Eponym

Are we the embodiment–conflicted fictive eponym
Of amorism, tainted–like a monolith for martyrdom
Scandalizing passion with our profligated fashion
Disassociating servitude from actual attraction

Are we the antithesis–the artificial flavoring
Of catalogue compliance–like iconoclastic bravery
Subterfuge for living with superfluous misgivings
In redundant disapproval our dissident divisions

(forgive me for being away so long. I have been quite sick lately and I promise to make time to visit my blogs more now that I am in recovery mode)

Drinking Arsenic Like Medicine

Ladies and gentlemen
Let me present you with a
Perfect new precedent
For acting like an idiot
Here in this very room
Over in the corner sits
The hero of our story, or
Should I say the idiot

Some people simply have
No shred of common sense in them
Would you believe that he is
Something like an idiom
A metaphor or simile
For oblivious naivety
A character for study if
You can stand the scenery

Let us have a toast to his
Odious achievements. He
Had the best of health before
Showing up this evening
Staggering in agony
Begging for the Tylenol
Was poured a glass of arsenic
And presently imbibed it all

The moral of the story
Oh, ever-present audience
Is: when you have an ailment
Never look for medicine
It’s safer on your own and
You are better off with loneliness
Than asking for assistance
And ending up with arsenic

Well-Behaved But Faintly Desperate

Sensory like Armageddon
Bended nerves and thin expressions
Thrown across this weary canvas
Lent to give a false impression
Spent to keep the censors guessing

Biding time for convalescence
Hidden lines and long confessions
Packed within these casual glances
Locked behind our fragile essence
Well-behaved but faintly desperate

The Tedious Business of Conforming

These kids today require far too much attention
They want to think all on their own
These stranger shapes will call for radical dimensions
It seems that something should be done

What will they do if we allow them to continue
What kind of chaos will they cause
We’ve got these molds that they just are not fitting into
They ought to look a bit like us

These kids today create a tedious disruption
So many wrinkles we must iron
We’ve not approved the parts they use in their construction
We have some diagrams to burn

What will we do if they continue alterations
How will the future world survive
We have the clues and all the blueprints for perfection
We just can’t seem to stay alive…

Shards

It’s not right is it?
A train wreck, rain check face with half-paid smiles and fever red lips
Pasted over a last chance resolve that never made it out of bed when the digits dropped
It’s days like this
When badly photocopied eyes
Which couldn’t afford the full color prints
Take up space on that billboard
Days like this
When angel laced asphalt screams obscenities from wheel-worn poverty and the collective reply of the masses is “suck it up
Everybody hurts”
And I ask myself
How it is that we manage such mayhem
Tucked in pinstripes and patted down with disposable lint rollers
To fill a world so desperate for everything else with the one thing we have in abundance
Rejection
Percentage-wise, we’ve never been a willing lot of responsible users
For all our talk, we salvage less and suffer more than skin can show through tight black fishnets on distant side streets
Only to look ourselves in the mirror
With badly photocopied eyes
Lie
And return again
But underneath our ink and recycled paper
We are dying for some color
Just a life less ordinary
In a disposable population
With reusable souls
That do not need to be told
“you look good today”
We need to be held
We need to be picked up off the sidewalk
And, with the shards of our broken mirrors
Shred these simple sub-standard pie charts
And drive the razor edge into our veins until we bleed the deepest shade of candy apple red onto this monotone mess
All the dreams
All the dreams flowing out into a Pollock mind blaze of a stain big enough to wash away days like today
Until eyes speak like Pluto in exile, saying “we will not go quietly”
And the shards of our broken mirrors become tools of redemption
Cutting through hollow point media masquerades and idealistic beauty
Slicing these badly photocopied eyes off rain-washed billboards
Until shards of our broken mirrors become weapons
Our Constantine sign of rebel beauty
Our anthem of being more than a mass of flesh and social statistics
Rebirthed carving out a new generation
Unwilling to dwindle quietly behind conventional wisdom cooked up by cultural bias
And the shards of our broken mirrors
Will become the passkey to a new beauty
A new breed that bleeds bright eyed dreams into our empty streets
With shards sharpened like knives against the skin of what we have been
To shed those faded yesterdays
And set us free
To be tomorrow

Zombies Among You

Swing to the creak of the hinges
You people are sick in your succulent tombs
Stagger the slope from the ditches
Awake to moribund glow of the moon
Menacing only in figure
But lifeless expressions betray who we were
Balefully drifting disfigured
A ghost of the passions that struggle to stir
Some bear the marks of the broken
Poor shattered hearts all awry in our chest
Others wear feelings unspoken
Sentiments drowned and for all unconfessed
Stalking our “innocent” victims
All pressed and nicely tucked into their beds
Clambering free of our coffins
We are the shadows that trouble your heads
Stake us or break us with sleeping
But we will arise on the darkest of nights
Coming like zombies among you
Here to remind you of things you let die

Dancer Down

Oh there she goes
We’ve seen this song and dance before
Too many rounds
And now she’s bleeding on the ballroom floor
Pay her no mind
Pay her no mind
She does this all the time
Try not to stare
But don’t feel bad
She does this all the time

And when the crowd closes in
The music–oh the sweat and angst
She lost her footing yet again
Trying to move at a different pace
Dancer down dancer down
Dear mr. DJ keep the beat
The pandemonium resumes
Don’t stop the band just play on

You tore your dress
Silk has a tendency to catch
On sharper edges
Chiffon and lace don’t ever last
Pay her no mind
Pay her no mind
She only wants attention
Just step around
And keep in line
She only wants attention

The floor is cold on the face
The angle much more riveting
What people hide up their dress
Adds a sense of danger to the scene
Dancer down dancer down
Let the doorman lend assistance
The pandemonium resumes
Don’t stop the dance just play on

Dear, did you shatter
Your last glass slipper
Did the clock strike
The end of the day
Did you think they
Would want another diva
Nobody hears you crying
When the music playing

Untasted

A bitter drought has gripped your reign
Bring forth the women and their spawn
Pray to your Gods if they can hear
Our jaded kind to carry on
The trusted vintages are dry
The teaming rivers turned to dust
Sun scorched the bones beneath the sky
Will you return to dine with us

We are the fruit
The ones untasted
All your silences are wasted

We are the wine
The finer spirits
As you cry too loud to hear us

We are the sustenance and pleasure
As you suffer at your leasure

We are the future to replace you
But our flavors are untasted

Distant Relation

Dive
Dive
Shake
Strike through the heart
Shatter the veil and proceed
Miniature
Lives on vast ocean
Scattered amidst the world they believe
Branches
Asphalt and pine
Twisted together
Acres of lights
Parcels of heather
Tiny, like the circuits
In some massive machine
Blinking at me
Winking at me?
Somewhere within
Life
Death
Love
Sex
Fear
Pain
Hunger
Curiosity
Just like me
Fused
In some distant relation
Though some may doubt
Which situation
Spawned us all
Still all we are
Is bound
From here to the beyond
Fast flowing
Breakneck
Bloodstream enemy; alias; ally
That is I
Or we are us
Untouched, perhaps
But yet touched
Inside
And here
Now
Is that not validation
Indeed
We are relation

The Hammer

Hear the ringing
Of a tiny golden hammer
On the steel back of a blade

How the confident and vivid echoes roll
As it strikes away at seconds in my soul

Every swing sends
Little shivers up my spine
For the name he carves is mine

Such a tedious affair to tell a tale
But I know those words and numbers very well

And the feeling
It’s the finitude of living
On the knife edge of a fate

Waiting patiently
In the wings of staying busy
For the last remaining date

While the hammer keeps it pace
In an absent sort of pulse
A rehearsal for the day
They will lay me in the dust
And the words will be my name
With the story of my time
Written deep within the stone
All the things that I have done

And the hammer keeps it’s pace
Such an unfamiliar friend
Like a harbinger of grace
For a swiftness of our end
All the words will be our own
And the story we have made
Written deep within the stone
All the things that we have done

Captain

In wood engraved before the bow
Consider life before you board
This is the threshold if you dare
But if you fear then turn around

This vessel fragile though it seems
Has weathered travels into hell
No safety here is guaranteed
But you may pass below the beams

Uncharted waters as a course
Into the storm the captain points
The bow our weapon in the storm
In search of strange and distant shores

Against the elements we brave
And take our rest on troubled sea
Beyond the curfew of the light
Into the mist our bearings laid

By mended sail and stern resolve
We strike for capturing the dawn
Above the barriers we ride
Escorted on by ancient calls

So cast away if you desire
A place aboard this beaten craft
But stay for hesitance or care
While safe ashore you can retire

The captain has no will to turn
Nor sway for danger if it shows
The currents take us where they will
And we may never then return

In wood engraved before the bow
Consider life before you board
This is the threshold if you dare
But if you fear then turn around

Vow Of Silence

If all the world would take a vow of silence
If all the mouths were stopped for just a day
If we could trade some stillness for our violence
And give a better thought to what we say
If all the world would hold their tongue a moment
If all the curses faded out in pause
If all the politicians and their rantings
Would take a second place to inner laws
I think it would be nice to pass unspeaking
And tilt a hat or smile as we greet
To listening to the birds in meditation
perhaps a day of quiet would be sweet
It seems to me that all the noise of language
And all the words we form will never do
To prove the truth of what we show in actions
To say, by way of living, “I love you”

To See, As Do The Birds

To see, as do the birds
I think perhaps would teach the world
To have a distance better witnessed from the air

To see, as from above
I think perhaps a view would give
To lend perspective on the lives in which we share

To see, as do the birds
I think perhaps would change the earth
And bring horizons undiscovered down below

To see, as do the birds
I think perhaps reveals in turn
A new perspective of the land we say we know

To see, as do the birds
I think provides a broader scope
With new solutions from a wider range of field

To see, as do the birds
I think could foster verdant hope
To rich expanses from the common man concealed

To see, as do the birds
When they ascend above the noise
To carve a respite on the gentle rising breeze

To see, as do the birds
I think perhaps can be our choice
To, with our minds, take flight in ways that make us free

Fashion And Fatalities

You wear your skin convincingly
As if it’s where you want to be
But I can see, oh, I can see
And nothing here is fooling me

You wear your smile so finely peeled
As if it’s how you really feel
But I can see, oh, I can see
And nothing here is fooling me

You wear that dress so confident
As to impress with elegance
But I can see uncertainty
And nothing here is fooling me

You wear your Jewelry like a charm
As if it keeps you safe and warm
But I can see you’re disbelief
And nothing here is fooling me

I don’t intend to condescend
As if I don’t know how you feel
I can see, oh, I can see
Because you look a lot like me

I wear my heart out on my sleeve
As if that’s where it’s meant to be
And we can leave, oh, we can leave
Because none of them are fooling me

Extinct

I’ve seen the shiny little eyes
Staring out from under covers
In the shadows where they hide
Giggling quietly together
Little children of our past
Little places we remember
All the questions we once asked
Have we banished to the corners

Are we killing off the magic
On the inside
Are we killing off the children
With their eyes wide
Are we trading in the wonder
For the good life
Are we giving up the hunger
For the sake of having comfort

When the children are extinct
Our imaginations muted
And the eyes no longer see
Will the reasons be important
We were born with bigger hearts
And our heads still undeveloped
Don’t forget the other part
Please don’t ever let them sell it
There is nothing to replace
All the things that can’t be purchased
There’s a small familiar face
Waiting just below the surface
Every child will grow to be
Just a child in bigger skin
Do not sacrifice your dreams
Let the children live within

Enclosure

Interred in juggernaut walls
Rifted as it were from form well fit
By cause or catastrophe untold
Folded for wilting
Petals lain in tired heaps about this enclosure
Swept up in figure crumpled slumped and sunken in efforts spent
To rend mortar from brick to crack sick structured severance
Laced in loosely laid arguments
Spun for movements yet untaken
In desperation resolve forsaken
Trapped
But not apparent
These exits hid for time when waking reason sheds inhibition
When sense and sensitivity are molded first for what cannot be seen
Which here now resides
Bent in shadow
Drawn for eyes of brighter respect
Whose lenses cleansed again repent the disbelief in trade for what is made
Gentle fingers to trace the contour of this devil’s grave
In truth to discover the clever architect of such cruel monuments
Could not a tyrant be
If indeed as tyrants go a hand external this would mean
Entombed in grave remorse or faded course
For drunken charting in love’s throes
A figure fair and sovereign did fashion such a cavern
If not by reason
Then by lack of will to look beyond a cold unforgiving frame
To name an enemy unseen a thing of dreams or even more a ghost
But ghosts do not here dwell
And ghosts
Though present nonetheless
Do not the dwelling of the living form
Nor lay the bricks
A holding pen
If that is what it is that you are in
May rise but ‘neath the guide of only one
The one in which resides this mortar
This brick
This mob of walls from which is not a certain door
And so laid
Crumpled on the floor
A figure bathed in cascaded darkness all it’s own
To wrap in rags from sorrow sewn
A thing of beauty
A thing of bright elements infused
Of such a race that angels envy for their loves
Disfigured in despair by air oppressed and rent of rest
And yet…
Free
If by choosing she will be
Uncluttered by restraint to paint a stroke of brilliant light
Across a night in need of such
For out the darkness
Blushes paths untaken
Words unspoken
Exits formed of threads being woven by hands which built
Perhaps unknowing
This dim and dreamless dark enclosure
To unravel walls well fabricated
But not from necessity here created
A farce are they
By motion shattered with ease
Poor creature you are not caged
You are not clipped as birds with wings
You are not held within these
As always you are liberated
And have been since when first created
Birthed unclothed and unashamed
Untold untrained and untamed
To build grander things than tombs in which to cower from a world of tombs
A world of rooms
A world of flowers wilted in walls built
By hands not meant for such doom
By eyes fused with colors unreflected without others
Arise to face these juggernaut walls
And find them weak
Made to fall
Spend those finely sculpted hands on other tasks of greater chance and higher call
Lit from a fist thrown firm beneath the tired chest of these apparitions
Move and live and love
And in so doing be the destroyer
Of your saddened heart’s enclosure

24,901

Twenty four thousand miles
The circle of this sphere
Surely somewhere there’s a place for me

Twenty four thousand miles
And anywhere but here
I don’t know where I would rather be

But I would like to belong
And I would like to be home

Twenty four thousand miles
Across this speck of dust
Floating in an endless open space

Twenty four thousand miles
The distance between us
I want to set the galaxies ablaze

And I just want to belong
And I just want to be home

I want to tear apart the sky
Rip the colors from the leaves
Burn the atmosphere to static

If we could light it all on fire
Maybe then I could believe
We could rise up from the ashes

I can’t feel anything at all
But I feel nothing very well
Someone wake me when it’s over

I’ll either choose to sleep it off
Or I will blow us all to hell
I guess I’ll go back to the covers

But I just want to belong
And I just want to be home

Strings And Things

Fragile, the nature of us, being fashioned
Of flesh or of bone or of both being fastened
And woven together, though temporal being
Through course unexplained and, by force, no one seeing

To conquer, to hunger, to draw ever closer
Impeccable faults like impossible lovers
Unwinding by fate, perhaps, choice being loosened
In turn we are chosen; in pain we are proven

In wearing, like garments, we serve out our purpose
Till death do us part or calamities hurt us
Too easily severed, too short in our lasting
We die without answers and live without asking

Yet in our existing, though brief and unstable
In seeking we dream to be, if we are able
Intwined with another by strings or such things
As God in his love and the meaning it brings

Tale Of A Mute Bird

Stuck down and crushed to the concrete
A feint sound obscured by the glass
Left now deceived by his instincts
To fade out in silence at last

I held you in my hand
I thought I heard your final song
Whispered into the wind
But it was gone and you were gone

Slow breath is stuttering gently
Tired head tilted away
Eyes glazed and giving the sense we
Are too late too late to save

I held you in my hand
I thought I heard your final song
Whispered into the wind
But it was gone and you were gone

What does it take to silence the songbirds
Only lies and clean surprises
What does it take to stop the music
Only things that we see right through

What does it take to break the will of
Something so free and beautiful
How can you brace for what you cannot see

I held you in my hand
I thought I heard your dying song
Whispered into the wind
But it was gone and you were gone

Children Of God

God are we children of your charity
Are we in your grace
God are we broken in divinity
Have we gone astray
God are we messengers of better things
Are we in the way
God are we fragments of your sovereignty
What have we to say
God are we victims of depravity
Are we really good
God have we spoken from sincerity
Do we have your word
God are we children of the reconciled
Are we as you thought
God are we driven by humanity
Are we on our own
God are we children of a higher king
Can we rise above
God are we soldiers for a purer cause
Do we fight for love