Rituals.

The Kings and Queens gathered around the lake, the Bloody Lake. Trees lurched to the waters’ edge to dip in the tips of their roots. Their spring blossoms painted red where once they had been white. The hunters from the forest, the Wolf, the Puma, dipped their muzzles in, their once-white teeth now gleaming red. The Hawk and the Eagle dipped low from the sky and scrapped their talons along the surface. The Wheat in the field swayed with the bitter tempting song that echoed in the wind. And along the bloody lake I sat and dreamed of better things.

Three Fires: Torch A picture of the sun hangs in my window, setting the room on fire My bed is bursting into flames I am burning My skin turns black and leaves lines when I run my hands through my hair From the tip to the heel, I can feel the fire swell and grow I hold my muscles taunt and wait to spring into action My heart races The blood pounds beneath my crispy skin The breath dies in my chest and I exhale smoke and ash Through the haze of heat, the world shimmers and shifts around me I am out of my place and will be burned at the stake There is so much at stake Run Run from the fire Run from the flames Run But my voice has died in my throat and I exhale smoke and ash The flesh burns away The organs cook I whither to ash and cannot move Three Fires: Forest When sorrow breaks like waves the time has come to end it A tree of bright white wood stands gleaming on the hill The sun sets behind it and lights it on fire The grass burns away leaves the ground covered in ash A white sky, as

I don’t live in a dream I live in a land forgotten Once, the words poured from me like water Always in a straight line Sometimes silly and awkward But a straight line Now the words pour like a curled ribbon twisting around like a stick with one end My mind drifts and sways on breezes like kites When I try to hold it still, the world seems to shake instead and I wonder if I will ever be able to go back to what I once was I look through my mind like memories and I try to grab hold But they are still water and slip through my grasp I want to wield the words like bricks and build a great building that everyone will want to see I made this choice, you see, once long ago, and I cannot bear to think that it was wrong I still do love it so But I cannot get my mind to stay And I rhyme to words forgotten I look back with confusion like the words of someone else I cannot remember how I got them But I can see them in my head But they do not glow like they used to Once the words poured from me like

There is a heavy howling in the air A muted glare I seem drawn to these people The tidal forces of Newton’s gravity They’re not the people I want They’re not the people they seem But inevitably they are But maybe it’s my paranoia Built in me since birth A faulty sixth sense It cannot seem wholly accurate It seems impossible to think that it could always be true That I could always be right But who am I to determine When I ask, I think they lie When I don’t, I think they will The paranoia in me Where eaves are ears And I catch what I drop They know that I am standing there So it’s a mere fraction of the mass Hysteria But assuredly, I am insured For riots Plastic shields control what I regret to unleash The peaceful demonstration The silent protest Who is shamed by what I’ve failed to do? And now Months after I have begun this undertaking It is all brand new Windex on the window of my mind And sometimes I can see the footprints of where I’ve been And sometimes, like this time I cannot se

The pleasant whistle of war As I surge across the line The mud tries to steal my feet and the rain beats against my helmet I carry a gun I surge across the line The ground around me explodes in fire and mortar Barb wire trembles in the thunderous roar and reaches for a man to hold The back of my mind is screaming Telling me to run, flee, run, flee The training tells me to run So I run with fear and purpose mixing into a single stream of thought I surge across the line In the madness and gray and dust and smoke I seek an enemy I find a man and whip my rifle to his head I shoot him when he’s down The dirt beside me pings I drop to the ground I look for a target and take a shot I survive He does not I jump to my feet I surge across the line When the day is done I slump in a ditch I close my eyes and dream of far away places But all I see explodes in madness Gray, and dust and smoke A man asks me if we won I do not know so I give no answer Darkness settles Where gray turns to black The ord

Seated on her throne, she is a dark queen Shadows splayed behind her in a semblance of blood, cloth Her eyes have scanned the stars for the signs of her salvation But it will not come in time She is her only hope The warrior inside her wakes A cruel creation of the vital fluids She has bathed in it since she was a child A sword in her hand A spear A blade Tendons cut like meat Bones broken with pale white chips Flung to the heavens The hearts that ceased to bleed She’d hoped that he would come He could have saved her enemy His way with words, he could have swayed them But he has not come And she cannot wait So her fate is sealed She will wipe them from the earth And the others will kill her for it “I am betrayed by those who say they are friends And should I defend myself, I will not only be turned away I shall be turned against” But she will not yield The warrior inside her makes her stand The shadows pull with her A dark, dark cloak But it gives her some comfort This reflection of th

I sleep on a bed of flowers They are gray and suit me well I sleep and dream for hours They are real and waking up is hell I took a chance on the medicated dance Now I’ve gone and lost my partner I took a pill to break my will Now I’ve fallen even harder I have too much time to think But my thoughts don’t stay together I have flesh that will rot and stink But my head will stay forever Oh woe, oh woe, will carry me Oh woe, oh woe, why can’t they see Horror, horror, lurks behind my eyes Horror, horror

~~~~~~~ Words, words, like candy Like bins of gummy bears and licorice whips Like Saturday morning rainbows on the kitchen floor, claimed with a bare foot Like when the floor is lava Words, when a pen is a sword in your hand and you write like daggers When the letters spiral and carry When they leave a trail of blood Words, words like magic ~~~~~~~ My thoughts are rain They pour, but can only fall so far ~~~~~~~ Horror In the mirror Horror Reflected in the screen Horror Sometimes I catch a glimpse of such Horror ~~~~~~~ If poems are flowers Then I am a hummingbird I jump, I stray, I cannot stay. ~~~~~~~ This is an oppressive cloud Of dirt and age Of trash and rolls of fat Where turkey tetrazzini sings and my body is on fire ~~~~~~~ The castle gleamed with white stone walls Laughter and music rang through the halls and voices were like angels They spoke my name I found myself there, in dark corners And the voices pulled me free Some with potions, some with magic They worked together lik

Tell me. Give me my reaction Tell me. Am I to feel ashamed? Am I to stay broken? Am I to cower in the corner of my bedroom and feel your presence hover over me? Tell me. Because I do not know if I am to feel these things. I want to feel screaming, wild joy. Not the touch of your hands. I want to feel exaltation at the dawn of each day. Not a chain around my wrist. I want to see the world wake into shimmering light, with a sunrise of peach and cream and carmine. Not disbelief in the faces. Not you walking past my house as though you live down the street. Not, not, and not. But I do. Chains and yokes and stocks. A noose. A strangling hand. The thrust of a knife. Tell me. Is this forever? Am I always-broken? Never-mended? I will find a voice in the darkness you’ve given me. I will adjust my eyes to this inky night. I will find fireflies and stars and moonbeams to light my thorn-path You have beaten me with my memories But I’ve still the chance to win You’ve beaten me and beaten me and mad

Paper, paper to make the words I worry about. To grow them in snow and shape them in a blacksmith’s fire. They shall be stars, these words, and set among the heavens for the world to read. That darkened cloak, that dazzling sheen, wide enough for the world to see. And there among the thousand, the millions, staring at the sky, a hand will go up, a hand or two or three. Piercing voices, like glass, like crystalline bells. A chime becomes a choir. They, voices will say, they know, they feel and the sweetest note will ring out “I understand.” And that voice shall be our brother. The wilds will become the zoo. Every species will mingle with their own. Separate to keep the diseases contained. But being for the benefit of friendship, there will be casual Friday, when all can run amuck.

Pleasantly picture days without pills Days without pills don’t disappear in a dash Imagine instead ingesting only infantile amounts Now picture a beach where the sand goes miles, that pleasant light tan and occasional sparkles. Waves that lap, waves that kiss and caress those miles of beaches The sun’s shining high with fluffy white clouds. The water is rolling, dark, dark blue. It teases you once, when you test a foot or a toe. “Too cold too cold.” You splash as you go. The joke has worked once and is now put away. The waves will embrace you and pull you to sea. Relax and lean back on inner tube or raft. Reach and lean back, fixing shades over your eyes, checking sunscreen and your position to land Relax and Drift. Let the sway beneath you wrap you in a blanket.

Grass is growing on my window ledge In this hollow, I feel hollow My words echo and thunder back at me I speak in shallow breaths as if running out of air I wait for my head to rung out through a cutting silence My world is void of music and reels Yet I dream in song Yet my head is in tune Yet void and black and bleak and filled with mirth and laughter and friends The world has faded to this spot like a tortoise in its shell I speak in secret to never-deaf ears Always there, I could not see them The pain is hard to reach, the words have flown, and yet the ache: I miss it That heart within me The coal is growing diamond in me Torture, Torture!, tortured artist. You wrote of pain You felt the pain And now its absence pains you Your hand is broke, yet freedom has not come (ask the words) you hear the whisper The grass is growing on my window ledge I hear it, in the space between lines In the cold, here in the cold Can you, can you, in the cold? My spine creaks like wood My ears burn, blee

From the house departed we enter a dark wood Bow slung over shoulder, read the signs in the grass Bear has been here and the fox and the wolf We feel no urge to hunt them today Today we seek the spirits; we search for their den “Over the hill,” cry the trees, “over the hill.” They speak of places beyond our reach but still, we will go Over the hill, over the hill Calves burn, thighs ache, muscle and bone pushed to the limit Over the hill, over the hill We give all we have to push and pull our way over the steep, steep ground Here the fox sees us, on the side of the hill, and runs over to greet us “Brother Hunter, Brother Hunter,” he says, “You give no chase?” “Is our coat not sleek enough? Why do you not hunt?” Today we seek the spirits. Today we climb the hill. “Climb? Can you not run? Can you not dash? Why do you labor here? The spirits await.” We will come. But we must go our own way. The thorns will scrape. The undergrowth will cling. We cannot run. We cannot dash. We are Man. We m

If eyes were silence, I would live in them Pools of Black and Murk Drank by the bottle, ordered by the case The taste of honey and butter and biscuits If silence were golden, I would hoard it I will build my house of it, a temple to it I would layer it thick, brick by brick And cry myself to sleep wrapped in a blanket of it If silence were silent, I would love it I would marry it I would caress and kiss and feed it I would murder it, bury it in the backyard and die atop it If silence wasn’t food I would starve Where silence is water, I drink I swim, I bathe When silence comes home from the war, we will build a life together Fences and barbeques, a dog, a car He will be the father and I will teach our children of glorious, glorious silence

My computer breathes in time with me A reflexive skin I have waited a thousand years for this revenge For this chance at revenge and I have failed. Do I have a thousand more years? I see where the edge has come, but cannot bring myself to stand there and look. To look when all I want to do is look. To see the vast expanse stretch before me, my courage makes me falter. I am unwilling to take a risk, for that means there is a chance to fail. And I cannot fail. My computer breathes with me and exhales a fogged breath in this cold winter air. Once it was cliffs and edges that overlooked ravines. I have waited a thousand years for this revenge and now the world is a different place Now it is railings and balconies. Now my screams of rage are drowned by the masses. I cannot bring the Doom if I cannot make my voice heard. But the masses teethe and swarm in their own way. Their eyes are on their feet. Their minds are in their heads and each is certain that in the right light, they will glow. W

I am Bionic My heart has been replaced by a mechanical, winding clock The thoughts I think are clicked out by turning gears Metal pins hold my memories in place I walk with unbending knees I am disconnected from God My Maker The steel of my skin has been torn in twain It is pulling away from my wired ligaments I am leaking lubrication I am shedding black, oil tears I was founded in the foundry The singing of the hammers was my lullaby Dedicated in burning, sunshine coals Dried in crisp, cool water The anvil was my crib and I wailed to prove the workmanship of my lungs I was suckled on molten metals and oppressive heat was the blanket that wrapped me tight. My education was the school of “Why” And I never found an answer What was made and built and changed Was made and built and changed And never the why appeared My forging in the forging held no comparison to the torment of my mind A purpose stacked before me Stacked and stacked, the sheets of metal The hammer fit my hand and I learned

My heart is killing me With every beat I die Perish, that these thoughts should think so well I am unaccustomed to their independent nature Unruly children Dancing before the fire’s flame Conspiring out of sight Honest words, Poisoned ivy, Climbing plaster walls This house is not a house It is a neighborhood funeral parlor Blending in with childhood games Ringing ‘round the roses Singing out a song of death Words spoken without the reason of invention I have madness and in my madness I beat the odds. I cast the words before me and they fall into a pattern. They build the puzzle. I will cast these words again. And they will build the puzzle. The words will be different The picture will not be the same. But they are the pieces I have always used. I beat the odds.

You cannot exist if this is all in my head I am the Builder and you are not real I am the Builder, and you are not here Like clay, I have shaped you to your form. I have set your feet in the earth. I have watered you and because I have done so, you have Grown. But you are not real. You are wicked flowers and weeds. You are the flowers and yet the bugs The bugs that destroy my work. I have lost my pity because you set yourselves on fire. And yet I have no pity, because you are not real. There is no matter to this matter. There is no mass to the masses. There is no weight to my soul.

I write words like spells. To pull me from my skin, to Slide To set each cell and capillary aflame as my soul bursts from its cell I listen to the music that will drown me. Like rushing tides that pull me beneath the caps and rolls of waves A crystal blue prison that will make me panic as I feel a darkness close around me Like winter to enfold me Like a night to claim me Like all the horrors you can imagine Like all that, but wonderful instead I think it’s wonderful. And I feel no shame in this. Only desperation when it goes and I cannot follow Only despair when I wake from haunting dreams and see the sun shining in my eyes To touch Heaven, to touch God My Heaven my God And then strip it away like flesh flayed from the skin Like a knife that cuts its tracks down my arm To feel fibers sever and muscle tear and nerves that scream Nerves that scream like I scream when my eyes open to this place Every moment of agony Every moment of it agony Books weigh like anchors on my feet To pull me t

Under the cap of ice, the river runs chilling through the veins of the earth, crystal blood and pure driven. Windows that frost over with crackling, snapping flakes of snow, like the glass shattering as it grows. The home becomes an igloo and all inside are Eskimos with fur halos and a way of life that has broken it’s back trying to hold off the future. I speak nonsense like garbage to clear out my mind, flushing out the pipes and hoping that once the block is gone, a clear smart thought will strike out and change things. Nothing changes things. A toy store that buys broken toys and keeps them on shelves to get dusty and be alone is full of soldiers that are hunched over with limbs hanging free and useless. There are bears that cannot see and ballerinas that cannot dance. At night they gather round a plastic fire and tell tales of how once they were loved and embraced and how all they feel now is that cold, rushing wind, so they go their separate ways and don’t speak of it again. Oh ho

(Rain, and the Wind that Carries) The suicide who slumbers Infected by delusions And wishing on a star All the sorrow in my heart Has burned into my head If I cannot find a cure for it Very soon I will be dead With the sadness of time I seek the perfect rhyme I reach beyond my skill To summon them at will Building with the sun, sweeping the horizon, it shimmers in the morning light A noose around the neck that hangs the sky The burden of flight shared by vicious birds that circle above corpses and monitor the dead Crystal sounds ringing through the air The echoes of the canyons The stir of grass A thousand crunchy hoppers pushed into flight by the thunder of an east-bound storm She was a child left alone on the dance floor Moving to silent music, the beat that couldn't exist When everyone had fled, she shuffled her shoes on the barn’s wooden floor Shifting straw The wind whipping around her hair She gives it no concern In this world of hers Where the wind picks her up safely She sp

I see myself through frosted glass A sensation not mirrored by the truth of the image I see myself something I am not Skilled beyond measure, I marvel when I fail Whose image have I taped to the twisted window that I fool myself so well? When the turning goes quick enough, when murky water clears, I shall throw myself free I wear the tension in my neck, a yolk for the oxen to struggle through the field I have tilled here And I have failed as well My disconnected thoughts have joined forces They smother me at night with a hypoallergenic pillow The simple thing that chains them here The guilt or The obligation Or any of many, minute causes I may not have ever told you But it didn’t mean you could never ask I live without meaning No, beyond this obsession with personal purpose I live without meaning Confession of depression A sin I cannot help My mind seeks to stretch my body to a point it will not go A wave pinned upon the sand I could, I think I could cut my head open to let it go I see

Did you see what I did? Did you see? It was a good deed. It was a kind thing. It was a gesture. It requires your acknowledgement. I must feed on your admiration. I must know that you know. I am selfish. I give you knowledge so I can horde your reaction. I am the dancer. You are the dress. I get all the credit. I deserve it.

Once upon a time, I had a greater retention I could view things in a wider scope Like the sky’s great dome, I could comprehend it all Slowly, grass grows outside the window of a half-buried room. Water has filled it to the brim and drowned the house’s inhabitants. A realtor, in a golden coat, has placed it on the market as the home of ghosts and what was once a great mind, filled the walls with paintings that have no artist and given the deceased a claim to fame. A crippled child hobbles up and down the cobblestone lane outside the blue room, touting papers that declare the end of the world, predicting the future as it arrives, and the child charges nothing for the news, since the profit would do him little good. Down the street, two large boys charge small children for the chance to see the cripple walk, as small children think it a marvel when God places in front of them the staggering vision of the differences available in the mold, though when their parents catch on, they are dragg

I think I have died That you no longer care if I live This grave could be unmarked, for all the people who look at it and know I am here I am hunched At my desk in my favorite sweatshirt The hood lined with orange And the sleeves frayed, worn I have worn this sweater for so many years, though loved it half as long The orange does little to cheer me tonight As I have searched your name and found a new addition to your fame An expansion of your being I realize the knife is still there Because I can feel it twisting, fresh, in the wound I smell that change in the sweet spring air and regret that I am not there. These rhymes are happenstance and agony. It has been so long since I have written here, had the charge to write here, and as always, it is of a tragedy My tragedy Like a forgotten war, Like a villager, killed by a despot, who is survived by a child who grows up dreaming of nothing but the tyrant’s death (I don’t even care to draw the conclusion) I have a thousand songs, twice over,

It can’t be worse than this, this scarred world tearing, red at the edges The knife, the sun, stabbing the horizon each day, smoke that floats in cloud disguises Happiness cloying, clogging your lungs Repetition that breaks your back like a violent fucking rape Ivory statues, tilted heads, and plaster smiles I am burning beneath my napalm skin A water body with an oil mind I cannot focus because I see beyond the skies I walk, among stars; but curious They do not speak With the light of a thousand forsaken tales buried in the brainstem, I am tethered, chained Ripped back from every escape The master’s hand on the master’s whip Snapped against my spine with vocal energy Go. Stay. My mind is made up My body disagrees The clash of titans, gods: the undivine Fought on separate planes The two can never meet The war rages on It is a place magnificent For the reflection must be an indication of such Sunlit spires of gold and bone Vast plains of wheat-tipped grass, moving like a river, wide Dre

i am Rotund i am a Walrus but not the Only One i am in a Costume look out of someone else’s Eyes. i am Blatant. i am Blunt. like a tree stump i am everything i Wish i Wasn’t. and it’s the Best i can do i will never have what i Want or Be or Do everything i want to be Now should have been Set in motion days ago. but Something stood in my way black, broken butterfly are you secretly a bat? should i fear you as i fear me? i fear that i’m the best i can do.

Branded by the world, I carry scars Invisible to my eyes What source claims them? My skin burns with the repetition of this iron thing Severed tendons I stand on my own two feet For a moment, before I fall The hard mentality strikes me and I yawn With calm, clarity I stare The black hole sun Swallowed Swallow And down the drain I go The words I rhyme to are on the wind and gone I run through an open place, space I call it a field I ignore the wheat that has grown here long I cannot focus To this tilling task I have forsaken the call I suspect I never heard I run, I call I exist to speak about myself through tears I no longer understand I speak a new language Built out of sounds I heard, once and only, it has no recognizable rules It has no rules But follows on the course of my petulant whine Why, oh why, does it come to me? When I’ve lost no love for it? I am burdened by weightless voices. Oh how clever “The giant tree is small.” A skilled tongue gives no guarantee of a pleasant kiss

A lamp flares in the darkness. The wick is adjusted. Faint trills of music drift through the night and in a dim room, pen scratches against paper. An authoress sits by her window and glances out at the night sky. The light reflects off the window and the stars are blocked out. She is darkness in a dark room. Under her hand, the pen moves swiftly and leaves delicate black lines. Words that aren’t words, words that aren’t the words she seeks, are left behind. Her heart aches with the things she writes. She bleeds on the paper but the blood is never enough. It pours and gushes and spills forth. But it is never enough Who could comprehend, she wonders. Who could star beyond crisp paper and glimpse the maw she puts there? Her shoulders are heavy with effort. Her wrist is sore from concentrating so much effort and focus into her left hand, the evil hand. She feels as though hung from a noose, her body weight dragging along the floor. Her boots offer that ominous scrape along the wooden plank

I am very bored.