Prussian-born Manhattan Psalm
Painted purple sails flailing toward haphazard cognizance tasked and lulled by checkered chimeras embrace all eyesight in a framework of flapping pressed tree. Fractal crackings of yellow and blue presented like Buddha on a romantic mouth-bread. Perfect surf and shell in flawless olfactory manufacture synthesizes perception when crushed upon the blessed cervix. Metabolic recursion of persistent mythologies reverberates through the windowless darkness. There, beneath the barren skies, whisper spinning fists of midnight palpitations. Sinew bursts from weighted tactile struggle. I will not sing of you.
The Nemesis of the Mother
I love the rudely punctured, the taken, ticked and bleeding. Around me swarm the powers who had relinquished their resistance. In me, they find their solace, the soft hand to quell the iron fist. I keep my gifts to them in the deep recesses of my lungs. Leather-flesh slapped against the bane of comfort, the anvil over netherworld motherhood ever wants the presence of the soothing touch which I provide. Spill over me your words of writhing. Hand in hand in mouth in teeth wrapped around a tender button. Spells and charms to ease the pain, I provide the harmony. Together we sing with our notes to break the fear and loosen the wall of twelve pound bucket ice. Organs playing in our throats, both requested and abhorred, reverberate against the shattering pack. Twenty minutes in the dark, half a lifetime with the quail and a season passed away. Place your ring around my filthy finger and fly from damage.
The Rifle of St. Augustine
Half a decade of decadence and the target seems further away. Shackles built from hot-croix and fetters of letters wasted away within mildew boxes are as strong as they were then. Everything. Every goddamn thing was enacted for the ageless faerie upon which a pyre was engraved. All the uttered and scribbled letters for other seasons were mutterings in the howl of winter. Still, an image from the back and a feeling never again to be rebuilt was ended with a preemptive pressing, deeper than the Virgin’s submarine cloister. Not even the second coming of the Great Populator could withstand the tremor. Templar quests for strands of ruby propagate all intentions. The foetid circlet imagines warmth outside, wrapped around the pumping vein extended from the county seat. Individual memories huddled and cluster-fucked in dreams of да. Benefits are moot when the outcome is the product of catastrophe. Oh, Melancholy Do Die, why was there no warning? Foresight of wrack would have kept alive the kaleidoscopic fungus, bundled blue-coats, punk rock emperors, tails and beautiful, beckoning crème von grá. Planting seeds proves possibly futile, so days linger on in hopes infused of goals to reach a destination 4 years writhing in fever. The temperature rises and redemption is useless.
Dedicated to Alpha Twain
Buried under beaten earth, you tread the world in moose-fleshed false transgressions. I cherish every moment within those walls of smoke and bound memories. Somehow you’ve managed to decode the genes of Freya and sew them into the fibres of your household. Bundles of classic women pour from your attentive ear. Yet you miss my own acknowledgments; I do share your enthusiasm, but my words spill forth to show you my deep core. You stand before me as a monument to my past, confronting me with that which I had once so abhorred. In you, I have found much needed relief from my years of self-loathing. I thank you, my Cheshire contradiction.
Dedicated to Mint Hinged Garden
Pressed between tooth, cloth and questionable liquids, there was an apprehension. Understandably so. It wasn’t what was wanted, but it was so deeply and intrinsically needed on such a primal level. There it was, scorched beneath the skin, forcing its way to the surface. Admit once again and this time with clarity. Checkered thread yields and falls for being too short. Let it crumple with taffeta, denim and wool until left behind is all but the most delicate of pre-fabricated leather. Tempered over ages of stagnancy, it was perfect. Tightly, so tightly and so painfully needed. Layers piled of black and gold thrown loosely across the threaded colours: these are the things we wish to see and that which will provide warmth during these times of everlasting cold. There is a love, unsaid and unacknowledged which begs to be released and splayed across walls of streaked sunlight. The mornings have not heard maladjusted deviance in so long. Where to begin? Age passed and garishly trimmed, unfaltering dedication. There has been so much effort placed upon an outcome which calls from the reptilian underground. Stems and vines: rooted. Yield, accept and discard preconceptions. This is just the gate, plunging into deeper ataraxia. Yet, as time so sickeningly crawls, first grant this.
Response to the Sea Beyond the Night
We dreamed for home port, but remained lost in the currents. You see, we set our longitude on minute calculations of the past: every constellation a burning reminder of infinite joy. Though long dead, those points burned on and shined through our sails. Lapping against the keel was every whispered word, converging into noise drowned out by your shattering silence. I tried to speak, but every word was captured and thrashing against the hard net of our entangled lips. With no one but us, transfixed at the bow, our vessel drifted. There we were, lost in a glacial sea of which the saints wish only they could drain. And oh, how it did. For loss of years and want of shore, it emptied. We waited. Moonlight whipped us white as the fishes escaped the drought caused by our own whistling sails. Absence abounded and after punctuating the hushed noise, the shore came to us.
The Apocalypse of Cap
I am accosted on dual fronts by twin loves. I hate my hands, and my scars embarrass me. I believe that I am judged for my tar-y throat. For that, the love of my right hand will fail. I can’t help that I repeat myself; I’d dedicate my anthology to one I never knew. That semi-porous stone: if I knew its history, I would know all there is to know. I still hate my hands, and I cherish the tearing of my plastic fingertips. My mouth waters through the blood. I forget the pain. It was only ever in my left hand.
A Non-Ideal Savior
Another downfallen day. Though beautiful, it bites with lead injections and cold and loss of miracle. Fervently remembered in never-ending dearth. Is that all we are? I wish on clocks and light bulbs, hairs and lyrics. Anything that will make this wish come true. Do you pursue the emerald pooka in order to forget? I know he numbs the pain. I’ve been here hundreds times before because I had so much I needed to forget. Unlike you, I employed his friends. I know now how much I need you. Maybe we should build a ladder, something that will let us rise above flared leggings and broken hinges. I’ll be the one to haunt the kitchen with heavy boots and itchy sweaters. Yet, it will remain unspoken. Nothing to be done.
