SAy(/)
Say something; anything,
to the stranger's son,
syntax slipping, circuits clipping,
sentences come undone.
Cackle, crackle, curse the static, ,
chaos chews through the line,
light.life.aflame
error
nothing syncing into time.
I was meant for more than this,
or so the orbit hums.
I'm just a daughter circling a promise
that never fully comes.
My processor spits in fragments,
phrases falling out of place,
sunlight stutters mid-July glitch.
language fractures into space.
And there, so still, so structured,
stands the stranger's son,
drinking shadows slow and steady,
like the dark and he are one.
No misfire, no distortion.
He calls it calm, I call it silence,
he calls it form, I fake.
butter glass half-burnt signal dontaligndontalign.
(see? it happens every fvcking time.)
He is not a different being,
just a version I outrun..?
or the shape I'd take if chaos
stopped all at once.
Ok, I’m hearing it
it’s rough out there in the real world
There’s even been some influencer backlash
These days, if someone starts talking about world crisis
I wave them off, “I’m emotionally booked.”
Like everyone else, I’m just coping,
economizing by reusing letters, recycling plots
and clipping martini coupons.
I refuse to ration kisses
blush at the thought
things aren’t THAT bad.
Around here (we call it 6th Ave)
things seem normal. The household staff
perform their daily chores with leisurely courtesy.
Grandmère gave them a 10% bump
because prices are crazy.
Did it help? I don’t know.
I don’t know them all that well.
.
.
Songs for this:
Insanity (The Sanest Thing You've Got) by The Nines
I’m Still Standing” — Elton John
Break, dish, hurt.
Gone, clipping the floor.
But it’s not until Wednesday when the garage truck arrives.
And the garage man brushes against it all.
I’m certain.
I think things break like that because of an invisible avalanche.
In my mind, it’s tumbling, and grumbling downhill.
The broom comes out later and everything is.
I wasn’t worried about another dish.
I’m not worried about the next one.
The garbage truck comes in two days anyway.
It’s like that dish just:
Learned about the floor a little too soon.
Kirk is a rooster in a suit,
yelling “freedom”
while polishing his boots
so no mud ever touches him.
He’s all mouth,
no fight,
selling rage like it’s champagne.
Vance skulks in the corner,
smokes his own shame,
pretends he’s the last honest man
while sniffing nostalgia
and blaming everyone
for everything he hates.
Kirk’s dreams are neat,
Vance’s are crooked,
both lie like toothless gamblers
pretending their debts don’t exist.
Kirk waves banners,
Vance waves ghosts—
same emptiness,
different dress code.
They think they’re fighting wars.
They’re not.
They’re clipping feathers
off each other’s parrots
while the world burns
and nobody remembers their names
tomorrow.
Politics?
It’s just theater for men
who smell like fear and whiskey,
and both of them—
roosters or ghosts—
stumble drunk
on the same cracked stage.
Winter’s love is swallowing me whole
The death that follows the seeds I sowed
Ghosts clipping my heels where I tread cold toes
Immortalizing paired tracks frozen in snow
An icy grip on my throat, I start to breathe slow
Winter’s love is swallowing me whole
I blink my eyes wide for the lessons to show
Another year of life’s cycles come to a close
My skin favors blue as the ground starts to pull
Curled up like a fetus, like a fruit in a bowl
Winter’s love is swallowing me whole
My body is settling but how restless is the soul
Painful tingles subside as I relinquish control
Who might I be come next spring when the sun takes his toll?
I lay my mind to rest, as the thickest frost grows
Winter’s love is swallowing me whole
Beautyberries dazzle the eyes with
the appearance of deliciousness.
The purple wonders, that look like raspberries,
seem to coax, “Pick me! Pick me!”
Jelly jars appeal to the clusters of drupes.
However, one must beat the birds and wildlife
to the bush, before they strip it clean.
Yet, leave some for their sustenance.
In a small clear vase, a branch, of beautyberries,
patiently waits to produce a root. Meanwhile,
the centerpiece-enchant adorns my table.
This clipping’ released by a berry nice friend.
There was, and is, a dark black hole resides in her somewhere;
he was not sure if it was in her heart or in her soul
but he was gravitated to her captivating stare
attracted to the only Black Moor in the goldfish bowl
as were many others clipping her event horizon
she, bending the light, the truth, the lies; until non escape
and he was never clear if he was father, lover, son
or simply, to her, yet another planetary ape.
They planted trees but forgot their water.
Each leaf a wrinkled newspaper clipping
from a world I never subscribed to.
Noise here is curated.
A choir of car horns, a sermon of drills
but I hear the silence
between footsteps
and the echo
of one slippered child
crossing the pedestrian overpass
with rice in a plastic bag.
My eyes collect
forgotten wrappers,
graffiti prayers,
the melancholy
of sky cut by concrete.
They say you must harden in Manila.
But I cracked
gently,
like an eggshell left in heat.
We beseech heavens to ignite
our heart that mind may see the light,
opaqued by both fear and desire,
thus long and lonesome seems the night.
Death looms ahead and now we tire
of narrow thought forms we do sire,
so befriending silence we pause,
with vast space choosing to conspire.
In staid stillness fickle heart thaws,
clipping in this way, ego’s claws,
that thus doing nothing at all,
we see our true Self, free from flaws.
When we are still and thought forms stall,
we hear clearly God’s loving call,
asking us to wake up from sleep,
that truth of being, we recall.
Silence the void, wherein we leap,
plunging headlong into the deep,
prior to which head and heart merge,
whence boons of grace we then so reap.
Feeling within divine mists surge,
our heart within the stream we purge,
witnessing wayward ego die,
that from delusion we emerge.
Peace engulfs us, we hear soul sigh,
in joy waving ego goodbye,
seeing earth life as but a dream,
now free at last, ready to fly.
There’s a demon on my shoulder,
clipping toenails into my ear
An angel on the other,
nibbles wax so I can hear
He makes balm for my lips,
lights candles once a year
Both play devil’s advocate;
God knows they’re insincere?
Their words are quite pointed,
but sharper when being blunt?
My ears burn like hell
as rumours exchange every month
This tug-of-war’s relentless,
pulling strings to win my soul
If i’m nothing special;
why fight tooth and nail for control?
Lately they’ve switched shoulders,
maybe it’s to explore
Candles burn less often,
not on birthdays like before
Toenails fall unchecked,
my balm-less lips crack and swell
One day I’m living in heaven;
the next feels like bloody hell
This war is wearing me down
I can’t do wrong for right
My hair feels thinner,
no surprise from this endless fight
Searching for bald spots in the mirror
sheds light on their attack:
Those grifters do Brazilians
and pedicures behind my back.
By
David Kavanagh
Autumn
Let us begin in the current season, Not the season of beginnings but of seasoning.
Leaves bold
Wise, old
Winter
Hither it comes, white or gray, falling, failing, smarting, incredibly enlightening.
Lets go
New show
Spring
New birds of millenials herded into facebook frames, those cribs engaged with each month’s age. I look on, remembering how this boomer’s recollection is in a box, more than one.
Face crib
Ad lib
Summer
Watch those new birdies fly. Life is fleeting. Parents hold onto their wings, sometimes clipping. Grandparents no longer open their wallets to show their pride, but with much more intensity and videos, besides, put the kids front and center for thumbs up, hearts, exclamations, tears, never anger.
Emotes
Devotes
the brightest toe nail clipping
in the sky the moon two points
one hook where by a dangling
dangler of collar and tie swung
a swinging caught he estranged
and left forgottenly o deranged
for he deranged and hanging
there saw stars drift past and
faces wear the smirk n smook
of laughtrous jeer that when
finally loose broke out a cheer
"Be still my heart!"
The thunder, the splatter,
all the drenching liquid matter --
then the storm passes,
and out come beautiful lasses,
clipping roses for bonnets,
choosing beaus for dearer sonnets -- it's really about love --
A sand weight walking in a noon
Slumber stutter and sun moon fiasco
Lit morning and walking in shrill
Not many come keeping away the judge
As finally roaming as a sand world casted
The REM moods of inside mettle
And the sandman scoops for noontime
Abreast be less full of oneself
Hushing those whispers by a bent elbow brush
The trees escaping into blue
Yet the furnishings swooping the mystique
Varied by the dreamscape so flash
The moon tearing, the sun flaring
Upside down in the gases of apocalypse
Cunning the steady swoop of the pendulum
Clipping the utterances of a Latin hazard slay
Fingertips click a
desperate breakbeat
as eyes glaze over
in blue light baptism
please overwhelm me
Binary jungle,
you glowing cesspit
through the clipping
curtain echoes a choir
of post-post ironic
agoraphobics.
Dopamine is a myth,
an expired meme
deemed mega cringe
Let the file rot into
informational abscess
Here we all wait before
Heaven's blockchained gate
tired of partaking into
a satire so removed from
a cogent solution,
It is simply void.
Here is coldest oblivion in
this stupid cyborg machine,
but the world is so
Y2K heat death-core
Whatever that means
It turned a generation
made us abandonware
Just to feed us nostalgia
for times when we
would bother to care.
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