O’ withered orchid; once
A blooming child devoid
Of weary, standing ‘midst
The evening sun, beneath
Its golden smile–now
Thy leaves of deathly bronze
Decay, sinking coarsely
Beneath the frail hemlocks
Who weep with hollowed bones.
“O’ withered orchid…
We miss thee, withered orchid…”
I press keys in a language I’ve borrowed.
I did not create its letters nor learn
them on my own - or birth the ink
that stains this page.
I did not mill the paper I blot,
only coarsely abuse it; waste it.
Even the silence between my
sentences is mere blanks in thought.
My metaphors hang limp,
too tired to skew meaning.
Nothing I write lives longer
than the screen’s glow.
I did not seek this craving to write…
it’s just there, with a voice
swimming in a sea of better ones
- and I’m drowning.
Hmm.
That dark ink with which you were written
burning so coarsely to leave you with
a calloused and thoughtless destiny
comes now to pickpocket all your smiles
all your loves
and loves there were to bind your time
Save now but a semblance of family
a photographs lie
an uninvited memory
and so to bitter turn all of disport
those anguished years
But ah my love
it is a death which comes to all of us
And lay you now at night in hatred
cold of sulfurous scorn
to stab the needles of the stars
upon a pillow so damp with tears
while all the while some scratching quill has rewritten
the past within your ears
But so it is my love we never listen
and so in spite and certainty
yourself you cannot unburden
Is it so how you think you are not broken
that some righteous bile is left to swallow
how can it be on such foolish errand
a callous gift indeed it was
this heartless and thoughtless destiny
Written on coarse coarsely written
Mumble-jumble
Words can’t sway, nor delay
Huh!!! Doctor's note
2/28/29
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2024©
"Love you a lot."
Words never said with honest hands.
This devilish lip-service
conducted
by defrocked priests.
I will not love myself
until,
I find you in a hole
I also can jump into.
We will huddle together
listening for the
hot breath of hunting wolves,
not knowing it is we,
we who breathe so coarsely,
so loud,
so lost and feral.
("The Heart of It #2", 2007, original oil)
In the Footsteps of Christopher
The Bearer of Christ
As man of form and formless spirit
literally, figuratively, coarsely, subtly,
bringing us to where we are today
on this farther shore
blessed with the abundance of Eternal Life.
But how many of us even notice?
How many take the time
to see the light, feel the breeze
and trace the path
that led us to here and now?
I’d say not enough.
And so unconscious, unaware
we live out the modern world’s dream
as a nightmare struggle
of good against evil, love against fear
forgetting in the moment we are in fact
One in all, always, already here.
(10/9/23)
So, you thought you have the right
To in my bed pass a night,
Not alone, with your lover,
Vulgar love-making brave,
Sensual pleasures coarsely crave…
You have my mattress defiled,
All night romances of the wild;
For hours with a pervert
Who claims she is a convert.
Now, a discolored white sheet
I’ll gladly burn in the street
To Junk Press give a story
And have you shamed Miss Glory!
Bed used without permissions
A sin not for remission.
Ibrahim saw Abraham try to spit
But about the rudeness thought not a bit:
Herdsman coarsely attacked with a spittle
And it had no meaning or just little,
Whereas it was Abraham’s wished battle
Against his teeming hundred cattle
just placidly grazing on his farmland,
For gratitude discharging dung on sand!
Ibrahim, the black like burnt kettle,
Would, confronted, give a fight of mettle
And might, at last, on farmland just settle,
Abraham leaving to helpless rattle
On a subject of stampede by cattle
And Lord God knows that’s as bad as fatal…
With each fresh eye contact fresh spittle:
Abraham for big ones not little;
For the sure- to- fight Ibrahim herdsman
whom no folk might ever beat man to man.
If I could remember the admonishments
of the gods,
then stalkings
by the fabulous four,
pestilence, drought, flood, and famine,
not to mention the universal decimator war,
would reduce me to a common denominator
childlike in my passions.
Driven into obsessiveness
yet unrepentant
crowded by my wanton behaviors into
unlikely sins incarnate in their own foolishness
I lurk now
held earth bound
by a likely anger from the gods.
Not being a lyrical human
I coarsely beg, borrow, and steal, from others
to create my whole
while digging my own grave
I do not hear the gods.
I was coarsely stopped at a junction today
With fixed alternatives thrown my way
To let pedestrians storm in my life when there is no sign of crossing
Or to be my own royalty and allow no shitty bossing
Many times, I seek peace and appear meek
Louder voices around me immediately read me as weak
When I interject and show the red light
Machetes they pick up; ready for a bloody fight
I clutch on to the whistle of my dignity
Blow it hard to save my endangered integrity
Rattling vehicles of harshness, they drive
Threatened by the uprising voice they try to shove me to the Archive.
I grit my teeth and white my knuckles
as my newfound mentor chuckles.
He teaches me about disdain,
but no matter, I planned for pain.
My eyes both flutter as I shudder,
then I hear him coarsely utter:
"Good, looks like you still feel somethin'.
***** I swear, you ain't worth nothin'."
Lashes wet my back with crimson
in this self-prescribed sex prison.
I don't mind the body abuse,
but worry when he grabs the noose...
He likes to leave it on so long,
Last time, I thought I was gone.
But this time I see in his eyes
Something that brings fear to mine:
This is self pity and anger,
my hairs raise as I sense danger.
I test my cold metal chains
but can't break from my restraints.
He slips the noose around my neck,
then gives my cheek one final peck.
Fire rips through my perception,
Monsters I don't dare to mention..
Everything I love is ash,
all my glass memories crash.
Burning flesh, a pungent smell,
flares my nostrils in this hell.
I hear screaming, perhaps mine?
Then I'm returned to my time:
Surrounded by smoke and flame,
mumbling my dealer's name.
In this inferno, I bubble,
as his crackhouse burns to rubble.
The curse driven by the full moon
Drove him to the forest where nature looms
Hunger fueled his charging rage
Uncontrolled hormones set to be uncaged
His body writhed and twisted
As if an unknown evils' power assisted
Elongated nose, canine teeth, bulging eyes
Coarsely grown hair , teeth large for size.
A cave a dwelling some place to hide
To conceal this beast from human sight
But the mind of the beast was not the same
To kill and eat by the moon was his game
Luna called with her full blown light
The beast responded killing that night
His disgust and dismay had just begun
Controlling the evil inside would not be fun
Blood soaked face dried from the feast
No memory or recall to save the least
Suicide or devastation destroy this part I be
Lunas' control is too strong over me
The Mask
A craftsman crafts such a beatiful thing
To hide himself away,
From the true soul that lies within,
That is rotting and shall decay
Not shall he realise what trouble he's in,
Unable to mend a broken heart,
He is guilty; aquired a sin,
But such a golden harp
From which he plays apon,
One of these days,
His mask starts to kick in now,
For his cries, they certainly pay
We all begin to ask him; "How?"
But none of these thoughts seem to park,
I this coarsely descended state of mind,
From which he did depart.
"Take it off" they begin to say,
But the craftsman simply replies;
"My journey is not over yet;
"So I shall be on my way."
-Ariana Kulikov 2015
I know. I have left you
With your worst enemy: your own.
I am only keeping what I’ve unlearnt
Throughout your education of me:
The enchantment of dialogic desire
And the near perfection of shared intimacy.
In this furnished house of you,
I walked in and I walked out
Because I am not yours to hold
And mould into a keepsake.
You think the unchanged shall rob
Me more and dare me less
Than living in the adventure of you.
While the projection of me bears fault,
The inside woman is burdened,
Yet, alive and introvertedly poignant.
Indeed, I live coarsely and serve the devil
That pulls at my flesh till words sprout
Into wingless birds of ink
And I give myself more to this dream
Of a minor god than to your atomized
Version of how love has never failed me.
Still, who dreamt up whom in the end?
My life is like a movie
well in my eyes I can truly be the ruling
I'm the doozy, Uzi shooting through the rooting
super-computing, fusing routine, never will use these
suiting every few, cleverly blue
see who? me looting every noose
I'm severing, choose to openly rue the recipe soon
why? I earned what worth my brain stirred
the curse, the pain hurts
the search for lame burns
they burst away first
in vein, I lay crazed, when I say hey
I feel they may make fate, destiny a gate
to make way for the day, decay great
face hate to be ate, ached, eight by eight shamed, by the rain saint
pourin' poorness upon the fortune
forced to force feed forty four before we orbit coarsely
im boarding, morphing for these unholy moly forces
I'm holding royal loyalty, I fully see the rhyme dulling
coldly spine showing time, breakin' like folding my soul in nine
for the care of sharing the fire for the fight
in the focus on the light when I write it right, just get excited
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