the proverbial french fry in an order of onion rings

Flowers in the hourglass


These brittle tears
Eradicate the etch of endless faces
Intuition won't save me now.
These fickle years
Replace the past with shifting places
Yet none my when and how.
My inner Napoleon takes his bow
To the clapping of a bitter crowd
To the hissing of their hidden clouds
Of long-suffering disappointment
In me.
But I am not their Caesar
I no more know their names
Nor recognize their patterned seizures
They call dance
I do not see the same.
These winter fears
Do not thaw beside their frenzied, crackled blaze
And I cannot meet their desperate summer gaze.
These fragile, autumn tears
As I abscize into the dust
Into the lies, to be raked and thus
Burned and scattered over seas.
Forgotten, erased, . . . and free?
A flower in an hourglass
That holds back the sands of grime.
These dreams were never mine.
Not me.
No, not free.
No, no, please don't erase me.

Stuff that collides with the rocks in my head

To Be


I am washed away and raised anew
In every stillborn moment
I am farther in and further through.
I am feared by those who know me
Both to with, and to without me
I am hope to those that doubt me
Those who tarry all about me
But do not trust enough to take me in.
I am where permanence begins.
I am the gray granite slate of time
I am all that lingers on and on
And I linger still when I am gone.
I am wiped away in every moment
Raised again in sleeping torment
To be marked, then washed again.
I am grace, I am forgiveness
I'm both in and making every moment.
I am love.

My Room Smells Like A Febreeze Leak - Gross!

Strip-Mining The Yellow Brick Road


I am a little man behind a curtain pulling greater strings
With the heart of a cowardly lion
And a tin foil hat to keep my thoughts my own.
A puppeteer hiding off the stage
With a disguised, projected voice
To cover my growing list of sins
My rising list of doubts
To keep God from finding out.
The world markets burn
With the green flames of our black-hearted greed.
The grey skies fill our yellow bellies with uncertainty,
And the red dawn fills our eye-whites with doubt.
Our lips turn blue as we forget to breathe
Our ears begin to bleed
From the strain of suspending our disbelief.
And there are wars and rumors of war
Collapse and disaster, strife and rampant chaos (and greed)
And we hang God in the city square
For daring to make us feel
Only to realize that without hope we were never real.

I am a puppet on a tiny stage
Dancing to thoughts not my own.

Are We The Horse and Rider Thrown Into The Sea?

Doubt


Said in the morning it will be clearer
Thought happiness is just smoke and mirrors
There's none that understand,
There is no promised land
There is no holy man
Not one.
Claimed and cleared of conscience
Your bemusement fogged with smoke
Noose from our collective hope
We conspire to hang ourselves by deed.
We volcanic-cratered time-bombs
We are the mechanized napalm
Encompassed whole of soulless industry
With most deserving blame.
Duality embodied
Duality unleashed.
We're all just smoke and heroes.
We're all just smoking heroes.
We're all just burning Neros.

Something Silly

Villainous

I've got you where I want you

I cliched unto my foe.

I'll laugh about my triumphs

While you weep about your woes.

You may have drawn the first blood

But the last laugh is the deepest,

At least, I think that's how the saying goes.

Know that I only let you touch me

Because I'd look dashing with a scar,

Yes, in a burst of flimsy

I thought I'd like a scar,

Yes, in a fit of whimsy

I wished upon a . . . oh there you are.

You caught me monologuing

Indeed, you caught me cataloging

All these dreams you can't despoil,

Yes, soon you'll be spitting soil

Or pushing daisies west

Yes, yes, that would be for the best.

And why are you lying there defeated

Get up and start retreating

Don't listen to this drivel

Whimsical people, heads on a swivel

Caught by whatever thought they choose

Always losing sight

Thus why I've got you dead to rights . . .

Hey, where'd my victim go?

What if I don't want to be the lonely one?

525,600 Pieces of Silver


Sitting, sitting in circles
Walking, walking in lines
Children of circles in circles
Wandering, Wandering in mines.
Numismatists seeking treasure
Concerned less for substance than shine
Polish our pieces of silver
Thirty in total, in kind.
Move to our next destination
Double our traitorous fares
Or nothing, gamble our conscience
For a chance at sixty piece shares.
I wonder if great sins will sink us
Or small blasphemies bring us down?
Failings from time unremembered
Sacrilege coming unbound.
My God, can You feel my erosion,
My corrosion tarnish Your crown?
I've never been less undiluted
And I've never missed You more than now.

A long time ago in China I'm told

Mausoleum

And I watch my soul wash from the skies

What if Emerson dreamt he could fly

What if . . . no, wait, nevermind.

Divided by dancing Maples and Pine

Crushed by the weight of industry and time

And buried in a concrete sewer.

Where no doubt countless thought to say

Everything there is worthless anyway.

A volcano in the rain

I do not ask forgiveness

For where my indignities lie

For the world will watch me burn

With their flashing firefly grins

As I watch my soul wash from the skies

Everything dies in the end.

Autumn

Fall


I am formless, overwhelming
Futility embodied in drifting
On the wings of Zeus' gasp
Into Hades' unforgiving grasp.
I am preconceived as whispers
Father Time footsore with blisters
In every creak and groan and snap
In each dim-lit feinting pass
Overgrown and under-worked
And often seldom tread.
I shift in fluttered dread
As I feel the earth's derision.
I am convenient hope's abscission.
I will pass in ash nigh Advent
In reds and golds and browns,
For three months absorbed into the ground
Yet someday, life will find it's morn.
Among the pruned and plucked and torn
Upon the dark midwinter's pass
I will frost amidst the dying glass,
And on a warm day as the bleak fades
On a Friday, as the black grays
Someday, there among the thorns
Someday, on a Sunday, I will be reborn.

Than What I've Been Handed

The Insurrectionist


Are we really all so justified
In our blindly trusting ties
Bound as victim to the tide
The shore's self-defeating slide
Into erosion, corrosive pride
Where fractured filaments lied
In premasticated fabrications
Spit back out, wide-eyed dilations
Thoughtless forms of meditation
All led us back to here.
Baptized both by fire and fear
Muddling through the very clear
Dimmesdale-packaged preaching
Plastic-wrapped magazines impeaching
Virtue with perjury's beseeching
Mercy for its slandered speech.
Another doubter into the breach
Where discontented masses reach
For connection to themselves.
Self-help books on battered shelves
Epics of men, dwarves and elves
Distract us from believing.
Time capsules are deceiving
As any truth worth perceiving
Is found in clawing up from crashing down
We're all alone in a room of clowns
And we're the closing joke.
As the laughter drowns our final choke
Perspective swirls in vapid smoke,
Burns away all time's reclusions
Fills our lungs with our delusions
Marks our souls with dark contusions
Lost inside our own illusion.

The Blog is Back!

I Am John Wilkes Booth

Someplace.  Spotlights.  Stage lights.

Today is the day I assassinate everything

That I have ever believed in.

Poor caliber selection my only saving grace

With residue on every point of contact

And q-tip flavored second thoughts

In chemical solution

While my hand is quietly turning blue.

Today I am an incorruptible figure

In a stupid hat, constructed mostly of legend

Sewn together with myth

And liberal usage of wishful thinking.

Tomorrow I am Novacaine mixed with vodka

And a single cherry

In a glass of sherry

Downed by whispered fools

And I tie my tongue in knots

To relieve the loosening in my stomach

Yes tomorrow I kill the only face I ever loved

In preparation for facing the mirror.

Today I shot the face of freedom.

jjjjjjjjjjjjj

Tigers & Goats

Oh disenchanted charm

The loveless lovers' undying vows

Until death will do them part.

Bright and luminous darkness

Ere the night time's dawning sky

With still and stilling breeze

Distilling undiluted ale

From the pure corrupted proof

Of vintage-aged modernity.

Oh anachronistic dancers

A three-step waltz in five-by-four

Patterned unique conformity.

Sacred oath of perjury

With crossed-finger hand to God

Standing tall on bended knees.

Oh misbegotten child of promise

Named destitute of fate

A clear, abstract work of art

With a three-part death on wooden stake

Oh the demons here are human

And the bastard child of Father time

Just fingerprints of doubt's divine

Once a pride of manes, a flock of wool

Now jungle cats and mutton

Just blindly looking for a sign.

I Am Death 

The pathway to revealing chaos

Is begun by creating order

As in our world where factions border

Patristic, nationalistic pride

Stars and stripes and stitches in our sides.

We're crafting rules just to break them down

Singing drunken eulogies in round

Ah, but at least there is defiance

Masked puritanical compliance

But really a joker wearing spades.

Here our feeble eyes are crossed and glazed

To convey an infirm appearance.

Bondage of the will makes adherence

A betnoir's glimpse of grinning ghasts

Where Tanaris breaching reach is past

And we're just phantoms wearing halos.

Pink, Orange, Moon and Stars


Still and picturesque, swells and collapse
A backdrop of everlasting fire
Of mantles, veils and cloaks
Pinprick eyes of a thousand gods
Awash in infinite longing
Beg Lady Midnight lift her skirt
And send them all their waking slumber
And send them all their gold-orbed rest
And send them all their unadorned, azure sleep.
Lord Twilight peddles wares tonight
Star-scape pendants emblazoned white
With the traversing, patterned sameness
Of eternal heat.
There with the unenduring sojourners
A stillborn faith flat-lines while yet awake
And miracles birthed of fathomless breath
Streak sonnets 'cross the forever sky,
Giving mortals turn to wish
Entreat, entrap my love with yours
As we wait for Avalon's kiss.

Tendrils of Insanity

Whisked about the frothy madness
Of the addled and Antaean mercury
That siphons the alchemy within;
That which beats within the breasts of beasts
And twice within the chests of men.
Ah, but the fates are loud tonight
Those bringers and revelers of chaos
Intermittently feral the saints march
In concussed, percussion steps
As if on the stroke of witching hour
Your loyalty falls to eldritch ire
To be replaced with the yellow stains
Of temerity, stench of tremulous fear
Oh and how . . . are you looking closely?
With leaps of roiling grace
With gifts of slight of hand
Breached yet unassailable
Nigh but unapproachable
Surreptitiously revealing cards
Iris glazed, with malice hidden in the sleeves
And oh, but what are we, what are we . . .

We walk were angels fear to tread.

Olive Garden Mints

Vintage Fake

Clerical collars for witches
And silver chains for priests
Thumbscrews unleash the sacred wine
Bits of Mass clinging to torture
Bind it up on the tides of time
If it floats, just hollow sleepless fits
So bite your tongue and will it to sink
You were never meant for bliss
Cloaks and silver daggers
Concealed within our lips
Designed to humble kings.
Again the simple way of things
Bleeds the color from our world
With blurry hues of pastel beige
Heaving with surprise and rage
At the rapier betwixt our ribs
Cracking every egg-shelled friend
Just another lie proclaiming peace
Another wrinkle, an older face
Another farce pretending end.

Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers

Asps

In every quarter-hour crisis
The blood infused retch stains carpet

Oh be still my faithless heart

Please be still.
But I will not say peace.
Not to each passing wave of nausea
Each directed search of pain
Each reverberating weakness

Please be still, I ask you
But I issue no commands.

I offer forth no trust
Neither animosity nor kinship
Darken bile-cracked lips
Consider me a moment to be chosen
But neutral on the both sides
Until the future of forestry is revealed
As ink-stained obscenitied hands
With cyanide tears.

Or should I say all trees become paper
Covered in worthless words
And the cries of our venomous fears.

Consider my scars, measure my doubts
Carefully weigh this poverty
Yes, consider me well
Else, consider me poison.

Winding Roads of Cheese

Paul Revere

The intravenous insurrection beckons, gently
Come.
Ethereal injections whimper as you run
Until the howling in your ears become the throbbing hum
That bids you think escaping is an urgency,
Just Come.
Forward on the beat, at the thrash of pounding drum
Come.
The silence echoes swiftly across the darkened numb
Of holes in midnight forearms,
Into the breach - the scum
Into the cracks - the scrum
Into the darkness
Come.
The Paul Revere of madness rides in twilight, gathers some
But answer not his cavalcade of finitude and
Come.
The bells astound the scattering alarum of we numb
Catatonic replicas of violence render dumb
Into the breach and seal the void, insurrection's strum
Come.
And rally toward the weary lines of chaos,
Simply Come.

Come.

Come.

I beseech you, come.

Fear not the tyranny of possible
And Come.

Ultimately life makes fools of us all

Rivers, Rivets and Convergence

We will kneel
With empty hands aloft
As the albatross
Of our grief bears down upon our skulls
And every spoken word
Infringes on the quiet
Each sigh of sweet relief
Rings harsh amid the silence
All well-intentioned
But utterly pointless.
In seamless retractions
Of infinite voids
One whole is the next
The intimate toys with the blasphemed
Creating a kaleidoscope
Of comforting irreverence.
We would speak to vanquish
The still beating hearts
That gather together our tears
In banquets of tourniquet blunder
And the rending leaves every wound fresh,
Even ripe for the plunder of breath
Into staccato, stale breathing.
But speaking is words
An encroachment of order upon
The meandering meadow of chaos
While heartbreak judges itself.
Thus we will stand
With vacant eyes alight
As fragmented hands reunite
With another
Hands raised to banish the oncoming darkness. 

Danish boats float higher above the water

Cottage Cheese

How long can misrepresenting
And various "isms" hold us together
When we are determined to blow?
Yes, the infinite dwelt inside
And corrupted all our movements
With extending bronze fists
In iron-clad contracts.
So greatness entered a life's holy hell
And the fulfillment was too great to bear
Tiny hands drop their egg-shell worlds
To cover the stains on their pants.
Love is paramount
Anything else is tantamount
To swearing allegiance to disaster.
We are jesters in the courts of mobs
The unruly conscience of riot
So full of the ether we explode
And cover the world in our entrails.
We're so full of the righteous we crack
Leaving a track of digested god
The world sits in hand grenades.

And your smile is the reason I am still alive

We The Broken China Dolls


In the whirlwind of unanswered pleas
Spat back like vending machine change
From the genie jar of well-wishes,
         The weary insincere mop crinkled brows
         With wary eyes in haggard countenance
         Weary shine dampened by romance spots on tissue.

Every clarity forsaking me
In news reels of microfilm vision
Swimming against the dowsing rod
That has claimed my lusted, rusted orbs
As it's potentially hapless victim.

(I already walked the aisle
And took my hypocritic oath
With a reveler's hand on my shoulder.)

Everything within climbs over the clamor and out
(Digging trenches of crusted precari)
Retreating from ruddy child with muddy cheeks
         Wanting only water, hugs and candy
         With their human rain-delayed smiles

My twin spirits dilate with greed
I cannot move forward and yet I can't leave.

And I only see a sawdust-stained iris.