Ghosts of things I’ve written in the past

*Get Out*

I walk the road
that only sinners tread
sidelong glances
and muffled snickers
reeling from blows
and invisible monsters
while jack ain’t nimble
and wasn’t too quick
when he got burned
rolling down the hill
jill breaks her neck
while he only tumbles
somewhere behind her

get out, get out
storm clouds gather
lightning strikes twice
get out, get out
before you hear
the whispered shriek
of my heart

I walk the road
a lonely, broken highway
nobody waits
at the end to greet me
solitude swallowing
and silence deafens
where we ring around
things not so rosy
but somehow we still
all fall down
pockmarked and scarred
rising from the ashes
not so happily ever after

Fairy tales
and other lies
somewhere, inside
a baby cries
the pied piper takes all
and the city is left empty
with no one to mourn
or remember when
it used to be magic

get out, get out
another ghastly reminder
lightning strikes twice
get out, get out
before you hear
that awful shriek
of what was my heart

*poetry of sorts, i guess*


I cut my hand on the jagged stone called “regret”
and bled a river that ran down my arms and legs
smeared a pathway on the floor, so that I’d know
where I began and where it all ended-
A thousand times I tried to breathe again
gasping and grasping nothingness and sorrow
blindly trying to fit the bloody puzzle pieces
into a somewhat contorted sense of normalcy
where jagged stones line small creeks flowing
with the red, fetid water that comes from my veins
and emotions are damned up, only to waterfall
-oh so prettily-
over the tops of my fragile consciousness
Yea, I sliced through my soul on that blasted rock
that tortuous thing made up of guilt and pain
while riding out the waves that engulf my being
and hopefully, shall bring me back home again.

*Royal Longings or the Sad Tale of Frog Princes *

like a frog or
raging toad
with squishy face and fingers,
playing at being princes
wearing the crown of jewels, tilted head
and searching tongue’d
to drink nectar instead of the crawlies
he should be fed
croaking in outrage when he cannot quench
his avaricious hunger
and his royal longings, groping for humanity
and still falling short of his lily pad

*Dusty Boxes*

god, the boxes in our minds
brought down from their shelves, all dusty
and opened again for the first time
the stuff long forgotten, still fresh and new
as the day we left them there-
gasping breaths of heart’s flutters
the dust rises and disappears
with each remembrance
a sweet, fuzzy-soft memory
of youth’s freshness and wonder
while we become dusty
and slightly crinkled about the edges
as time marches on
and our minds turn backwards
to open all the boxes
and savor the sweetness left inside.

the babbling of the anxious

beauty wears her hair in long, brazen locks
and lays her body on the ground
she trembles at the cold and cries
as the warm sunshine engulfs her
beauty sleeps her fitful slumbers
dreams her crooked dreams
in which her locks are cut away
while the earth swallows her body
and the sun stops shining down
the winter freezes her forever
and she is called beauty no more
a world where samson becomes delilah
impotent powerlessness reigns
when nightmares are the realities
and realities are just a long-forgotten dream

Damn the fact that I had so many mini strokes that robbed me of my ability to write, remember, even remember if I wrote this.

I have entire decades wiped from my memory banks. Jeff’s response on the original fb note post seems to indicate that I must have written this.


Either way- it is good.

**UPDATE**

Jeff called again and told me exactly how/when I wrote this and my memories came flooding back.

It was after I did a dinner theatre gig and it felt channeled somehow when I wrote it.

He reminded me that musicians often say the same: the best works don’t come from you, but through you, as if downloaded from the Akashic Records of sorts or the Collective Consciousness

For your eyes only: Lines of suspicion, sedition and a search for perdition

“For your eyes only”
(Lines)




“We live in the age of camera-phones, Internet…” – ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’



–

“It is impossible to say entirely just what she means to me.”- Charles Dickens
–

“No man is an island” – John Donne




1.




Life can be summed up best by seven simple words. Don’t get caught with your pants down. This above all to yourself be true. Don’t drink and drive you bloody idiot. If it’s not on it’s not on. The ancients said. Seven is a magical number. Between heretic cannibal and pious ascendant are seven paths, seven pillars. Between NOTHING and ETERNITY is seven days. From idleness to idleness is seven hours. Seven keystrokes. Seven last smokes. Seven year good fortune. A cooling off period. The big freeze. Tonight the temperature is dropping. Life can be summed up by the polar ice-caps melting and the post-coitus of yesterday’s lusts. Seven sins, one is lust. Bare breasts, pink nipples sweet to taste, the pang of long gone touches, the musky smell and wet feeling in the first moments since the embrace is broken. Seven sins, one is greed. Counting your last pennies like they meant something, losing 270 billion dollars like it meant something, taking, taking, losing, giving back logos on charity goods and a telethon. Seven sacraments, one is anointing the sick, rendering alms, relieving suffering, a kiss, a kind word, the promise of tomorrow. Get well cards. Flowers. Helium balloons. The sick white hospital walls. The groans of dying. Seven sacraments, one is Eucharist, the body and the blood. Jesus wanted to be close to us.




2.




Love had. Conversational drought. The man drought. The farmer wants a wife. The farmer wants a husband. Love being had to the sound of whispered kissing, to the sound of champagne glasses clinking, a little light flirting among the drinking. Deep in the thick syrup of tonight, garments are being shed to lie in crumpled bundles on hotel floors. A lot of tourists in the city. Love had not. Half a bottle of tawny port. Has the taste of wood. For fucks-sake. Heartbreak. Desolation tastes like salt on the breeze.




3.



What can a man do? Sip at cheap bourbon and beer and tell his tale. Sidle up to the vulnerable girl who’s had some drinks. Shoulder out all comers. Many hours work for a few minutes of pleasure. By and by a man, presently a beast. By and by a man, presently a piece of flotsam against currents of evening wound tight with rhythm and sound. How I hate all nights in the city, packed shoulder to shoulder. Screaming bars. Identical tank top and hip hugging jeans wearing girls bouncing on the dance floor yelling. Always the same. Foreign beer. Vodka and ginger. Fuck off. I don’t want to know you. Fuck off. I don’t want you to spill your drink on me. The droplets of sweat on my arm. Midnight stuck- strikeouts sidle home. Lockdown.

4.

Shaved legs. Tights. Leggings. Thin calves. Shapen thighs. A man lies. You’ve chosen your bed now die in it. The price of bullshit is. The sentence delivered. Will you be upstanding? Here comes the justice.

5.

Quarrel? Do you quarrel, sir? Do you bit your thumb at me, sir? No, sir. Pistols at dawn. Gentleman’s duelers. Pushkin had a whore of a wife and died for it. We must all be the same. Faithful. Thin. Fat children- the new stolen generation. Fat people- the blight on the nation. Thin is the new bronze. Bronze is the new black. Tanning is skin cells in trauma. Have you seen the signs? ….Sodom…. burns. Have you seen the fires on Avalon’s last sure. I name this land: Terra Australis. We must all be the same. Silent and reverent when brass sounds play, outraged, today and every day. To fuck, to fight is the new black. Why would you want to drink a poisoned chalice anyway?

6.

Have you had your Obamagasm? Have you felt the spasm of change? Have you had your big O, the big OH OH OHHHHHH, the big OH-OH, can you feel your juices flow, oh oh oh, here we go, OH OH OH ohhh. Have you had your Obamagasm today?

7.

Hold on tight. Hold one another. Hold one another. Together on the shore. A shore of night. A shore strung together by distant lights. Discordant, shattered, broken beaming. Hold on dear children to the dreaming. In what darkness do you sleep? Hold onto the sheets at the chill closes in like a predator. And the morning serotonin washes over you like a prayer. Where will romance be held? Where will we dine in Hell? Loss of faith is a terrible sin. A terrible burden. Hold me now as the chill closes in.

8.

Make sure. Make sure love against the beat of currents. Seal up your love. Patch its holes. It’s Valentine’s Day. Set your love’s sails. Weigh your love’s anchors. Look on, to the fore’d to your most beloved star and we press on, we press on.

9.


Please forgive my disturbing lack of faith. And also my foolish ideals.




10.

Down in the stone yards they sing a song. A song of tombs. A song of rooms. A song of mausoleums. Down in the stone lands they sing, a song of archeology, of museums. A song of ancient tomes and bygone tongues, the weight of ages- like tons. Down in the crooked jaw streets, whose tongue winds stained on black roads beyond the midnight. Down in the midnight kingdom, we stand, holding candles and reading. Between the lines.