Understanding?

Is this what I think it is?
A familiar feeling flitting through my mind,
Tracing itself out over lined paper
Scrawled in arterial red.
Exhilaration, and fear
Locked in combat, amplified by the
Quivering, tenuous threads of
Communication holding it together.
The screeching of a violinist, half-tuned,
Playing on a tight-rope as a billion
Alien faces look on.
Words meet words, but they cannot merge.
One must yield, and the other ascend,
Leaving a gap
Of understanding, and a hope
That humanity can fill it.

Idiot

This is the deluded confession of
An addict, in case you were curious.
Healing begins with remembering,
Apparently. Step 4:

Inventory your sins, document your crimes,
Relive each of those moments you fucked up
And wished you were dead, or worse.
And you dare think it could save you?

Oh, you're still here reading?
Well it's really none of your business;
Go choke down your own fucked up
Memories, and leave mine out of it.

Standing bare-ass naked on a snow bank
Watching the sun disappear behind the
Frozen clouds of my own breath,
The sting of frozen flesh... I said stay out of it.

A life utterly wasted, used up uselessly
On the most toxic of drugs: Hope.
And thinking a few nonsense words scribbled
On a scrap of paper could redeem anyone?

Your photograph there in my mind
Has torn and faded over time.
Sight, which had been grey before
Has found a world of color once more.

The world and I have turned again
Away from you and all the pain,
But scars, I've found, and memory
Do not fade quite so easily.

I still can feel you deep within
Sliding there beneath my skin,
Muscle, sinew, nerve, and bone –
Those places that you once called home.

And while I wish I had some cure
For your spectre, I am sure
That though my mind has said adieu,
My heart will ne'er get over you.

Somnosomatic

the cold light of morning
finds him awaiting its arrival
blindly staring into dawn’s waking gaze.
another night wasted
on consciousness
(another year wasted
on meaningless longing).
eyes squint at the harsh glint
of the day barreling toward him
like an oncoming train.
once, he wished to be oedipus
(minus the incest, thanks)
but those days are long past –
blurred together along with a thousand
insomniac nights. a xerox of
memory, moved just as the scan began
so none of the fine print
is readable anymore.

staring out through one black eye
at the blurry stranger lying over me;
in morning’s mourning (at least I think)
feeling the ache of defeat (and the sting of
life moving on).

some wordless tune from distant,
tinny speakers of a radio float through the
whispering curtains (or maybe just
the ringing of my ears) with beams
of dawn.

every morning the same; enough to drive
someone mad
and yet
so frustratingly unfamiliar (a map would
be nice) to both the onrushing day
and the still stranger beside me.

cinders and memories

My love for you burns deep inside me,
Like an ember that refuses to die
Though all of the oxygen has been
Cut off.
Third degree burns have disfigured me
Beyond recognition, though my face
Remains untouched
Save by the wrinkles of time
And sorrow.

Scar tissue still pumps blood,
Still dully thumps in my chest –
Almost like a heart.
But it’s just a crude imitation
A mockery.
Embers of times we had
Float beneath my eyes,
A dim, ruddy glow, mere shadow
Of the bright, naïve hope
That once shone through.

And now here I stand,
Still watching you walk away from me
Like a fool, lost in the memory
Of a life that never was.

I see your face in the ashes
And smile.

The Field

The rhythmic pulse of the field
Filled will one million chirping crickets
Mingles with the heavy numbness
And pleasant fatigue of one too many
Glasses of tequila and lime.
A cacophony of sound and thought
Somehow made to be in a kind of
Perfect harmony.
Stars dance overhead in the clear night sky
And slowed thought drifts lazily to you,
As it always does if given leave.
I never was any good
At lying, or deception.
Try as I might, my thoughts can be read
Clear as the night sky by those
Who posses the right compass;
That which I give, but can never take back.
The heaviness I feel, perhaps not just tequila
Numbing my nerves, but still the regret
Of a past or future –
I’m never sure which –
Dashed to bits by a fate so cruel as
To make God weep.
I close my eyes, watch
The infinite points of light fizzle into nothing
All together. The cool, damp
Grass on my bare feet – a welcome reminder
That though I walk blindly,
I still walk.

The Conjuring

Rites of protocol transmitted,
Carried into sparking blue nowhere,
Reading from books of arcane .txt
And giving new life to digital phantom
Of analog heart.

Electron streams, fiberoptic cable
Make manifest what had been meager
Memory and echo for so long.
No mere macabre nethermancy,
No disembodied phantom that had haunted
Second sight, or second life;
Living and breathing,
The space and time between
Made once again as one.

The connection thins, image falters,
Glowing runes warn that the gateway
To the otherworld cannot long persist.
And yet, within, the link endures
Glowing all the brighter.
Glimmers of hope ignite what remains
And cold embers once more spark into flames
With the message carried through
Coded missive of cardiocircuitry.

Never forget

Never forget what must not be
Forgotten.
Alzheimer’s afflicting entire cultures,
Scenes of bloodshed, bigotry, fire, rape,
Annihilation, extermination, radiation
Painted over with shades of white
And a neat trim of doubtful grey.
The world of today sits on a
Pedestal of the past, supported
By high-tension cables of
Neural connection – memory is the
Helium that keeps us all afloat.
Yet some would chip away,
Cut the roots of who we are
Because some are ugly, best
Forgotten.
No! Ugly, dark, bloody, racist,
Evil, unthinkable, horrific, sexist
Bring them forth!
Let daylight sear the flesh of
Hidden past, let us confront the demons
Of our fathers and seek to bury it no longer.
Drive the stake of truth through its
Shriveled heart and know that it
Will not rise to consume us again.
Never forget what must not be
Forgotten.

double-e incumming

it is at moments after i have dreamed,
the fading twilight of a mind unchained,
that i picture you most clearly amid the swirling,
phosphorescent mist that clouds my sight.

an existence of pure oblivion has its door opened
to the searing light of the dawn, making my retinas
moan in painful protest. but your hazy face
soothes me, unwillingly, as readily as it makes me a fool.

a flicker of movement from the curtains, lets in
rays of light, and fleeting visions of a petite feminine form
tribute to your presence, and the hotels you always adored
when you wrote of her, and never of me.

it is at these moments, before the dreary banality
of a world locked into a mechanistic, masochistic dance
sets in, that i feel most like the self i used to know
before i remembered dreaming at all.

Catharsis

I've felt the burning within my chest –
The molten hatred that consumes
And destroys all without rest.
To the flames as a fan,
Until nothing but cinders remain –
The ashen reflection of something
That was once almost,
But never quite a man.

Hatred, Fear,
Sound, Fury,
An alchemical concoction
Of self-immolation.
Doubt and worry
Plagued my thought
And dreams
Until I thought I'd scream.
Feelings collide and divide
Inside of me,
But on the exterior:
Calm, placidity.

Now, nothing remains.
The ashes have blow away
Leaving a hollowness that
Cannot be filled, cannot be seen.
Hidden beneath the hideous masks
I wear to hide myself
From everyone
Who doesn't want to know
Me.

A death mask
Covering a living face
Hiding a dead soul
Vanished, erased.
Nothing left to me now,
Save what senses do tell,
Whispering lies in your head.
Don't believe what you see,
Touch, taste, hear, smell;
Inside I am dead.

Splinters of Glass

Splinters of glass,
Translucent needles, razor edges
Glimmer in the morning sun
Beading down through the shattered frame
Liquid river of light.
Looking up through the pain,
A thousand cuts
From within.

Crystal grenade went off
Beautiful light of merciless ruin
A blast that should have been heard
For miles.
That was weeks ago
An eternity of destruction
But no one's come,
And, it seems,
No one will.

Nerve cells can be overridden,
Overloaded, overworked.
Data stream error, and
Rolling blackouts occur.
But the knowledge that
Despite your betrayal,
I'd forgive you anyway
Still keeps me awake each night.

If I could pick myself up,
Don't you think I would've by now?
This crater is not quite
As comfortable as it looks.
Just beyond the deafness
And ringing in my ears
Some sweet, wordless elegy plays;
But it is lost behind the wall
Of chemical euphoric numbness
Drowning out the screaming
Physical.

Ghosts, echoes, ashes
Of a future torn away
Haunt my ruined sight
In the dead silence of
Black, bleak night.
Leaving nothing but your memory
Crystallized with the sunrise
Refracted inside
These splinters of glass.

Lament of the Lost Ones

We have become what we once feared

Lost Ones

The sightless the faceless
The lifeless the soulless
We wander the wastes of the void
And silent spaces between stars
Searching for something
Something lost to time
And memory

We exist as shadows
Mere fragments of what once was whole
What once was good
The fires within us died æons ago
And yet we endure
Broken blackened
Torn and tormented

There are some things worse
Than death
To live forever

No

We live not
We are but collections of memories
Still clinging to each other
We are formless dust
We are soundless echoes
Nameless shades

A chorus of anguish
And sorrow
Heard by none

Less than
Nothing

The Current

I’ve been pulled under
Lapping waves swallowed me whole
Stunned and dumbstruck by the voice
That calls to me from beneath
The dark, cold surface.
Strikes a chord within me
Resonates a memory
I drown within myself,
Let go of all I know.

And I know a kind of peace…
I found it far too easily.

Striking the bottom, I find
Only the cold stone of a riverbed,
Not the numbing warmth
I’d been so falsely promised.
A baptism of lies,
Eye opens wide
Now I can see
For the first time.
Reborn, cold and aware.

Sunlight trickles down through the current
A ray of truth, of hope…
Barely visible in the murk and gloom.

Struggling now, flailing now,
Searching now, inhaling now
No air to be found
No redemption in the cold
Shifting sands of the bottom.
Just the eternal current
And the surrender to its will.
Euphoria and
Darkness.