The world in black and blue,
no visible outline, the colors
blur. Headlights bright red,
and the people covered
in smoke as I stand in the back-
alley surrounded by old graffiti
stains and a half eaten tuna fish
sandwich. The alley cats
devour the carcass leaving
the bones and eyes behind.
I look at the eyes and I see
my mother pan frying
batches of leftover
salmon, a once in awhile
treat, then back to smelly
tuna daily. I give my mom
credit, her cooking skills
mask the awful aroma just
enough for me to eat with
ease. I still wonder what
mystery meat I ate back
in high school, looked like
tuna, smelled like beef but
tasted like chicken. I get up
and leave to a corner
bodega shop where they sell
beer and passable pepperoni
pizza for a late night snack.
Then I chill at the coin laundry
shop next door, I should’ve
brought earphones with me.
a carcass is moving
out from the white of the eye it is
so all-consuming
dots form in lines on the absentee spine
dry undefined lumps are soft and infusing
the bruises and rind and the opal contusions
they fire with pus and with derelict mucus that
rises in shape as if living and human
adorned in the fumes as mycelium blooms and pours
wings form from mold stocks that spew from the local pores
leeching the fluids the carcass now wizens forth
reaching the sky with a forest of open sores
sink in the bleak rims of deep skin have peaked
they churn sinkage and reak sin that bleeds from the meat
and it turns as it sings and pulls taught and it dreams
knots drink him and blink in with pinkeye beliefs
I have calluses on the inside of my body.
I am smooth and polished on the outside.
But once you peel away my cocoon, you will find cuts and bruises.
My intestines are knotted, tied in one big bow.
My bones are cracked and discolored.
my muscles are tangled and weak.
My brain has pins in it, i am someone's voodoo doll.
But no one will ever know, i hide it so flawlessly.
I don't want to hurt others with this thought
But my work can hurt others besides myself
I'm spinning, I don't know what to do
Like the ocean of other people's passion
I have a wooden boat wreck
My brain is not made for this world
I hear chattering
An illusion, a nightmare, a disorienting confusion
I am waiting for you to tell me
The voice is loud, there is no heart for me anymore
Someone tells me to run away
go out
when i go out
All eyes follow me
Everyone brings a gift of death
Everyone is coming to celebrate my death
I am tired of this bitter and irrelevant nonsense
Someone is screaming
It's like he's holding a saw and cutting me
I feel light because of my own fear
full of not jumping
In the scene of my death
It is interesting to worry about my future
I just played a game
Like the rest and all who slide
They just act like scary clowns
All become just a naked corpse
Everyone just wakes up
They are playing a role
Everything becomes just a naked corpse, that's all
I'm just tired of this bitter and irrelevant nonsense
Do not leave my carcass in the city,
Bury me whole by my grandfather’s side.
Let me repose far from the vanity.
The skyscrapers offer no charity,
and people stay indifferent to plight.
Do not leave my carcass in the city.
There are no modest pledges of fealty
to the men who seek to live by the light.
Let me repose far from the vanity.
I claim no virtue nor feign purity
but I am improved where mother resides.
Do not leave my carcass in the city.
Though decent men are not without pity
The noise alone will swallow them alright.
Let me repose far from the vanity.
Then, my home, forgive my own vanity
and absence-put my remains well and right.
Do not leave my carcass in the city
Let me repose far from the vanity.
In the dark recessions of the corpse canals,
Where the breaking of bones sounds the eerie air like the clanking of bells,
Where the tearing of tendons whistle and hiss,
Echoing across blood water lakes laced with piss.
Found deep within a Carcass Catacomb, where the restless undead candidly roam,
There are, unfortunately, the unlucky few who call this home.
Sunken cadaverous corpses sink restlessly, forever seeking to escape and flee,
If not entrapped within an infernal sea, suffering in blindness with naught to see.
There! Deep below swim the loathsome drowned, cursed to breathe the contagions of innumerable ilk whilst eerily unfound.
And so to the canals are they forever bound, with rotting bones whiter than milk,
flowing in a surrendering of flesh, bleached flags of corpse silk.
The country is at war again
War of hustle and bustle for power
Power for self aggrandizement
All in the name of democracy
Birds of prey are in full flight
Hunting for the Carcass
Of the comatose nation
All in the name democracy
Friends are turned foes
Adversaries have become strange bedfellows
Scuttling shamelessly from one nest to another
All in the name of democracy
The country is at war again
Tension and pressure everywhere
This is the season of double-speak
All in the name of democracy
Truth stands on its head
Lies of yesterday
Have become truths of today
As mendacity has murdered credibility
All in the name democracy
very early right after I lost everything
that day was born with me scared in the woods
refuge of one who has forgotten the padded way
of his own sanity
feeling cold without sun rays or comforting thoughts
the menacing shadows freeze your soul
every sound is a monster that comes to get you
the falls wounded legs and arms
the back in pain is nothing
when the hunger erupts absurd
on the chaotic horizon of your needs
I fell to the damp ground were dead leaves rot
centennial elm sap flows and writes in its crimp trunk:
"Calm down because you are in your home
you can assume a fetal position and cry alone"
the anthill right there was teeming with life
the ants near my mouth I ate
while the others I chased with my eyes
maybe spend the rest of the worlds here
turning me into an old trunk
in the carcass of a wild animal
in fact I am and we are backbones
I am and we are in our deserved place
The beauty of truth shriveled and spit
Like July 4th snakes, dying on the sidewalk
My eyesight is going, but I don’t think I lie
My shingles are back, expressing anger and pain
My flesh house is crumbling
I will not be sorry when it dies
The smells of old age parade around in my house
Sneering and poking their fingers at me
Reminding me of the smell of garbage piles of Pomona
I always hated old people.
Their wrinkles, age spots, blue veins
Especially their smells
I watch myself turn into a carcass
It is taking longer than I had hoped
I never took a pill before
And now here I am, a pothead
With bad teeth, and black holes
In a mouth no one hears
William Shakespeare: Carcass
The remnants of virtue used and earned,
eternal and the extent of such,
vainglory is measured thusly so,
so be it, a valued lesson learned.
Should beauty pleasure men so justly,
and fair maidens make their faces glow,
tempestuous journey lies before,
for the wise scorn and fools do wrongly.
Regard the advice that you must prize,
and live your life fulfilled evermore,
that you have no room to be concerned,
for you listened to, words of the wise.
Slight work claimed for natural appeal,
embellishment purpose to conceal,
as innocent charms often reveal,
carcass mention naught for the genteel.
2020 February 17
Lines to Awaken your Muse Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Joseph May
5. The carcass of beauty spent and done - William Shakespeare
Rhyme Scheme;
abca, dced, feaf, hhhh
Howmanysyllables;
16 lines x 9 syllables per = 144 syllables total
The shell remains, picked clean by
Hungry vultures, ravenous with greed-
Eyes, gouged out, now vacant in their stare.
Raw morsels of choice bits and parts,
Unsparingly stripped or torn away, and
Soft gutted vitals furtively devoured,
Totally filled the needs of scavengers who
Yielded to hunger and shared the feast.
Cruelly, the carcass rests on bony frame
Although once supported by plump,
Round parts, on which it mightily ran-
Crushed and crumpled, now an empty shell.
Abandoned, there it lies- the scavenged,
Shattered, rusty, ravaged Chevy-
Staring- lifeless, amid the weeds and grass.
June 14, 2016
~9th Place~
Contest: Rusted and Busted
Sponsor: Casarah Nance
Judged: 06/27/2016
1st Place
Contest: A Brian Strand July 3
Sponsor: Brian Strand
Judged: 07/03/2021
The shell remains
picked clean by hungry vultures
ravenous with greed.
Gouged-out eyes
now bare hollow sockets
vacant in their stare.
Morsels of choice parts
deftly stripped or torn away—
and gutted vitals, furtively devoured,
have filled the wanton needs
of scavengers who shared the feast.
The carcass rests
flat on bony frame
supported once by plump, round legs
on which it mightily ran.
There it lies—
a brittle, empty shell—
the poor abandoned Chevy
on the Harlem River Drive.
Sandra M. Haight
~1st Place~
Premiere Contest: Bring To Life
Sponsor: Shadow Hamilton
Judged: 04/14/2018
~3rd Place~
Contest: East Jesus
Sponsor: Roy Jerden
Judged: 01/02/2015
Note: Inspired by my many trips years ago in the late 70s, to visit my father in a hospital there. I would see so many abandoned cars lined up as 'empty shell carcasses' along the Harlem River Drive in New York City.
Forgotten Poems fill my head,
Though ruined; tattered or destroyed
The Truth I seek, how do I dread-
For this Life I've yet enjoyed!
Arctic Artist, how hard I shiver!
My frozen carcass never found
Lethal Liquor engulfs my liver-
As the snow drifts all around...
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