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The Monster
Growing up from deep inside
The Monster’s eating me alive.
It shatters all that I hold dear;
The very food on which It thrives.
Darker than the blood It feeds on,
Blacker than the devil’s throne
The Great Deceiver; Great Destroyer
Takes that which is not Its own.
Deeper than the ocean’s bottom
Roots clench tight around my soul
They drag me down, down, down,
Into this abysmal hole.
Who will come and slay the Beast?
Who will my brave hero be?
Who will save me from this Monster?
Who will save me…from me?
The blood-stained clothes
Which once were white
Tell tales of wondrous sacrifice.
The Monster slain by One so pure
That shadows flee His glorious Light.
Consider me a bard, Master of verse and rhyme.
A teller of tells, minstrel for ancient time.
Long ago in forgotten lore, stories there appear to be.
Tales of might, magic, and men. Dragons and unseen seas.
Hast thou heard of ancient kings, perchance of angelic knights?
Maybe of devilish deeds, or lurking day-weary even frights?
Perhaps of myths, mountainous trolls... or the sirens in the sea?
Arthur at round, white lights or yggdrasil of broken leaves?
The trickster in the den, plotting upon the fisherman,
Or the wing-beaked lion that rides the elder wind?
The pained skull that brought forth a god,
The ragnarok doom or the one of lightning facade?
The one weak of heel, yet strong as the day is long,
And the one who engaged him, losing, yet fighting on?
Many more true, Stories abound all around.
You simply have to look and find what wants to be found.
Do you care to look? To seek one of lifes endless joys?
Or will you stand solo, and look out across the void?
Beyond the Darkness
Beyond the darkness there is light
So I hope and so I pray that one day
I’ll truly believe something other than that truth;
that undeniable pain this world wishes me to remember
through wrenching torture, through these chains that bind.
Love is such a lie
and men are meant to die
as easily as they came.
We are candles, our spirits are the flame,
and the wisp of smoke that dissipates when
Fate ends the fire is nothing more than a reminder
of our failures.
My heart beats for no one but myself.
I live for no one but myself.
There is nothing wrong with this, the world says.
This is how it is; this is it how it always will be; this is how it always has been
there is nothing beyond the darkness, foolish boy,
and if there was, you would have already seen it.
Bitterness eats away at the hearts of men
and I think one day it will eat mine.
Sorrow scars the good fellows and
makes them soft no more, “Experience” is the word.
The experience of the coldness of the world
which turns the heart to stone.
May I never see such a day,
as I see these sleepless nights.
May I never stop to question all my hopes and prayers
which bring peace to me and gives me light.
My candle burns, and the wax melts.
Such are the facts of life, and the candle that burns the hottest
of savage, selfish dreams fulfilled is the quickest to it’s wake.
Is love a lie? Perhaps, and indeed it may probably be.
Are we alone? I know I’m not, and so I do believe.
Truth can be attacked and prodded and opinion sieged
but belief in one’s heart and soul and belief in that which reigns above;
that is a sanctuary of the holiest reprieve
for those such as I, who do their best and seek a journey to their rest.
Those who seek a light within the cavernous region of the world,
who see that which is unseen within their hearts and souls,
and minds burdened with the same sinful desire as all of their breed.
Perhaps we are all the same.
Perhaps we see no light, because we are that light we seek.
Perhaps that greater power which we believe exists
with all our confidence has always been there right behind us,
keeping our flames alive.
For there is no light to be seen in the darkness,
when you are the light.
Virginia (I Miss You)
Days warmed by the Southern sun
After lunch, finished eating buttery, salty corn on the cob
Not too full to run and dance, laughing
In the emerald green fields, dotted with dandelions and
Encrusted with dry dirt, cracked underneath our footsteps
Last one to the old pine tree was the loser
Lying in the shadows of the eternally green
Elbows covered with dust, hair matted over sweaty, bright faces.
Creeks and brooks trickled
Endlessly, leading into the new and unexplored
Clear water reflected our smiles, yellow globs stuck between teeth
In the thick cover of branches and moss, the
Lost sounds of crickets and sparrows lead us back.
When the sun set, we held hands
Only after darkness set, to avoid their stares and snickers
Night sky above us, a heavy, sleepy head on my shoulder,
Greasy fingers slipping in between each other.
I stole this poem
I bought some plums today
I’ll eat them tomorrow after I freeze them overnight.
Nothing interests me, my lonely solitude enjoyed
most nights is gone.
The store is mighty full,
families abound; some baby hiding in the cherries
while his mother is testing melons for firmness.
I reach back for the ice cream,
I touched the freezer and it burned me.
Because I could not stop,
the cart kindly stopped for me.
Paying is such sweet sorrow.
One Starry Morning
January 6, 2006
I awoke one starry morning with dreams
Still dancing upon my eyes, and gentle
Music drifting above my tired ears;
But my heart mourned - for I recalled the scene:
A party, in a castle of artful
Design, beneath a dim, emerald sky,
Rolling softly o'er a faraway sphere.
And round the mirth -- my friends, with cups agleam --
The nitid face of a woman regal
Leaned to my blushing lips from her veneer --
With closed eyes, I met her caressing stride.
And soon, the reverie was forsaken,
As deep wondermerment and concern drew nigh --
For would I, with Alisa, kiss again?
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The Wall Between the Bed and the Kitchen
01/7/2006
It was somewhere around page ninety-two.
The day started out with her knifing an empty jar
of who cares what
and who cares how the light came through six slats and flayed the bedsheet.
All you need to know is that she is the twisting helix
in my polysaccharine stomach;
I am the white flag she waves,
the one used to dab the corners of her mouth,
to dab the soiree fiancé from her chin.
Page ninety-three.
The radiator whirrs beside the bed. Neither beautiful nor caustic, but
in any case, it slowly sputters the story.
I sling low in the sheets and wonder if I can stay here forever.
Be nothing beautiful, nothing caustic. Forever.
To never tell the story.
Be the wall between the bed and the kitchen.
In writing, the technique I am using is called diegesis. But this,
this is fucking mimesis.
This is me imagining a ruby stud melting into lava in the light,
and it drips as a tear;
this is me imagining a blue sparrow fluttering at her waist, but--
but more like drowning;
this is me imagining her origami hair floating on a river current.
This her hand running down my spiral-bound spine.
In film, a shot/countershot puts two people face to face though they are separated.
This is her in the bar, flirting with whoever she wants. This is him with his penis inside a tight, young Russian girl. Shot/countershot.
This is Mother Mary and the beads of her Rosary. This is the hand that moves over them one by one.
This is conjuring ghosts with photos. This is a turning page.
Page ninety-four.
This is her in the kitchen, knifing an empty jar. This is me in the bed.
You never see the wall between us. Shot/countershot.
This is me bracing for syntax and saying:
All is lost
to the wall between me and the kitchen.
Open letter to Earth
Yesterday I saw a bearded man who stood
atop an empty milk crate on Fifth Street.
He read to the SUVS and shopping girls
that wandered past the floral shop nearby
out of a book missing pages and words
and having a whole orange planet on the cover
right down to the frivolous lines of latitude
and longitude that you might expect to spell
“It’s Okay!” or something else ambiguous.
There was also one knock-out of a brunette
who watched me pass from across the street;
she cradled a moist bouquet of orange tulips
that drooped slightly as I drew further away.
I wrote a letter with ink and parchment
last night.
Dear Mr. Bukowski:
Give my regards to Black Sparrow Press
for The Last Night of the Earth Poems—
this may not be the chiming of Beethoven’s Ninth,
but if it were, this is how I’d like it to go:
your book resting open in one arm
and this girl, naked as Eve, in the other.
Reflection after a gravesite service
The trump of the insensitive,
we blow once every so
often but usually not on
purpose;
its silver note over the concourse flow,
and our lives like the audience
in a great gilded hall.
Mostly we're too busy for the shi-
-ning tone
to penetrate our weary minds at all,
but some quiet young man alone
with ears just too soft and
a heart that just can't seem to bear that
shrill sound;
we wring our hands and cry: we should have known.
We should have known, and now we stand
beside him stiff and prone
and otherwise quietly trembling
or loud
with sorrow when we touch his frozen hand.
Six feet can do no justice here.
This bright mirror broken
and the falling snow days after while
I think:
A darkening end to a bitter year.
