The King of Awful Things

All nine legions underneath my command,
made of staunch men from a lion's glen,
with their eyes afire and hands abrand,
tiered the valley for their final stand.

In the cold expanse of December night,
which Luna kept and while others slept,
and behind their faces painted white,
they waged their last and final fight.

The blood spilt and flowed until dawn,
and I, the king, made of awful things,
praised the first and last feline pawn,
and told them the world had finally gone.

Mount Repose

Here I am
crushed beneath
the mountain of my sleep
sitting softly
level on the fence
balancing my repose
as I am
crushed beneath
the mountain of my sleep
sliding fluidly
dancing with the stars
balancing my repose
and I am
crushed beneath
the mountain of my sleep
where I dream in keys
and numbers and footprints
and echoes and sand
and sun beneath
the mountain of my sleep.

in full bloom

to the west
is a settled lonely
blooming Sour Cherry tree,
the dark-red morello
will ripen soon.

to the east
is the Great Caspian
where Stenka Razin,
the sea rebel,
made his glorious raid.

these two directions
are the same.

The Wading King

We slipped through transient terrain
across the ethereal and the arcane,
leaving beneath us white waking trail
and floating on the sway of cattails.
A kingfisher met us upon the harbor
with foundations laid of fall arbor
of the Venetician lagoon fertile,
stretching from Brenta to the Sile.
We paced ourselves through the dunes
descending further into the lagoon,
stopping only upon arrival of a heron,
wading king, a brackish marsh baron.
The acqua alta was soon on the rise
as twilight hours birthed glowflies,
between Chioggia and the Torcello
we sank with eelgrass and Othello.

People Never Change

Weary of all these bottomless days
we replete away into the nights
in our glutted drink and our haze
longing for sights and better days.

We press into the twilight hour
sinking deeper in a selfish rut
letting our inner sloth devour
to stumble and strut in the hour.

Draining open bottles and lit ends
to shake away the day's routine
we slink in lasting, decaying amend
embedded in genes here until the end.

Weary of all these bottomless days
we replete away into the nights
in our glutted drink and our haze
longing for sights and better days.

Love long since faded, habit remains,
and dreams die to the daily grind
where nothing is finished or attained
and only rind and procedure remain.

Tomorrow will only ever be the same,
hope only fades away into the mange,
but in the end, so does the pain,
no one changes, we are all the same.

Weary of all these bottomless days
we replete away into the nights
in our glutted drink and our haze
longing for sights and better days.

The Reason

On the day
that I realize
I can no longer
up and leave
with no goodbye
no parting words
no final say
because
I am held here
attached to something
restrained to this town
is the day
that I no longer
have a reason
to stay.

Dóm

We pour sand into wine glasses and engulf your throat in fire
to make reflective mirrors for etchings of our lost words,
to bring about our law, our judgment, our hour,
to set into motion all that should have been in your stead.
We break falsehoods and untrue claims by sham prophets
and stand sure in conviction and the redemption
as we smash through the muddled mass who smile and grin
to their final, gasping breaths of life on this world.
We beat the wretch, condemn the whore, batter the betrayer,
and laugh our final laugh when they are left wondering why,
despite their arrogance, in defiance of their apathy,
and undeterred by the weight of their crowns of sand.
We pour sand into wine glasses and toast to the Great End
to make looking glasses for a fleeting image of vanity
and everything absolute that you took for granted
or ignored in spite of every single whisper I spoke to you.
This is your day of everlasting judgment. This is your doom.

in a waking life.

in a waking life
you see the sun set and
you rise in the early hours
to hapless moments
measured only in clock-ins
and coffee breaks and
empty smiles from co-workers
with four kids,
lemon cars,
and two mortgages,
and cats that eat table scraps, and
none of them know why they persist.

in a solemn vow
to climb up and make
your way out of here
you instinctively make a house
and home and root yourself with iron
chains to this town.

you work your way to the top,
reminiscence about the good ol' days,
take out student loans,
date a few pretty girls,
and hunker down to a homely place
and buy yourself a nice, little house
in the good side of town
where you can have a few years
of marriage, and then maybe
some children of your own
that will go to your childhood school,
become a part of the PTA
and bitch about taxes,
and what they're teaching your kids,
and who's running for president,
and why your boss won't give you a raise,
and what your ex got in the divorce.

and in a waking life
you see your son set in
motion everything you never
wanted for yourself
but couldn't ever prevent.

Hullabaloo

Through these thickly glossed
and glazed over eyes
is a veneer that is all too adept
to judge sound from unsound,
to which the latter is usually musical,
I see here and there that the daft and dotty,
and the never-in-a-hurry-to-fall-in-line,
the moonstruck and split porcelain children
are all mad hatters without their hats.
Yet if, for a moment, we are considering insanity
and it is measured in medium, then would a loony bin,
in moderate terms of per capita, of course,
and still customary, be as a whole utterly sane?
This is just food for thought for the starving sick.

Bedlam in the Asylum

When you go to pieces each night, every morning
leaving me little chance for any hope of warning,
you crumble and decay, and blame it all on me,
and find that anxiety prevents your own mourning.

When the granules dissolve from your fingertips
and decomposition sets in on crushed lipstick,
you circle old streets with cracked concrete
until the dying sun leaves you in an eclipse.

When you go to pieces each night, every morning
leaving me little hope for any chance of warning,
you collapse and decay, and blame it all on me,
and find that disquiet prevents natural mourning.

When discord wraps your throat and tightens down,
when lies flood your mouth with a plan to drown,
when you lay in bed with the bedlam in your head,
I'll be waiting here for you to die in this town.

When I go to pieces every single, sodden night
leaving me the only chance for feeling delight,
when I tumble and stray, I find peace within me,
and the final moments before I black-out...I'm alright.

The Magnate Mandate

The unaccountable, the sheepish,
the chargeable and the doomed,
none which come
of the conscience-stricken,
can sleep ever-so soundly in the night
as that of the weight of a crown.
The wretch that does sleep,
is tempered and cut
for ever-so founding of a muse.
In lethargy and dispassion
there is passion.
Believe me when I say,
a king is all these things.

The Waltz of the Lush

We sand our skulls and put our tongues to the grindstone
and dance on graves in early hours, because
in the pit of our shallow husk
we know that every morning is one step closer
to the night when some fucking prick
will get hammered with his friends and dance on ours.
'Til then, I'll keep dancing.

Ghost Land

I can see what you have closed your eyes to.
This town is a ghost land. Souls wanting life again.
At night you rest your empty minds full of broken dreams.
I won't play any part in this plot to pretend.
The summer breeze breathes past memories
that this mind has yet to let me lose.
Anamnesis of a thesis of ties to this town
and all the imagined that they had implied.
But the recognition has long since faded from my eyes.
And before I know it, a quarter of a century is gone.
There is truly only one motive constant to emote,
that tomorrow I will surely still feel the same.
This town is not Eden, and I won't settle for anything less.

Here and there I see a flicker, and catch a glimpse.
That almost abandoned rage begins to surge anew,
and I grasp the need of smashing something dear,
breaking the sincere, uprooting and fleeing here.
This town is not Eden, and I see it's nowhere near.

If what I now know was then known, I would have walked away.
I frightened those too afraid to think their own,
worried those who could not go without, and pushed away
every thought of thoughtless care of a non-contender.
I wrought the dark, and kept to and crept in corners
and slept in a candid town of the spirited dead.
The lamp posts spark and ignite the city lights
and engulf the road so that my way becomes clear.
Spectres walk the city streets hand in hand.
This town is a ghost land. It has no life left to live.
This town is not Eden, and I won't settle for anything less.

Red Carpet Massacre

The red carpet is a view to a kill
of thrills and spills at the awards,
one gigantic movie star dart board,
on my headphones I hear Duran Duran,
and inside my head I hatch a plan,
I know what'll make this interesting:
a bit of automatic lead protesting,
pumping round for round through the air
aimed at actresses with bleached hair,
the millionaires, the Prince of Bel Air,
pop stars, teen idols, I go homicidal,
the hip-hoppers and Hollister shoppers,
using teeney-boppers as bullet stoppers,
the TV reporters, the Disney supporters,
it's family-friendly televised homicide
and all brutally broadcasted worldwide,
a happy massacre on the blood red trail,
a carpet that leads straight down to Hell.

"Dance into the fire."

O, Arcturo

O, Once Great Arcturo,
take us under your existence,
All August Arcturo,
we hark a hound of distance,
and sleep 'neath split verses.

O, Unremembered Arcturo,
take us into the dead expanse,
Our Atrocious Arcturo,
let us mutter a spark advance
and come alive to intersperse.

Of our kind offerings
we become all consuming hate,
Of a righteous offering
we become a fury to uncreate
that we shall carriage down.

Of tempting offerings
a cosmos pas' time to expire,
Of dreamt other things,
this macrocosm of feeding fire
tho' we shall spark to drown.

O, Unremembered Arcturo,
take us into the dead expanse,
Our Atrocious Arcturo,
let us mutter a spark advance
and come alive to intersperse.

O, Once Great Arcturo,
take us under your existence,
All August Arcturo,
we hark a hound of distance,
and sleep 'neath split verses.

Brisk Motions

We teem with brisk motions and fill
full to the brim of null notions
that pull or kill any sense at all
to recall missed emotions now dull.

We deem those undoing with a doubt
and a curse in spite very necessary
to a cause about to take the night
from worse men that we might bury.

We seem to stand still in assurance
and a word could kill unless banned
in the third world that we assure you
can dance for less reason than you do.

We teem with brisk motions and fill
full to the brim of null notions
that pull or kill any sense at all
to recall missed emotions now dull.

The Source (revised)

Slipping dread and awe and undoing
each thought, each measure reviewing
until the placement of your doubt
slips and leaves you with no way out,
fallacy and fright plague the present
until you condone time not well spent,
until envy and disease become words
and anyone, anything else preferred,
silence, then, takes its own course
and you decide to destroy the source,
an action defined and lacking virtue,
but then, that was always you...
wasn't it?

You cut down man with your tongue
by justifying facts others have sung,
you slip a speak never harsh to break,
but a force of habit is now at stake,
you open wide letting loose the tide
to cause a rift to ensure we divide
and walk ways away without a word
which was always what you preferred,
silence and satisfaction, no remorse,
and you decide to destroy the source,
an action defined and lacking virtue,
but then, that was always you...
wasn't it?

That was always you...
wasn't it?

Halfway between Alaska and oblivion

I see the sea as a blanket field of red ruby and blue sapphire armies, oceans of men that consume each other. The entire view sky rests within your eyes, and your hands conduct only an empty stage. Pass the toast of wine and pour into the streets. You are the conductor because you built a house on sand and set this ship in motion. Keep asking all the wrong questions. No one lied to you more than yourself. This city is on the brink, delaying its time before it sinks beneath the dark and the murk of decay. Now the hand connects to the heart halfway between Alaska and oblivion and there is no longer any accountability in this city. You kept all of the promises you never made. If this ship ran ashore, we would never even notice. We are too busy calculating the wind and mapping the currents and raising the sails and being overcautious and overzealous for calm waters and too damn stubborn to smash though the hull. None of this will matter or make a difference if we never hoist the anchor holding us here. We are just dead weight in sunset in Salt City. It is time we take drastic action. Let's be dramatic. Let's engage mutiny. Let's jump ship.


Or, let's clock in. Let's do lunch. Let's forget I said anything…
halfway between Alaska and oblivion.

Walkaway

I open doors decorated in stained-glass windows and brass finish;
stone archways over hallways that always meet in the middle;
walkways that last only as long as the center allows them to be.
I open doors that are never locked and never have a reason to be,
and I walk hallways that always end but never meet at stained-glass windows.

The Map

Passed down through the days,
the map was now far beyond
moth-eaten
and archaic.

You creased it closed
with folds
instead,
and it caused
some of the smaller roads
to disappear beneath the lines.

Those were the ones
you chose to travel,
when I wasn't looking,
because you knew
I could never follow.

And maybe that was
even the reason
why you folded
instead.

Scrawl

Each scrawled line I write
is my testament and descent
into these darker shades of red.

I could contest the fact
or accept the truth,
but nothing will bring me peace.

A third solution
would be my reparation
with your pretty, little head
mounted on my wall.

But that's just wishful thinking,
I suppose.

Time (III)

I can see
that you're still doing just fine,
or so you think to yourself,
which may be a crime.
And as the cycle approaches nine,
all that's left is time.
I can see
you still color inside the lines,
and you still take time
for others' lives. Just not mine.
Not last time, not this time.
No, never mine.
But that's not a crime.
Just out of place

and out of line.

No Virtuoso

Sometimes
I just sit
and ponder
in absolute
amazement
at how completely
fucking
brilliant
I really am.
But every time,
after several minutes
and without fail,
I begin to realize
that I am actually
quite moderate.
I remember that
I am no virtuoso
and that you
half-baked sows
are all just
out to lunch.
Very
fucking
out to lunch.

Letter Y

Two years I've held my breath, with two times the effort you put forth. Two words and you walked away. So breathe, because today's the day that I make you pay. I've written it all down for you, so you'll see it coming. But regardless, you'll never escape your unbecoming. I will end you here today. Today's the day you have last words to say, since you'll never see tomorrow anyway. Today's the day. Two years I've held my breath, with two times the effort you ever gave. Today's the day I finally exhale and dig you a shallow grave. And to be perfectly honest, it no longer matters why. Hush, my dear, please don't cry. It's just that today's the day you die. Today I give you two goodbyes, one for each year, and one more goodbye for each you're not here. I'll never see your face on other faces, or remember us ever going places. I'll make every little detail untrue. I'll never remember you. Today's the day. Today's the day I leave you instead. Two more minutes and you'll be dead. Today's the day, after all you said, that I leave you for fucking dead. Hush, my dear, please don't cry. Say goodbye, because today you die.

Letter X

There's no more Seattle, so the rain comes here instead. No hope for tomorrow, and none for today. And there's no more Seattle because you only lied when you said there's hope for tomorrow, and hope for today. In a past now forgotten, you had drawn a visage of villainy in your kin. It grew like a sickness and spread. In a past never begot, yet foregone, a nightmare of memories once been had birthed a persuasion in my head. Now we've grown tired, withered and old. You've grown weary of vindictive remarks, and I can't escape my staggering failure. Now I've grown tired, bitter and cold, and so frustrated since we never embarked that my dreams implode without closure. So many years ago, when we were young, you had self-centered, selfish suggestions and petty, little plans all from the start. So many years ago, it should have stayed undone, and my dear two years, there's no question, ruin began to grow in your gold brick heart. Now there's no more Seattle, so the rain comes here instead, no hope for tomorrow, and none for today. And there's no more Seattle because you only lied when you said there's hope for tomorrow, and hope for today.