065: Little sun / Runic

I roam the outskirts of the living world,

with postcards of the petulant and vile,

on subway walls and empty roads,

settled behind by fragile snow.

My fat moon, in the belly of the night,

I slowly sleepwalk below granite skies

and flicker forever to flame for the sunroof,

vested to the sun that blinks through the vortex.

It shoots photon arrows to shatter the ice,

shy nuclear heart, brighter with every revolution,

a trace of wings, brings comfort from the spirit

and ever so often, a savior's sword.

And in the wake of its leave, gradients of ash,

crowds chatter, like grinding, in foreign tongues,

clouds of doubt fester and shower the fear

that maybe the hands of light are just lips of a ghost.

Circus pet struggling 'round the axis of null,

sun in my head, blood loss bleeds into the golden path.

I will wait at the gates of dawn all the while

tucked away, the runes sleep in the darkness.

064: Conclusion

Gallery of mummies,

murdered parts of self,

wrote in red, the clouded life,

as exposures drag the head,

the earth drank the blood

that seeped between

the cobblestones.

In our mausoleum,

honey shrouds the corpse,

the hurting words

and the loss

of what was never there.

Absent angel,

present the echo,

in the concrete world,

pitch black solid;

I answer to -

find myself

in blank days,

terror in the night,

hold back

the rose of anger,

nude skin stripped

of denial.

Sun flare whipped,

when they speak,

every word,

the knife described,

parchment the mouth,

throwing stones

to build the cathedral

Cold dark hides,

restoration in the distant,

cupboards of my heart,

the spiders' racket;

you may feel

a little sting.

063: Teethgrinding in Heaven

A miniature coffin laid down,

without a sound

from the stonefaced crowd

steering 'round the cenotaph.

More woman than child

and less child than that

weathered avatar.

Where undirected tides go,

beneath a hungry moon,

from a soil dewed in tears,

flowers bloom of rot

in delightful creation.

Imperfect angel descent

from the stars gazing back,

we come together

and I shudder to think

I'd choke on a mouthful

of your innocence.

Human dirt still tastes sweet,

like the growing pains

of a world suspended

in the instant of our lives.

An alchemical balance frame,

which way do we go from here,

maybe the rising will tell.

Purge.

Repeat.

062: Atlas

Paint your love red on the walls of my abode,

so the thin marrow may outgrow the bone;

I've lived so long in the shadow of the sky,

my wings tucked deep beneath dead skin,

waiting for one that fits my loneliness

to kindle the rush in my innards of rust.

Chained dearly to the mountain on my back,

made in the shape of every writhing thought,

I'm building an exquisite silhouette

for you to match, but I was always there -

self-portrait of pain, ease in distant deserts,

still kicking ego on the frozen slab.

Discard all judgement when the nails go through

and I'll find you shying inside my serpent clothes.

061: Distraction

A sequel, predictable,

rug pulled by things

of so little consequence,

no news, just symptoms.

Ravel ironic, stationed in wait,

on the way to somewhere, a surface truth,

central among distant beauty -

razors the eye, shakes the bowels,

as buzzards land around the neck.

Perhaps I have no right,

just walking on the shore, in line,

but furthest away,

shielded by night.

Uncomfort reaped, a bestowed memento,

cutis contained, to cast a shadow

and give birth to nothing

but words and shades

of deep monochrome,

to a logic dire, beyond Champollion's reach.

Natured/nurtured, readily lost,

thought clouded, to strip naked in the wind,

could the ink used to write the guidelines

be drying still.

060: Death and the Antiquaries

Island within

a scattered archipelago,

low tides still expose you,

winds erode

and waves grind,

while a random snapshot

mimics serenity.

Leaden beams

carrying the wounded,

so fascinating

from afar,

the reduced bodies

of the once mighty,

a fleeting relief,

away from the fall.

The bridge behind your back,

only floods will reveal

its final pulse

and its absence will mirror

the screaming void.

Time is no friend

in the echoing caves

of this freakshow,

so I hoped blindly,

come spring anew,

they would clone me

using DNA from littered

cigarette butts.

059: Trip to the treehouse

Eggshells rise and roll

the crowded dining hall

and fingers freeze pointing away;

on the jungle's rim, a foxhole,

leak through the pipe

and sandbox the mirage,

with a twitch of fear,

between sudden trenches

of the outside.

Freed to the vasts of self,

still quaked back in Cretan mirrors,

intimacy - desert well,

nurtured by the mute fading,

then dive it for a moment

to the berserk sound of life;

and before leaving here,

dust the patchwork

seeking a lifeline

all undividing.

058: Sleep of the ants

Gasp self, formed by matter against absence,

calloused knuckles and radio songs intimate,

forcing the outside world in,

figures deluge beyond the Cartesian.

This here is condemned,

run-down house atop a restless tomb,

wherein the blind tornado sleepwalks,

cradled by the deepest roots,

lonely seeded from Adam's skull.

Step in, needle cushion, collection of comedowns,

polar north spells only nowhere,

the dead, never dead enough to bring out,

when the tremors of raging weakness

keep them awake through the sanguine dawn.

Crutched eyelids howl to fall,

but thoughts, twitching, carry on,

as ego bursts and blasts in anti-Zen,

a display nurtured to extract cheers and tears.

Always lost in stargaze from knee-dug glens of salt,

with nerves exposed to autumn's gnaw;

just let lie motionless.

057: Names

On the static shore

of a remote lagoon,

I had dinners in the dark

with the moon up high

and an empty plate

for those who live in starfields.

Distance, relative

when trapped in a cage of echoes,

wandering the streets

of the city of unbuilt houses;

still the silver screen whispers

in icepick tongues,

diminutive and demonic,

shards squatting

the path of imbalance,

while I kept replaying

sequences of near joy,

lodged in secret graves.

I stretched my mind's limbs

to touch the sun's mantle

from the bottom of the pit,

starving and solitary,

in kinship of the king,

with a mouthful of lead.

This war, ongoing and unanswered,

cruel yet incumbent,

never released me

into the freedom of wolves,

but taught me I'll never breathe

the air of heaven.

056: Other end of the world

City shapes go on,

omnidirectional,

through the smell of plastic

and sweat

and a billion whispers.

See cardboard rows

flashing -

blind paparazzi;

electricity purrs,

lightbulbs mimic stars,

behind a corner,

a butterfly flaps its wings

in a glass box

and the line that divides

draws a blood equator.

The outside

isn't that pretty

seen through a hole in concrete,

through a pink eye

and an evil word,

- like a periscope

from a sane bubble,

refusing to collapse

back to thought.

Shaking paralyzed,

detuned,

almost bloodless

and up with the blues;

the arms that hold heaven

will reach tomorrow,

but tonight,

nowhere isn't far enough.

055: Haiku

Append missing time

to a blemished résumé -

hell is a mirror.

[Written long ago, slightly altered.]

054: Cave into me

Cave into me from the flowing blackness

behind subway windows, reflective of desire,

when the eye is lashed - dream trap ecstatic,

when I make up new geometries,

you're the golden ratio to my arch of dust.

Will you let me go, let me jump off the chaise,

run away with the driver, frail wings careless,

let me bloom into the egg shell man

I was meant to be, a poison seed

engulfed in turbid amnios.

We'll birdwatch and trainspot the apocalypse,

tired with a passion on Monday mornings,

a sordid mind's springs unwind so weary,

till we grow old and boring

and the universe puts us to sleep.

053: The spill

From barrens to deserts,

partaking clockwork migrations,

bacilli of a tectonic world that crumbles slowly,

back to the frozen sweat of the void.

Black hole heavy logs

intersect at right angles,

where my mind falters and my skin knows not,

rabid titans' tug of war,

the phantom of order scared by destiny's scythe.

Fugitive patterns, dismantled by the wind,

wrote the story of a new dawn

on a cold prison wall,

lavishly eroded by the nails of left hands.

A sole beacon, in the distance,

a man's seductive blind rage,

spilled and scattered

to the heart rhythm of carrion calls.

I hang on dark clouds, disseminated

at the crossroads of free fall trajectories,

scribing a single word

on antique rotting bricks

from the ruin of a golden promise;

I'll espouse dusted bones in my flea bed,

upon a mattress of tentacles,

intertwined fingers - starving grubs,

shaping what used to be a perfect body,

long before the illusion faded.

052: Untitled

Electronics

ring the wake.

Methods to the chaos,

ideation in red,

beneath the ground,

sexual,

like Mishima's Mustang.

The people.

The noise.

Inhale deeply,

to the end of the earth;

crawl

across nails and needles.

Storms,

gentle violence.

Heart of the world,

the word,

hanging, descending;

let it land.

Heroes of isolation

crowd together,

pallbearing

the last sweeter self.

Never was I

more alive.

051: Februarie jalnic

The day the sentient beast discerns

the polar desert of its loneliness,

the day volcanoes of revolutions erupt

in the obsidian silence of love,

drugged for an everlasting presence

attainable like the surface of the sun,

lost in treasure maps to the grail of the high

that makes all the lows seem breadcrumbs in a trail

in the obsessional ravines of pale concrete

and seasonal affective crucifixions,

raging, frothing, spitting, pineal bathed in venom,

straining the unlengthy chain.

A day, a trip through empty glacier halls,

where footsteps count the years

along meanders decaying gently like snowfall,

observe - the colors of the rainbow are all black,

divine symphony played on chords of leaflike lives,

trying to break the code of an error syntax.

The day today is every yesterday and every tomorrow,

serpent godfather at the head of the table,

his own tail on a silver platter as main course,

all the while Cronus keeps gnawing on his children,

building a shrine of strength on pearly bones,

a bleak February in the microscope of solar winds,

today is just another day.

050: Lines in empty spaces

I see the world whirl by

in the glow of lonely streetlights,

tallying seconds in swarms of smoke,

stretched along plastic firmaments,

until a bright consummate day

will blow wide the windows

of my solitude cocoon.

The breeze hints of her footsteps,

as I revel in the barren distances of crowds;

come visit, image traced in sullen red,

from an electric alcove -

shielding meager ties,

while I remember years of eternities,

countdown to an apocalypse of sleep,

the gray comfort of being a master

of a cold, nothing night,

seconds tallied in swarms of smoke

and the glow of lonely streetlights

in which the world whirls by.

049: Spring in Luzon

With a contorted mouth agape,

frothing sermons for seconds past

and myriad mistakes

that congregate in whirlpools of shame,

I'd feel the pain of a tiny, endless world

dissipating in a structured void

of silent, hydrogenic granite.

Away, pustulate words

that never healed betrayals,

raked bone chapel, mine,

in a splatter of rearranged

gaunt icons of the holy,

a haunting of perfect ghosts

in self inflicted lacerations.

My friends of misery would stand tall,

proud like lead crosses,

as I'd absorb the nails to atone

for feasts of skin and milk,

to every place solid or dreamed.

I'd picture trading blood for comfort cold

to solve the riddle of war,

for love becomes the word of flame,

of throbbing membrane

in godly, infernal delight;

but the spirit whispers forgiveness,

seeping through the seams

of walls built of question marks.

For fire and water to be wed or gone,

perhaps as life requires pain,

freedom demands a little death.

048: Together

I still see him sometimes

in splinters of volcanic glass,

standing on my right shoulder;

and sometimes I fall back

to visit the empty rooms

where he used to hide and play,

now, animated only

by a desert wind

blowing memories.

Our blood, our tears fading,

melting into the night,

clawing at the walls

of a perfect nothing;

and if my heart was heaven,

I'd build you new flesh,

brighter than pulsing stars,

and if my heart was hell,

you'd rise to steal the sorrow

from humans' brow.

As you were fire,

I will be ice;

and as you were the word,

I'll be the teeth,

as I disowned, so I do miss.

Together in the estrangement

of concrete confines,

and the tenderness

of untamed flowers,

in frailty and power,

we'll remain the same, eternally.