Last Dawn
ebb of mango
over half moon
as a man between dusty walls
reclines the same way,
bedsheets rife with
twisty blooms,
while his clocks point
to coming hells
and unseen constellations.
towers of plates,
stoic in the kitchen,
dwell too long there,
except they are.
in the sink
a bristle of effete bones,
half with flesh,
a carving knife stuck through.
=====================================
11/17 .. removed "to be" after "dwell to long"
Resign
what could be more desperate
than a belt around the neck,
and the subzero of goodbyes,
and the failure, if someone cared.
it couldn’t just go on and on,
waiting for a slip,
and the unstoppable sense
that one is being sucked down,
swirled to drain away,
beneath a basin of daily rituals.
as if we even know what we are,
or why these roles, or the nature of the game.
trite jangles on a gamut of nerves,
far more numerous than piano strings.
love,
it sprints at full thigh,
but must leap, more than once,
the monster’s ditch,
and hence it loses, one by one,
its petal-like toes.
far too much keeps going on,
below the cheap magnetic shells,
down here in the nucleus.
===================
3/13/23 ... "know" replaces "knew" "are" replaces "were"
10/1/22 "the" replaces "a"
Change of Clime
a rattlesnake half dust
employs itself
as a lounge chair.
a few jays wilt
on electric tethers.
no fusspot grackles
to gossip over the wires.
nothing blooms or flits.
plants beg for sauce.
heat whispers
but lizards have no ears.
above a crispy arroyo
rusty with pummeled cars,
a vulture mistakes itself
for a poisoned roach.
such absurd meekness--
meek as the eluvia
prostrate before foothills
of molting char.
============================
12/2/23 ... not a very accessible poem, some mods
10/1 "Clime" replaces "Climate"
9/25 massive changes
The Statement
our time must be spent
hiding from the statement.
it’s an absurd statement,
not for lack of truth, but the nudity.
why should life be see-through?
as with clothes,
the layers protect who you are.
and define you.
and must be fashionable.
don’t
overwhelm your peers.
others have worse problems.
shut up so they can fake it.
don’t
bother those who hide the past
in unworn lockets gifted by pain.
who opens a locket
to look at its face?
and who wouldn’t be horrified
by their own neglect?
don’t
try to be better.
others aren’t ready to cry
until the tears cleanse.
tears,
they scald as bad as battery acid.
don’t consider them tinctures
of sad little cures from the pure heart of an angel.
they won’t get through.
==================
Psychic
voices
mingle and revolve,
persistent as a net,
clockwork as a waltz,
opening every pore and part
till memories blush,
a song from a sigh, a key in a crow’s foot,
a tincture on a taste bud, a smidgeon for the nose.
and later, so soft,
a nuzzle skirts a nipple, bliss rounds a navel,
fingertips strum a nape and
the sculpted breaths,
frivolous with daily haggles,
poetry of a moment, verbal and mercurial,
frolic-flocking the stage
under
herringbone clouds and orbital Geminis,
and all the other mysterious cog-pixies of an anti-clockwork universe.
until
too many utterances loquacious-obstreperous,
mishmashes of victory-or-crime mouths
kissing to curse, forgiving to berate,
so many hungers
who could assuage or offer naked assurance,
or dispel the flypapery sins of their buzzy beggary?
nothing left, except to go blank, sever threads,
dispel the guests to wander meddlesome,
back to those goal posts, unconscious and horizonal,
so jealous of time.
======================================
12/24/22 lots of mods ... sad... still not right
9/27 "such" replaces "their"
9/17 ... desperate continuous edits...
9/16 ... more changes to this product of mania
9/16 ... changes continue to the original abomination ...
9/16 major changes to original poem, tossing out whole sections ... gutting the rest ... absolutely awful poem to have posted ... might still be awful, can't really say, brain so muddled
Polar
in a closet.
a place where the curled
reach up from a valley in a psalm.
hollow cloth hangs above.
crucified angels of wool,
or effigies of last defense.
no mediation,
not here in anxiety’s womb.
this valley in a psalm.
so inky at night.
this place where lack-of-movement
captures movement.
it prowls. it
alone stalks,
until dawn,
when a thought might think
the price of admission
beyond the door
is the same as the door.
======================================
Depression isolates. But isolated time is time with the gods.
Winds To Ninety
whips excite rifts,
emptiness sacrificed on a hectic altar,
guzzles of somersaults,
sacrifices of twists,
gallows of invisible guts.
headlong,
only to vanish in bursts and busts,
mocking tides, mocking gardens,
mocking weather, moons, and seasons
with the abominable doppler
of an irremediable howl.
gusty in the lush graveyard,
ghosts spray and bark,
no clock to check unclothed rants,
salve the savage sacrilege
or the cacophonic philippic.
enemy of the calm,
enemy of the conformed,
enemy of the praised, the rectified,
the vogue.
hectic flecks
swipe, spasm, slither,
torn from a tree bent humble as grass.
they churn up tears petrified yet splintered--
miserable arch illogical tears
of a stabbing, dying rain.
it bites our faces, windy wet curse,
inflicting lycanthropes lost:
fangs, muzzles, hackles, features,
they stretch our fake snarls in false hungers,
gleeful before an arena of gods,
lofty gods, cruel gods,
lunging on.
=======================
9/10 fixed typo ("bursts" replaces "burst")
9/9 ... really hard poem to work... edited phrases hours after posting... still bad...
Looking Back
the light
would’ve been dark in another room.
photons milled on walls,
pawns bumping pawns,
in a struggle of grey upon grey.
zooming out,
this was just another cell
of a planet in a district on a continent.
beyond that, a slapdash galaxy,
dark of matter and cosmos.
anything human served as a morsel
for the Gargantua that was outer space.
it all interconnected, if only in one head,
what came out, in broken vomits,
drawn from a flawed moebius engine
that lost spokes within spokes of
wheels within wheels.
so it was:
this lonely universe
had taken a long time to craft its little beings,
the sort who could be forced to ponder
how tragic and magnificent
the will to spawn dramatically was.
======================================
Post Crash
life’s this-and-that
comes with an end,
down into a final tunnel,
sunlight’s edge,
a single precise chop,
plunge of fate’s cleaver.
all at once embarrassed,
and not fitting in,
weak as a whimper,
unable to travel or excel,
lonely in this forced self-
judgmental place,
where patience
dribbles pride into a bedpan.
it is now you
who speaks to ancestors,
you who conjures visions:
chimeras of carnal beasts
sinful of primeval parts.
it is you who watches
the outside world blur
into tricks of charades,
where puppets, who would puppeteer,
yank in a mutual harness so vast
none commandeers.
it is you
who no longer cares
about knots in the guts of social distress.
you who now feverish
makes love to a touchless spirit,
seeking more than anything
only her name.
and yet,
when the serene stills the circus,
no reward.
no god comes. no cheers.
the world, it breeds on,
ruddy from laughter,
as if someone had failed
to scrounge an epitaph
for your puny isle.
9/8 "her" replaces "their" ... wanted a female goddess theme, personal preference
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