Laudanum

how can i afford the cure? 
the cure is my disease
how can i speak with words still pure? 
my doctor poisons me
yet will i laud
and make it
soft
the words of the wise
are plainly lost 

Written ca. 2011

Kerux

the angel called out to me
Recite! 
But I said, 
“what will I recite with these unclean lips? “

So the angel ripped my larynx
out of my throat
and set it on fire
until it burned to ashes

then I began to recite

ca. 2011

Hubris Geneseos

Kerouac, if i share your life
must i also share your death? 
the inherent conflict lies in striving
only to be laid to rest

it weaves itself like black golden thread
through our dreams before we were human
collectively we are so much less
so much more
and soon

then i was face to face 
with the limits of love and grace
and every word i said
echoed back at me in the silence of my own mind

there, no sorrow
there, no regret
there, only me
and yet
and yet…

the hubris of giving birth
is the prime mover of this universe
and bearing the light, if i consume
my body, my soul, inside this womb
and draw all men into myself
until i am a living, breathing, burning tomb

until reality is compounded and condensed in me
until i’m a light which cannot see 

ca. 2011

Fallen

so there really is no end to this
faded snapshots, fleeting bliss
all i’m left with is desire
this my hell, and that my fire

archer shot too high and far
borrowed moments from the stars
now my time is free for all
never fall free from the law

my muse a slave, i sold my rights
in one too many stolen nights
moth to flame for city lights
a god has fallen slain tonight 

ca. 2014

Dry Drunk

i was born
to a mother who always is
trying to destroy me

my father
left
long before
i was born
i can never seem to find
where he’s at

i’m so dry
such a dry, dry drunk
white knuckle sober

ca. 2011 – 2012

Cells

remember when you sat in asylum
and heard sounds from the other side
when i soothed you with that children’s song
high above the lamentation
up on the desert plain

remember when you sat among the violent
and heard through the haze
the passionate rhythm 
the voice always with you

remember when your eyes were opened
to sun-colored fields
and to fields of radiant souls
each one cut and multi-faceted
each one perfect in its own poverty

remember when you looked down from that hill
on the sparkling city-lights below
and the city was transformed
and lived and breathed
and ran through you like divine blood
like Zion itself, consumed in your holy communion

I run through your memories
christening them holy
I breathe into your crowded slum
until every rock, and the dung strewn on the dirt path
are all lovely
worthy of worship all along

remember the fury with which I destroyed you
when you paced, heart racing
in your jail cell
when I set my wolves on you

remember the endless, stretching months
that all seemed like years and years
when I unleashed my plague of locusts
into your scrambled brains
when you found no rest in sleep
and your flesh burned through the day
when I breathed fire and consumed your little house
and you stood there naked and aghast
in a mechanistic universe that hated you through and through
a starving animal, you cowered in fear
thirsty longing to find shelter from the sun

i run through my memories
latent and potent in every cell, every member
i remember 

ca. 2012

Begging for Bread

is it my age-old blasphemies
that keep you at arm’s length? 
screaming for life
begging for bread

i sit by the silence
wrapped in the shade
the glories of youthful dreams
beautifully fade

my name in lights
my name tonight
forgotten
if for a moment
if i could hold it tight

if i could only make love to my demise
open to skies
swim in your eyes
with the rest of the teeming sea
of humanity
lost 

ca. 2011

Gehinnom

On a world with no moon I pondered deeply on a starless night
Wondering what happened when the sun fell silent with the light
And yet the black sky told no story, no star-man seen with belt alight
Orion quiet as the darkness still, unthought, unformed

Not because of clouds or want of sight was my world formed in darkness
But because the sun had gone and was the only light
The nearest star was just too far, and so to me had never been
Like I must be to it as if it were I wasn’t born

All the light I knew this night was fire; fire was my own
Nothing out beyond myself had gave this fire or had shown
One sign of having helped me strike the tinder into flame
I didn’t even know it “fire”, knew it by no name

On a world with no moon, no stars, no clouds, no name
I forgot there was a sun
but it was all the same

Hexakosioihexakontahexaphobia

i insist on suffocating slowly
still
i refuse to die
imposing my will to weakness
avoiding applying the “why”

implications are closing in, oppressive
my mind is open, fluid
suggestive
interposing meaning and form with
the spoken and written letter

the light source filtered through all this
wreckage
the squeaking moving in, oppressive
regressive, the way my vantage remains
a disjointed unit-whole

you persist, and i suffocate quickly
you ask so nicely for me to die
deposing my God damned will to power
why do i seem to avoid the “apply”?

THE SYMBOL ON MY HAND IS BURNING

into the flesh, and back out from inside
illuminates Prison, a chasm, a prism
dividing a spectrum of impossible light

we wholly refract the soma, the psyche
The Panic transforms into beauty inane
compulsion, obsession, redemption, addiction
we know we’re alive
we perpetuate pain

ca. 2006

nameless

worlds within
and without are all waning
insatiable
chaos
vacuum
the void
which sat between heavens
heavens splitting the waters
the waters, the weeds
create living geometries

etch-a-sketch drawings
of silent mandalas

now the dreamweaver
lotus
now the lucid unwaking ones
who appear at your bedside
disdaining your closet

while you lie
awake
sleeping
hypnogogically paralyzed
their eyes burning green
freeze your skies
red
as

Christ
comes

you
trapped in misogamy
you
flying through tattered air
you
stoned off this oxygen
burned by the stare
of a mirror 

ca. 2006