Wounds

The vitriol-
the violence gestating in cobwebbed cupboards,
all the features of the face pressed against the wood;
a toppled plateau waiting for the end.

Say nothing though.
The voice will draw it out,
all that suffering and pain;
is the last of the fruit that remains.

Say nothing then,
let it fester,
consume us who feed on it;
not with teeth, but patience, digesting.

Everything

Be done for the day,
unanswered.
The sleepless nights of the nation
bringing to heel those movements transposed,
when the walls can no longer protect you from the elements.
I felt love,
feeding us and making us strong,
to become violence on the leeches
only a few feet away,
who will not bend by force.
There can be no companions here.
Our identities,
something that burrowed into the background,
but we’ve known that;
reduced we are to subtle heat obscured.
Hanging from the wires,
no one to prune the eccentricities
between this place and another.
So eager to find themselves fit amongst the stars,
all the insides set to fire;
It can’t go on like this.

I can taste the years;
every moment respected and cherished,
severed from the world around us,
on the other end of the beginning;
silent and still,
dripping.
Once we had it all together,
tumbling like a clod of dirt down a hill,
that will collapse under pressure;
restrained only by old roots.
Let that comfort you in your time of need.
The smell of ancient minerals,
oil, grease,
that languish lecherously
against all the dreams of fate.

The end is nigh,
though no one is there to hear
the autumn leaves laughing beneath tranquil steps;
like water toiling away,
tossing up all the horrors we had forgotten.
Those truths that hide in the present, revealed,
but brighter,
                      leave nothing that was.
Echoes,
captured by some concern that is not me,
a stroke of color
pressed hard against a blank paper,
the sound tumbling up a long hollow
until pleasantness is nullified,
from years of giving more than expected,
dying in avarice.
I’m not sure now why it didn’t break
while we fought against it,
the long wait and effort vindicated
before that final curtain drops.
The systole and diastole
cannot survive to the end.

Where the wires, pipes and tubes retire,
quiet hidden movements
with shrouded secrets even the skin conspires on,
stabbing at the ceiling in six different places,
until, at last, broken.
Like orphaned laughter so briefly sustained,
to become part of a greater whole,
the salt laden water water rising to the throat;
a sense of belonging,
lapping at what warmth drips down,
in the brighter corners of that vacant place.
I can’t remember why I enjoyed it so much.

Eager to grow into something beautiful,
and quietly resign to darkness;
I would fashion some reverence from the stale stone slate.
It’s not trash, but it should be,
to open eyes questing;
awkward, ungainly,
bruises, cuts, and wounds.
Overwhelming,
wondering,
yet no less worthy of what alms we offer.
And that is enough.
We are bleached sidewalks in the sun.
I don’t know.
Some part of that old life,
forcing itself through too small a gap,
crumpled like crash test dummies;
Belies what was beneath our feet.

I want it all – and quickly,
while the state of my mind,
cannot reconcile what is real.
I must feed it,
before it gets away from us.
Para llamar a casa,
in violent protest.

Hours are indiscernible from minutes.
I regret thinking time was like the sea,
that primal tugging beyond the veil;
but truth does not move through time as we do.
Collecting like lightning in a bottle,
settled like stew in a dim lit room.
This is the world,
all our troubles overflowing,
like so much sand over the desert dunes.
Exhaust what you can, the endings don’t stop.

Naked,
I fear that life,
though it is dependent on the past.
A heavy hand may have cast it out,
as a thresher to an arm amongst the wheat;
a cloud of chaos still warm from the womb,
confident there is plenty more
(if you’ve got the coin to spend).
It’s not like it thirsts for blood,
it will find empathy
excavating what innocence is left,
in the darkness.The leaves are gone.
Lives are short,
taint us with histories,
known, expected, overpowering,
everything.

Angelarium

Where death is natural,
the infection settles,
overwhelming the end,
echoing in the veins,
                  “again,
                                again.”
It spreads, revitalizing
to keep peace at bay, another day.

The mystery beyond the threshold,
pungent like a punchline.
Known, expected, overpowering;
withheld painfully.
Ignorance as sharp as a sword,
the vendetta cutting on all sides.

Life is meant to be overcome,
not given.
not taken lightly.
Fought against,
              bested,
                          subdued.
In death;
to beg for its persistence: blasphemy.
Lance the errant tongues.

Lake Superior Agate

Always,
we are what we are;
what we claim to be.
The words we dress in,
may be donned or discarded,
what lies beneath-
remains.

Turmoil
may rise through us,
sculpt the earth with violent upheaval,
but we are not those faults;
what lies beneath-
remains.

Life
will color us with experience,
stripe us red where it overwhelms,
taint us with histories.
what lies beneath-
remains.

Always
we are what we are,
but changed.
Never actually the same.
What lies beneath-
remains.

The Maples of Vermont

A spike and hammer,
a bucket
unevenly distributed.
The sun means nothing but light,
A bright pylon amongst the clouds,
but its back is turned all the same;
giving its warmth to anyone else.

The freeze isn’t gone,
merely hiding amongst the shadows.

One tree,
prouder than the others, brighter;
stands tall-
an ambassador to the sky,
speaking for the earth of its roots,
or so it seems. Its arms fanned out
in a skeletal embrace.

The leaves are gone,
but the essence inside thrives.

The metal placed against the bark
causes no response,
not that anything is left to shake free.
What is needed is underneath,
a few blows away,
and then-
                  it slowly seeps,
unable to contain itself.

Later we burn most of it away,
so all that is left of that bitterness
is sweet.

Cooper.Cooper.Cooper.

In the darkness,
traffic lights become
            suns
            moons
        in bright colors.
                  Trying so hard to give direction
            but just pinatas.

The forest sings tinitas,
          isolated secrets.
            No one knows what
        no one would believe;
    while the owls,
              the owls are not what they seem.

Anguish

Two chiral figures stand opposed
divided by a heavy moment,
hands clasped to keep one another in place;
white craters consuming the digits,
tapering off to olive arms
that too quickly sink beneath tufts of fabric.

Though their pose is static,
their faces tremble;
the unseen weight within
grinding against them,
excavating the innocence left
of the husks they’ve since become.

A discernible history revealed,
with careful examination,
exhaustion of the senses,
sacrificed for lucidity,
acceptance.

It- emerges from the void,
like a fluke over the stern;
not even the depths,
a simple hint of the darkness,
where all things find their origin.

Two chiral figures
opposed
forever.

The Pale Criminal

The near-carcass of civilization’s remains,
wallowing in the waste its terminal thrashing creates,
will hardly notice a few scraps taken-
though to voice the act will leave others shaken.
One need only to pillage sedately, head down,
and remember: all of this will someday end.

The pale criminal thrives here as legion:
a hobbyist, a collector of things,
a connoisseur of excess, defiling every void;
all of it front and center. The barbed wire above trenches,
hiding the war that scurries like rats,
in the dark crevices beneath line of sight,
dressed to kill, but unwilling to die for it.

Protection comes instead from abundance,
quantity over quality, foaming out the pores
in a thick film of condescension
that they hoist over the thin, translucent skin,
between the fading life inside and the world confronted;
the near-carcass of civilization’s remains.

Symphysiotomy

It has to hurt first.
Be safe, they say. Watch yourself.
It’s not like it thirsts for blood,
but it may as well- the way it does.
Carelessly consuming everything you feed it,
anything in between,
whatever remains in the afterglow.
Let go, they say, that’s all you need do.
Sure, it’s not like it thirsts for blood,
but it sure knows where to find it.

You need two hands just to wake it,
the persistence to prime it,
the courage to face it after all the warnings.
You need two deep breaths,
and a moment of silence before you begin.

It cries out like a banshee of chain and gears,
louder than reassurance,
but trust, you need only let go
and it all stops;
the whaling,
the violence.
Though in order to know anythings gone wrong,
it has to hurt first.