Inquisitors torment the torturers
dunked in the waters, floating a way in droplets.
Repent and be guilty is the reverence aspired.
The trial of the centuries’ past, passes off
the ordeals so to separate truth from ratings
on an imbalanced, graduated, rusted scale
etched with raised scarlet lettering
***
Interviewers and photogenic barristers duel
as cameras project predictions of astrologers
the servants of anxiety linger and transcribe.
The grand jurisdiction is set apart
in two rooms of equal size and mass
A hearing is no true place to listen
when we see no righteousness
hear no righteousness
and just speak.
***
The hand over the flaming book
does not leave a blister
An iron brands, the verdict is
a muted, fettered scream
There is more shame in accusation
than lingering in the immured palaces
of eggshell walls, portable cell phone
towers, good behavior and cotton sheets
Exoneration comes with
but a minor disfigurement.
Conatus
A cast of winter friends are called
to the holiday table bejeweled
with the merriment of delicate
Venetian glass and cheeky
Chippendale chairs that carry
our bodies, seated in luxuriance,
as our mortal words flank each other
The polished oak plateau bounces
the conversations on its straight back
through the transparent witnesses
forever holding fast to their colors
in the descending particles of light
scattering from the teardrop crystal chandelier
that never falls from grace, the fastener is stainless,
as the soot from the candles
begins to touch the shards with
grimy hands but the frozen tears
tinkle in the draft that leaks ribbons
across the festive eve
***
We clang over Game theory
We clash over M-theory
but each theory is but a theory
as Voltaire and Thales saturate the air
and linger in the ruins
of a half-eaten meal
***
The wine stumbles out of buxom bottles
pieces of bitter cork mock those who
are disappointed by not having a perfect pour
but as murmurs become memories
and grand proclamations sing paeans
to the sheets of the night’s intellect
a small child, bare chested, creeps behind
with a chocolate smeared smile
A hot airy spray seasoned by strained peas
fermenting for hours in the soft new bowels
is filtered by an arrogant cloth diaper
and scalds my weary calf
The miasma embraces my slacks
it bonds with the very weave
as fluted glasses raised in
winnowed half-light toll in tangled chimes
the child crawls under the elaborate ritual
bumping into the central support of the table
***
The players of the play of pageantry
retire to the den where children should dare to fare
and smoky scotch weeps into rocks glasses
as French doors unlocked, but they should be,
flash open as one knob jostled by the whirlwind
of youth cracks the frustrated window
framing the evergreen outside flocked with snow
The bare chested babe slides across the hardwood
like a chick coming in for its first landing
as an avuncular sheen drapes over this weary soul
who only wishes to reminisce and discuss
coming days at hand, but no, all must wait
as the father, my friend now tamed by time
hoists the child up from under his armpits
and is held at arm’s length
they smile devilishly at each other
as the mother, encased in drama, sweeps through
sky blue pajama top in hand
The boy kicks his tiny raccoon paw feet
the cloth gleefully falls away
and a stream that will never know
the chilling ice of winter
soaks his father’s Egyptian cotton shirt
like the Nile during a flood
nothing can be done as he says, “Ah, this is actually progress”.
Defying
Born into a glossy picture framed by glass and mottled stone
She knew the secret to defying time’s fading.
Avoid sorrow, joy, confusion and choice
And wear the mask but never frown or smile behind it.
Ritually standing on her head for half of each day
To counter act gravity as it reminded her
of the tug of precocious toddler and she never
allowed any wizened aunt pinch her cheeks.
Never to stand in direct sunlight
The rays and dry heat crisp
The skin to crumpled sheets.
Getting old is her greatest fear
And her therapy is not living.
Drink lots of water and stay indoors
And eventually you have a pristine
Well preserved corpse as they
Lament over her casket she gets her final reward.
“She’s much too young to have died.
Mortis Rift
Sometimes to be is not being
Without any questions just quiet
Not to be may be the answer to recover a semblance of humanity
Noble or not
…
I will find the mechanisms that created and store your will
I will take what fulcrum of thought and perception you have
And steal its axis to construct cavitation.
I will see what is internal, the lonely places where you hide
And take the ersatz essence and megalomania you allow in your being
I will implode your core and manifest a new center and rotate
It seems like destruction but it is elevation, transcendence, when
You are controlled by phantasms, saturated by materialism, Americana
It is altruism because I tear asunder the countenance of contamination.
Security is illusory; the sooner the dissolution the harder life is
To take but no longer are you distracted by visions of others
And the first step to freedom is seeing the invisible, indivisible networks
which do not allow motion in the viscous emulsion.
The machinations have been there all your life
you are impervious to the emotive crank of the pulley
and once removed there is not a direction you cannot step or stumble.
True Freedom is Terrifying and fascinating, and this not a threat!
Assassinate thy avuncular certainty, the solutions poured in your ears
Whilst you slept have antidotes and Polonius was in on it.
FUEL
An interjected fued created by fumes
Evaporating and contaminating the open room
A spark ignites a vapor to a flash
A simple regretful tumultuous clash
Easier just to let it go amongst the flames
All but an idiotic, egocentric, grudge remains
Apologies are sometimes harder than adamant stone
The resolution is left to decay with the bones
Of the atmosphere; of the stalled scene
Of the sarcophagus, the shroud rips
>
To be wrong is never the worst thing in this transient life
Mistakes are everyone’s universal movement through the strife
Awareness is the potent potential to the allegorical dreams
To let confusion reign is anathema to the kinetic means
A single signal echoes evenly through the serenity
A projected protagonist’s proposition extant to infinite
Release or be dry kindling that will know the vengeful spark
To the little temporary tocks
Quiet down you noisy wooden clock
QUIETUS
Blessed Curse
Chaotic cacophony centralized controlled
Reorganized into streams of perception
To categorize and analyze external forms
Recognition of ambitions through volition
***
Simple signals to symbols as solutions
The confusion between the factions
Evolve to pulsating waves and fragments of light
The more illuminated the more to affright
***
A blessed curse to burn away the blissful shadows
A blessed curse to change the reality of Nature
A blessed curse to be burdened
***
The pretense is acknowledged so glimpse behind the obvious
The accumulation of outcomes splinters from cause and reaction
A process of progression and plausible prediction
An ascension from the abyss of the oblivious and instinct alone
***
A blessed curse and a cursed blessing it is
A blessed curse until we…
Bee bop or what we thought
Growing intoxicated as masses
The sound flows and grows
The patterns amongst the organic seem unsolvable
Watching the bird soar and fall
We all become dizzy
strolling in the park with Dukes and Ladies
A thing becomes as we sway and swing in the wind
A maelstrom rolls as our arms grow weary but stronger with gasps
A thunderous reverberation of a wordsmith songstress
A field of what seems melts with the dreams
And the vibrations sound with meaning
An ode to the changes in created chords, chaos and order
Killing the Czar’s Dog
All the confident comrades vent venom’s fumes
No longer people, no longer power, no longer living
Bullets off of jewels, blood embroidered tapestries
Regicide is not enough the dog must die too
***
The assassins of Islam armed by Allah with hashish
The red devotion flows over mountains to the Mongols’ connection
Black and red books, hand delivered righteousness
***
Onward Christian soldiers, only children, falling into slaughter
Inquisitive minds want to see and know heretical theoreticals
Burn away the difference in the smells of offerings and smoke
The savaged souls were saved, weren’t they?
***
Ghost dancing on the open arms of the great embrace
One shot injects fear and decimates this ragged, runned race.
The red revolution’s devotion abdicates the throne of reincarnation
***
Dylan knows God is on everyone’s side, or at least behind them
Surrounding surreptitiously for no one to see
Unless like eyes blink synchronistically
As the Diminished
As the poet’s words turn to contorted scribbles and sighs
As the painter’s pallet colors merge sadly and dry
As the Sun’s light at night is a reflection on the Moon
As the summer’s breeze is taciturn to the rage of the monsoon
As the daredevil’s action without their own fear
As the archer’s aim when they cannot see clear
As the singer’s song without an audience to feel
As the film projector’s movement without a movie reel
As the guitar plays with rusted broken strings
As the notion of calm while the tornado screams
As the shadows’ ability to conceal when dawn’s light reveals
As the control of illusion when truth’s key turns to unseal
As we are.
A Royal Execution
Prince Valium and Princess Halcyon took a midnight stroll
Around and down a darkened topiary to a poppy lined path
It is so soothing to lie down in the hazy fields
and see the meta-atomic atmosphere obscure the stars
hand in hand the royalty venture into the streams surrounding the path
dissolving the dirt from their shoes and their bodies feel the cold flow
a beautiful, uneventful night to go for a stroll so similar to the last
it is humorous how time merges to a moment of mechanism
and all of the dreams and fears collapse into a point on the pivotal plain
where all things begin with a breath or end with the same.
As our heroes’ journey began to wane they feel like they should move on
and not stay on the poppy path, but transfer their first direction to
the electrically charged forest of vines and gray leaves to venture
forth and see the lacerating cliffs that were promised to be from childhood.
***
The Princess asked the Prince, “Should we dance on the edge?”
In vociferous response the Prince states, “We have already begun.”
The unstable, lacerating geometry thrusts at the evening
Organic orgasmic murky stream’s current converge with the
shale shade of the ground and black Amorphous sea
Footing is unstable in the obscured starlight, the lands shake
From the river’s erosion and the potent pollution
the crystals lined peaks had previously frozen as
the barriers of the living waters and the tired land rumble.
***
They dance in a violent trance waxing and waning to the emotions
Of the celestial spheres and then the royalty stops to face their fears
In unison they yell, “Should we jump over the edge of the cliff and be
forever young and fearless?”
A question in vain as they were already plummeting and are
absorbed by the waste and the Amorphous sea
both wave, hand in hand, and sink.
Cemetery
Inner pressure expands the seams
until lucid leaks deluge
Exhausted fumes violently vent
Collapsed in potential inevitability
Engraved stones were kicked over by children
As petulant specters hide in the family tombs
***
An indifferent sun diffused in silver gray clouds
Delicate storms invade the helpless horizon
Innocuous aftermath leaves disrepair
Incessant laughter pervades the devoid ruins
Equal in capacity to all of the joys of men
Deafening visions of nature’s dismissal
***
Corporeal centralized civilized clarity
Created in silence
Insulated Days
Silver gray clouds become sullen shrouds
over the potential and promise of the day
A crushing crash straight to the petrified ground
are any flights of ambition, to any heights
Accused of inaction when movement obliterates
possibilities that may ascend randomly but in less complex avatars?
Manic, purposeless pacing depletes the reserves of creation not agitated
to change position for the sake of such,
redundant
quietly concealed but the direct pathway is obtrusively revealed
that shouts supplication for termination not to be trapped, compressed.
***
Altered light, by the gravity of parallax sight soaks
visions, estranged hallucinations, bicker in the corner
Subduced motives all vitality seeps away maliciously
Seduced operatic hearts play as the master conducts the ventricles
A cramping fit comes through slicing the hanging
vestment of youth to ribbons
A forfeit is announced as mixed metaphors mate
and reproduce in a more opportune daybreak
The glaucoma shuts the eyes and struggles with resistant lids
as repose that readily grasps and squeezes neurons
to implosion oozes away through the spaces
and rises to the insulated day of tomorrow.
Today is replete with nothing complete.
***
A mild nap watches time mock the Grand Guignol radio play
Jagged sharp shards of reality
target the tracking eyes full of neurotoxins’ baneful
wishes toward the halting of a gossamer speculation
that fulfills the space without seams
The sullen shroud drapes with little concern
and tears between self and intention of will
The desultory sonorous screams to be still
compresses, and pressurized time slowly dims the lights
That lead from platonic caves for transcendence we fight
Phoenix fire’s flames burn and singe the past
allowing evolution into a state of creativity that lasts
Repudiate rescind this war of attrition
It doesn’t matter if yesterday was not a completion
The silver gray clouds become the shrouds
of the potential and promise of the insulated days
The problem with clouds is that they break.
Circulatory
A single solitary cell venturing
In a unidirectional pulsating pathway
Leading eventually back to the same point of origin
Impure metals and minerals bonding with rage
Speeding together at pace.
***
Surrounded by momentum perpetually pulling
Away and down swirling around the drain
***
Motivation becoming cholesterol
Collecting on the arterial wall
Emotion is an allergen
Invading but a catalyst
Sadness in the sneeze or the soul
***
A progression and a path is the state
Of life contained in a nucleus, or fate
Cells fusion and releases elements
Energy, exhaust, and waste
And yet it is the state… into cycles we will revolve
***
And circulate
Sinking
The spinnaker aloft, folds over
as the winds stop and casts the sail
as a blanket tucking in the passengers