Wrought The Craft

Follow through on the screen,
every dream weaned on a broken scream.
Lush driven memoirs spill obscene,
cauterizing kisses taste of doom.

Windows break gateway eyes,
souls shatter in collapsible heaps,
refuse rising decadent fumes,
ingratiating sludge of depleting use.

Coax forth the soft-spoken tendrils,
fiending remorseful.
Lure from catatonia,
wresting flesh in obloquious delight.

Speak once to be heard:
excavate freedom,
emancipate dreams.

Kinetic Verse

Bouzouki twangs,
Spirits buoy in solidarity.
Steps suffuse the beat,
Eyes stare into eyes;
Eternity.

Twined under rustic night,
Truth lulled in melody.
Spindling forms spoke naturally;
Whispered causality.

Movement hitches to halt,
Desire flutters in revolt.
Olive blood yearns for more,
Hellas alive in sensuous form.

Linguistic Satiation

Emotional affairs:
Fling of solitary evenings.
Entrenching in desire,
Role-playing dream’s manifestation.

Conversation serving as intercourse,
Ripening the harvest.
Tongues dancing in harmony,
Agreement sprouting fortuitous hope.
Eyes glazing as words undress,
Thoughts masquerading eroticism.

Building with layered connections,
Souls twining through words finding
Barren hearts lapping promise.
Mounting into simulacrum,
Tasting, feeling, throbbing Amor,
Guising in words bodies never explore.

Stroll out sated
Leaving in wake
Love unconsummated.

143

Remember when love happened face to face?
When words were spoken in earnest tongues,
Chemistry ignited by physical touch.
Cell phones have become a codpiece;
Fingers typing love, intimacy, secrets,
With cold buttons as the sole witness.

Remember when hesitation was a hiccup in speech?
What is it now? Waiting for words on a screen?
When did love become about “what did that mean?”
There was a time when grasping hands meant something.

Romance is being fueled by technological advances;
Filling in the voids of actual human interaction.
Truths are found out now through a cornucopia of mediums;
“I love you” is now plastered aboard screens,
Informing the world what lips should only speak.

Romance has become an informal whim,
Packaged to fit into bustling cosmopolitans.
Type three numbers to replace a word,
Then wonder why it was never heard.

The Creaking

You always asked the same old questions; the ones with no answers. You’d blow ‘round these floorboards with the unrestrained fury of a man watching his harvest ablaze. Slight trembles--there were earthquakes in your knees that threatened to collapse the entirety of your being. Often I imagined that your eyes only ever saw the hurts in your life, as though there was a film blinding from the tempest all around. Those were the statue days. I’d taken to standing around mute, in awe of your spin cycle ways. With each jarring door explosion announcing your plagued conquest of another day, I honestly tried to scrap together some empathy. Your battle hymn was turning into martyrdom, the cause of your destruction only ever burned in your bones. The soul of your sorrows was a private affair that bled through the cracks in your skull. I questioned if you rehearsed it. Plights like yours only ever arose from violently desperate minds.

With each blow of your tongue you struck dumb your fellow proletariat. On the soapbox of middleclass you wrought the irons of your life, with every tethered revolt scarring experience onto your brain. You always claimed, “This shaking keeps me steady”, it was like a tremulous metamorphosis permanently stunted. Somewhere beneath you were fixing your second skin. You harbored molting dreams that you coerced into epiphany. After awhile tragedy and pity decided to blur. You took this as a sign.

You talked for eons about the possibilities, painting dreams like stars on a bleeding canvas; your attempts to catch the plasma were cosmically futile. When days crawled into the “magnificently bad” you were staunch in your defeat. You wore the mantle of woe like a taut second skin. Those epiphanies that were broiling underneath were quenched in the lava of reality. It was these moments that seared me in sincerity. For all the balderdash of broken dreams, these moments bespoke vivid clarity. The pupils of your eyes became kernels of a pain feigned but not often felt. Brooding in the expanse of a life driven by the seismic pulls of survival, you clawed in untamed ferocity until your wounds seeped too copiously. In these stolen moments of actuality, when bullshit and pageantry momentarily subsided, that visceral bond that twines every member of a family--the erratic pulls of acidic churns and chest wrenching pains we associate with emotions-- it was then that the rollicking stream of existence quieted long enough for us to see into the abyss. What stared back was our precious impermanence.

Zenith

That moment the sun hit its zenith you attempted to set yourself on fire. Sometime before that you claimed almighty that you were dousing yourself in holy gasoline. I stumbled by with broken doggerel on my lips, you were so parched you would’ve accepted the kiss. You smelt like an inferno ready to conflagrate—it was a beautiful sight that the tourists would have loved to fawn over. Zenith means the peak is reached, let’s call it a climax of sorts. I saw the matches in your hand—this started to feel like a very real circumstance of self-immolation. There was a righteous frenzy of witches burning in your eyes. I could tell your brain was embracing the fry—suddenly the clouds overtook the sky. At this point you floundered like a heathen with a newfound cause. Someone slipped the noose from your neck, though you were still doused in the waiting inferno.

When I look back at the moments you tried to destroy yourself I have to suppress a smile. I always think back to the innocent spring days—you were blowing dandelions into the Zeus’ heavens; hoping your dreams would erupt from your heart into the cold catastrophe of the world. Those were times when your cheeks were ruddy like lobsters in the sea, and you had the decency to cry with me. Times when you punched back unjustly, and catered in the dealings of equally gross pastimes. Somewhere along the line you got it in your mind to become your own shrink. The verdict was your own permanent plot in the crust. You were fixing to have me be your elegy, nonchalantly unburdening yourself of the pleasantries.

I’m not quite ready to be the vicar in this story. Somewhere in the shallow pool of your eyes; inside the pious orbs of a merry soul that harbored its own sun; there burns a greatness of the saints. I’ve never understood the hurtling desire towards the grave, no matter how many times you recite the encyclopedia explanations to me. I just keep fixating on the cold corpse of withered vibrancy. I’ll have to remember the first time you kissed Sadie’s lips and stole my heart with it. I’ll have to remember the time your mom collapsed in the foyer and we clutched each other in infantile horror. These are memories that we are collectively drowning in. The fire of life can’t burn away all the horrible hurts, as much as you claim to desert the path of normalcy, the polaroid of your existence is aflame in me. One of these days you’ll hate yourself for thanking me, for stoppering your temporary dream---the Siamese struggle of solidarity shall not lie solely with me.

Curtains

He remembered the way the curtains fluttered; every undulant ripple searing reminiscence amongst the synapses. He noted the sultry curl of the fabric, the slight colony of dust motes gyrating in the sunlight. He heard Ephraim cry out in the distance, some hazy dissonance reverberating against the window pane. Pulling aside the veil, he gazed rapturously at the reflection peering back. It never made sense. The eyes twining his looked like foreign soldiers about to die.

He could feel the death rattles rollicking around his skull. Somewhere Ephraim would be waiting in reprobatroy grace. Floundering around, time felt like a fresh jugular cut. He noted a certain lethality in people’s gait---an unrestrained violence fiending to escape. Without particular care he realized the room was ominously crowded. Bodies pulsated in sweaty exuberance. He felt the united plight of synchronized beating. It was like a bloodlust building to frenzy.

An insatiable thought began to germinate. Before fruition became a dream, Ephraim arrived. Ephraim exuded the type of calm that was necessary in world disasters. There was an eternal coldness in his gaze, a prison of emotion that remained caged. To shake his hand was to embrace the fleeting moments before death---an urgent struggle coupled with resigned finality. If you were a perfect stranger you would think Ephraim was capable of either terrific violence or rampant altruism. The reality blurred in the in-between.

The handshake was the sign. What proceeded next were perfectly executed acts of wild violence. At this point he stopped noticing the little details. His hands became busy ending life.

Ephraim left him to oversee the cleanup. His mind began regressing into more stable temperatures. Equilibrium’s hard to find in the aftermath of genocide. Squelching across the viscera he once again arrives at the curtains. They resemble kindergarten smocks the day they painted stop signs.

Lots

Taken to solace in parking lots,
solidarity amongst the empty spots
and lonely lines.
Divided in indecision,
searching for a space to call mine.

Slowly becoming the beehive–
stinging with activity.
Swarming all around, a huzzahing frenzy.
Eventually receding, dim humdrum,
vast desolation is home again.

Time stands still in the vacant lot;
lost sanctuary of lore.
Betwixt night’s surreptitious kiss
and dawn’s hazy lullaby–
pavement speaks of forgotten times.

Curdled Cream

The day the world realized I was no longer young was the first time I saw my corpse. I knew there was a shallow grave with my name on it, and accepted that tombstones were only flawed pageantry. Before that I was an erratic heart monitor caught up in the voluptuous highs and lows.

I was innocent at some point. There were mornings that I woke up fresh and virginal, and in the back of mind I felt like Jesus before he knew he had to die. I used to call those days the September of my life.

People would probably call those thoughts naive. Like the day I proclaimed your eyes were like a falling leaf. Often it felt like the sugary first lick of a lollipop. Sometimes it was so sweet you devoured it whole without even enjoying it. There was also that time you ran away from your pulse. Your lips tingled leaving mine. These were all stories in a head that once remembered them as true.

Without ever caring to look the sunlight caught up to my shadow. By shadow I mean the buried parts you can’t see. There was a legend once about a cave that harbored fear. I don’t remember what it looked like, but I was sure I was about to walk in. What floats to the top has usually been festering on the bottom. Lets call that curdled cream.

It was about this time I became blind while still being able to see. I often found myself walking forlorn in long corridors. My hands were like skeleton keys, I just never found for what. Out of a door came a haggard face that once could of a been a beautiful you. You were blind too. At this point we fumbled to clasp hands. They sucked together like blood hurtling down a drain. All I remember now are footsteps that sounded like gunshots. All that was caressing my hand was air.

If this story were a calender we would be in December now. What’s the word you use when you put horrific slashes through the numbered days? It’s countdown, I believe. Except instead of slashes you should imagine a fresh corpse. Note the lukewarm aura of heat, the slight curling of the feet. Marvel at what those eyes can no longer see. It would be a safe bet to say those eyes are dead. You would lose your money if you believed they saw less than you.

That corpse was me. All that’s left is to explain why I stopped breathing. Right now I’m being prepped to return to the earth. In about forty eight hours I’ll retire beneath the ground. There will be a marker that futilely attempts to encapsulate a life. Then there will be momentary grief that fades like colors in the sun. Before all this had to happen there was an organ called a diaphragm that moved like a metronome. That device no longer keeps time. It would be easier if you just envisioned a tourniquet right now. Sometimes you can’t stop the buried things from bleeding out. It’s not that you die from the drainage, but rather from the fact that all your secrets are spilling out. There was a cure for that blindness after all.

"Amber" Moments

Soaring down Ocean Parkway
Like wild bandits from a fresh robbery.
Windows down, exalting in wind’s rapturous song,
Hair billowing the savannah tornado….
Amber tunes lulling the motor metronome.

Abusing the concrete in infantile zeal,
Each RPM tick announcing conquest.
Senseless chatter in the deluge days,
Ripe existence in the lush contentment.

How we raged like ragged strangers of the world,
Foolishly owning the sun’s light—
Capturing innocence with a button’s pause,
Silence rang to old age’s kernel.

Vibrant ran our tumultuous blood,
Seeking thrills and sputtering emotional toils.
Find a similar addiction, a rapturous substitute---
For none looms in the Amber aftermath of youth.

Vigil

There was light in the cathedral
when you passed.
Flickering as the gurgling of your heart,
floundering flame of faith snuffed out.

Prostrated before some monstrous altar,
pleading to pictures for fortune’s reversal.
Mocked in silence as knees went numb,
pews throbbed in lamentation.

Light went out in the darkness of the house,
murmurs to heaven all but faded out.
Somewhere you floated to invisible ghosts,
where stricken voices fall on deaf ears.

When sense at last came around,
judgement mocked from a thousand eyes.

Serum

Searching for truth in all the wrong places;
at bottle’s bottom, in beautiful faces.

Fixing the hurts by inflicting the wounds;
pain to mask pain, pity to mask doom.

Denial’s boon— to terminally blind.

Coping with life by courting death;
a flame forsaken, a willing theft.

At bottle’s bottom, in beautiful faces;
searching for truth in all the wrong places.

Constructs

The hours roll to a hiccupping halt,
Like pompous cops flouting the law.
Rules are bending to break;
They only ever were words on a page.

Words get stuck on peanut butter tongues,
Like that poisoned well of buried guilt.
Safe-boxes harbor fear with protection,
What’s locked in doesn’t want to come out.

Lies are yellow, envy green, and anger red;
Spectrums, like life, bleed and blend.
A hue today can wash away;
Is difference created, or meaning made?

Thread Count

Existing in sin,
If that’s what existing is.
For nothing equals to this,
Terminal madness of the hedonist.

Go ahead and blind these eyes,
Please plug these ears,
But don’t ever steal the tactile Shangri-La.

Feelings shared like a needle-drug-stupor,
Infecting with the high of co-existence.
The only real proof that life exists,
Grasping in fervor, the fleeting succulence.

Attempt to bind these hands,
Snip off these pitiful fingers—
The barrows don’t call quite yet.
This bull-rush of life stays achingly sweet,
Agonizingly attempting to shackle thee.

Every Jack Be Nimble moment burns me,
The wick of being smolders rapturously.

To when dust coats my bones,
Reclaims me in Gaea’s furious finality…
Time will scythe us all down when it will,
Yet every thread of this lifeline shall be cherished,
For Fate’s shear knows no true affection.

Gramophone Days

Dying sunset in the park...

Watching lovers stroll in their cocoon–
hands entwined.
The world; crushed filament in their palms.

Gazing at the old maids puffing smoke,
rattling wheeze rambling in their lungs–
oblivious of contagion’s smothering reach.

Warped trees in some Picasso dream;
all angles, lights, and epiphanies.

Cars thrum like distant capillaries;
rustling, purposeful metronome flow.

Steadily turning towards another day,
spinning record of humanity.

Barrow

Sense must flee before passion swells,
Else deception breeds in sorrow.
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

Beginnings ring youth’s endless bell,
Constant promise of tomorrow.
Sense must flee before passion swells.

Exaltation drowns out the knell,
Celebration on the barrows.
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

Too enraptured to even dwell,
Upon what could ever follow.
Sense must flee before passion swells.

Cracks arise on this wretched shell,
The doomed plight of being hollow.
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

An inevitable farewell,
Love-turned-lust shall hang the gallows.
Sense must flee before passion swells;
Vows of night, in the morning quell.

Plump Devils

Always knew that lips were trouble,
two succulent scythes of death.

Inevitably drawn by magnet pulls,
then smothered in sweet insidiousness.

Maternal skirt-warnings rang in ears,
finally making sense to child minds.

Eventually we’re all swallowed whole,
though a more willing sacrifice you’d never find.

Wildfire

Well I heard from some good sources,
That things aren’t going so well.
I’m hearing mighty war cries,
I’m feeling terror in my bones.

Statues are a’ crumblin,
Trembling like these hands.
It’s deadly all around us,
Soon will all be bloodstains.

Ticking tocks are mocking,
In their sage and silent ways.
Our frenzied footsteps drown it out,
Those whispering pleas to be saved.

I heard that this is the way things are,
That their most likely never changing.
The sound goes to my ears, I understand,
Yet hope doesn’t quite leave me.

I’m burning now, like everything,
The inferno washes over me.
In smokescreen pain it all makes sense,
then darkness finally takes me.