I find it difficult
To wring the truth
From my dry and blistered tongue.
You tell me the answers.
You tell me you are right there
In front of me,
But I can not see.
My eyes swell,
Bruised by the light.
The dust in the air
Forms pulsing constellations
Where the sunlight filters through it.
The discord on the floor,
Illuminated in patches,
Reminds me
I was trying to crawl to a corner,
To shake in peace.
I seek comfort
In my personal hell,
And the concrete
Seems to understand.
I feel we share something,
The concrete floor and I.
We are both so cold,
So unforgiving.
The humor reaches me
There,
Not far from my own stench,
Not far from
The place where I removed my guts
And spread them out
For everyone to see.
Funny
I can not even remember
What it is I am not forgiving,
Only that it is not forgiven.
When you come by
You tell me
That once I had all the answers
And now there is only filth,
Putridity.
I remember
Why I don’t want to remember
Anything.
You,
Oh,
The avenging angel
Sent to purge the fallen from the ranks,
You
The voice of God’s purity,
The messenger from
The dream
Of decency
That spiraled out of ancient masculine hegemony,
A wet dream
Of masculine control,
A dream of
A religion fit to rule,
Fit to put the women on their knees
Where they can properly worship
With hands clasped.
I am done with
Your dream.
I can only guess
The look of horror on your face,
The revulsion in your words,
The contempt
Must spring from hatred,
And so I am happy
Because I
A mere mortal
Have earned the hatred of God’s pristine messenger,
I have taken the step
That leads to total condemnation.
On my knees
Slave to sensory pleasure
I want only more.
A single wish by the damned
Would be wasted.
I would wish only for a stronger body
So that I could torture it longer,
Fool my mind into thinking
That I have what I always wanted,
Only to laugh when
The warm glow vanishes.
It leaves me here.
So I know
Why you have come,
Arbiter from society’s cruel clutches,
You have come to mock me.
What I have left
Feels only pain at the sight of you,
So perfect,
Once so beloved.
When I look into your eyes
I see only myself
Trapped in a puddle of excretions.
If only the shakes would stop
I could speak
I could try to change
The evil things I think,
But it is too late.
You are leaving.
Outside the wind blows,
But the windows are closed
And here there is only
The smell of my skin
Scaling onto the ground.
If only I could turn back.
I realize the only way to move,
The only way to stop the shakes
Is to do it one more time.
As I reach for the syringe,
For what precious little I have left,
I think only of spitting
In my executioners face
When I see him again.
Beyond comprehension
The needle finds the vein,
And I plunge the fluid home.
It’s all gone now,
Everything.
The image of the room
Crashes to the floor
And shatters.
The memory
Of what I could have had
Lingers in the air before me a moment
Before it falls to the floor
And shatters as well.
I crawl through the slivers of my life
Heaving,
Blood on my festering lips.
In the farthest corner
The creature I became
Comes to rest
And moves no more.
I know not what happens next
For I have gone.
I have been painted into a picture
For a grim and gory fairy tale
To nurture the offspring
That will choke the world
In the time when the rivers run black.
*-*-*
The extreme imagery of Wax on the Altar resulted in an attack on the two locations of, at the time, the only surviving copy of the work other than the handwritten original. A line was inserted into the manuscript, one of true blasphemy. After the event took place the vandal successfully changed the password to one of the sites. I could have removed the line from the site I still had access to, but that would not have fixed the overall problem. There was, and is no address, to send a letter to about it, as near as I have been able to determine. I would not correct the copy at this point. I never put vulgarity beside the name of Christianity's messiah, but to prevent someone else from going through the experience of being judged for having done so I will leave it stand as though I did. Both sites have been cracked and passwords changed now, so I can't access any of it. I can only comment from a distance, not change the writing (which I never did, anyway).
The compilation exudes very graphic overtones, which I have dubbed the "My name is Renfield effect." The silent terror only escapes detection at the level of human hearing. On the mental level it is vaster than the depths of space.
2001
That was the year I created a website archiving a large portion of my poetry. It was probably 70% of it, at that time. I rewrote some of the material while I was drunk, plain and simple. I didn't make it better in any way, regardless of what I was doing or thinking at the time. That's why I started restoring it all.
There's been a fair amount of controversy over some of my work. By the time I put together Wax on the Altar and Cinnamon and Cyanide I had become desperate for recognition. I decided that the best way to draw attention to myself was to create shocking material. It worked. Everyone who read the compilations had a negative reaction, sometimes extremely negative reactions. It became notorious. I used those reactions to bring attention to my good stuff, and in that light it was successful.
People hate a lot of my writing. I get that. I will not, however, say I was wrong to write it. My life has been incredibly boring. The things I write about are nothing like my life. Words are just a big game to me. I can make simple words seem kinky, and kinky words seem normal. I can write fiction people would never suspect wasn't true, and non-fiction that nobody would ever believe. That's what I do. I am proud of it, because it is the greatest gift God gave me.
I'm not done writing new material, nor has hundreds of pages of old material ever been available for people to see. As long as I am able to, physically and mentally, then this is what I do. I love it. Anyone who doesn't understand what I do would do well to leave it alone. You won't change the words, you won't change the truth and you won't change me.
I'm just a little bit curious. I'm human, that's plain to see. I want to know everything. Someday won't that be? I write not because I'm furious. It's all just another page to me.
That's pretty much all I had to say.
Have a nice night, if you're in the Western hemisphere.
Good morning and good day to you overseas.
Sometimes even my mistakes have mistakes.
oops
There's been a fair amount of controversy over some of my work. By the time I put together Wax on the Altar and Cinnamon and Cyanide I had become desperate for recognition. I decided that the best way to draw attention to myself was to create shocking material. It worked. Everyone who read the compilations had a negative reaction, sometimes extremely negative reactions. It became notorious. I used those reactions to bring attention to my good stuff, and in that light it was successful.
People hate a lot of my writing. I get that. I will not, however, say I was wrong to write it. My life has been incredibly boring. The things I write about are nothing like my life. Words are just a big game to me. I can make simple words seem kinky, and kinky words seem normal. I can write fiction people would never suspect wasn't true, and non-fiction that nobody would ever believe. That's what I do. I am proud of it, because it is the greatest gift God gave me.
I'm not done writing new material, nor has hundreds of pages of old material ever been available for people to see. As long as I am able to, physically and mentally, then this is what I do. I love it. Anyone who doesn't understand what I do would do well to leave it alone. You won't change the words, you won't change the truth and you won't change me.
I'm just a little bit curious. I'm human, that's plain to see. I want to know everything. Someday won't that be? I write not because I'm furious. It's all just another page to me.
That's pretty much all I had to say.
Have a nice night, if you're in the Western hemisphere.
Good morning and good day to you overseas.
Sometimes even my mistakes have mistakes.
oops
Out of Time
I lost a lot of time changing my computer arrangement. I intended to post something from Roll Call of the Lesser Devils here, and something from Wax on the Altar at the adult content site. I failed. I did post the second poem of Wax though, Corpus Deperditus.
I'll probably finish that entire compilation before Roll Call. It doesn't take a lot of content to freak people out. I think it's like 20% of the size of Roll Call.
And now it's off to the world of responsibility.
I'll probably finish that entire compilation before Roll Call. It doesn't take a lot of content to freak people out. I think it's like 20% of the size of Roll Call.
And now it's off to the world of responsibility.
Poetry Restoration Project.
Notes on the short poems of Roll Call of the Lesser Devils:
Some people still think this is akin to a personal Wikipedia for me. I write this for my entertainment, and for the entertainment of whoever may read it. It's just something I enjoy.
- I studied Keats through an advanced English literature program before I got to college. I wasn't in love with his image or his poetry, but I was awestruck by his shorter works. Before that I equated the quality of writing to the quantity of work. I began experimenting with maximizing impact and minimizing the number of words used to do so. The experiment was something of a failure at the time. Instead of showcasing the power of word selection, in my opinion the poems came off as lackadaisical or the product of a short attention span. By the mid 90's, however, when I wanted max impact with few words the earlier experimentation helped me achieve that goal in a very big way.
- I wrote a large percentage of the short poetry of Roll Call while I was staying in the Pontalba in New Orleans. For those who do not know, the Pontalba are the oldest apartments in Louisiana. They overlook Jackson Square in the front, but go back a half block to the middle of the block they are located on. Inside each of the apartments of the Pontalba are private courtyards open to the air. The front has the famous wrought iron railings across large front porches, with French windows that open out onto them from the main sitting room. The rooms and quarters at the back are not as large. The servants' rooms are small, but the ohers are spacious and quite comfortable. The one I stayed in was furnished completely with antique French period pieces dating back to the period of the Pontalba's earliest days.
- I was there during the most horrific period of drug addiction I have ever subjectd myself to. In 1989 I was still doing crystal meth. I had discovered a source of real PG, which I constantly did with the meth. I was also taking LSD regularly, rolling on ecstasy whenever possible and smoking weed at all times, day and night. That was the spring when I stayed awake 7 days out of every 10. Thinking about it now causes me anxiety. It was horrible, what I did to myself.
- I wrote almost all of my short poetry in public. I spent night after night writing at Cafe du Monde, 100 yards from the apartment. I also wrote on the Riverwalk all day, many many times. Thousands of people stopped to read what I was writing.
- I was going insane on the inside, but the poetry just seemed to become more and more divinely inspired. That's what I think now. At the time I thought it was all garbage. I burned over 1000 pages because I was so twisted up inside.
- During the period in the Pontalba I was engaged to one of the most beautiful girls in the world. I never stopped loving her. My mind was messed up, but she could always find a way to reach me. She would take my hands in hers and get me to focus on her face, and then she would talk to me until I was okay again. I've never loved anyone in my life more completely. She used to go to The Crystal and Oz with me, and we would bring girls back to the apartment for sex. I never participated because I was in never never land, but I've never forgotten how incredibly hot it was. I miss her.
Some people still think this is akin to a personal Wikipedia for me. I write this for my entertainment, and for the entertainment of whoever may read it. It's just something I enjoy.
Roll Call of the Lesser Devils 106-110
106.
Behold your white plaster walls
They crumble
A breeze through your heart
Envelops softly
All grays washed away by waves of green
Living fields of emerald, chartreuse and kelly
Return, dispense gladness and cheer
And all who notice not
Make themselves unworthy of freedom,
The servants of the power
That keeps us all
Living poor between white plaster walls,
And guillotines in concert halls.
Turn back now
There's no place to go
And nary a beat from the metronome.
107.
Twilight flickered,
The autumn sky pressed down
Upon the earth,
Held dear treasures in place
In trunks fashioned from rosewood,
Filled with warm, red flowing thoughts,
Close to the heavens, closer still
To pent up joy in a longing heart.
The colors of the evening life
Cascade before appreciative eyes,
But offer no solace to the lonely ache.
The evening lights are all parlor tricks
I thought to my self,
Before suddenly I could see,
The deep soft brown of the soul behind your eyes.
The darkening sky holds treasures, dear,
Like casks of wine made from true emotions,
Captured, a state of illumination,
For the two are one,
And are always, you see,
For even I this comes to be
When the twilight
Flickering fades.
108.
Pleas
Speak to me often in innocent words
With light shining softly
Through your long, soft hair.
Speak to me long of the days without end
When we loved from the dawn
And loved harder by dusk.
Speak from your heart,
So dear to me,
For if cherished have I
Then cherished are thee.
Tell me quietly
In the dim light
Why it is that I live
(to love! to love!)
Hold me tightly
And don’t let me go
As the seconds tick by and by.
109.
Frame 97
I hear her voice calling to me
Across the sea of groping souls.
Her desperate plea for mercy,
Cages my heart
For I have none to give.
There is none in this life,
But she calls out for it
As if there were.
I feel her pain incessantly.
If only we could just
Be done with it.
110.
There is not much in the way of beauty
Nor tidings of gladness and joy
In the ailing world to which I was born,
In which I will die in the end,
But the wind and the rain make me happy
In ways that can not be expressed.
They are the rod and the staff that comfort me.
The elements dispel the memories
Of illness and sickening self defeat.
The wind makes me laugh
In a tone my friends fear and misunderstand
As my soul flies giddily away.
[Notes: I have a great deal of notes to go with these five short poems. I plan on posting those either late tonight or early tomorrow. I'm suffering from some sort of terrible sinus infection, which shrugged off one round of antibiotics as though they were placebos. And I still have to go to work, so this is going to be slightly delayed.]
Behold your white plaster walls
They crumble
A breeze through your heart
Envelops softly
All grays washed away by waves of green
Living fields of emerald, chartreuse and kelly
Return, dispense gladness and cheer
And all who notice not
Make themselves unworthy of freedom,
The servants of the power
That keeps us all
Living poor between white plaster walls,
And guillotines in concert halls.
Turn back now
There's no place to go
And nary a beat from the metronome.
107.
Twilight flickered,
The autumn sky pressed down
Upon the earth,
Held dear treasures in place
In trunks fashioned from rosewood,
Filled with warm, red flowing thoughts,
Close to the heavens, closer still
To pent up joy in a longing heart.
The colors of the evening life
Cascade before appreciative eyes,
But offer no solace to the lonely ache.
The evening lights are all parlor tricks
I thought to my self,
Before suddenly I could see,
The deep soft brown of the soul behind your eyes.
The darkening sky holds treasures, dear,
Like casks of wine made from true emotions,
Captured, a state of illumination,
For the two are one,
And are always, you see,
For even I this comes to be
When the twilight
Flickering fades.
108.
Pleas
Speak to me often in innocent words
With light shining softly
Through your long, soft hair.
Speak to me long of the days without end
When we loved from the dawn
And loved harder by dusk.
Speak from your heart,
So dear to me,
For if cherished have I
Then cherished are thee.
Tell me quietly
In the dim light
Why it is that I live
(to love! to love!)
Hold me tightly
And don’t let me go
As the seconds tick by and by.
109.
Frame 97
I hear her voice calling to me
Across the sea of groping souls.
Her desperate plea for mercy,
Cages my heart
For I have none to give.
There is none in this life,
But she calls out for it
As if there were.
I feel her pain incessantly.
If only we could just
Be done with it.
110.
There is not much in the way of beauty
Nor tidings of gladness and joy
In the ailing world to which I was born,
In which I will die in the end,
But the wind and the rain make me happy
In ways that can not be expressed.
They are the rod and the staff that comfort me.
The elements dispel the memories
Of illness and sickening self defeat.
The wind makes me laugh
In a tone my friends fear and misunderstand
As my soul flies giddily away.
[Notes: I have a great deal of notes to go with these five short poems. I plan on posting those either late tonight or early tomorrow. I'm suffering from some sort of terrible sinus infection, which shrugged off one round of antibiotics as though they were placebos. And I still have to go to work, so this is going to be slightly delayed.]
One of Our Guys
I found this on my morning news run. It's a video montage of photographs taken by one of our guys in Iraq.
The creator of the video had this to say:
Who exactly supports the troops? Some neoconservatives only want our guys to live if they have acceptable ideals. This is completely unacceptable. Whatever has happened in Iraq, whatever has happened here politically, that has nothing to do with our men in uniforms. These comments are below contempt. Karma's a bitch, and I see some negativity here.
The creator of the video had this to say:
I am a combat vet. Infantry. Iraq. I spent 16 months of my life over there, along with approximately 150 of the finest Americans I have had the pleasure to know. Prior to my return I created a little still montage of some photos of my experience, put it to music, and uploaded to youtube for the benefit of friends and family. Much like has been done thousands of times.Seems innocent enough, right? Below are some of the neoconservative responses he got on YouTube . Click on the image if it's too small for you to read. Blogger shrinks images.
Who exactly supports the troops? Some neoconservatives only want our guys to live if they have acceptable ideals. This is completely unacceptable. Whatever has happened in Iraq, whatever has happened here politically, that has nothing to do with our men in uniforms. These comments are below contempt. Karma's a bitch, and I see some negativity here.
Black
What sort of self important egomaniac sits around quipping about all of the incredible things they have done, how momentous their accomplishments have been, what great heights they have achieved? Simple children might at first be impressed, but even children and the illiterate can begin to recognize false pride. Falsity oozes out of braggadocio until it covers the speaker in a shit-like film that spreads stench for miles around. Truly to tell you that anything about my life has been momentous, incredible or important enough to make me better than you would be a lie. It isn't good to make your writing smell like shit. The problem that I have faced so many times is that I really know nothing other than what I have lived. It would be foolish of me to think that my personal experiences demand elevated description, that these experiences make the life of the average person seem small. The only way to avoid the trap of pomposity, then, must be to focus on the minutest of details of this, the most unimportant of lives. Somewhere meaning must have been hidden underneath the endless layers of pointlessness.
I think I might have some idea of what I want to say. Around the time it occurred to me I had thrown away the greatest opportunities of my life in favor of a good feeling I realized it was going to be infinitely harder to win back my self respect than it had been to burn it up. Maybe the only thing I will ever be able to teach anyone with talk about my own life will be that you are nothing if you lose sight of what you have been taught is right, and that once you are nothing it is a long way back home baby. I don't think I have returned yet. I don't think I will ever escape this trap I laid for myself. I am, and will always be, the most miniscule speck of dust beneath the heel of the society that didn't lose itself, that didn't wonder what its own name might be after getting into the good feeling far too deeply.
Listen to the fool who has seen the passage of great things given him out of his hand, traded for a wisp of smoke the wind all too eagerly yanked away, laughing. The ability to know who you are, what you are worth, that you are good, makes all the difference in the world. Never let a good time present itself as all important, because once you believe the lie you have traded your spirit and only pain will bring it back. Those who do not believe what I say can refer to these words as self important quipping, but know that in so doing you are really telling yourself you are too important to learn, to hear the pain in my voice. If you can't see the pain is real then you should give it a go, lose yourself in the big party, spend a few years under the influence, and then try to get out yourself. Then you'll know.
I don't know why I even think now that anyone will come after me and read the most important thing I have ever written. I don't know why I harbor some small shred of hope that these words will save some stupid teenager from the ceaseless nightmare I have seen, and which still wakes up inside me to take over my reality. When it wakes up the world turns black and there is only hurt. Maybe I hope because if I had not written this then there wouldn't be any hope at all of ever saving anyone. Maybe the hope isn't so wrong. Maybe this writing will do something positive. If I were to ever let go of that hope there would be only nothing, and I am a hardy fool who doesn't let the void consume him without a long fight.
I think I might have some idea of what I want to say. Around the time it occurred to me I had thrown away the greatest opportunities of my life in favor of a good feeling I realized it was going to be infinitely harder to win back my self respect than it had been to burn it up. Maybe the only thing I will ever be able to teach anyone with talk about my own life will be that you are nothing if you lose sight of what you have been taught is right, and that once you are nothing it is a long way back home baby. I don't think I have returned yet. I don't think I will ever escape this trap I laid for myself. I am, and will always be, the most miniscule speck of dust beneath the heel of the society that didn't lose itself, that didn't wonder what its own name might be after getting into the good feeling far too deeply.
Listen to the fool who has seen the passage of great things given him out of his hand, traded for a wisp of smoke the wind all too eagerly yanked away, laughing. The ability to know who you are, what you are worth, that you are good, makes all the difference in the world. Never let a good time present itself as all important, because once you believe the lie you have traded your spirit and only pain will bring it back. Those who do not believe what I say can refer to these words as self important quipping, but know that in so doing you are really telling yourself you are too important to learn, to hear the pain in my voice. If you can't see the pain is real then you should give it a go, lose yourself in the big party, spend a few years under the influence, and then try to get out yourself. Then you'll know.
I don't know why I even think now that anyone will come after me and read the most important thing I have ever written. I don't know why I harbor some small shred of hope that these words will save some stupid teenager from the ceaseless nightmare I have seen, and which still wakes up inside me to take over my reality. When it wakes up the world turns black and there is only hurt. Maybe I hope because if I had not written this then there wouldn't be any hope at all of ever saving anyone. Maybe the hope isn't so wrong. Maybe this writing will do something positive. If I were to ever let go of that hope there would be only nothing, and I am a hardy fool who doesn't let the void consume him without a long fight.
Worst Ever
[This was a dream transcription from a very bad year]
slow motion train crash
slow motion train crash
The faces of the gathered people seem to indicate they are experiencing pleasure. The assembly has been gathered for the purpose of playing music to the students. I was having some intense problems with my identity as I realized I was a minority in a place that much more closely resembled a communist society than a democratic one. I had turned to the woman next to me, someone I had known for some time, and told her that I had to get out of there. When she asked me why I told her it was because I was an illegal, and in my mind I was in Russia. In fact, that was true. I really wasn't in the United States anymore, I was in Russia, and I could clearly remember the boat trip I had taken to get there. The male across the table had no idea what I was talking about, and the woman seemed to think it was some sort of syntax problem, not a real problem. I felt as though I were reaching a crisis as the concert was about to begin. The concert hall was small, and I had begun to cry over the alien nature of the things around me. It was then the power came to me through my sorrow to say something. Everyone who could hear me crying was ignoring me. This was not the sort of thing that you were supposed to do at the concerts. The director of the concert, the person in charge, in fact was looking at me with a look of great disapproval. That was when I began to speak out. I said, "Round out." I could see that he could see that I was different and he was trying to stare me down, which I would not allow to happen because I was so unhappy with my new perception of the crowd around me. Even though I said that loud enough for the entire audience to hear (I had been crying much more quietly) no one would look at me. I could detect the irritation as it crossed over their faces. The director stared at me even more pointedly without pausing in his introduction of the pianist, so I simply mouthed my response to him. I knew he could see my lips saying "F*** you!" all too clearly. The grief was still pouring into my head from where I had no idea, I just knew that suddenly I was a stranger in a place where before I had been just like everyone else. I refused to be sucked back into the illusion of similarity. I thought about an ice skater trying to climb out of the water after she has fallen through thin ice, and the ice you try to climb on keeps breaking, as I reached out to the male across the table and began to shake him. I knew that this man had been my friend just minutes earlier, and for what reason he could not focus on me I did not know, but I wouldn't allow this to happen to me. I shook him until he could see me. The concert began across the room over my desperate attempts to wake up my friend. I could see the light in the back of his eyes as he began to see me, really see me, for the first time. It was then I began telling him we were going to have to get out. The woman next to me caught on to the reality a lot faster than he did, and she leaned over as I began whispering to both of them that we had to fight this school, we had to get out, we had to get out. An attendant came over to the booth we were supposed to watch the concert from and gave me the message that there was someone waiting for me outside. Immediately I knew that I should not get up and walk out, because that was the last time my "Russian" friends would ever see the Cuban "wet-back". I refused to stand up and leave. I began to get louder and louder as the attendant insisted more strongly. Finally I hit him, and the assembly was upon me. I could see the woman, who I knew that I must have loved, and my friend, fighting them before the crowd obscured my vision of them. From my pocket I pulled out a knife. I don't know where I got the forbidden object, or how, but I didn't care. I knew how to get my freedom at last. And then I was stabbing the students who were tearing at me and beating me. I must have hurt several of them critically because the armed guards came quickly. They must have seen that the students would not be able to take me. When the bullet entered my forehead I opened my eyes. I was on a beautiful sea, with an island nearby. The sun was shining and there was a trade wind blowing. The woman was next to me on the deck of the ship, and my friend appeared down closer to the keel. Opening her eyes she smiled at me and said, "That was easier than I ever thought it would be." Death had finally delivered us from the prison that we could not even see.
One Might Ask
Author's Note:
Uncharacteristic lines discovered and eradicated.
Roll Call of the Lesser Devils
102.
Bleeding tears and crying blood
My eyes awash with unpurged emotion
I am torn across the wasteland.
The wreckage of my life I see
shattered attempts at stability and peace
Thrown back in my face by the scorpion winds.
Standing out in the crowd
I see a regal lily.
Dare I seek solace from her?
Flashback to the last
The rose with the poison thorns
Soul deep slashes pumping out my life’s blood
Somehow even now I seek to clasp
The delicate flower to my breast
To accept the pain as well as the pleasure
For beauty in bleakness is to be cherished
Though sometimes it wounds one sorely.
[102 is dead to me. How many times can a teenager compare a woman to a flower? A lily? I couldn't come with something a little more complicated? Yeah, a woman is just like a flower because see, they're blossoming out of a plant that's rooted into soil. Exactly like a woman.
Moving on from that failure there's, you guessed it, another flower metaphor. This time it's about a girlfriend who dumped me. She's a rose because I got stuck by one of her thorns and bled. Aaaargh! That sure makes me out to be a wimp. The big man got stuck by the tiny flower and it hurt, bawww. Now that I'm grown up I want to go back in time and say: Put a fucking pair of gloves on, dumbass. You got dumped. Be a man."
There's at least two lines of the poem you could spread on crackers to make chesy finger foods for a New Year's Party. Bleeding tears and crying blood. Rage! What does that even mean? It's like I was auditioning to be a screenwriter for a terrible soap opera. "My darling, since I left you my hot coffee has been lukewarm, like the urines, except black, like the night and the stars that look down upon our forbidden love. Hold me, Rose, oh thorny, thorny Rose."
Besides that 102 is fine.]
103.
A Life In No Chapters
Another roiling cloud of thoughts
Passes through the air,
Slightly tinged with the taste of sea salt,
Passes the altar and no on cares,
flickering candles as it goes.
The altar of fading, forgetfulness
In a room nowhere in particular,
Off a hall with door after door,
Scents of somnambulism heavy in the air.
Before the altar
A young man sleeps
Prostrate before a vengeful god.
The room was small and dark and carved from rock
In every way his own,
A home to the horrors of time.
The tale of the titans is sad and long
Beside the rolling oceans it has been told
Again and again.
Night sets.
The gods still rise, and still they take away.
The misty sunshine closes in
The brightness burns like a crucifix
Somehow he could tell
Though he no longer could see
Out in the void there must be others.
One came to him,
Emotions snapped and ground
Thin ice under heavy treads,
Spoke as if the heavens had fallen
In the voice of an angel, soft musical tones.
The comfort seduced the man,
But then it passed away
Long ago
Before anyone could remember.
An epitaph to a small world
Passed away with everything simple
Out in the void there were others
With eyes like lasers,
Gazers, penetrate through
Charade of charades, the reality.
Forever clung to weariness form
Decay of structure
Tantamount to animus prime.
The man prayed for release in desperate words,
Prayers sent in vain to a god who hates prayers.
He woke up in an ocean of light.
Pulses of visions too bright to see,
Too important to ever forget,
Solar flares from a million transparent suns,
Cascading blips of color washed clean away,
Waves washed over his drowning form,
No perspective to latch onto,
No up or down or past or pain or life or wonder
Nor wonderful irony
And all he could do was let go
Just let it go and watch it wash away his own
Small sins, begotten in his own
Bathtub gin
Where once upon a time a man lived
Before the creature he became
Snatched happiness away
And left him to die
All alone.
The strange floating daydream of newborn morning
Swallowed him alive, atheist dreams and all.
The damp dew spewed forth a myriad of thoughts.
On that morning
He was sure there
Only nothing could be more pure.
His savior was garbed in white flowing robes
Cresting waves of thought bowed down to Her freely
For She was like the moon on a warm summer night
The stars were Her friends and lovers.
With a knife that symbolized truth
She purged his desires,
Snickety snackt click clack,
Cut out his disbelief with the blade.
When no more black ichor poured out
She filled him with a desire
A lust potion that allowed him only to love Her and life.
At least for a while he was happy
Though on a leash did She keep her young man.
At night he was let loose to play
Amid the warmth of closely pressed sheets,
In a bed made of clouds and pheromones
Perpetual wanton gluttony of pleasure
The main event, the only event,
The end and the beginning
The alpha and the omega
Yet somewhere people scoff at sex magick.
Even a blind man may see on occasion
Through a veil of deception and lies.
Somehow this man caught an inkling
A barest glimpse of the tiniest of truths.
When his mind finally listened to reason
He quite suddenly went mad.
He fell from the grace of his graceful goddess,
He fell from his heaven to earth,
Like a seven second virginal birth,
Like there was no law 'gainst heaven and hell
Or monsters at the gates,
It was simple, evolving, all at once
The dead man into life fell.
Through flashes of fever and delirium
Through altered mental states.
When at last the man woke up alone
Naked against a bleak backdrop
Shivering from the cold
He was baptized in uncaring
To the silent sound of a battle hymn
Written by the lords of the underverse
As some men have once had it called.
He had become both predator and prey,
No salvation, no damnation
Just hollow memories and the sounds of waves,
On that long forgotten shore.
His body had aged until nothing was left
But granite and his will turned to stone.
He had seen the horror
That one can not unsee,
The doom reserved for the seeker of Taboo,
The forbidden knowledge
That tears the soul from its home.
Before a simple altar
Of pine cones, sticks and shiny stones
He kneels in submission,
Hoping beyond hope to forget,
Not praying, not hoping,
Only empty, he wishes no more,
In a room that is dark, and small, and him.
The man, if that he could still be called,
Found the end of a long, painful life,
And there was nothing, no light, no more.
Like a toppled Titan
Chained in the darkness below
The sands and the mountains and the fields.
The wounds never healed,
But persisted into eternity.
Even in the greatest days
There was no goal, there was no god
There was nothing but fever and dreams.
In headlong flights through fancy and fiction
The man lost even his own identity,
And then, of course, there was nothing at all.
His life had occurred in no chapters.
104.
He had fought the good fight
On a hill amongst the multitudes
He held off the forces of evil
As they washed towards him.
The soldiers had become
A sea of blood and death.
They died in waves
Uncaring in their ignorance.
He had fought the good fight
Like a stone in harsh winds
In a desert of wilderness
He wasted away through no fault of his own
As the wind blew on.
And it blew through his heart
It chastised him in his solitude
Blew him away like dust in a storm.
Yet still he had fought the good fight.
105.
The Transit Station
Sitting quietly in the transit station
On a bench in the sickening throng
-People walk by him
Unknown to the masses
He stares like a hunter in a forest full of targets.
It is the stare of crimson ages past,
Gleaming on like an eagle’s eye
And the ignorant people just keep passing by.
Uncharacteristic lines discovered and eradicated.
Roll Call of the Lesser Devils
102.
Bleeding tears and crying blood
My eyes awash with unpurged emotion
I am torn across the wasteland.
The wreckage of my life I see
shattered attempts at stability and peace
Thrown back in my face by the scorpion winds.
Standing out in the crowd
I see a regal lily.
Dare I seek solace from her?
Flashback to the last
The rose with the poison thorns
Soul deep slashes pumping out my life’s blood
Somehow even now I seek to clasp
The delicate flower to my breast
To accept the pain as well as the pleasure
For beauty in bleakness is to be cherished
Though sometimes it wounds one sorely.
[102 is dead to me. How many times can a teenager compare a woman to a flower? A lily? I couldn't come with something a little more complicated? Yeah, a woman is just like a flower because see, they're blossoming out of a plant that's rooted into soil. Exactly like a woman.
Moving on from that failure there's, you guessed it, another flower metaphor. This time it's about a girlfriend who dumped me. She's a rose because I got stuck by one of her thorns and bled. Aaaargh! That sure makes me out to be a wimp. The big man got stuck by the tiny flower and it hurt, bawww. Now that I'm grown up I want to go back in time and say: Put a fucking pair of gloves on, dumbass. You got dumped. Be a man."
There's at least two lines of the poem you could spread on crackers to make chesy finger foods for a New Year's Party. Bleeding tears and crying blood. Rage! What does that even mean? It's like I was auditioning to be a screenwriter for a terrible soap opera. "My darling, since I left you my hot coffee has been lukewarm, like the urines, except black, like the night and the stars that look down upon our forbidden love. Hold me, Rose, oh thorny, thorny Rose."
Besides that 102 is fine.]
103.
A Life In No Chapters
Another roiling cloud of thoughts
Passes through the air,
Slightly tinged with the taste of sea salt,
Passes the altar and no on cares,
flickering candles as it goes.
The altar of fading, forgetfulness
In a room nowhere in particular,
Off a hall with door after door,
Scents of somnambulism heavy in the air.
Before the altar
A young man sleeps
Prostrate before a vengeful god.
The room was small and dark and carved from rock
In every way his own,
A home to the horrors of time.
The tale of the titans is sad and long
Beside the rolling oceans it has been told
Again and again.
Night sets.
The gods still rise, and still they take away.
The misty sunshine closes in
The brightness burns like a crucifix
Somehow he could tell
Though he no longer could see
Out in the void there must be others.
One came to him,
Emotions snapped and ground
Thin ice under heavy treads,
Spoke as if the heavens had fallen
In the voice of an angel, soft musical tones.
The comfort seduced the man,
But then it passed away
Long ago
Before anyone could remember.
An epitaph to a small world
Passed away with everything simple
Out in the void there were others
With eyes like lasers,
Gazers, penetrate through
Charade of charades, the reality.
Forever clung to weariness form
Decay of structure
Tantamount to animus prime.
The man prayed for release in desperate words,
Prayers sent in vain to a god who hates prayers.
He woke up in an ocean of light.
Pulses of visions too bright to see,
Too important to ever forget,
Solar flares from a million transparent suns,
Cascading blips of color washed clean away,
Waves washed over his drowning form,
No perspective to latch onto,
No up or down or past or pain or life or wonder
Nor wonderful irony
And all he could do was let go
Just let it go and watch it wash away his own
Small sins, begotten in his own
Bathtub gin
Where once upon a time a man lived
Before the creature he became
Snatched happiness away
And left him to die
All alone.
The strange floating daydream of newborn morning
Swallowed him alive, atheist dreams and all.
The damp dew spewed forth a myriad of thoughts.
On that morning
He was sure there
Only nothing could be more pure.
His savior was garbed in white flowing robes
Cresting waves of thought bowed down to Her freely
For She was like the moon on a warm summer night
The stars were Her friends and lovers.
With a knife that symbolized truth
She purged his desires,
Snickety snackt click clack,
Cut out his disbelief with the blade.
When no more black ichor poured out
She filled him with a desire
A lust potion that allowed him only to love Her and life.
At least for a while he was happy
Though on a leash did She keep her young man.
At night he was let loose to play
Amid the warmth of closely pressed sheets,
In a bed made of clouds and pheromones
Perpetual wanton gluttony of pleasure
The main event, the only event,
The end and the beginning
The alpha and the omega
Yet somewhere people scoff at sex magick.
Even a blind man may see on occasion
Through a veil of deception and lies.
Somehow this man caught an inkling
A barest glimpse of the tiniest of truths.
When his mind finally listened to reason
He quite suddenly went mad.
He fell from the grace of his graceful goddess,
He fell from his heaven to earth,
Like a seven second virginal birth,
Like there was no law 'gainst heaven and hell
Or monsters at the gates,
It was simple, evolving, all at once
The dead man into life fell.
Through flashes of fever and delirium
Through altered mental states.
When at last the man woke up alone
Naked against a bleak backdrop
Shivering from the cold
He was baptized in uncaring
To the silent sound of a battle hymn
Written by the lords of the underverse
As some men have once had it called.
He had become both predator and prey,
No salvation, no damnation
Just hollow memories and the sounds of waves,
On that long forgotten shore.
His body had aged until nothing was left
But granite and his will turned to stone.
He had seen the horror
That one can not unsee,
The doom reserved for the seeker of Taboo,
The forbidden knowledge
That tears the soul from its home.
Before a simple altar
Of pine cones, sticks and shiny stones
He kneels in submission,
Hoping beyond hope to forget,
Not praying, not hoping,
Only empty, he wishes no more,
In a room that is dark, and small, and him.
The man, if that he could still be called,
Found the end of a long, painful life,
And there was nothing, no light, no more.
Like a toppled Titan
Chained in the darkness below
The sands and the mountains and the fields.
The wounds never healed,
But persisted into eternity.
Even in the greatest days
There was no goal, there was no god
There was nothing but fever and dreams.
In headlong flights through fancy and fiction
The man lost even his own identity,
And then, of course, there was nothing at all.
His life had occurred in no chapters.
104.
He had fought the good fight
On a hill amongst the multitudes
He held off the forces of evil
As they washed towards him.
The soldiers had become
A sea of blood and death.
They died in waves
Uncaring in their ignorance.
He had fought the good fight
Like a stone in harsh winds
In a desert of wilderness
He wasted away through no fault of his own
As the wind blew on.
And it blew through his heart
It chastised him in his solitude
Blew him away like dust in a storm.
Yet still he had fought the good fight.
105.
The Transit Station
Sitting quietly in the transit station
On a bench in the sickening throng
-People walk by him
Unknown to the masses
He stares like a hunter in a forest full of targets.
It is the stare of crimson ages past,
Gleaming on like an eagle’s eye
And the ignorant people just keep passing by.
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