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