Category Archives: poetry

Citizens United

I wish I had enough
to budget for my vote
the cost of the ear
my representative
long since entombed in gold.

While we scrawl on paper
which evil is lesser
our betters tell us
that they are citizens
and they are united

behind something greater
than any we could wield,
as many zeros
trailing as for us lay
ahead, there to impede;

for though voting is free
positions cost money
and it behooves them
to give money power
while we still reward greed.

We too are citizens
but are not united,
we blame each other
for the lack of funding
we would need to contend

but if I could afford
to bend the golden ear,
I’d cry out in pain,
give voice to our freedoms
dying in avarice.

Khaos

Khaos reigned that one great day in June
when the world fell beneath a pall of gloom
while he brought low all that was known
and left only the flowers of violence in bloom

That terrible sound as he traced the ground
with his one companion and friend
a blood-rusted axe that shined where it cut
longing only for flesh to rend

And rend it did until it was sated
by as many souls as there are stars
those struck, expired and those missed, did live
though their hearts were enveloped in scars

For none could stand against those bloodied hands
the day that Khaos reigned,
they died or they fell beneath his knell
and the world remains forever stained.

Echoes

I don’t want to be stuck down here
the metal creaking
my form popping into something smaller
               and smaller
                              and smaller.

Without light sound is the last reflection
               I see myself
               I see myself
breaking,
                              like breaths fighting for relevance.

               I see myself
               less than I was when that sound was made
                              and diminishing quickly.

               I see myself
               and no one else
futile, trapped beneath the world.

I’m Not Coming Home

Matted felt holds tight against the skin
               the candles that light the night
have cried themselves to stubs
               flickering their last efforts
against the tired authors eyes.

The words he writes seep out like sweat
               something pushed through the pores
that in their passing cools the flesh
               and leaves a heavy weight to the air
growing darker.

The paper beneath his heavy arm
               is folded meticulously for the future
it takes the ink like a dead thing
               pecked apart by carrion birds
the message he writes, hidden bones
               beneath pulpy flesh.

Mumbling the shadows of those scribbled prose
               he tears up against the weakness of his voice
recognizing it now as an alien thing
               only to be heard again as an echo
on some other minds gramophone.

When the words run out
               he will seal it with wax
a few months later it will be read
               by which time he will be dead
resurrected only in those words
               written, though, unsaid
played like an old record
               from memories of higher fidelity.

Kings of the Sea

Lobsters, I’m told
have no natural ending.
Back when they were frowned upon
not worth the water that would cook them
they’d become so large they’d horrify
the mind.

But somewhere
someone said,
 “delicious.”
and quickly,
we found the strength to overcome
building giant machines to scoop
them off the seabed
like clams from a shell.
We subjugated them
harvested them
until nothing of the monster was left but
these tiny little things you could pick up
one hand.

Now, bigger ones,
unimpressive youth in the shadow of their ancestors
are kept safe
on pedestals
where we can catch
a glimpse of those past monsters
through a cage of glass
beneath fluorescent lights.
A circus thing
alone and delicious.

Love

Major Briggs intones his greatest fear,
tortured, tied up and drained,
“That love is not enough.”

Love is not enough

More is left unsaid than is spoken.
Consider now this mystery,
invoke those dead words.
What shape do they take?
Are they answers or questions?

Perhaps love became too much
and when the heartless could find none within,
they manifested it
a product of those things they could wield.
Wealth, power, fame, control
all the monsters love was meant to shield
instead empowered.

Here now, we retreat- overwhelmed;
our love too hard to bring
en masse against their replacements
Reduced and redundant
in a world that suffers only the effortless to survive.

Major Briggs is dead,
as well as the actor who played him
but his fear is still there in me.