Lightning, rainbows, heaven

Fecal state the mattress
rots a virgin’s puerile fate
on ashen pallor a cellar door
is dashed into bits

    we are not made of lightning
    we are not made of any such thing
    our existence is not so virtuous
    this hour has come for thieves to take

and bloodied nose
drains floral patterns into storm drain
into street beaten back by rain
some teeth there make for quite the display

    i want to burn money
    turn god into gold
    race dragon fire as it burns
    a village to the ground

but hers is a scream i'd never heard
is magic, is death, is purged,
used, broken, abandoned, discarded,
…he got his fill

    matter is not made of lightning
    is not the fanatic’s calling
     is deeper than we know
    is the very edge of bleating
    rainbows lead to heaven.

Sysius, Rufus, and the vacant state

In the fit of my atmosphere
i had only just succumbed
to your intent
to destroy me

happily i would engage
you happily
set the stage
for my tragedy
enraged

i clamored
i climbed
i clung
to the divine
within
to drive away
a darker yet still
foreshortened
sin

i am Sysius
the caretaker of gardens
not our own

i am Rufus
moderater of games
long gone
dead

i am the desecrator of monuments
to the nearly immortal
and the spit in your face
after your gravest offense

i’m frightened
i’m delusional states
i’m encapsulated mythos
rhyming against rhyme
reasoning against reason
without either
i am vacant.

Conduit

Forward i have come
found parents of the under one
blamed regards to irreplaceable vices
chose to implement
what has never been done

now a view not determined
normal
her self-esteem taken
a certain mental
conduit maiden
hell

but i am not brazen
nor am i made of the same
mettle
my time is...
seems somehow different
less virtuous
more
contemptuous

a voice, an entity, travels
a fiber-optic pathway
to my doorstep
disappears
all at once
alone

but there is beauty in the silence
a vague fountain of life unspent

over there
a horse in slow motion
stops
looks at me
recognizes something
kneels
beckoning
through the haze
no sounds
just motion
moving as if by instinct
as if in sync with some
unseen force
moves forward
to initiate what has never been done.

Dwell

Rivers of sub-atomic
particles,
articulated syllables,
all misinterpreted
rituals,
i have forgone

sightless have i
undone the ties that
blind
forward my heart
to make relevant
a constructed emotion
i have blended
slight

a backwards glance
suggests there might
have been a chance,
a gathering of stars

but an ocean grows ever
deeper
where those particles collide
where i sit
at the foot
of purest creation
where place cannot derive
location
where location is
not fixed
where you,
as if in static silence,
dwell.

Guide

Still,
i have not died
quiet,
I can be your guide
for the time spent on selfish endeavors
had been set aside
some time ago

but your eyes,
speak truths yet unspoken
see not exponential threats
so broken go
my lies,
beautiful lies
with which to teach the way
to heaven
while green is the sound
of my heart breaking
is not the color of my soul aching
is not the blade of
your sharpest
bite

so there is distance in the
cool air tonight
but you are
still

and there is reluctance on
the fence for now
but i have not died
quiet.

Warm Gargoyle

Tomorrow
the time-shifter
comes

for
some borrowed
stolen
returns
and
a livid color
to reprimand

this entity -
a conscious state,
bearing not the slightest…
wait
see it spilling over,
see its contents,
sober

and riot i
some volatile scent
in a land
a firmament
an earthly
façade
with no precedent
for the burn
to come

so perch on the cornice
my man
as we gargoyle
to the avenue
and catch the
afterglow of their cigarette-
stained lips
a sorry sodden
leatherette
a handful of
nothing i can do
a headline of empty blurbs
for you

or an ode to no one
in particular,
in other words
our time is not ours,
is gone.

Marathon

Striding figures
move steadily along
broken pavement
mouths moving through
one eighth inch thick glass
a window framing
a familiar scene

machines sail on
rivers of fractured
asphalt
more heading south
than north

today the clouds do not
smother the sun
today the pilgrims come
and go
today voices clash, merge
into a cacophony, an
avoidance of what surely is
to come

marathon - this existence,
this place
a pram, a child, a future,
a sequence of ones and zeros,
a string of choices -
this magic we carry -
a look, a glance
away.

Eta Orionis and The precision of stars

Some time ago, a beautiful blue binary star exploded off the westernmost crest of Orion’s Belt. Her time, as they say, had finally come.

And for a while, the aftermath of this event - the debris and resultant radioactive material - moved out and away into the vast expanse of space that had lain for millennia just beyond her reach.

Now, moving lifeless, mindless, still with that certain precision of stars, she follows a path predetermined by 900 light years of terrestrial anticipation.

And somewhere, on a dreaming planet some distance away, a young biped sits admiring a smallish outcropping of rocks lying at the place where beach becomes ocean. He scans the ground for something, only half expecting to find what he is looking for. And then, there it is. He picks up the dead technology, acknowledges the power it had once given. Wraps it ceremoniously in six blades of greenest grass. Holds it up over his yellow head. Then, in some ritual fashion, welcomes the end of the burning sky and vanishes into the nothingness of Eta’s final embrace.

Quiet - her fire burns in the distance. Moving out and away. Absorbing the milky white tentacles of a forgotten galaxy. Reigniting consciousness in a new way. Oblivious to form in this one moment.

How the rocks did glisten.

Infinitive

Need not come on strong
to need
not come on i
need not come on
to need
not come at all
come not i
to equalize
raise the living
to join
the dead
id been counting blades of greenest grass
to quiet
the voices in my head
when Jane had made her way
across the slow parade
having seen countless particles of matter
tumbling
stuttering to shatter
a new way,
the good road home
when
to listen is
to know
that
we need not come on strong
to need not
come at all.

Valence

Valence is not gravity
pulling
or a mathematical sequence
of arbitrary events

it is a misunderstanding
ever expanding
finally going

going gone

and magnetic fields, i am told,
envelop the earth
to keep the sun from
burning us to death -
we cannot see these things
yet we are assured of their existence

i wonder if what i haven’t proven
with mine own intellect
really breeds truth
i wonder if what they have told us
is not a lie
i wonder if a mind can lose its own mind
after giving in to reason for an hour or two

finally,
in this reality, i wonder if that same reason
can save us
while in the next,
(the one just beside me)
i know it cannot.

Bone rider

The road was littered with bones
human, so long ago

it seems they had taken the stadium and begun the slow process
of weeding out

and my love for you was a flower
regardless

but i am not a part of this paradigm
i am not structured
i am not you

my body is a house
a temple for a mouse

while you are so completely separate
distinct

a beauty unqualified
part hypnotized
tundra

aural is the sound a soul makes
when it lacks connection
goes misunderstood
goes

and no matter how much we ride this flame
the flesh will ultimately keep us apart
to savor the flavor of
absolute isolation.

To nagus verve, desanctuary

To nagus verve
i perpetuated a rhyme
where once had been reason
subdued and pantomimed

and urged, i succumbed
to an illness, expanding,
and delivered a fragile fate,
a momentary loss of control,
as the next failure became reality

but i had stolen words
to explain away the hypocrisy of
my disease,
some kind of narcissistic mantle
of disbelief
that shattered those tiny
particles of time that had been sold
to nagus verve,
desanctuary

to verb infinitely,
is to participle the apostate,
where resting is measured formally,
assured of a sudden truth
i had already known,
my blind tongue
engraved:

i am addiction,
replete.

The crow and the foil

An attraction
that’s what this is all about
or a space more desolate
or a spineless vertebrate
burning tired skin
watching hell from a safe distance
don’t they know we understand
that
a young boy knows
his legacy?

a metallic shimmering fold
some ways off on the horizon
catches his attention
fleeting
files for an extension
on shallow new
dimensions discovered while

you

admire

nothing

so tangible.

Feint

A rotation of sound
around a fountain of you
and a deep, dark, pulsing whisper
haunts me tonight

i’ve bested myself
in a game of empty variables
lost my way
in a hollow embrace
and now
haunted
i’m saving
nothing

and

there’s a ghost of a man
there, just behind me
dodging reflections,
feinting,
but regardless
he’s there
the one
representing
disillusionment
hinting at nothingness
somehow
comforting,
his cold
whisper.

A condition of terms

Words-
i am one in six billion
fingers
searching for a way to explain
but this strange language is man-made
and doesn’t seem to express
what made me not want to get dressed-
today

i am petrified
forest-
more quiet than quiet
as you fall in line
at the drop of a dime
signaling the end
of my time

i want so much not to be
human,
to remove the body
to finally
be
understood.