You mock every answer, then rock yourself silent on waves of tears while rain splatters down off the roof. Upturned eyes watch muddy grey skies, creamy clouds lowered to almost mist. Your salt kissed face now glows from the moon, growing immensely intensely serene, wrapped tight in the web of the weary. The cool chill of failure still clings to your shoes, forcefully dogging your every move, while your wild wake rises to befriend tomorrow when the sun shines on you and you sleep.
Effortless, intense, speared to a laughing flame engulfing incendiary voices lost to a dandified kiss. Belief is but an illusion that tricks your strident soul to evaporate in delusion to capitulate by enacting a lyrical lynching, radical in static resistance, grinding towards and linked to fear.
II.
Cling to this stinging inkling of shock, intimate elemental plans comingling with fickle fluidity. Douse the stout and setting sun, a summation of dripping frustration resolving vast insistence upon the insincere clanging about the concrete garden, emitting an influx of tabloid seams. Prepare your thankful simplification, draining statistics of identity.
III.
Crafty scenarios crystalize, delivered from dank cantankerous dreams, reactive electric doldrums tickling ridiculous reality, racing freedom's grievance, a solemn conflict frankly rankling a frenetic faction of critical glances retiring to blank and careless leads, forcing a powerful creative alliance, until our reliance on pale captivity in all its catalogued strata becomes increasingly clear.
Golden flakes from your teeth rain down like yellow snow, a powerful performance, insanity made real. The gangland signs you spat with fingers numb with cold simply sheltered your existence in the underclass, helping you to disappear. Now death shakes your cage night and day, impervious to the revolutionary credo, while blood bubbles from your mouth -- the metallic taste just won't wash out -- eyes sealed shut, puffed to pieces. The standard black and blue mottling towards your cheeks is a tale that may be sold to the masses, watching what passes for news in these parts, an intricate lacing of lies so layered it can never be entirely unwound. Outwardly appalled, the devil in us all is pleased at the vilest atrocities we can and have so quickly gotten used to.
I lost three fingers, tortured with a Turkish knife. Blood oozed from the wounds like molasses, reminiscent of rich cherry syrup, effortlessly conjuring up the time before mere sweets became extremely exotic delicacies. And you, you lost your eyes, wandering through a fog of poisonous gas, while our leaders lost their minds, guiding the entire nation straight into hell.
They say we are the lucky ones, not leaving life, yet not quite living, buried in the grey of in between, scavaging trash for the tiniest scraps, starving skeletons with paper thin skin. From early morning through deepest night I listen to the agony of this wounded mass of humanity, gasping and screaming amidst soiled sheets, lice, bugs, and rats the only company in their beds. There are no longer enough capable people to care for the living or bury the dead.
We wait, in perfect complicity, almost without breathing, wondering what new disaster may now lie in store, the outcome of this bitter war, awash in terror and tears. we look at each other without seeing, reality spilling from our eyes.
When all is said and done even the "victors" do not win.
I place myself prostrate against the ancient altar to art make sacrifice to design nimble fingers sculpt their magic without effort casting and collecting colour in cool pools seemingly rimmed with lead I am humbled before the miracle of creation and with each completed piece I fall in love again
Give me something to believe in not a simple negative force an absence speaking louder than an entire fireworks finale some unobserved reality paranormal effigies to a long dead king and a half dead father who calls across an ocean of land while the silence of your loved ones scream for your return to the natal home a slave to the territory where your blood first spilled and was set aside, contaminated waste thrown down some cleansing New York hole It is only after you wake up you realize you were dreaming
Give me something to rely on not empty promises genius that rises to the top like cream long golden curls getting caught in the drain a wake of dust trailing your path uncomprehending solid water marks tracking olympian patterns on wood falling down after only three drinks flat on the floor of the corner bookstore waking up as if in a daze no longer knowing where you are I want to hurt you as I liberally apply the duct tape to cut off all your subtle airways I laugh as you moan as you whimper that secret word half your desires so quickly appeased It is only after I am gone you realize I was leaving
Give me something for which to stay ecstatic not the boring drudgery of day after day a worrisime record of epic fumbles screwing up in historic proportions before the world spinning out of control in the midst of confusion When I rip your hair out by the roots in clumps I feel oddly vindicated and when you voice your meager discomfort I wish your mouth sewn shut If you didn't like to be hurt so much I would slice you apart completely but as it stands only after the music stops you realize it was me singing
Not far from a cliff where blackberries needle their way towards the clouds the voice of the sea sings sweetly and the calling of gulls sound like mothers warning their children of danger. The whir of cars and transient machinery fades away, lost to the continual swishing of water licking the sandy shores.
Paradise flickers and disappears without any flash or sudden explosion. It simply burns out like red dwarf stars suffocating on their own gasses. it winks on and off like lightning bugs like a blue strobe flaring in a huge dance hall silently setting the air aflame and the heart to beating a merciless tune of palpitations so fast it makes the head spin. It cuts across the night like emergency ambulance lights, and we brave the decades of darkness for one instant's experience in the midst of the joy of love.
The scent of summer rain beats a cool tattoo through sultry moonbeams. Your love could swallow the ocean. Your power could tame the beast that burns within the hurricane. I have sacrificed my longing, to walk like a ghost through the world unseen, to align the voice of reason with justice, to ponder the pleasures of patience, a marriage of convenience to shake the pillars of heaven, a perpetual shower to settle the dust and awaken the spring.
Danger lurks in the oddest places, even at innocuous watering holes where two boys stand, joy writ on their faces, their pleasure at being together maintaining the power to lift one's soul.
Still, two steps to the left or one to the right could precede the moment disaster calls and ever after their parents will think day and night of the second their babies fell into the falls.
The depth of our lives should never be taken for granted nor the thick emotions that ripple through us be lost for with every death a new seed is planted, and we honor those who perished no matter the cost.
Two brothers stood with their feet in the water, smiling and triumphant, so full of glee that this picture of them somehow makes it harder to assign to their fate the word "tragedy".
They fell down together, still holding hands to the hard grey rocks fifty meters below, but now in that spot, a tall willow stands, simply marking their grave, for those who know.
