All these heaps of words
As I try to purge
Every passing desire and reaction
Verbalizing tangents and distractions
In a mad dash
To diagnose and excise
The cause of my necrosis.
Tag Archives: writing
Back-Alley Butcher
The Traveller’s Song
Is the thought gone?
Did it dissolve away
like the sudden snowflake
on the tip of a hot tongue?
And the words on the tip of my tongue
Dissolve, but are never destroyed
Piggybacking on the steel legs
of reason and wonder,
exhaustion, joy,
and the foreign wanderer
I have always been.
Not an idle word is abandoned
in the wake of new songs
How they flicker in the sun
turning, keeping time, telling stories
in wordless languages
of colors colliding, instrument strings
vibrating, resonating the songs of our souls
And I was born old
Onward I crawl, by day and year,
Towards the day of my birth:
Rewoven again in trembles and starlight.
I’m going to see Him-
All these years waiting,
traveling alone,
though I never have been.
What was the thought?
The traveler’s cloak
a defense against the cold
wrapped over the bare emotion
breathing beneath
It unravels to expose
the naked beauty
of the forgiven soul’s migration.
Sound and Furies
All my life, jostled between
Direct candor and stray wit
And people who hate what I have to say
But love the way I say it.
Low Tide
These ebbs erode the shoreline,
Carrying the banks to build bars
For the oyster to ingest
Constructing pearl from the hard sands
I once stood upon.
Time erodes my story,
Washing away the grains
Of days and hours and potential roads
And the details are the same
But the game of charades lilts to a side
Our birth pitches us into projects
We cannot honestly complete
Like writing the ill-conceived
Autobiography
About the stranger.
All the roots I sank
And I’m still just a duffle bag
One goodbye away
From a homeless nomad
Too tired to roam
Watching the churning sea
For the bits of debris
That feel like home.
Writer’s Remorse
Glad to hear you’re doing well!
I can’t complain! Doing fine,
Though I’ve got this feeling lately
Maybe it’s finally time
To pull all the words I’ve written,
Pile every piece into one tall pyre,
Every jot and every tittle,
And the light the whole damn thing on fire.
But what’s the point?
I can’t escape who I am.
If I burned every thought to earth
I’d take the ash and begin again.
Obscene Strength
An unexcavated strength,
Veins extracting their toll,
Forms in the deepest, darkest holes,
The abandoned mines of broken-down souls
Possessed by the weakest parts of the whole-
Strength that screams
With foamy lips never dry
At unseen ghosts in black skies,
Weeping for the strangers hobbling by,
Dreaming of consciousness as a closing eye-
Strength still, that looks,
And in looking, sees
All that is and should not be,
The kind of madness compelling, “Flee!”
And all perceived chants agreement-
And in the sweat, the sorrow, and the mud,
The hunger, the loss, the burn of chains,
In thirst, in isolation, in condemnation
The strength tarries-
The soul remains.
August Ruminations
Here sits the castle of my soul,
Touched by rot and ruin,
Cramped and narrow,
Housing doubts, fears, confusion
Standing room only
This aged mansion
Can’t hold the immensity
The vast expansion
Or colored intensity
Of a summer sunset.
Man from clay,
But here I lie, on earthen hill,
My corridors splay
Insufficient to fill,
To swallow the ground beneath
Incapable of cleansing my stains,
Or repairing my breach,
Created: I cannot contain
These elements beyond my reach
Beyond my reason
But even they have a first:
God’s handiwork unfurled.
He fills to burst the
Confines of this world
That cannot contain Him.
And how small am I?
Woven in the womb’s darkness
By His delicate design
And omnipotent sparks
Of fragility and fate
And I ask Him to abide
In this broken abode.
I ask Him to hide Himself inside,
This God I know
Of fire and radiance
I ask Him into this crumbled pittance
Decaying more each season,
Because denying Him admittance
Is no small treason,
This Creator who can neither be contained,
Nor restrained,
Nor ever moves He in vain.
Strike Anywhere
This under-the-bushel life:
This hush-or-you’ll be seen,
Silent in the strife,
Lucid in the dream,
Choking-out-the-light life
When I should let it burn.
This habit I’ve worn,
These lies I’ve swallowed
Hiding what’s torn,
Filling what’s hollowed
By grief or scorn
With whatever can’t burn,
I keep the wick trimmed
Waiting for an invitation,
But when beckoned, I dim
In reckless hesitation
And sin
Because the light burns
But these dark nights
Call my name
And if light gives sight,
Bring on the flame
It’s time to ignite
My resistance and my purpose
To see what burns,
And what remains.
Self-Deskovery
I miss the road trips
Destination: Me
Always looking to find,
Looking to see,
Look at me now.
I’ve been here,
Been grounded,
But in my stillness
I’m astounded
Hounded by me.
This pen doesn’t aid,
Doesn’t trace my lines
Or uncover my being;
It just reminds me
Of the kinds of me
I’ve already found.
viewingcamelot 