Nightmare

Soft whispering, in my ears, or my head?

I turn and look, see and feel the new fear.

Thick black scars on hands and wrists where it bled.

Doom sighs, shifts and shudders as it draws near,

reaches for the mask, the face it’s wearing.

A cruel dark creature of towering gore.

Long nails dig under chin and scalp, tearing.

Its grinning visage flops onto the floor.

I’m running and my doom is pursuing.

I don’t want to die, not here, alone.

I hear it laugh, my flight is amusing.

Its talons rend my flesh and piece my bone.

I wake, my fears are once again my thrall.

But to be safe I turn and face the wall.

The Rat

The rat willed for refuge

from the chambers in the sewers,

crowded everywhere that it went.

Away from the refuse

and negativity that skewers

all of the time it has spent.

So it indecisively sought

a solitary space of its own,

but not one single section could it find.

Instead it was caught

by the reality that was thrown

that it was trapped in the tunnels of its mind.

Copper Pennies

Christen my blood in your name as

I try to lick it clean. It tastes

mildly of copper pennies tossed

into the river and it will

sediment into the rocks, and

one day you will find copper-brown

stones at the base of the creek when

you leave me here to go swimming.

Chasing the feeling of it all,

I have to leave, return to that

creek on a summer night.

Pause where the water illuminates

the light of something lost within you.

Maybe we'll find it after all.

Bird Trap

I caught you in my trap,

little bird,

and now I let you go.

I long to see you spread your wings,

my love,

in magnificent full flow.

No Cigar

I am the world's

greatest disappointment.

Mr Might-have-been

could almost have been

my name.

For every

minor victory, i am

mocked with a myriad

monumental defeats.

I am a man;

in some frozen

wilderness, rubbing

sticks together so I live

through the night.

whenever I get a fire

going, God snuffs

the spark

just to see how far

he can push me.

tonight, hell find out.

because tonight,

my wifi

keeps going out.

Aged Anarchy/On a limit

Adolescent dreams of anarchy and revolution

replaced by reality's convolution.

That disillusioned dreaming teen

replaced by dollar signs and routine

feeding the machine

rather than offering a solution.

---

But we've got five years left in the meter

and I can't help but feel

if we invest just a little more

change, we'll be safe from

the warden that lurks around the corner.

Dimly Tinted Windows

I think I look good
from a distance
in dimly tinted
windows.

Far enough away

to not perceive

my vague expression

as lost.

A Transaction of Sorts

Silhouettes cutting the moonlight

into long dark rooms;

each of them greeting another.

With a smile and a bow

they part ways

each thinking

that the other will remember him.

Never such

Oh, you were like a summer's day.

its swollen buds, their juice

and bursts of fruity sweetness held

inside the rough winds loose—

and prodigal the heaven's eye

that scented man to spoil—

and clouds, and songbirds, and the sky

belonged to you, all.

Eternal should the day have been.

So who had it been, who

aboard this little earth had come

to net your flowered rue,

and freeze your winds to store them in

a cabinet to view?

Was I the perpetrator, used

too long to arctic hue?

(Who else? The world held but us two!)

Dazed by your nectar wild—

cupped by your richness, and then

in turn, your currents mild—

perhaps I'd seemed a ready thief,

bringing my gales and ice

as all the gifts you might receive.

For you, a mocking price.

For me, a harvest gathered twice.

Yet buds begrudge the place

which hard rime takes upon their beds:

they shatter it its base.

So let me make my return, flee

from treetop-roosting birds

to where no music comes with words

to where there is but me.

And as the summer comes to thaw

in sticky fruits, in jars,

I'll walk the Arctic's midnight thrall,

watching the icy stars.

Visit to a Friend

The trees still lacks leaves.

They resemble elderly men in the daylight.

Soon the hairs will regrow.

The airplane in the sky that is so distant

is visible now.

The doorbell remember me.

Freight cars are loaded and offloaded.

The baggage that is one's soul is expanding.

It thrills with its duties.

The perfectionist worries

watching his shadow grow.

Reflections Refracted

The bus passes by

reflecting my visage in its windows.

My countenance shifts and changes

as though on a pond

disturbed by a pebble.

Yet the fish are still and placid.

Alone in Kyoto

I saw the city pavement

— a whirl of activity

I saw the glamour and movement

— a swirl of anonymity 

Sharp faces, sharp clothes.

Bright streets, dark woe.

Wasted

I have committed the worst of sins

one can commit. I have not been

Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion

take and engulf me, mercilessly.

I applied my mind to the symmetric

arguments of art, its web of trivia,

when my parents bore me for

a much grander purpose in this

Life. It never leaves me. Always at my side,

that shadow of a melancholy man.

Rooted

The crowds that linger in desolate spaces are bound by nothing,

and yet are as rooted as the trees that whisper in autumn.

The merciless soil grants no escape to those without a sense of self,

They construct cells to hold the sacred and unwilling,

Square and rectangular blocks housing all their frivolities.

Burdened by burdens masquerading as necessary joys.

Still

People are a distraction

both from ennui

and motivation

which is why

I feel so distracted

from the motivation

of a useful attraction.

Silence and Sirens

There's little difference in the susurrus spoken sound

of 'silence' and 'sirens'

yet within their substance

is considerable distance

That is how I feel

about the sigh of you and I.

I've spent an ephemeral eternity

trying to establish

which of us, despite apparent semblance,

is guilty of the din.

I've started to surmise that it is me—

the bashful banshee.

...Of our Time

Do not mistake what is being said for what has been said,

for even though time transcends the fragments in a spasmodic puzzle,

there is weight in each word

(repeated or not)

and with each imbrication

our individual actions implicate,

we are each of us

essentially the sum of our parts.

Plummet

Children sitting on the cliff edge, examining

the ebbing tide,

tossed pebbles first, then flowers.

The flowers floated;

the children sank.

Masquerade

Insincerity is society's greatest hypocrisy

and I cannot stomach the illusion.

A plethora of prepared pleasantries

to choke on in calculated confusion.

So spare me the sycophantic simpering,

complimented with a soap opera smile.

Remove the mechanical masquerade that custom has made

and display your human hatred without guile.

Flyaway

In memory, of the child

who bounced the ball into the field

and though he searched, he realized it would never return.

While the grass and the earth choked it

the child stopped and turned away for ever.

He moved on — It remained.