White on White Translucent Black Capes
I
Acid melts on her tongue
pink wriggling curl of alive
the very young instinctive pulse
that rushes through galactic ports on air
to Stone Age lust
firm her spine, straight in perfect trust
She flips long fingers
through her hair
the squalling brain
splitting into fractal fantasy
words spill with distorted sustain
cut free from her lunacy
Ducking beneath
a suddenly grown oppressive
doorway--she is Alice, and swelling with each
footstep--Ravyn sees the scene of the
Crime framed through a looping
crack in nature
She pauses, freeze frame on the bachelors
the brides, eternal ornaments of time, summoning hot erasure
She mimes her lines in telepathic
seizure salad
but no one sees her
as she drifts soft down
her body
a wet wrinkle
like a cast-off surgeon's glove
The director summons the cast
for one final climb
above the watery expanse
of a bad romance
to sit atop the fiery rigging
and begin from the beginning
II
There will be hell to pay
There will be a reckoning
There is no other way
to crest the burning
slope of the breast of days
Then she stands inside
the gallery exponential
her lungs expand as she
breathes with aching golden luxury
Of the body map, she's finally free
Dramatis personae: Ravyn Blackwood
her lover, Duke of Dread, Gregor the Demented
and the fox in the thicket
Merciless Moralia
III
Starring in the
coffee bar
with the crackling squiggle of
neon blue
Wasting away
at the Surreal Beauty Cafe
IV
The theatrical curtain, black
shower of tragedy,
drops like the chill of
early winter rain
and the blood's so thick and hot, it pops in her
veins
Another performance of wonder and pain
concluded:
fortunately, this time
nobody got murdered.
Sleep Is A Symptom of Wake
Sleep is a symptom of wake
unburdened by philosophy
It's a game of give and take, mostly--
taking wake from you, restoring the day's
Best moments, clipped dendrites in a perfect
surgery of memory
For me, the symptoms are dire
They are pain
they are pain
they are pain
Pain beats me like a pinata
it takes and drains and drains and drains
You ask me what I take
For the pain
And my answer is simple: I take more pain
Now it is 2:14 am PDT
I sit, not insomniac in your normal sense
But on the rack
rear-end angel on the road to ruin
I am a monster, now that I see me
A dire wolf turned mutant
A living hunk of tundra
A fossil harshed into miniature
A crestfallen piece of creation
In my pain are verses abundant, for
It is a singer
and its songs are legion
It is a tree
that grows
Inside
Another tree
Encircled by circles of age and tremulous claims
to wisdom
Again,
merely born of pain
Pain is a genius
that erases you
As
You
It takes your soul and wears it as a cape
A carapace
Jekyll and
Denied
It is a stamp
in a robot manufacturing plant
Gregors incorporated
It tools fortunes
And is a rollercoaster in a cyclatron
It is a wounded
animal
That speaks to now, now
It is the worn
out
tumbled
down
Furniture
Playing an old blues
A scratchy jazz
Record on
Your old aunt Lillith's gramophone
And you thought I wouldn't
mention her
Again
Her age
her muted rage
We do not use
those terms
For feminine
We do not speak of
Lesbian
We keep things under heavy
composure
Manners and mannerisms
Passing for
Normal
There is a sleep also of conscience
A bitter remonstrance
From karen correctors in the marketplace of
Dreams
A bustling agora
choked with
Screams
Native
Black
Chinese
Japanese
Irish
Italian
mestizo
Ameri
Canon
Shot in an iron ball
across the sunken valley of Manahattan
Shaking in tatters and rags
Bundled in a
gypsy
Medicine
bag
These, again, are the
symptoms of
Sleep
A thin rainbow line
Guarded by the Dream Police
Cat on A Hot Tin Horror Cast
with a tip of the poet's beret to Ellyn Maybe
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake--James Joyce
I
Skating across the tin
rooftops of the
planet
Like a lone girl performing tricks with her blades
self-conscious of her masks and masquerade
Curious, she peers through the holes in the sky
where shattered lives abide in
ramshackle tarpaper shacks
Nobody knows where the
next
meal is at
There are rumors
that children are being
sacrificed
There are rumors
that everything is fine
There is advice
I cannot take
And the razor blade edge of final fatal lines
Requiescat in Pace
II
Both sides exhale poisonous fumes
Both sides stoke the fires of propaganda
Both sides invoke a nightmare binary
Both sides cannot cause
Humanity
To side
against itself.
Let's not make this
difficult
Put that imp of the perverse
back on the shelf
At least
More difficult
than the aching bellies
than the sleepless nights
than the edited bloody limbs
than the ripped backsides of hospitals
than the bodies elided, mass burial in rubble
than the provisions of armaments
than the skunk gas released at universities
than the poisoned tea of social media feeding frenzies
than the bombs
and the rape
and the horror we
cannot escape
III
Peace and war
cannot be separate
A war for peace
engages the sternest warrior hearts
Let's not dance
like a cat on a hot tin horror-cast
compassion-fatigued aghast
at the storm of perversities
Strength: the heart's yolk, unity in
complexity
With show tunes, warm food and whimsical humanity
where leaders fail, the people will prevail
and forge ahead despite perplexity.
