Infinite repeat
we search
we go nowhere
there is no other earth
we are a microcosm
a universe in a grain of sand
an effect bereft of cause
Orbiting
a dying star
We circle
we search
we are
fireflies
in a jar
Bouncing and banging
off translucent walls,
They stare mesmerized by
our low green glow
They laugh and lounge
free at ease
Singing summer's song
we glow despite it all,
Or perhaps we glow
Just because.
Into The Night
rusted cars clattered noisily
against an amethyst skyline.
A glow on the horizon
soon to resolve
Into a bright broken
Eggshell moon,
swaying old oak
Orange striped with
Spray paint to mark its
own impending doom.
Soon to be replaced by
bending young pines
Encroaching broken congregation
Of concrete counting the time
as the same graffiti covered
Train clatters
farther down the long
battered line
Confirmation?
I didn't know it was lost-
unclasped hands
lifted head,
and outstretched arms.
Feeling around for nails
searching beneath
stones, and these rotted logs
true strength lies within
I Am
my own damn god
America
Indifference
despite the desperation
dragging behind him
acting as if he may make
some legacy that will last
no man fails without trying
at least once to do something
piss poor or great
words never really mattered
in the end they are only
another burden
our shoulders need
bear no more weight
What can we write that will change anything?
What can we do to affect this place?
Does it matter if we do?
Is indifference
my only design in fate?
vocables
incandescent leaps
I bind
small winged forms
a goddamned swarm
of them in my head
from whence they were
born to crawl across my tongue
never return
to their so-called home
an utterance
or murmur
or slip of
the lungs
No one knows where the ladder goes
Have I mentioned the agony of mortality recently?
The monotonous anticlimactic ending of it all.
The dreams in which my living family die
Sounds of hellhounds pawing at the door
Sniffing the air, pacing in my hall.
How much difference does it make?
Not a single piece can guide us away
Not one word will offer up escape.
The coffee maker pours out the strangest sounds
at four in the morning.
Little hissing puffs,
Was that a deep low growl?
He Said
selfishly coldheartedly
leading me away from me
i suffer from a slavish
codependence
Her her her hands
are those of a tormentor
murderer of a man
with golden intentions
he said:
my eyes yes my mind
I would have given
to her to her to her
and and and been her slave,
or her king,
or the dog
slavering at her feet
i i i
i am done
resigned and numb
to wallow in self-pity
and accept my defeat.
Smile-Celebrate-Sing
as if it is the first
day of spring,
the mythical dogwood white,
the fragrant damp earth,
the newborns unfurling in green
come quickly,
or not at all,
I cannot care
shut away the remains,
or burn what's left
to ash....
Ishtar,
what is a resurrection
without a few laughs?
She Doesn't Speak
the crows grooming themselves
in the frail limbs
of the few trees
left in her once-
award winning yard.
She can't help but think
they prepare themselves
for her
alone.
They rustle
and caw
an esoteric language.
The lawn hasn't been
mown in months.
She pulls her robe up close,
pulling her hands
under the healing warmth.
Destiny marked her long ago,
and set the scenes, and set the props
so carefully into place.
(the widow with
a purring skeletal
cat in her lap
rocks and waits)
Charles Simic
Eyes Fastened With Pins | ||
How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.
|
Rosary_______________________________________________________________________________Altar
Quietude
every answer came
there is no such thing as silence
It was society I was trying to escape
every tree seemed to sway and wave
pointing me in a different direction
lavender leaned against a light post
I breathed in the predawn
I was an island
I was a ghost
there is no such thing
as silence
every answer whispered
as the sky lightened
Poverty
Fuel for the fire
A leaden anchor
I am drowning
Burning alive
Holding my face
Just above the surface
Nothing helping
My eternally
Aching head
Bloodshot eyes
Final notice
Gasping for air
Society's foot
On my face
Pushing
down
Ever
So
Slowly.
Desperation
Is all we know
At the moment
Pablo Neruda
Death Alone
tombs full of soundless bones,
the heart threading a tunnel,
a dark, dark tunnel :
like a wreck we die to the very core,
as if drowning at the heart
or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.
There are corpses,
clammy slabs for feet,
there is death in the bones,
like a pure sound,
a bark without its dog,
out of certain bells, certain tombs
swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.
I see, when alone at times,
coffins under sail
setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead braids,
bakers as white as angels,
thoughtful girls married to notaries,
coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,
the wine-dark river to its source,
with their sails swollen with the sound of death,
filled with the silent noise of death.
Death is drawn to sound
like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,
comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,
comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.
Nevertheless its footsteps sound
and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree.
I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see
but it seems to me that its song has the colour of wet violets,
violets well used to the earth,
since the face of death is green,
and the gaze of death green
with the etched moisture of a violet's leaf
and its grave colour of exasperated winter.
But death goes about the earth also, riding a broom
lapping the ground in search of the dead -
death is in the broom,
it is the tongue of death looking for the dead,
the needle of death looking for the thread.
Death lies in our beds :
in the lazy mattresses, the black blankets,
lives a full stretch and then suddenly blows,
blows sound unknown filling out the sheets
and there are beds sailing into a harbour
where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.
moth
beating gray and white wings,
flailing for a way out,
is there an escape?
This is what I thought I wanted
drawn so naturally to the light
In the heat of the bare white bulb
the dust becomes embers
exhausting
what little
life
was left.
Lucidity Asleep
of body out
stretched hands
I spin to hold
tightly to this world I could hold
In the palms of my hands
In ova
I awaken
To the realization
That I am sleeping
In the passenger seat
Even as I write this
I test my reality
I am resting my sanity
Only temporarily
Temporally suspended
Upended imagery
Look twice at your watch
Watch the weather change
Fluidity
fluorescence
Ghouls and tulips
A child's rhyme
In
My
Ears
It would seem that
Life is but a dream.
Kingdom Of Our Youth
Her silent stone children still
stand in dead rows along the coast-
Remnants of majesty & truth.
As Hendrix played Purple Haze
with feedback shriek
carefully controlled,
A slowly swelling rage
was born within us.
The campfire
turned the burn of bourbon
into so much more
than it had ever been before,
Nothing will ever be the same.
Nothing will ever be as pure.
We ruled with small iron fists
in control of nothing & everything,
All at once,
Magnets were miracles
of our omniscient maker's
imagination,
The moon followed us
on the ride home
as if it had nothing
more to do,
We built it all from the ground up
But the world has left it in ruins,
Only those lonely
distant monoliths
remain.
JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)Influenza
The Hollow Men
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot
Hypomania
If left untreated, an episode of hypomania can last anywhere from a few days to several years. Most commonly, symptoms continue for a few weeks to a few months.
Grunge (the way i remember it)
Father And Child
I didn't see the struggle,
I didn't know what it was to make ends meet,
I didn't know how it felt to have mouths to feed,
Little eyes looking at me,
Little ears listening,
Impressionable minds
to be molded,
Forgive me Father,
once I knew not,
though I thought I knew it all.
* * *
Child,
Be not so scared,
Be not so frail,
Be not so silent,
Be not so pale.
Watch,
Listen,
Laugh,
Be more than I,
and my father
before me.
Epiphany(?)
look at this milkwhite sky roiling beneath an angry sun
amused at these alleys tucked down between the brick legs
of the building opening windows like mouths accepting anyone
Gardens growing unkempt on the roof
where we drank gin and listened to jazz,
i had never heard Miles before
i never knew that words could get her
drunk and slurring.
She said she just had an epiphany,
it only took a gallon teasing her to articulate explanation
her voice was an experience like pulling teeth,
a little loss of blood,
and some friendly persuasion.
Dreams Of Doubt
"May the wordsbe in your hearton your lipsand in your mind"
Craving
the new blue
second sun
with tail in hand,
tapping away
on the altar
with my fingertips,
restraining myself
from snaring
another pill
instead of
the psychostimulants
I am chewing
lip & nail
until the grinding
begins again
again
again
the mesolimbic
reward pathway
positioned midbrain
releases the glory
nonsense flows forth
synapses firing
This is another's voice
not mine
needing
screaming
...just 1 more
just 1 more please...
I defy it
I deny it
I will stand
all of those feelings
in a line & execute them
one at a time.
C I R C L E S
as the curve
traced out
by a point
that moves
so that its distance
from a given point
is constant,
known since
before the beginning
of recorded history
the wheel, which, with related inventions
such as gears, circles still,
makes much of modern
civilization a possibility,
inspiring the development
of geometry,
calculus,
and astronomy,
which of us
would exist?
how much of what we do
could be possible
without circles?
Cain: The First, And The Last
He will be here when the last drop trickles out, becomes mud, and springs forth fresh green shoots. He understands the cycles with which the earth was molded.