you are the north to my south
the anode to my cathode
a valley to my mountain
night to my day
the cat to my dog
some say opposites attract
we sure don’t!
Dead station of soul, cold
a cuneiform of heavenly hosts
on a cathode ray tube, born
shadows of forgotten sliver gods roam
digital tears, a broken modem's wail, fear
the hollow shell of the sky, cracking
nightshade fingernails fawn
lost in the echo chamber
waiting for a mechanical dawn
Raft branch buoyed in canopy crossroad
Ocelot pillow paws rail rainforest rotunda
Yataghan claws trail trunk, track cathode
Assailant arouse pounces, stiff tail rudder
Lithe, while night looms, lightspeed silent
Ogling exotic shores - she yanks anchor
Centipede nimble Queen needs her tiara
Evermore adorned, baubles bean arabica
Lustrous pearl dozes on dark décolletage
Opulent moon mother of tides, sly tyrant
Tortures subordinates to claim her island
Iridescent iris treasure hunt sailor ocelot
Spotted sea captain keeps snake for halo
Lapis lazuli exclusively steers royal yacht
Asphyxiating prey, Casper crouch lay low
Navigating her way to throne, puss pirate
Drapes cashmere ears in conquest crown
Nautical Nineteenth November
Our World as seniors
My world has become one of the impossible,
where the impossible may become possible.
My world has become one of fantasy,
fantasies that becomes ones reality.
Reality where ones limited imagination,
combined with visions, artistry and talent
take ones existence, one’s mind into realms,
beyond that of this world, our reality
and into to the ether world of ones dreams
ones desires, forcing one from facing reality
beyond that projected from a cathode ray tube,
such as wick 1, 2, 3, 4 which lite up my hours.
B. J. “A ” 2
March 27th, 2024
a blue chevy impala basks in a suburban driveway
like a beached whale it oozes gases and black oils
its seeping white walls beg for rubber movements
little boy inside the house sits on a pleated couch
he watches the setting sun through a screen door
fat mother stirs pudding in a wall-papered kitchen
smoking father works a tv guide crossword puzzle
he flicks white hot dust into a crystal glass ashtray
the corner television set transmits black and white
cathode rays of a half-naked wrestler pinned down
the destroyer with mask on lifts his victorious arms
little boy hears calliope music in the green distance
the ice cream man comes with dry ice and cologne
still three blocks away he makes another long stop
fat mother fries bloody meats in a fiery blue skillet
she turns on boss radio to hear elvis sing the blues
little boy goes to the admiral and turns the channel
bishop sheen appears in black cursing the darkness
skipper frank implores the kids to brush after meals
tennessee tuxedo chases tiger tornado to megapolis
smoking father finishes a tv guide crossword puzzle
the ice cream man arrives with dry ice and cologne
Us meeting it was by chance - a happenstance
a crowded place, me sitting absorbed in the cathode ray blue of my phone
you sit a close distance away
"you like the show?... It's my favorite"
never again thought I could be this
i'm drawn to you more and more each day
the sun rises and sets over you - every day I wish it to be longer than the last so I can spend more time with you
my light do not leave me -I carry you wherever I go
do not leave this door open, for it's a chance our love could walk away
Deep in coiled chambered hearts
mortal designs conspire
in arcane chamber hearts
pump isometric drugs
the cathode ray desires
as electric images expire
what are the strange
things that toil in the Dark
idle thoughts and brittle bones conspire
like ancient snow graced by divinities
of apathy in oblivion
cast in shards of cruel inner demons
accessing cathartic chambered hearts
pump isometric drugs as photons collide
reside as something coils
in mortal minds deep chambered hearts
as electric image expire!
Surrender to the rhythm
under the world!
The night music of ages
Dance the Dance Macabre
Clubs deep bass seeps
Into Dark corners
as the lunar keeps the time!
Electric lights keep the rhythm
under the world…
Absent images in cathode
rayed tubes keep the thump and hum…
The feet move to the groove
The pulse of a heartbeat
in ascends in rhythm and rhyme
to a world beyond worlds…
Divine!
A never-were that never was a
Neverland…
Nevermore!
Keep in metronome march.
The ruthless ragged raging rhythm.
In the earth under the currents of life
dance the Divinities, the dance Macabre!
Of the world within, and the world without surrender to…
The rhythm and rage
of the metronomes grace!
The rhythm under the world…
Haunted by its simplistically,
All the masses work for nothing,
Power drones I watch the meek alone.
Bare white the afterglow.
Power of blackened glass reaching for the zenith.
To touch the face of creation.
The masses must toil as I do in this Leviathan.
A Silicon made oblivion.
Thump and hum,
Cold white light in these aged eyes,
Once sky blue now blind in my inner mind.
Now only the passing stare she dares,
I hear the data in the cathode-ray tubes scream,
Cold is this light, I watch it fall in oblique patterns.
On the pavement of a city ordered in chaos.
I feel this thump and hum deep in my soul.
The shadow hangs there,
I see rays of an abandoned SON…
TO BE CONTINUED...
The past dreaming
of the future
Burnt out at last
Light pulsing into the cathode ray tubes
the wires of difference machines
process seconds, data, imagery
From diseased
To hidden desire that fire electric nights
Shallow dreams what will be
Pass through nightmares of futures run
in future life the past is in reruns
As I dream a dream of nothing
that will last
A desire of the cold fire burning down deep
the drink of sleep
the coiled hard machines
Stand as the cold winds burn
something reeks of madness and suffering
the quest of the minds
Inner eye
the nighttime runs rampant in time
with lives burning out fast
as the passage of time only sees the future as a pulse in Cathoray tubes
A reapers machine
hot white harvest
bone dry land
years have been spent
driving this reapers machine
Across desolate lands
Shifting oblivion sands
Of some mad American empire
Insanity conspires in dreams dark
stark towers reach
reaching into the open sky
as ravens gather
black as murder
On top of empirical spires
Burnt out in sapphire sky
a reapers machine
dead at last
frozen rusted stance
Heliosphere novas brake
on shattered glass
shines bright glittering sun rays
Across the dry façade
Stardust fades into
blurry Dark rage
a machine built
on the damned
The last slaves of Cathode-rays
In distant insane plains
Ominous clouds gather
Flickering lighting
Deep rumbling thunder
Coming insane
Tyrannical summer dry rains
Hover over mountain ranges
Like spines bare of flesh
hot White Sands
bone white days
years has come to pass
as machines dwell
On plantation lands
derelict sterile
In these brutal times
of American madness
empires dream
Of a Reapers machine
As they scream
lost in some mad American empire
I saw the bloody ending
My generation destroyed
My heart wrapped in razor wire
How I mourned their dramatic demise.
Down, down, down into the darkness of this obscure House,
Gently it goes
Sanguineous
Righteous
Whores of my Babylon
In my blinding pale yellow light
I see my soul my razored
I look at the faint glimmering
Down, down, down into the darkness
of an obsolete House
Gently it goes
The vignettes play
The light stays in absence rhythms
A fearful Generation
The neon and cathode rays blinding
Head long into that good night
Nothing in the finding
I saw the bloody ending
Generations from now
Tangled in my razored heart
It all starts off at the anode,
where the electrons are lost,
they went bumping and shooting through the wire
and set the voltmeter on fire.
There's a huge crash-land in the cathode,
where the cations are reduced,
then the anions sprinted back through the salt bridge,
and electricity is produced.
The joyous song and dance man
--- deceased and buried in the 1980s ---
suddenly now on the tv screen
in one of his old movies,
tripping "the light fantastic"
across the tap dance limelight stage.
Ars longo, vita brevis.*
A Latin translation of Hippocrates' aphorism from its original Greek, often translated as meaning "Art is long, life is short".
60's Child
I found myself at the tail end of childhood then,
Coming out of its long sunny sleep;
The days and nights of pleasures, terrors, wonders
Strung together to make up the pitted landscape
Of being small
Still filled my world and made it whole.
Mostly i remember things like:
Summer crab feasts, "I Love Lucy" reruns
"Laugh-In" bits, the drone of ball games on t.v.,
Trips into town to my Grandfather's old store
For candy and comics
Back before my town became Yuppie Central.
Another child raised beneath the cathode rays' glow,
My mind absorbed images, words with only hinted meanings
- Like the smiling faces in the cigarette ads
The offhand reports of body counts
From a faraway, makebelive war,
i heard and felt the many signs of strain
Between the longhaired Bigger Kids and their parents;
But not for me their world of confused revolt.
That would come later, milder in my case
When I became one of their second, weaker, wave.
No, I stepped out of the close land of childhood
Just after it was all over;
Wondering ever since,
Just what it was I'd missed, or hadn't
By dint of being a kid of the fabled 60's.
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