Retrospective

Mired in retrospection nary a decision could be made Wired by circumspection never in progression will he wade Fired upon synapses ignite the trangression with a spark Pyred within memories candlelight suppression now it’s dark Gyred by apparitions haunting reparations end is nigh Tired of self-reflection willful separation time to fly art: The Apotheosis of

Ragdoll

See the words it writes, interest piqued What says things such as this, in this way Tentatively, first from afar, engage this Ragdoll Watch it, jab it, pick it up for examination Unabashed, no concern for ramification Curiosity overwhelms, it’s such an unusual Ragdoll Does it communicate, try it, see what happens It does! Its

Broken

Stained glass, handmade Rufescent shades in shattered blades Red arroyo running deep In hemoglobic homily A broken mirror of nonpareil odium Despise the two derisive eyes staring back Seething sotto voce, curses and hatred Handmade stained glass, picture putrid Spur of the moment, spurn of the moment Now the eyes, they number seven In bloodshot

-1

Of course he can see the light, who couldn’t in its desperation to be seen With its ebullient throes of light-waving and self-congratulating brilliance And while admittedly often appealing on the surface, it is his predilection to hold judgement, preferring to peer into its concomitant shadow for clarity If there’s a silver-lining to every cloud

They say he finds

Abrading his eyelids with callous frustration, was enough to draw him away from a particularly potent painting of suicidal ideation Pain has that effect, but it shares the burden of cause, as well; whether physically or emotionally, it buries its claws quick-deep in both Two sides of an allusive illusion eluding elucidation They say, if

Forsaken by

Forsaken by love Forsaken by woe Forsaken by friend Forsaken by foe Forsaken by goodness Forsaken by badness Forsaken by sanity Forsaken by madness Forsaken by dream Forsaken by living Forsaken by nightmare Forsaken by giving Forsaken by everything Forsaken by one thing In the end I’ll be Forsaken by nothing

Ceremony

He hears her before he sees her, garrulously babbling from inside the drive-thru window Poor decisions, or unfortunate circumstances, unceremoniously brought her to their employ; skills lost to anachrony – or having none to speak of – she had no choice, she has to live… He supposes She was macilent, nearly emaciated, with grey cropped

Famous

he is famous inside his head it matters not if ever true it’s perhaps why he was bred to be famous-er than you strangers fawn and pamper him then oddly hit him with a quiz from their smile and on a whim they ask him who someone is but somehow he always knows he brings joy to

The din

The unexpected presence of a new voice rose through his darkened din; it is crystalline and promising, frightening and unobtainable Wayward imagination will choose its usual ruse ere he’s disabused; one for which he unerringly falls, evidenced by his halls of fancied fallacies Is that simple gullibility or blind intractability? Is it desperate esperance or

Doppelgänger

A doppelgänger cask Rests deep beneath his skin Like Schrödinger’s famed flask It seeps poison deep within A doctor throughout the day Who bears a vastly darker side Tries to hold this fiend at bay One he knows he cannot Hyde While sanity’s held inside his soul To admit madness he was loath Never knowing

Notes of madness

She was the charmer and the snake and the basket case, dancing to notes of madness that only she could hear art: Voluptas by Franz von Lenbach

Archaic

The archaic arachnid her fangs are protracted hunts from her foul lair with guile and tongue acrid Beneath cirith ungol fed by the wretch smeagol exchanged for protection from mordor and its evil Then baggins was brought there by gollum who could not bear that the hobbit held precious and the ambush, quite unfair But

Whispers and wails

How somber the breeze who pushes the abandoned swing, lamenting an unforgotten friend with soothing whispers and unbridled wails

Guilty

He marvels before the irony, feeling guilty for the guilt; he knows, surely, that it is the guilt keeping him alive, an aphrodisiac and a bane staying his executioner’s hand Warning of the wreckage wrought, aware of the afterthought, that this poison in its wake would spread plague- like through the innocent veins of the

tsk tsk tsk

tsk tsk tsk wagged the metronome who watched over her delicate hand ting ting ting sang the ivory as she taunted the sweet baby grand no no no seethed the pedagogue he was a talentless, ignorant fool sob sob sob rang the little girl forced alone with the tutor so cruel psst psst psst whisp’d

Morning flower

He rests the white flower in its waiting vase Vaugely smiling upon the brown, darkened soil Then sets the arrangement in its hallowed place And waters the morning garden, ever so loyal At once a thunderous storm begins brewing And sets to air an aroma that he could hug So lovely, he can’t help ‘fore

Pretty smiles, pretty walks

When he’s distracted – by a pretty smile or pretty walk – when ego has distracted id, he senses the existential moments Moments when his evanesce into periphery isn’t paramount; he’s inconspicuous in a spotlight, living amongst the living Not a shadowed pock at its center, quaquaversally thrusting hands with fingers of hands in fractal

Awkward

Deeply darkly Drowned in doubt Always awkward Anxious about Feel of fear From friend and foe Always angry Afterglow Cautious coward Cannot cope Haunted hollow Hiding hope Languished life Lacks love to lend Early exit Everlasting end

Welcome mat

Her serrated scissor smile bares auriferous caps and barely concealed rubies on artificially plump lips, as she pours pyrite pleasantries over late night, lamplit sidewalks and creeping, drive-by lechery She’s made threats of paper dolls to ensnare desperate secret keepers into paying for secrets and keeping nothing else, and spit out flurries of giant snowflakes

Pretender jester

The princess prances down the halls as if she owns them one and all, self-anointed so, by perceiving princely bold advances and apparent surreptitious glances Pretender to the throne, she insists that it’s her wits that got her there, as she’s wont to wear her tight gown and her polished, flaxen crown She knows her

Premature complications

They’re premature complications And predictive stipulations Of mentally strained gyrations In infinite preparations Overwrought and overthinking Details sought and in them sinking Not yet moments but in a blinking Overwhelming disaster linking Ever breathing, but forget to respire So smell the roses, and duck the crossfire Read the daily prompts and let them inspire Then

Nun the wiser

She expected the spider’s web to shimmer, having felt the draft an instant before. Nothing more than a peripheral afterthought, as she prepares her Rosary, in the heat of mid-afternoon. As she prepares to pray for him. Her cell is modestly decorated in passing time and empty space. A single bed, made each morning with

Lipstick kiss

of a lipstick kiss and requisite reflections on waves of discontent; not a lover’s quarrel, merely coercion by happenstance blown through the trees; bearing water red-handed at the shore’s summoning – a souvenir of the dalliance – only to drown beneath the weight of a lipstick kiss floating on bubbles by marianna_a

Hallowed war

The fight to overcome his darkly hallowed war won’t win, and finally he’ll succumb to starkly harrowed whims within

Whys

Dead roses grow and crumble in her wake of tears, even as her feet bleed from the thorns before her; she treads in an infinite circle of whys

Millenary miles

What hope have we whose every single step begins with a journey of a thousand miles

A bit o’cheek

try as he might to keep it supressed this torturous feeling deep in his breast it’s infecting his mind his heart and his soul in danger of changing to diamond from coal the comments and likes for wrongs that he’d write made him feel good and showed him some light the senations are gross and

Movie night

Moonray nocturne at sweltering dusk, sweat bedighted lines from the pale actor’s whip, rake his torso Obdormition onset by ignavy, recumbent on his bed, mesmerized by the spinning blades overhead The rotation mingles with blueish hues and shadowed cues; dust provides the grain in this 16mm strobe A movie projection flickers to life, of life;

Rolling hills and butterflies

He plods along his head hung low, his past and future he drags in tow And dreams as hope then slowly dies, of rolling hills and butterflies With a steady gait, this fool of time, just plods along life’s hellish climb And left alone he bears his wait, he bares his soul, and bears his

Tombstone garden

Imbroglio bedlam – madness wing, twin windows barred behind a wilting cinquefoil Twisted linen ropes escape each, abseiling to the tombstone garden where within the pistil presses Genuflect beneath sacrificial temples sullied by questions, reverent before silent halls unadorned by answers Guiding the supplicant hand of god to take a life, to free a life

Breathless enamour

The rhapsody of starlight impelled him to take the icy summit, he was breathless; yet they knew the thinning air wasn’t to blame; it was the casual climbing that betrayed his enamour with their scintillating serenade

Jealous Sol

Periwinkle skies with a dollop of primrose angrily wanting to shine, but nimbus shed tears are for frolicking bare toes and Sol is jealous of mine

Echo razors

His words echoed back like razors when her ears refused to hear them, then his life spelled out her name on the tessellated floor

Pedigree

she bore a pedigree of insanity familial psychosis incarcerations for generations by the state of disrepute she grew ocellated skin to watch all those around congenital paranoia from generations of incarcerations; and absorb she did news in the common room of war and isolation famine and torture religion and murder greed and lies magma flowed

Slight

slight of mind from others blind slipping grip, and left behind bear nine tail no pleading wail shifting whip, of self assail slight the land oft then brand slitting drip, will not withstand noose the pall with echo’s call splitting lip, his id befall scars and stains of shattered brains stripping thrip, of what remains

Is another man’s treasure

Slip through the night he must, challenging the darkness in corner and alleyway, twixt apothecary and bakery, ‘tween hovel and cesspit. I must embrace the space where shadows lurk, if I’m to quest successfully this night. …he whispers to himself, knowing his treasure is nigh. He pauses to hearken for a rumble of the dragon

The wolf

The wolf, she stalks me; her thundering growls and windsweeping howls, her tip-tapping claws and snip-snapping jaws, I hear her at my window, I hear her through my door

Naked poetry

As I encroached the morning mere, a lonely pock on its pristine shore, I espied a damsel knelt naked at the water’s edge, beneath heaven’s reproach She had yet to notice my presence and I was disinclined to disturb her respite, howbeit I could not avert my marvel She beguiled me with every move, envincing

Lunacy skewed

My eyes open wide, to a chair I am tethered The blood & the gore, what tests have I weathered Instruments all around me, infused with a gleam But wretched, like his smile, they’re surely unclean His spindly, fluid fingers moving so gracefully Skillfully adept with the tests that he does to me He pokes

The forest path

He once walked the forest’s path beneath its saber arch, listening to the march of crisp, falling leaves in the distance, electrified by the banshee wails of crickets keening through the trees, lulled into serenity by the songbird’s reverie Then from a voluptuous horizon, came she; variegating his dwelling in silvery pendalogues, poetical prisms, and

I am

I don’t want your hatred, but I have it; I don’t want your suffering, but I feel it; I don’t want your presence, but I am

Zenith

Sanguinolent streaks of rage tear the placid surface of a luscious, cobalt sky at twilight; the dying day dares a rebellion, clawing its way back to zenith

sensory deprivation

hears the whispered words in the melody of raindrops, smells the jasmine locks on an imaginary breeze, holds the phantom hand without the warmth returned, tastes the fallen memories from once adoring eyes, sees the absent soul now hidden from forever’s gaze

Laughter

Amongst the trees and the songs of bumblebees, listen to the laughter of the freshly fallen leaves they dance dervish whirls and pirouette in breezy swirls while the sun smiles down amidst contented, prideful pearls

Bell jar

Time no longer flowing, his isn’t an hourglass, but sand in a bell jar A coalescence of tenses stagnantly settled awaiting a shattered cage

#69

secreting a saline soliloquy while the tambour calls to war immersed in inferno insurgency riding shotgun ‘bove rapid ichor vaguely expressing the pressure behind a stiff kamikaze gale deters not the coming agressor or the inexorable coffin nail mannequin’d from mental vacuity as the terror takes its toll resigned to wishful torpidity panic’s stealing another

QBD

Dazzled by the butterfly dancing to and fro Then shattered by the moth in flight who had no eyes in tow So watch the moth at length I did to butterfly’s chagrin Must be childish behavior from the ‘pillar still within ~silly observation, quick brain dump

Cubbies and corners

In the darkest parts of the starkest hearts In the cubbies and corners a rebellion starts From the silent dreams to the violent screams Therein you’ll find these desperate schemes For the madness mends when the sadness ends When the will is broken as it no longer bends Then a hidden seed grows the bidden

A rose petal puddle

A dust-covered chair and waxen-fanged candlesticks A rose petal puddle and insouciantly diminishing stars An intimate dinner for two and wishes who play hard to get

What is the reason for being

Happy people aren’t trying to mock you Happy people don’t even notice you Or they fear being swallowed by the likes of you Couples don’t hold hands to smite you Couples hold hands to be attached Or to keep the other hands from wandering The woman isn’t parading for your eyes The woman is parading

The gambler

Gimme your damn wallet Said the middle-aged pyknic, in a slow and deep cadence. A clearly edacious black man, with an air of dumbfounded innocence. His pinguid complexion bled rancid stains beneath rolls and rotund. While a mayfly’s attention echoed in his cleanly shaven dome. Gimme your damn wallet A macilent, black youth wearing a

Shadowed wood

Shadowed wood in early morn A veil of fog its boughs adorn This mask it wears so no one sees A forest hides within its trees

Pinwheels

Of pinwheels in shower stalls From crimson fed waterfalls Saudade for a broken heart and respite when the sanctum calls

Tant mieux

She stitches her lips with little white lies Then tastes wet iron, as the silvered needles sway like windchimes Beneath her noisome, tarnished words Harboring an appetency for secrets and deceit Her euphonious whiplash would beguile callers with playful dispraisals from sanguine smiles Then she’d lie awake in her chamber, counting the bruises; accompanied only

Mentor

We hide in their minds and look thru their eyes Falsely accuse them with each new disguise Ones tempered and steadfast, you’ll find on the way But they fall the hardest and then longer they stay They’ll try to find ways to set themselves free To the light in the tunnel is where they will

Blue birds

Somewhere over the rainbow Way up high There’s a land out of reach and Lost to both you and I Somewhere over the rainbow Hopeless view Where the dreams you’re a fool to dream Never do come true Someday day I’ll beg upon a star To tell me what the reasons are Remind me Lest

Tide

In a single cordiform stroke, he entrusted to the tide his wish, who then blithely bore it away to deliver unto a starfish

Grove

In a grove Is where she slept And all around her Where she wept The flora browned As death took hold The price she paid For the soul she sold – And in the grove He found her still Beset with grief He’d lost his will With her so went His destiny So gave his

Truth

Half of all petals lie when torn away from the flower; To hear the whole truth, listen to the whole flower

Observe

She was butterflies and sunny skies In springtime’s summer air She was snowflakes and frozen lakes In late fall’s winter flare She was bare trees and dying leaves In summer’s autumn fling She was dandelions and birds flyin’ In winter’s early spring She was never there or anywhere To observe at others’ pace She was

Maiden

The maiden skipped on butterflies To keep her high above the lies When she unleashed the gossamer Deceiving souls belonged to her Her justice reigns from fingertips From firebrand and whisper‘n lips O’er web like blood inside her vein Now scorched they‘ll never lie again

Abrupt

Her evanescent sanity An abruption of the psyche, hovered overhead Dispersed in the brume of reality’s abyss Maddening madnesses corralling sadnesses As she surreptitiously clawed at her arm A misstep bound to betoken suspicious eyes They can’t discover, they can’t suspect Lest her arms be girded and out of reach She knew the game, she

Understory

Butterflies wove through the understory Along the coruscating paths of fireflies ~ They chased each other’s tales with interest Only to lose sight of them in the shadows

Sleeve redux

A chest that bears his emptiness Which the blood-stain will profess Soaked completely down to his sallow skin Leaving no choice but to redress There’s just one shirt that remains to him The raiment in which he grieves It’s black and burned and stained in tears With sorrow adorning both sleeves *I didn’t like the (rushed)

Sleeve

A chest that’s now empty Wrought a huge bloody mess Soaked through to the skin He now needs to redress Only one shirt remained So he’ll wear it to grieve It’s black and it’s tear-stained With sorrow on its sleeve

Whence

Whence will come the light After Sol and Luna hide Lost ‘neath blackened skies Sans stars from heaven’s guide It’s she from whom they cower Their brilliance forever banished Their light no longer needed When darkness ‘fore her vanished