there is blood  

       on your wings 

in the feathers 

         matting the vanes

it weighs your lift

       belabors your trajectory 

unwittingly you've been

     pierced

through the plate 

             in your breast

and once again 

     In the hollow of the

           crux tween your

    wing and body

the crown too

       you’ve dazzled with

is heavy now

             with might 

                    and woe

lift it from your brow

         in meager surrender

put it in

       the ground

for from thence

                it came

all those clouds 

                   are coming down

the blackbirds 

         circling 

     and tumbling 

screaming 

        they protest loudly 

the injustice 

     meted out

the thing 

about the memory

of pain

is that

it's always 

an approximation 

not quite like the real thing 

a slow proximal burn

an unfulfilled sensation

an alluvion through your melting brain

humming 

in the marrow

of severed bones

and screaming 

in the sinew

of torn tissue 

 

    and what of these beasts

defanged and starved

   dehorned and vulnerable 

     and what of all we've built

deformed by fire

fragile and brittle

   fingers grasping at the sky

whatever gods in gold and

     light

whatever devils in silver

     gloom

   they’ve turned their backs 

and they have abandoned us

their most promising 

     and beloved

   enterprise 

     we've pulled the whole 

of this gifted apparatus 

   down and around our feet

bewitched in cogito

     self-assuredly we trampled 

   the life from it

in the remaining ash and dust 

   pressing down

onto our crooked and 

     peeled nape

     we the vessels of undiminishing

disappointment in disheveled 

   and brazen locutions

     wail out our laments

and all those beasts

     and whatever of the

remaining birds

  mock our petitions 

and trace the gentle arcs of 

     necessity and annihilation 

               it is past 4 am

       or almost 

                    4

or somewhere in between

           and you ask-

what are you doing

                up at this hour?

-well, I'm making my descent.

           and I've been at it 

     for hours. 

                       weeks,

        years even.

then the silence befalls

              and at such an hour

     it is immaculate 

                          and total.

               seductive

   and beguiling

i know no secrets,

           i am not privy to this

       or any other wonderment

                 

             for decades 

   i've made my attempts

                but only really entered

 grief 

           and woe 

                            and hurt.

                     intentioned or not

     it is what has occurred.

               this descent 

has no bottom,

                       no real end.

despite its

              unbearableness  

       it continues,

  it beckons.

         i am no monster

              i am worse;

                     a being with ambition,

  envious and lost

i see i am 

              a murderer 

      of dreams

              and they've 

                                  left me.

           i hold their vacancy 

  as if it wasn't 

                         just emptiness;

            a hollowed-out shell 

                                       i mistake 

       for the glory 

                             of my soul.

i am the raven

no, not the eagle,

perched atop your heart.

heralding its breaking.

a twisting in the wind,

a whipping of its chambered

recesses. 

and you drift in

like smoke,

to and fro.

the problem with suicide

is that it is a

singular endeavor.

and it robs you 

of your desire to die 

upon these hills repeatedly.

over and over

and over

again.

the night is

now without

its beasts and creatures -

alone and flat and

silent.

we followed

the ringlets

and kinks of smoke 

over the horizons

into the darkening

north.

a lorn north,

with no south -

no longer.

as the ash

like a tepid

choking snow fell

in sinuous arcs and parabolas 

through the gloam -

it fell upon our heads 

and into our eyes;

into rivers;

mudding the hills and fields -

we sloughed through it

and no one spoke.

no one had the courage

to utter those useless 

words amongst the

smoldering remnants

of trees.

not one of us said goodbye -

unconvinced of this

or any other end

as if this newfound silence 

would somehow keep 

each of us 

from our own 

little annihilations

and let our hearts -

finally -

take rest in the 

night.

the continents are
on fire.
and no one is surprised.
this is what we
have been working toward.
and this is what we reap.
clutching our misguided probity.
these facts grow anemic and skinny
into fleeting points of concern
and inconvenience.

we’ve moved on to other atrocities.

and what of your slatternly gods now?
they come begging forgiveness
for their derelictions.
the spears of this squalid destiny
piercing right through
their hearts,
their eyes,
their hands.

we’ve grown accustomed
to our holding of no thing;
to no thing hallowed;
to nothing sacred.

in our dreams
the vitiating silvered stags,
with their antlers
of smoke
and ash,
go leaping through
fields of yellow rape
in bloom and sway.

and in the darkening winds,
whispering in the
evanescing forests
they all pause and marvel at
the vehement glow just beyond
the thinning trees.
and even now,
in what might pass for rain,
the seeds withering
and us weeping in
the dead leaves.

in the holding of that,
with which my hand
holds no thing
no more

of that within it
emptied out
and no one
i became

and oh!
if I were to no
longer look back
from thence on!

for,
it will take a turn
as it cometh
forth

so, i’d hold the little calf
or bleeting lamb
and spare it from the
edge and ax

but each tooth
will take it's due,
turn my pale limb black,
taketh of bone and flesh

twist and turn
my turgid soul
inside
and to the out

it will take of me bit by bit
bine my heart becometh
and as i hold and hope
and sing

the night
crushing
it cometh

i’m hardly ever sure
of the things i write and whether
i should have written them

but this was a writhing
phosphorescent worm
and here it is for better or for worse

and then i'm in the ambulance
and the sun is sinking
everything wells up in the corners

trembles for a moment

and spills out over the brim

there are bits of me rattling
in the ice bucket riding along beside me
held just beyond my peripherals

it is pink like the smudged and drowning sun

the traffic extends beyond the limits
of the pain killers they gave me

it starts as a slow radiating burning sting
where my fingers used to be
around the open end of my hand

under the loosely draped bandage
delineating what is clearly no longer there

the throbbing starts gently
in and around and out
through the clipped nubs of bone

and at the base of my brain a slow ignition
a smoldering notion that catches fire
and explodes into an enormous conflagration

none of this will ever be the same
none of me will ever be the same

i’m pressed up against a yawning uncertainty

i lose my breath in that ambulance

rumbling through traffic
toward rescue and salvation
toward painkillers, stitches, and steel pins,

toward missing bones, muscles, and fingertips
toward dead nerves, shredded vessels, and tendons

toward that big and terrible loss
toward the next me

i step outside and my mind goes blank.
all I planned to do vanishes.

i feel this sense of prolonged absence like I've been away.
away but not gone.

a familiar stranger.
a nagging feeling of incompleteness.

the distance felt of what I was
and what I have become;
am becoming.

i trust that my labors are hallowed,
propelled by an unfathomable deity.

not by the god you profess to know
or the one you swear to understand.

but by the gods yet to be discovered,
for there must be a multitude
hidden in the sacred toils.

a bestowing benevolence with
ten thousand and one faces,

slowly uncovered and illuminated
from within the hypogea of
the glacially beating heart
and from the pitch of the cavernous mind,

teased out in meticulous detail
with crude and obscene tools.

ho! and judas,
with his left hand of envy
and his right of greed,

toppled over mountains
and whipped down the trees;

driving the biting sands
into your growing deserts.


you lift your billowing heads
your eyes molten and hot,
weeping fire;

the grit of this endeavor
takes the skin off your hands

and from your feet
as you press forth

of stubborn
pride and spite.


the fever spikes and you
dream of shaded rivers;
these visions pass on

and into an incongruity
of solace

enraging your hearts
and their strings of calling.


god’s lowly creatures gather
up around you,
no more;

for you, the meek
have renounced your inheritance,

your bloodied mouths
choked with carrion;

your dazzled sanities
bludgeoned;

there is no one,
no more,

left to save you,
to lift you up
and bestow upon you
one final squandered
bequest.

oh! my injured brother.
my lost tormentor.
you beast
of the severed hand.

travail through these nights of fire,
sifting through the bones
and ruins.

i lay down into the sprawling fields,
a series of small
explosions go off in my brain;

i sink into the inky darkness
as words escape me,
pulled under by the distancing reports.

my throat goes dry and full of copper.

my nose choked acridity.

i look up toward the dead and dying,
a vicissitude reflecting; refracting.

the vicissitude
a monolith of my new becoming
clicks on,

starts to play and replay.
again and again

and again.

now you
my injured brother;
sickly and scarred,
damaged and harmed
hang there on the brink of surrender.

slowly bringing me to recognize
that I am becoming;

that i have become now
a beast
with a
severed
hand.

we will not be;

we can not be praised for
the manner in which we suffer.

we've crawled over
these sprawling cliffs of ash;

built up palaces of tangled
bones and branches;

but even now, even these
venerated places have been stripped
of their gold and light.

not all suicides are lonely endeavors;

the mud and water macerates the walls
the ceilings are coming down
the floors

cave in.

and what of our future?
it was there
sparkling on the horizons
until it wasn’t.

just a fading twinkling for a decade or two
and then nothing, a saturnine glare;

an unknown and unwanted solution;

our weakened hearts palpitating
erratic and wild.

the sun’s full of bleach
raining down merciless light
through the wheezing atmosphere;

what are we now?
the unsaved,
almost forsaken;

forgotten in the reaching tendrils
suffocating in the newfound
unmitigated eclipse.

at 2:52 in the morning
in the stagnant black canyons
of insomniac fever
and self defeat
I miss making things I once
made.

and my brain
grinding
out in agonizingly torturous
slow-motion
the reverberations of steel
passing through bone
and marrow.

the moment stretches out
into endless enormity
before the pneumatic guard releases
and I'm set free
but no longer whole;

my composure frayed
like the skin and
veins of my hand;
tender tissue amputated
and mangled

the four little nubs
of what used to be
my hand
clutched desperately
into the palm of the other.

it would be something
to let these things pass
quietly, silently
without the regret
of these utterances

but there is this memory
of screaming
a distant
and disembodied
screaming.

one more hour
and then another
with our backs against the fires
in this stifling pitch
and the dogs
starving and restless
pacing lonely parabolas
through the sifting ashes
trapped between the conflagration
and the stygian outer dark

the whole day
the sparrows screamed
and fell
flailed and gave up their ghosts
premonitions of the coming gloam
encroaching upon us the terrifying quietus
an inevitable calamity

if we make it through this night
we can watch the sun
emblazon the eastern hills
with the wild horses
cresting and dying
in rising lucifer’s new light

we’ll devour
what's left of the young
this was never their place

the trees will slowly fall and tumble
from their mountains
feeding our tortuous infernos

this is the new order of things
our dreams have become wolves
in the darkness
with eyes glinting and nefarious

in the small hours
they'll sit atop their mounts
brilliant and foul
drinking tea of piss and ash
surveying the rapidly chilling fields
of splintered bone
calcifying in the moaning winds

the wolf drawing crimson
from the throat of a unicorn

its beastly eyes glazed
with fear and death

you hold nothing in
your burning hand

but the ruins
of your fingertips

the stench of mercy
reeking of cordite

and the screeching of the songbirds
a parting rune does not make

after what most
couldn't call a night
you awaken to a congeries
of churlish sutures
snaking up the palm
of your resurrected hand.

your brain sends signals
to the mangled meat
and gristle

it welters and spasms;
it pulls and tears free;
nothing does what it's
supposed to

slowly,
after the rigors of
attempting function
have cramped the
the lower sinews
of your arm;

after tiny confused
and clumsy movements
yielding but a tiny
wriggle in what you
once called a finger

blood starts to pool
and seep
past the spidered
black threads and
last night’s
cellular adhesions

a slowly forming stigmata
growing to resemble
what once you were
taught to be;
what once
it might have been

a healing hand of christ;
a hand of longing
and forgiveness;

of redemption

with the strength of will
and the benevolence of cowardice
the unfolding of a midwestern gothic

in the deep dry night
when these tired stars glow ablaze
your hair aflame swaying and dancing
within the hyperventilating wind

the pills you were given come up short
only manage to muddle your senses
and turn your stomach

the sterile bandages have their own stench
you'll vomit up bile with your hair still aflame
reflecting softly in the porcelain

you’ll act as if this suicide was
mandatory and not a matter
of stubborn pride

the blackbirds now scream and claw
around your rotting mouth, they want your
tongue and teeth, they want your dehydrated eyes

you’ll worry and fray at the stitching
pulling through that spun silver thread
as it breaks free and loose
from your tattered soul

to go shimmering
effervescent
evanescent through this
deep dark midwestern
hallucinatory night

in the soft light
i have forgotten
these things that
i stood with and against

softly upon my nape
i feel that chilled patter
of time
running down
and out over the flimsy
membrane of anamnesis

a gentle coup de grace
a whisper of mercy

the point of this or any
other matter blunted by
cowardice or a doubt
steeped in apprehension

i know it does no good
but i do resent the abrupt
and violent end
to my sense of self

and to now having to
fill that void with clumsy
lesser things
and that sectioned second
elongated in my memory

of that moment when the
sky fell all around
my sight tunneled
and the fingers
from my left hand

cooled into lifelessness on
a steel table

and from somewhere
as if
from a great distance

a disembodied screaming

we stand in huddled masses
hunkered against the driving snows
dreaming ourselves sheltered

but in actuality waiting
with dumbfounded appetency
for the poleax

ineluctable slaughter
a slow march toward relief
away from this frozen bastion

ululating into the indifferent sky
their ears deaf to our hearts’ beating
the clouds encroach with malice

they've stacked our bones high
as kindling into towering bulwarks
all in the name of progress

and these shorn, trampled forests
have become a nidus of their iniquity
somehow all of this became accepted

abiding of this prefatory miasma
dim views of birds falling
and gray ash, susurrous

floating through the whipping grasses
all the beasts lying down
their tongues lolling

they have terminably broken its back

all these lowly beasts
of your flowered heart
drag you off
into and through
those fields on fire

you’ve cut the heads off
your tin foil gods
cut their hearts out too

you are lost and you have lost
Acheron boils over and
your hand looks almost real
in the glint of a traced arc

you shudder in the sudden rain
you are out of time
without time
the willows have begun to weep

this excrescence suffocates all hope
your heart starts to bleed
in this wretched light

try not to
yowl into the sleepless
sundered night
with these visions
of annihilation and other
things such as this way come

there will be times

where it will be
your flesh and bone

tendon and sinew

against steel
and momentum

carbide and pneumatic pressure

and you will not win
you will not come out whole

but with just enough wherewithal

to know what it was
that has been stripped from you

you will be shown how deep

your strength of will actually goes
how to don you’re bravest face

against the inequity and
trickery of your own mind

and you’ll be shown

a more nuanced definition
of resolve

you will know what it means to ache

with the desire for surrender
and what it means to

deny yourself that too

these are the severed beasts
of the left hand
of a cowboy gothic
the stone caves in
your chest.

wield it against the dust
against the hundreds of miles
with no rain
your hair will stand on end
at the moment the bone is peeled
of its skin and muscle.

your eyes
like smoked glass,
your skin tight
and jaundiced,
your mind a meadow
on fire.

the rivers now are of gasoline
cutting down through those
mountains of steel we left behind.

at night the sun never seems to set
anymore.
it never seems to rise, either.
and this world can hardly get to
sleep in this perpetual half-light.

the trees howl at the holes in the sky
vacated by the moon and stars.
when it gets like this your heart explodes.

you squeeze the air with all you have,
the air shudders a few millimeters.
with nothing to hold onto
and nothing to hold it with.
the bones drop from your hand,

one by one by one by one.

they came in off
the deserts
blind from the sand
and wind

baying at the
western moon
well past any
decency at
such an hour

frothed by mouth
and desperate paws
clawed your door
to splinters

you burned
your home down
in the nadir
at dawn

just to try
and keep them
without

unable to hold
out or on
with your blood
igniting in your veins

these actions devoid
of empathy
and too
lacking in
malicious intent

they retreated
to the skirting
just beyond the
encircling venal light

there you were
hoping that the
sun would rise

before the
ashes inhaled
the palling light

at the edge of night
where abandoned dogs
tarry
in the pitch
an evil impends

cordate horrors
pour out to the
floor
of a room
now on
fire

hold against it.
a dimness in the shortened days.
this lupine night extending
inward and out.

it's been there since the beginning,
unrecognizable at first but
a more certain predilection
now.

toward darkness perpetually,
imperceptibly saddening your brow,

shifting over all these decades
it sinking its teeth
into your nape.

familiarly a consistent pressure
its absence unimaginable
its staunchness unendurable.

one day you awaken with a fear
of dimly lucent days.

a weakened sun
coughing light through those
tendrils, laying hold of
the chattering sky,

made in haste and hate.

last night i slept
not but a little.
my hand nagging
and gnawing. nerves
leaping against inert,
numb flesh.
but it’s all progress,
i must remember
to see it as such.
the other way
is doom and it’s always
nigh. it takes
no small efforts
to keep it from
leaping at my face.
the doom is ready
and waiting for
my vigilance to taper.
gnashing those slender
fangs, spitting sparks
at my enkindled mind.
it wants to make its move.
so i fight and stay
awake lest my guard
wanes down and
this doom barges in
to tear and raze
my world to bits.

now,
we can fix it,
we can fix anything.

provided there are
enough medical
sutures and clean
needles.
and pills
of appropriate
doses.

but
what will be,
will not be
what you want.

it may barely
be what you need.

this room.

hazed and browned
like some stinking
opium den.

inside that curling
smoke you hear a
sigh. a slithery
whisper.

the devil flashes
his smile. his sharpened
gleaming steel.

it slips between the ribs
and bites your lung.
you cough up your
wallet and blood.

your teeth rust.
tarry air seeps from
your nostrils.
your heart hardly
beats anymore.

the sunlight slows
and your eyes dim.
it’s just
a little salt water.
there, in the corner.

you’ve learned to climb those branches
surprised at your own sprightly agility

higher and higher you go.

all those watching
are now impressed

higher and higher you go.

they will love you
as long as you keep climbing
they will adore you

ahh but when you falter
and fall
when your mangled claw
loosens it’s grip
when the boughs
give and break

your abrupt dissent will be
considered a betrayal
something
done unto them
undeserving of such a thing

you’ll meet scorn face to face
bewildered and crestfallen
but unsurprised

this reeked of inevitability
from the start

gripping the throat
a trembled hand

teaching you a
lesson. is this the
way it ought to be?

your brave face
going dark,
those eyes fill
with blood.

this is stupid.

without a point.
with no end.

something always
gives. at this moment
your windpipe

yielding.

my hand is a mangled claw.
healing? sure. but
most definitely mangled.
i haven’t put out new music
in over two years.
should this matter?
to the world at large,
it is a resounding no.
but my soul,
my soul depends on it.
my soul
anemic and weakened
staggers around the
corners of my memory.
i try to nourish it.
to feed it
what i can but
it’s been war
for a long time and new
horrors have arisen.
i ration out my beleaguered
heart to it. my soul can’t
hold it down and vomits
out the gruel. i hold its
sick head in my hands
i whisper words of encouragement,
i tell it things will be
alright, as bombs go off
in my head and
the rafters come down.
it is fevered and coughing,
i clean it up as best
i can and put on
my bravest face.
i don’t want to spook
my soul. i let it rest.
i let it cry. i let it be.

and now I have my hand
to clean.

my heart has always
harbored a darkness
i leaned into it often

the inky black
velvety with ache
it was a way to be
the only way
i understood

to gain a comfort
in that pitch
a price had to be paid

it was paid
and even though
i don’t think of it
too much anymore
regret browns the edges
as it perpetually looms
in the periphery

waiting

you’ve made me invidious
with your light,
your smile tinged
with regret
all this could have
been different
if only my courage
didn’t leave me
when you had to make
those choices
and yet
there you are
stalwart against
the bleak darkness
of the world,
protean to the
circumstances,
radiating forth
a pure and easy light
because you know
with the wisdom
hidden there in the slight
upward curl of your
lip and the soft squint
in your eye
that the outcome
of those choices
could have been
something far worse
and a lot more
less than favorable.

the rains come heavy
and swift, the
long, low rumble across
a sky, the clouds
spilling darkness
over the sunlight.
now,
there are different types
of indifference, some
of malice and pain
some of steel and bone
a set number of
revolutions per minute,
an upward trajectory
and it’s over just like that.
water pouring into the basement
wind unroofing your house
blood blisters bursting
between the sutures.

the birds
they are a
murmuring
and the sun
it is a setting
slow across and
into the lowly
horizon
do not despair
the time lost
do not despair
the imperfections
of our attempts
the world slides
past beneath a
reluctant sky
these are mountains
that we’ve built
a gaucherie
in envy of the ruins
left for us
misled assayers
dreaming back
to a former glory
these are mountains
of nothing
we are an
anachronism
not fit for this place

the ropes are coarse
thistly upon thy
nape

the night moans
and the ground palpitates,
doughty!
those places you won't be.
you can't be.
now the walls
in this billet bombinate.
so lay low toward
your suffering and
its easements.
in this tiny droning room,
reeking of tar and soot,
with its jittering, jumping light,
we supplicants
transcend in
through the flames.

the light without
has gone
incandescent, green.
the leaves have
all turned
up and over.
belaud the
templed clouds,
falling.
our breath
shortened within.
south became
north
and the world
started to
drown.

you are fierce
and full of
courage,
your heart swells
like the last
wolf
in a smoldering
forest
with nothing
left to
eat.

first they came
and took my
tail and then
they took the horns.
they clipped
my wings and came
for the fangs.
they returned once
again and pierced
my eyes and
removed my forked
tongue, peeled
the fur and scales.
i allowed them
to do it,
complicit in the
dismemberment.
because every time
they paid their visits
the horizons behind
and above their
mountainous shoulders
- scarlet, bright,
and on fire.
- the skies above
deadest of blacks
and raining pitch.

in this world
i get lost
inside
the nuanced
increments.
beneath the
projected ennui.
in the subtle
shift of
light
or the granular
dissolution of
a captured
sound.
i dwell in
those things
dismissed.
assumed
to all look
and sound
the same.
mesmerized by
the infinitesimal
multifarious
diffusions.
it's an attempt
at completion
a naive urge
to absolute
fulfillment.

what is this that
you are after?
i’ve lain with the
rotting, salivating
dogs in this
lousy bed
of nails and
glass.
who, bay
protests at
my intrusions,
snarl at
my nape, and
the injustice
of this occupation.
so you’ve kicked
the thorns
through my
side.
the stench from
those festering
wounds reeks
of burnt rubber.
i hold out my arms
and try to
see inside of here,
this lowly station.
try to fit
into your
throttlehold.
i’m stumbling
with knives at
my brain,
knives at my throat.
i choke down
the panic
and blood.
you force my eyes open
and black smoke
pours out.
you mention the
suicides and their
unending chains,
and i still
manage to feel
ashamed.

this crisis is
just like that one.
a routine of epochs.

it raises the hair
on the arm and
neck. it chills the
room. it breaks
the neck and back.
it stiffens the marrow.

it follows a trail,
the trail
of wounded
knees
and tears.

it is a march,
unending, beyond the
trees and plains.
into and through
exhaustion. beyond the
end of this world and
the end of
all their worlds.

it is a death
a death that keeps
on giving
into all the
generations.
into the rivers
and valleys,
into all those amber
golden, godless
sunsets.

i keep falling
in over and over
even though
i'm expected to
be someone else
and do something
else
something less idle
i have shaken
the devil's hand
and perhaps
forsaken my soul
and now
i feel i'm owed
and for that
feeling i'm choked
with and by guilt
i lose my grip
almost every
sunday evening
my chest heaves
and crumples
and heaves again
a little weaker
a little shorter
a little shallower
i present these things
i concoct to your
blind ears and eyes
i strive to break
your heart to see
the tears and the
blood bubble and flow
but all you do
is laugh and smirk
rolling your eyes
and sighing
exasperatedly
grow up, you mutter
be less strange
you wish

on the way home
i saw two buzzards
eating a cat
cold and wet
a crushing of
the spirits
let us commence
in the abandoning
of all hope

i am the last burning
tree in the forest
i am equanimity turned
to pitch and tar
i am the minutiae of
the incremental shift
for these are not ghosts
these are just things
left undone
in this short and
indivisible interval
allotted to that
burning synapse
that constitutes
the i in this and
all other reveries

the shadows
lengthen from the
stygian corner
to my outstretched
hand reposed,
between the
jaws of
the wolf,
delicately on its
quivering tongue
with fangs
clinking and
gleaming,
slavering with
devastation and
with this and
in this
salivating sickness
i scour the
heavens and the
depths in that
forever disconsolate
light to clip
the devil's antlers
to wail and beseech.
but nay!

he will not
lay them aside.

i hear the ghosts of trees,
of this and
that world dissolving
into the night.
in the whispering darkness
the lights click on
humming and buzzing with
the blue electric arc
they shine for
no one,
now,
they shine on
no thing.

this is
the one,
until the next one.

in a field
of wild flowers
emblazoned in
white
violets and
pale golds,
all with names
but i do not
know them,
beneath the
rumbling clouds
and thunderous
winds they whisper
to me - how
is it
that
you
are still
standing? -
and we crane
and scan the
darkened dome
above us for
just a single ray
- a single one -
of pure and smiling
light to pink
the caliginous
gloom. gasping
at the threatening
darkness while
the bones of
our soi disant
saints
and kings
liquefy to
spite
and pitch.

and in the glow
of the easy
and pure -
you will forget
the words of
things -
catching the dust
of stars
and suns in your
swimming eyes

the fix
is in.
was in.
the scheme
worked out
way before
you learned
sit up
and gaze,
learned
to punch
a clock
or discern things
decent and indecent.
surrender the
remnants.
dance without
rhythm or joy.
rending a heart
with feigned
tragedy and
a slow
but persistent
dissolution.
this we've come
to call
iniquity,
measured and
recorded throughout
millennia.

they lie there,
some scattered,
some stacked neatly
waiting and fading
from memory
the promises
and responsibilities
self inflicted and
imposed,
competing with
the more real ones.
they require courage
and demand attention,
a daedal mastery
of the hand, heart,
and brain.
they bare their teeth
in anger
and frustration
they demand to know,
in pre dawn hours,
why it is that they
are there, ignored.
and in response
to your unsatisfactory
answer, they break
your heart.

tonight i slept
and while sleeping
i dreamt
and while dreaming
i felt and ideated
i was forgiven.
it was a dream
usurping actuality,
pure and enormous
in its suasion.

alack, I awoke
with a sudden
start and for no
good reason
into the consummation
that indeed I was
not forgiven
but rather
forgotten.

in madness
i am chasing,
chasing,
chasing you
or something
like you.
forlorn and
devoid of
hope. i've
eradicated
the sleep
from my nights
in an effort
to gain on you,
on it,
on them.
but all that
has done is
shortened
my days
and filled
them with
stubby little
hours,
shaken and
dirty and
amounting to
not much
of anything.

in those
late hours
of night
when that
sound deep
in my skull,
vivid,
crisp,
and precise,
of splintering
bone
reverberates,
cascading down
the spine

i swear
it is like
ancient forests
falling down.
like mountains
giving up
and sliding
down into
the seas.

i've crossed the valleys
and you crossed yourself
as i approached.
the sparrows gasped,
now short of breath
like these dying days,
wheezing with the
wester winds and trees.
like the flowers
i brought you
that you cast aside,
all the stars thrown
into the mud, their
brilliance pusillanimous
and abnegated.
i am weakened by
your eyes like dusk
and gelid blizzards,
pacing like wolves
with eyes
resemblant diamonds,
auriferous and
scintillating in
the moonlight.

the sun screeches
up upon the sky
like hyenas drunk
on blood and murder.
i search for your
house to set it
ablaze. i am a
broken, clumsy
beast. trundling
off the precipice
i am falling.
falling hard
and fast.
falling off
the face of
the earth.

the grains of salt
that you discard,
they are measurable
by length and width
and height.
they too have a
dimension and
once a purpose.

we are
the eaters of bees
with our
swollen guts and
distended bowels,
strung out
on the sweetness
we search
for the adjuvant,
the honey,
for the miracle
of healing
and wellness.
we are
the bee eaters,
belligerent and
entitled.
in our ignorance,
for that sweet
elixir is not
found in the
belly of the bee
but rather
elsewhere.

i think my biggest problem
is envy. it is a stink
not easily gotten rid of.
it is petty and shitty
and ugly to look at.
it infects with an
overwhelming urge to
ignore it and deny
its foul presence
but it's there
poisoning the water
in my wishing well.

from here
i can see
for miles
and miles.
the rumpled
landscape
blown away
to dust
at the edges
and the days
seem to be all
short of
breath.
the ache
of the trees
and the birds
rattling through
my bones
and i pull
the dusky shroud
over my head
and around
my shoulders.
you look bemused
as you watch
me clamber up
those shorn hills
in search of
forgiveness.

and you smile
lightly, knowingly.
your heart ebbing
because every time
it is the same,
at first
the pain is
unbearable
and you are
convinced that
you will not
survive it.
that it is
an impossibility.
but then you
start to
crave it
and then
you start to
inflict
it.

i awake,
my blood
coagulated
and thick,
ebbs through
constricted
capillaries in
sluggish waves.

the chill creeps
its way along
the furs
and blankets
searching for
exposed flesh
to touch
or maybe
kill.

the light
in its recent
but perpetual
dimness struggles
through and into
the tented
dwelling,
and outside the
beasts gather.

with hoof
and horn
claw and
fang

i am no longer
welcome here.
my actions,
our actions,
have forced them
and the only gift
they offer
is vengeance.

motionless i wait,
my bleared sight
focused on upward,
into the thin light.
my hearing almost
useless barley
aware of their
panting.
my flesh
only knows
the frost.

i lay and
wait for
the generosity
of their gift.

the western wind
soft upon the beating
wing. whispers in
the plumage.
'forth, forth,
against me
you must glide.
i am the lift required
for the distance
you must travel.'
and as if by
instinct or some
unknown but felt
truth we tilt our
secondaries into
the whispering and
move toward the
gloaming distance.

the slow
and fragile
gliding
of this
parabolic arc
the humming
of the fast wing
a wavering heart
napping in
the numinous soil,
dreaming amidst
the whispering
of worms
and other soft
hissing noises.

the king is dead!!
has been
for a fortnight
probably longer.
but we ignore that
inconvenient fact and
stalwart our praise
of him against such
detractors as ourselves.

for to admit
and accept
that fact of demise
is to surrender
and retreat
into and with defeat.
and realize that we
are the captains
of our pain.

adrift with no anchor,
or hope, or wind
in our sail.
this sea
pitiless, deep,
and cold, and dark
beneath our
rotting plank.
patient and bottomless.

i am the baying
of the wolves at
pre dawn when that
shiver trickles up
your spine.

i am the late hours,
the hunger
suppressed,
a fevered insomniac
hallucination.

i am the pealing
of the night
bells.

when that ray of sunlight
slithers its way through
the fissure in my
dystopian dome,
it is a most terrifying of miracles.

i am the lesser version
of your expectations,
not quite the right shape
and size to fit
in that paradigm
you aggrandize.
bestow upon me a betterment,
a kindness and I will
disappoint you.

feign a blame on vanity,
inaccurate and reluctant.

watch out!!
for the gods, they
have become
careless. as the teeth
of dawn sink
into the night
and let your days,
where nothing your
hands do is correct,
and panic
and dither
settle everywhere
like dust, cascade
over your troubled dome.

and from them
silence, impenetrable
silence is offered
as the only appropriate
answer
to the begging
question, what will
become of me and
my stone heart.

the arrows cling
to my flesh
and the stones!
oh the stones,
they reverberate
through my
splintered bones.

i'm not sure i can handle
the past.
these quotidian visitations.
with all the aches and grief,
with all its remembered
panic and
worry and
woe.

although at this moment
its seeming simplicity
has a certain charm,
a slowly growing glow
emanating through the
memory centers of my brain.

it tricks the heart to skip
a beat, maybe two.
maybe tricks it to stop
altogether.

it is a grand seducer,
a known cozener. and
i fall for it often,
i fall for it now,
knowingly partaking in
the bane.

because the future
awaits smirking
with the blades
gleaming.

melancholia, or
the darkening
of the blood.

in the deepest
part of the night,
(3:23 a.m.
to 4:47 a.m.)
i take great
comfort in the
shape shifting
of my hemoglobin
to black bile.

the future
billows
into the winds,
whipping
the last trees.
and in the
lowly rustle
we lose our
way. marching,
oh so bravely,
into the delusion
of salvation
as our mountains
turn to storms
of sand.

you, supine
in your divinity,
as these perfect
days prove to
be our last.
and out hearts
give over to
chaos and
madness.

the sky ignites,
the waters
now still
and dead.
a grey ashen
murk.

those words,
come to us
from some
ancestral
recesses in
the turbid
encephalon
of our minds.

ignis letum

as the rest
of the flames
overtake our
homes and
flesh.

::: five postcards :::

this is
what i
become,
in this
space
as i fight
in the
insomniac
hour against
my shriveling
will

it radiates outward
from my center
something akin
to peace
that static droning
in my ears, my
mind. everything
in focus
the waves of
black light
crashing within
my chest and
i flow
with it

no longer do i
impede this
darkness,
i am the
darkness
i am the
world's broken
heart

as the light
goes out of
our eyes

we stare into
the bleak distance
and behold

the darkening
enormity of
our unfinished
dream

now the
winds
tear the
blossoms
from their
homes
out in this
wilderness
amidst the
wolves
and other
beasts

i've got birds
that soar
in my heart

that scream
into the
mountains

over the trees
and above
the festering
rivers

we turned back
and watched the
ashes in the sky,
our hopes lay
gasping and the
concrete burning
beneath our feet.

from the west
the winds
will tear
the sinew
from our bones.
in this
bleak light
our tattered
hearts rest.

and all this,
i did
while you slept

i sheared the mountains
i ignited the oceans

i filled your soul
with sorrow

i did this
i did this all
i am

the broken
arrow shaft,
poisoned tipped,

in your heart

let
the sky
fall
down
into the
inimical
and
jaundiced
ocean

let
the
mountains
burn
and the
fevered
world
gasp

in the
miscellany
of these
days,

i can
feel it
come

swelling,
gripping
my skull

tightly.
constricting
my breast.

choking
my soul.
disappointment

is a way,
is the way.
the ash

fills my eyes,
nose, throat.
breathe in

deeply.
my blood
thickens,

my heart
slows.
my vision

blurs, fades,
washes out.

the lie
is accepted.
morphing

into a truth,
into the truth.
our existence

now hinges
upon
it.

i've spilled it
on myself again,
this darkening
trouble,
this deepening
sorrow,
harboring this
lament into
and through
the sweet
night

in this twilight
it seeps into
my marrow. i can
feel its darkness
set into my skeleton,
it reconfigures the
bone, my structure.

as the constellations
scrape their dead lights
across the voided
welkin in primordial
trajectories, this
blackness i become.
subsumed in its

totality. rendered
unrecognizable by
that grand usurper.
i, vaporized by the
insatiable ticking
of the second hand,
smirk at its gape.

now the shadows
speak softly

the night slithers
away. and

it is usually
in these predawn

hours that i
long for the

eternity of
those moments.

it has been years
of restless sleep

for the stirring
of the soul only

yelps and howls
when i nod and

close my eyes.
i have a keen

sense of trouble.
it's wondrous and

exhausting. i can
feel it all crumbling

deep down in my
darkness. it touches

my liquefying mind.
it spills out and

seeps through the
floor boards

eons before you wake.
when you greet me

in the morning you
are, in all actuality,

greeting someone else.
a stranger

how we loved
the yearning
of the views
unbroken

...and from
the earth
lightning
cracked
into the
ruinations
of the
extinct sky

the gift
of the six
golden kings
grows into
our empty
dawn

floating
through the
black mists
of our feigned
sanctity

the pining rain
and the hot
tar roofs

the embers
of hope
slain by
our enterprise
glow dimly
in the
choking night

now we build
towers for our
wilting hearts

a
melancholy
descent

through the days
of the golden
light we spoke
of salvations

sturdy oaks
groan whispers
of hope

those places of
your slumber
crackling with
fire

when the
skies are
thick,
and oily,
and black
we shall
gather sunlight
through
the windows
of our dreams

drowning in the rains
all the ghosts
achromatize into
the mountains
of my memory

lumps in my throat
grow when the stars
revolve around my
heart

the nightly pyre
all dressed up
in sweat melted fat

sitting here
in the
fumigating night.
a thought
blazes across
the dome
of my skull.
another, then
another.

i ponder this
world i have
constructed and
continue to
build. i marvel
at its imperfect
totality. how it
harkens that other
place. how it reflects
it's horrors and
sadness. how it
attempts to
blaze with
that fragile
insignificance
of its
beauty.

in the attics
in basements.
in the solitudes
something stirs
and another
scavenged morsel
falls in to fill
the abyss.
the descent
eternal and
insatiable,
into a place,
this place
that is
now mine.

i take pictures everyday
every single day
mostly of the skies
to evidence the fate of
come what may

not unlike the Colonel
in his century of solitude
with his daguerreotype
pointed at the skies
trying to capture the face
of god in the clouds.

for I fear our doom is up
there hurtling towards us