Best Dead Eyed Poems
Still frames with dead eyed memories.
Magic marker’d promises;
open ended lies
that I can’t seem to forget.
No matter how far I bury this thing
inside my closet. You always find your
way back, with a smile blooming
like a drunken rose.
Fingers run to the edge
of our little world’s grave yard;
flipping the nights over..
Trying to find the picture;
a moment that will sate
the hunger of regret.
But I haven’t found it yet..
-James Kelley 2013 All rights reserved
The grandfather on my mother's side was a cheapskate.
A real cheapskate.
One Christmas, he gave me a used paperback book.
Something like “Jimmy Plays Baseball.”
It was written for a 7 year old child, and I was considerably older than that.
Still had “5 cents” written in pencil on the first page.
No foolin'.
Asked he, “You ever read that one?”
Replied I, “No granddad. Can’t say I have. Thank you.”
“Merry Christmas.”
I hated going to visit them.
In the row house in Baltimore city, where my mother grew up.
(‘Balmer.’ ‘Balmer, Merilan.' “How you doin’ hon?”)
Me and my sister sitting on the wood floor in the living room.
Positioned dead eyed to the manger on the mantle.
Given board games to occupy our time.
My father loved talking to him, Leo, Leo Groeninger.
Because he was brilliant.
And he knew everything about everything.
A sedentary encyclopedia on the spectrum.
His second wife sitting dutifully next to him on the couch.
My mother sitting in a chair, the only one left in the living room.
“Maybe you kids would like to play checkers, or Parcheesi.”
But he had one saving grace:
His German potato salad.
The real thing.
Made with ham fat.
Five pounds of ham fat.
Or bacon, if you didn't have any ham fat.
Damn that stuff was good!
This is where you opened my naked soul
The dark cold river in within the dead eyed fish
The black swans eying the lonely moon
You rise like a spear clutching a gun... my gun
The gun that burned stoned woods with the heat of my love
The gun that opened the skies and rained it with agony
Agony of a lonesome lover trying to kill the devil within him
Trying to escape the foggy grounds and blooded graves
You walked towards me with soft nude footsteps
My heart doth tumble to the sound of an angel breath
Striking my blind eyes with the sun of your golden heart
The heart that turned stony coffins to gold and black hearts to spring lullabies
You halt and search for air as your eyes turn lavish red
Your lungs feel like stone and rigid rocks but no river there to water the pain
You bend towards me and tears crash on me like hailing grenades
I shout out your name and tell you I'm here...
But I am trapped in the lonesome grounds of the dead Gods
You look at me and strike a smile then cry
You hold up the gun while saying the last good-bye:
"We once were one and now you left me
Left me alone in the dark even when you promised that you won’t
You left a broken soul that no mending can it receive
But you are mine and we are entwined
As I'll crash in the bed of roses over your grave
And fill the earth with my blood...
The blood of your love I will spill it to the ground
The blood that will ingrain trees of love birds
The blood that will tell the dead who we are
The blood that will teach Romeo and Juliet what is love..."
… Bang... I hear the sound of death...
I hear you are lying next to me once again
... But now forever.
A light mist of ethereous rain falls
silent on his thin, sharp-angled
face. He lengthens his stride and
leans toward the wind. He walks
through plundered poverty; crumbled
by the weight of exodus. Abandoned
to the blood-rough nails scratching
on the concrete diasporas of multiethnic
history.
Past the playground echoes of PS #59,
as they drift along the faded asphalt
haze of time. Echoes still ring true with
elemental bones of hope: the children
break out and through gunmetal gray,
graffiti covered doors, outside to the
saturated heat of inner-city rage.
Past gothic orthodox cathedral
mausoleums which sit like ancient
stoics and stare through burnt-amber,
azure, crystalline-blue stained glass
eyes; focused out with a kernel of
eternal mustard seed hope: souls will
come again and warm the sacred pews.
Past the Puerto Rican market
where the pig's head led the
carnivore parade of mastication
promise every day. A meat-market
window of letted-blood and death
reminiscent of Amsterdam whores
with their wares on display for the
dead-eyed stares of the men outside.
He comes to the dust and
grime of an empty lot covered
by old and broken concrete slabs.
He stops and lets his mind drift
back to watch a woman who wears
a ratted fox-tail wrap around her
neck. She holds a long, un-filtered
cigarette, loose, between her two
bright, fuchsia painted lips. She
wears a black velvet hat with veil
to her nose and a straight black
dress that flows below her knees,
mid-calf, above her shiny black,
high-heel, patent leather shoes.
He can almost see through the blur
of a chiaroscuro choreography his
mother, visiting with the Kazakhstan
neighbors, in this dreamlike memory.
The multi-plexed, subsidized project,
where he was born, once stood just
beyond his vision of a mother's visit in
high-heel, indigo, tangerine, sibilant
sounds; lit with electric light smiles
of denial.
She would hold her cigarette between
fuchsia lips and wear that ratted fox-tail
wrap until the cancer cough began to spew
Chesterfield blood on the molted fox-tail
head of her beloved fur.
Then she went to bed. Went to sleep. And died.
Pigeons cooed quietly on that New York City night.
Brave hearts beat
Hidden in silent men
Boots hide exhausted feet
Yet no complaints tumble with their tears
Brave hearts beat
Chasing death on foreign soil
Targets placed on dusty streets
Hollow death parched days on end
Brave hearts beat
Dodging dead eyed schoolboys' guns
Nightmares of red defeat
Yet waking to go back again.
V Anderson Throop
Nov 2014 ©
The maddening click of key strokes
The shrilling of the phones
The crunch of crumbling paper balls
Slices to the bone
The dull humming of the copier
Four million paper clips
The smell of tacky wite out
So sick of all of it
It's like sitting in a coffin
This tomb with three gray walls
Choking on monotony
In a stifling, dreamless stall
I need to find the exit
Won't be like all of them
A dead eyed walking corporate corpse
Fake smiles, no brain stems
I know I need to hurry
Before they bury me away
And I become a pro quo victim
Soulless zombie for the pay
spring melts into summer’s light
proving wrong that still despair,
chilled in winter’s heart,
has corroded to the marrow
for even poppies bloom
in broken fields and shell holes
bones blanketed in shrouds of moss
trill of larks cross no man’s land
as pollen floats out lazy over fields
fuzzed with sprouts and turned earth
windblossoms mazy crisscrossed
blown like crimson tracers
cicadas drone their symphonies
calling humid waves
warping off fields like sultry wraiths
moaning at dead eyed cocks on broken weathervanes
cats, lazy from the heat,
retreat to hidden nooks
détente with bird and squirrel
water oaths held dear
water ripples on silent streams
tracing gusts like a rolling barrage of cotton ingots
heavy with odors of stratosphere, of faraway places
tearing at the heart’s windsock
wet bulb heat folded in cumulous
divebombed by nectar laden bees
crazy for the blossoms
soaked and sultry queenright days
a story, sad songs
decibels rung in high towers
echelons above reality
sung to tone deaf and dusty gods
skies clear of dark storm crows
now becoming past
soon becoming now
then slides to never
as photographs fade
at times it’s too much
this heady weight of others
moments like whispers gone
while standing windburnt on hillsides
barren and mass wasted
somewhere distant wardrums beat
our racial folie à deux...
KNOGOBBLER
For the direction of a dark star
Forever in the wind of a casted shadow
Sacred powers of ascension and will
Severed from natural designs.
Brought forth to the will of new times
New Mechanisms and masters
Great prowess of the wastelands
Gracious mother to us all
Wrenched into another machine
We are spoiled but will be cleansed
Angst in the mouth of the rabbit men
Deliverance to a special place of youth
An ornament of superstition
Another belly up pet for humankind
Another false intuition.
Another false report
In a martial law flux of freedom isn’t but a hologram
The matrix of enslavement.
The cast of the old
The molded become dead eyed
The justice hits the pavement.
Molly II (Madeline)
Madeline helped Molly stand,
On her own,
She was too weak…
They gazed at Sara,
In pools of blood,
Lying at their feet…
SHHHHH
Speak not of me,
And do not laugh,
Cast your stare aside…
From behind the pads,
Of darkened room,
And leather jacket tight…
Molly focused all her thoughts
On days,
That lay ahead…
She nodded constantly,
With deceptive smiles,
At all the doctor said…
Hand in hand,
In friendship found,
Together they walked the street…
Madeline from behind the mask
Molly,
In too deep…
Molly opened up,
Her blue eyes,
Wide with terror…
In her dreams,
She lost herself,
And found Madeline’s lair…
Trapped behind,
The doors of hate,
In the recess of their mind…
Molly realized,
Far too late,
To fear Miss Madeline….
Madeline,
With twisted face,
Drove the dagger deep…
Screaming bloody murder,
At the man,
Crumbled in the street…
With no remorse,
She glided back,
Gone without a care…
Molly fell to her knees,
In disbelief,
“What had happened here?”
Molly gazed upon,
The corpse,
At his dead eyed stare…
She heard the laughter,
In her mind,
“I am Sara’s sister, dear!”
Choice?
There is no choice
We just follow
We shuffle on.
If we stop
We die.
We sell ourselves to servitude
We thrive on meaningless slogans
We stock the tables of those who shatter our hopes.
We are the sad, the hollow, dead eyed
Standing in dust at the side of the road
Staring unquestioningly
As the fortunate pass by.
We are of the millions living in misery
Beaten in hopes never realised.
Silently asking
In the name of reason
Why should we go on?
There is no other choice?
Men of affairs, scientists, gentlemen collectors,
researchers, technicians, plankton detectors.
Ladies, when permitted, provided manful help
Wading shorelines intrepidly for variegated kelp.
Be-whiskered men off charted shores
their Science to be applied.
From blindest depths defy stern jaws
to reveal a great divide.
Thus predate all faith - shift their cores –
expecting the spring tide.
Knowing their names, seeking their protection.
Categorised, specified, a literal dissection.
Must now each specimen elders plucked, and carefully
selected,
be hidden forever, politically corrected?
Dead-eyed and soaked, deep in their jars.
Pickled in formaldehyde.
Gentleman, killer? The choice is yours,
Think well before you decide.
Is the Creator of countless stores
Dr. Jekyll or Mister Hyde?
SHADOWS
Actors on a dimly lit stage...
SCENE 1:
dead-eyed audience
whispers behind the black curtains
plastics smiles
reluctant hands
chained feet
pouted lips ...
SCENE 2:
... arctic hors d'oeuvre
copious food
wines, beers - pride Irish!
trivial tattles
inebriated
blank heads...
SCENE 3:
... crawl upstairs
darkness, touch and feel
snores, toss and turn, toss and turn …
cock craw
morning …
a vicious circle
SCENE 4:
cold eyes bores to sky ...
Midwinter - means
transparent ice walls
pressed against shrinking skin.
Dead-eyed horses are revived
only by the steam of their nostrils.
No one predicts a beginning or an end,
'mid' is a frozen idea
in an ice-locked fountain pen,
it will not write even in warm hands.
Killer clowns' shelter behind
their fixed, blood flaked grimaces,
the whites of their eyes
reflect pinpoints
of a dawning apprehension.
Roads decelerate,
creaking through knuckled hands.
Chilled mounds toboggan off rooftops,
dump malformed snowmen
through unmeasured backyard graves.
At the hazy horizon of each grinding day.
midwinter blurs perspective.
This is the middling 'Mid'
a middle where the mind stops flowing
up or down.
Hiking into the soul of clouds.
Catching sun seeds in the palm.
Petals grasp a ruby-throated song.
Brookies pretending to be stream gems.
Set sail, no more worries on a willow.
Meadow fairies hoisting the breeze...
Weave an ancient fire nest.
God gently coaxing clouds into wrens.
Hushed conversations within the heart of heaven.
Sleepy in whirling puffs of sweetened pine.
Tranquility tapping souls with a gentle lullaby.
Now it's high time to descend.
To collide with obligation and
putty-faced iron men.
Plastic smiles replacing scented pine.
Dead-eyed techno-bots pretending they're alive.
The electric daffodils have dimmed now
Orange tulips back their guest arrival,
mechanical stem's,how they glisten
The arcane Robina tree is stet
no leaves this spring
Autumn is a long way off
Borage fills in the gaps
from corner to corner
they cover the ground
The dead eyed roses
grasp for sunlight
like mad mayhem
they last, in disordered array