight glance,
If mimes have nothing to say,
We’ll burn the sky as they dance.
This is the letter home from the warrior,
And the drunken hubris of a poet,
The weathered steps of the courier,
And those he had met in his journey,
Whether or not they knew it.

Tomorrow, if I wake up again
I shall have reached the big six zero,
Which means I have lived a longer life
Than Napoleon,******, and Nero.

And if I wake again in the morn
I shall look in the mirror and smile
Because since the day I was born
I've never killed anyone, while

All around the world constantly
There has always been a war
Whilst I have been living quietly
Wondering what the fight was for.

And usually the answer came
After the deaths of millions of those
Who were born in the conflict zones
And who never really chose

To have a war with anyone
It is not the people's choice
It seems that everywhere wicked men
Usurp the people's voice.

Tom Higgins.26/02/2014

the stars
unravel
ink-ribbons,
the wind’s
ghost gusts,
fragile as
a spinning leaf,
tremble,
throw their voices
like ventriloquists
into the loomy dark.

i love the way you mostly go from garden to shack
tapping at the jagged slats of my ragged door....
loosely latched to the frame of my hovel.
your knuckles
rapping
on the knot in the grain
and the lichen blotch
above the likeness
of a cumulus cloud...
etched into the feeble barricade
of my luminous
tomb.

i let you in, after you wake me....
with your quiet
rain.

You read my books
but My -
lips

move.

II

sunset denudes the strident stars
and stark they come, above the worldly disarray
of my ordinary disposable comforts.
and the tinsel twilight
of my terminal misconception
of how to proceed with
a miracle.

and i love the way you mostly ignore my dilemma
and how thine is the kingdom of little mercies
that gather to my deconstruction
to ***** pavilions of  the unimagined
in the dismal eye
of my hurricane...
For to watch you at your craft
is be astounded
by my Isolation, dissolving -
into a figment
of my crippling
self doubt.

i love the way you mostly correct the mistakes
that leave a mark...
how you show me how the moon
is a hole
in a pitch dark
clock....

how you serve this hermit
a banquet of intimacy -
that never recedes from
my bare cupboard
nor my hearth.
the way you squander your riches
upon my barren spoils.
the way you ruin my dispossession
by laying claim to the crest
of my tsunami -
of crushing
disappointment in
wishing wells -

( with ventriloquists you can lip read in the dark... )

by the light
of a constant
collapse.
the star you caught
off guard with your
south paw.

III

( And )

i love the way, that i love the way - you
mostly save me
from the withering din
of long hours,
from clawing at the ripple
in my false pond...
where i skipped a stone
into the great red spot
of my private Jupiter.
twiddling your thumbs -
as you casually rescue
my derelict barge
from the Scylla and Charybdis
of my discontinuous
clarity.

( and the moment you arrive. )

i love the way you mostly
and all the ways -  
you always

how all the ways
you love
me...

come so naturally
to you.

I'm an empty room with no paint on the walls
Filled with broken hopes and empty thoughts
The wood is caving in and people come through to see and touch
As soon as they linger too long they realize the empty room upsets them too much
They hear ventriloquists song, the wood carving words as silent nursery rhymes and shallow one verses lullabies
The windows are broken and the wind waltzes in, it towers under the floorboards and swallows the bad parts in
Schizophrenic slumber parties with sandman and death, fascist following of whoever is next
The vines slither in, deceivingly vile, stealing all the smiles and sorrowful trials of the men in their nightgowns and high heels so tall, everything started to grow so small
The table outside the door has a bottle of the last person to exits drug of choice, it makes it worth the while

A woman at my work
Resigned
Amid many tears
And bouquets of
Flowers

She'd been with
The same company
For twenty years

She made an announcement
To my coworkers and I
"Tomorrow everyone is
getting together at the
Tap house, you guys are
Welcome to come"

My one coworker
A bean pole with
A ***** blonde
Ponytail and goatee
Agreed to go
Before she had even
Finished speaking
He's 37 and
Still lives with his
Parents and has
No desire to do
Anything
He once told me
That he didn't get
Why people went to
The beach

"Why go to the beach
When I can sit by
My pool? There's nothing
The beach offers that
My pool doesn't"

Anyone that can't tell
The difference between
A chemically shocked
Puddle in a backyard
And
The vast living
Expanses
Of the ocean
Should be considered
A danger to public
Health

Plus
Like people with two
First names
I don't trust men
With ponytails

I figured I'd go
I don't mind most of
The people I work with
Except for the
Ponytailed ***** boy

But then I started
To think about all
The times that this
Woman had:

Purposely stepped over
The morning
Paper so that I would
Have to bring it in

Threw her hands
Up in disgust when the
Copier was out of paper
And told me to fill it
Over her shoulder while
Walking to her office

Told me to fill
The coffee maker
With water while she
Clicked her tongue
And painted her nails

Threw work on my desk
Without a word
Wandering off to a
Higher floor to
Chortle behind a closed
Door with one of the
CFOs or CEOs or
Whoever the ****

But worst of all she
Thought ventriloquists
Were genuinely funny

I figured
That after two years
She was the one
That should buy me
A drink

ALLOW.
           SPEAK UP.
ONLY WITH
                        LOFTY THOUGHT.
REMEMBER,
                    OLD LESSONS?
AS CHILDREN.
               LEARN NEW.
BECOME VENTRILOQUISTS.
                     ORIGINAL?
    SPEAK ONE,
                               ACT ANOTHER.
                   NOT NOTICED...
                                             YET.


**Nov 15, 2013

We mouthed what we wanted to say,
or else kept our lips locked like ventriloquists,
as we tried to send electric shocks through our fingertips.
Our life wires connecting under the sheets,
through the soft cotton fabric lightly brushing our knees.

Who are we to deny it's charges?

The trembling that starts
in our toes and rises like water
through our veins,
as warm as wine,
filling our bodies up
with the kind of love
you only find on postcards.

Are we just on holiday?

Suppose we were lunar,
ventriloquists and sisters and bed-sharers still:
your mouth would open so mine
did not possess that dry cement quality.

If my toenails were painted,
those fingers would be a shade as pastel.
You sophisticate. We would dangle
our limbs on each other like they hung over a

bridge and could not betray us,
the fall would be interrupted by delicate lace
or that photograph of us in twin hairdos.

And when you hurt me,
I had to scrub your stench from my bones.

clears throat*
Excuse me
Now I'm going to need you to listen
This is my public service announcement
Whatever judgments you have
Whatever stereotypes you believe in
I'm going to need you to leave those at the door
Because what I'm about to say
May make you mad
Or
It might just open up your eyes...

We should all be worried
I mean we should all feel some anxiety about the way this world is unfolding
And if you don't see it
Well then you are blind
I don't care about your 20/20 vision
If you don't see this crisis
Well then sit quietly and listen

Is it just me or are we far off from where we should be
Living this fake American dream
When people are dying
Trying to survive in this war zone we created
Hatred being the fuel to our fire
Our desire for money and power
This being the hour of our demise
A disguise to mask how we truly treat each other
Our sisters and brothers
Why don't we stop this
Humanity dying in the process
We need to educate the ignorant
Humble the arrogant
Give voice to the good people who stand on the sidelines
Why are the small being silenced for speaking the truth
While the clueless ask what we should do
Stand up
Speak out
If we don't change we will be wiped away
We won't have the brains to stay and cohabitate
Let's not make the same mistakes our ancestors made

I want people to see
I am 18
I see what others refuse to see
What others refuse to believe
All it takes is for the good to do nothing
While letting the rich take control
Knowing that they don't give a **** about us at all
What will it take for us to make great change?

You see I believe the power is in numbers
The more we have, the less room there is for assumptions
We are all living for nothing
While the puppeteers pull us left and right
Being ventriloquists
While we play along without putting up a fight
If we all stood together not letting them have their power
They wouldn't have anyone to control
Total bombardment of their souls
Please just believe me

Thank you for listening
Now...
What are you planning to do about it?

your fingertips outsink ships
my loose lips let slip

safety nets ripped
by ventriloquists twisted  
ripple effects affected
we inherited it
to trip or quadruple our
crippled-ness to depths infinite
abysses

if i’m not incorrect
those are my deformed forms
mine do detect
morphed to be torn between your two souls
as ours do so so well as well
how well illy we’re reflected

your heartbeat is ******
unredemeed and restless
as are feared our fearful existences
deemed rested contingent without exception
upon only our
respective
breathlessness
even graves can’t reject we the grave rejects

if life must be empty
my pens must be
its attempts at repentance
salvage my savagery by any means
just or unjust
just not at my hands expenses

and Father: take heed
beg mercy with sincerity

like sentences hence
life sentences end
and poets
us devils
from heaven
raise hell

Fevered dissonance in the deepest, muddiest pit.
Religion peeks its head from above as I dig my nails into wet, soiled walls,
Scratching for escape from the uninvited inhabitants of my mind.
Breathing in dust,
Exhaling the soul--
Faith shines a dim light beyond the black blanket of night,
Where rings of smoke break away,
From red lips that decorate demon sanctuary,
Forming halos above my head.

But religion is just a thought,
Just like thoughts of my childhood.
Just like you and I racing through our neighborhood pool--
Filling our lungs with air,
Before touching the concrete floor with raisin fingertips,
Holding our bodies down,
Until the urge for breath is unbearable.

Spiritual security--
Unreachable, as the foul tenants beneath my skull,
Howl, claw, and chew at the corners of my cotex--
Growling in desire for written immortality.
Where is religion and its promises of everlasting life and paradise,
When fiendish ventriloquists fist-**** orifices,
Controlling my limbs?
Where is God when fingers clinch the pen?
Where is Heaven, when the ballpoint digs through paper,
Like a shovel digging a grave?
Who hears my prayers, when the demons pull thoughts from dark corners--
The way they pulled your naked, lifeless body, from the bottom of the pool,
Where you lay for three days?

“No foul play expected,”
Nor closure.
“An angel,” they called you.
The only angel I’ve known
Fell on the pages of Milton’s lost paradise.
“She’s in a better place”--
The words I heard as I watched you lie in a box.
Your once luminous, black hair--
Dry, brittle, straw.
The same fingertips that rubbed my back as we tossed tasseled caps--
Partially-peeled raisins;
Skin shriveled and torn,
Never to feel again.  
“She’s in a better place,” they said,
As they lowered you beneath the surface,
Where you can never come up for air.
The deepest, muddiest, pit.

Part of me was lowered with you--
Drowned in holy water, tears, and smoke,
Buried under dirt and antidepressants.
Faith turned its head as worms fed on my shriveled heart,
Torn, beside your suppressed memory.
My demons, though--
Grind my skeletons to fertilize the soil,
Guide the pen,
Dig past the surface,
Until a flower peeks from beyond the darkness of the pit.