Category Archives: poetry

Vultures

We sleep in derelict houses,
haunted by neglect and decay;
our dreams writhing with a disease
that scars our skin in memories
of lives we’ll never achieve.

We are not who we are in this place,
only who they allow us to be.

What they can’t keep from us,
they take from us greedily,
leaving us only these derelict bodies.

Our power, our labor, our passion
snatched from us, vultures on our carcass.

Our bodies left to fester in neglect,
what ravaged flesh that remains,
nothing like who we were in that cramped space.

Like the whole, the parts are just husks,
rags hanging on passively, Spanish moss on dead trees,
indifferent to their existence without purpose,
but not knowing of an end;
such things are their power,
                          their labor,
                          their passion.

Clipped Wings

All greatness we achieve is exploited in the end,
the language we speak used to condemn,
the letters we write now contracts that bind us to them,
and the paintings we scrawl, presentations of our downfall.

If this absurdity had given us large enough wings,
neither you nor I would be allowed to fly freely with those things,
we all know what such power and elegance brings,
a flood of dead president callers, all holding collars.

We would fly, sure, but only if it suited our benefactors,
they’d pay us to stay grounded, keep the lights on, run the tractors,
overwhelm us with gifts of earth born distractors,
ensuring room enough in the sky for those worthy of flight.

Better to sing for yourself and leave them with silence,
write on the walls of your heart, let their pages feel your absence,
paint pictures to paper your home and let them live in blindness,
what greatness is in you, does not need their value.

Maybe we can’t fly,
but we can bound through life as best we can.

Mikolash

Mikolash

“Eyes – Beautiful eyes!
the kind that tells you everything is going to be alright,
echo camouflage shirt (green and black)
pocket, black khaki shorts.” – The Walk-in by Tamesha Battee

The bells echo over the moon lacquered city,
a painted dirge drawing all hope in off the streets,
to warm hearths who’s flames will seem alien,
contrasted against the fires that will soon descend,
Eyes – Beautiful eyes!

Reveal to me the cool embers of the city beneath,
so that I may stoke them to life, wrestle the world to ash,
conquer the external, crawling with curated comforts,
that feed on us through open wounds numb with lies,
the kind that tells you everything is going to be alright.

In shadows of the body’s hollow whispers dread,
those lovely eyes unseen turn in on themselves,
searching for the twisted threads of realms apart,
amid arcane symbols, a chilled heart, a mystery unfurls,
echo camouflage shirt (green and black)

dancing like phantoms in secreted winds where sanity averts,
lapping at the sips of moonlight the cloudy night permits,
beating a primal drum through passions of nighttime things,
luring an ambitious torch from that eerie abyss within,
pocket, black khaki shorts.

A History of Mirrors

It takes a moment to recognize the face I see,
rough cartography that looks like deceit,
lies between us, a confusing ambiance;
big; small – they are all wounding.

Look away and speak to me only in silence,
you are the last I want to hear.

I’ll extinguish the lights,
scream until my lungs rise like flames,
reducing my thoughts to ashen remains,
that glow beneath the cacophony.
Embers radiating a dim red light –
of fear,
            but you and I,
                                  we’ll call it anger.

Snap

The pressure,
functions far beneath the surface,
beyond even darkness,
pushing against mundane complacency,
the nine to five,
contentedness;
jealousy seeking a surface it will never see.

That viscera,
grinding like worms, displacing the earth,
infecting the mantle with friction;
ur minerals confronting each other,
conflicted purposes,
devouring;
Sacrificing themselves to see the end of the other.

It burns,
that ancient exchange of authenticity,
for the hot pulpy rage that takes its place,
patiently waiting in the soil,
biding time,
stalking;
until finally it can break free and consume.

The surface,
undisturbed for countless generations,
is corrupted by the change,
so long schemed beneath its skin.
Malicious intent,
contempt;
the kind of anger only born from corpses.

Rocinante’s Secrets

The worn grips where I held you tightly,
through foul winds or gentle breezes;
the subtle change in color there, pleases –
where hills become valleys resting in those old wraps.

Every scratch, no matter the size,
when I carried you impatiently from place to place,
or tangled with you imperfectly at my own disgrace,
are hints at the strength beneath your skin.

The dirt that hides in strange corners,
the oil, the grease, the wires, the gears,
sometimes too much, or too little are my fears,
that the care I can give you is not enough.

The way the two of us consort,
inspiring the earth to move, the wind to blow,
and in that ambiance becoming only the now I know;
free, finally, from times attempt to capture me –

Soft words whispered to eyes keen enough to listen.

The Ur Resonance

That head cold of a place,
claustrophobic like asthmatic lungs,
a beginning, an ending,
depending on where you look.

In that heaving chamber,
a body stands misaligned,
like paper planes fumble folded,
the right side crawling away,
desperate for the solace of shadows.

The rest of the body too, one can assume
(but know nothing).
Where secrets grow like hair,
even as the source will never do again.

Another figure is inhaled,
drawn deeply from the darkness.
A reflection of the native,
lunging towards its chiral twin.

The folds of space between them thin,
become thinner still, non-existent,
a monstrosity of osmosis.

A tired rage erupts from the forebearer,
one ‘good’ hand emboldened and armed,
vomited out from the disheveled shapes,
plunging a dagger into the aggressor,
again, and again, and again, and again,
until, together, they slump away,
retreating from life, reality, everything.