Black-blue paint bleeds from within the cracks of crumbling cement walls,
Crushed skeletons infused within limestone erode,
exposing nameless sorrow hidden behind faceless grains of gypsum,
while a forgotten galaxy's celestial ceiling peers through a decaying thatched roof.
Misguided souls reach out into night's void,
screeching repeated sins into feverish gusts of wind,
tethered to each rusting rebar that's barely holding what was once their haven together,
unable to let go, doomed to relive past grievances.
Weathered spiral staircases lead towards nowhere.
Bleakness suffocates while hope is snuffed out,
like the wick of bitter candles drowning in their own wax.
Spinning surrealistic scenes melt into intangible realities,
each soul writhing in agony, trying to break free of abject cycles,
yet punishment clings like the smell of burnt tobacco,
unable to separate the scent from the fibres of existence.
Disembodied voices find no reprieve,
only more excruciation
at the hands of cruel judgement.
The stanza was written in trailed off silver, circle over circle was wound to form silvery words, embossed around them though the palace sheltered paintings of razor-thin wings bespeckled with blood imprisoned sonnets that zip and fly with the hub, palatial and so endearing, the disembodied whispers are like paint peeling.
DISEMBODIED GRAPHICS
reminders
of
impermanence
inspired
beleagured
&summoning
apprehension
in
oblivious
symmetry
uncanny
a
dreamlike
affinity
magnetically
formed
within
an
unattributed
enclave
energetic
reminiscent
explosive
coherent
surreptitious
pulsating
captivating
. glistening
prismatic
miniature
unusually
complementing
engulfed
in
a
beguiling
innovation
glowing
vaporously
a
fantastical
whimscal
reverie
transient
understated
with
eccentric
graceful
simplicity
The day I had hated the orange sun,
Or the bulb that sat with me in the room,
Please know there was something you could have done,
But worry not, I was your opportune.
Maybe when the grey blade glares on my skin,
Or when the cold darkness hugs my body—
Please read my dry lips for what could have been,
A set version of me: disembodied.
Don't mourn or cry or anything of grief;
Look back at your own shadow's state and shape.
Why didn't I get my slice of relief?
Why just now? Why not then? Something at stake?
When my turn comes to haunt those who wronged me,
I won't do it. I won't. I won't. I won't.
Against my feelings, I will have pity,
Pity I didn't get yet I still want.
A curly corded telephone rings in a distant room,
its black Bakelite bulk vibrates behind closed eyes.
An old-time fire-engine parks its flame and brass chassis
inside a cavernous skull, though no conflagration
sets the dark alight.
It is that shallow pit of night when faceless clocks
expose themselves to be landmines.
A far past is calling; disembodied tongues drum loud
in an echoing ear.
A cumbersome receiver tumbles off its cradle
an accumulated dust of misappropriated yesterday’s
softens its fall.
Nothing has grasped at nothing.
A line is dead and buried; there's no resurrection,
the call however lingers, as a voice dissolve's
deep within the combustible light
of another day.
Hegemony of shrubbery and trees
Bows out chain link fences along country roads.
County diesel trucks cut down
Greenery an inch level to the ground.
Fences being overgrown
Owners cut inside.
Only disembodied knuckles left
Of wood to shake against the wind.
Beer drinking high school boys
Stand in speeding cars
Play mailbox base ball: home runs
For all unlikely correspondence lost.
Red flags rusted at their sides
Nothing coming in or going out.
They stood and now lie agape
At the emptiness they might have held.
Like my father slack-jawed
Dead below his antiseptic sheet,
Gob-smacked at his
Instant recompense.
Summer like an eagle has swooped down
Under its tearing claws, the Earth shrieks and groans
Days and nights breathe out the stench of dribbling sweat.
Roads rage and roofs steam like an overly heated pan.
The midday Sun flares right overhead,
Spitting fumes and fire all around.
The Earth lies scorched under its burning breath.
An oven pre heated, hot enough to grill and bake.
Rivers and streams pant in wild unrest
Canals and cisterns lie distraught
Dry leaves in whirlwind swirl around.
Fallowed lands yawn with mouths wide agape
From the woods, rise coils of sooty smoke,
As the dried undergrowth burns in the forest fire,
Sucking the last vestiges of grass and green.
The flames of fire dance in wild ecstasy.
Alas! The self same summer has barged into me
Burning outright all my unsung songs.
In my ears, echo the rustle of dried up thoughts,
Which waggle round me like disembodied spirits.
How I lament the loss of my lovely rhymes,
As the ink in my pen also is drying up.
Oh! I wish it were moistened by the waters of Helicon
And like a stream, trickle down into the paper I hold!
(“Bardo Dreams”, 2017, original mixed media encaustic)
Maybe so in Hollywood, yet
We all dream, not just fags,
And in our dreams we are all equal
Equal in being dreamers
Disembodied spirits on the way
No matter our sex, no matter our race
No matter our age or even species.
Disembodied spirits on the way
Dreaming like lovers do
Lovers of Life.
(9/20/25)
Pocket-Gazes
Night depressed—
black spirits, spiders,
demanding, retorting,
an empty vessel, titanic with trauma.
A downturned smile, flagellate,
disillusioned, demoted, disinterested—
dystopian dysmorphia.
Dolls.
Masks.
Spills.
Blood.
Oxygen.
Water.
Decaying. Degrading. Devolving.
Despair, disaster, disappointment—
disappear.
The lexicon collapses inward,
a ladder whose rungs only fall.
Sand sighs. Water shifts.
Hands disembodied.
Faces detached,
checked out.
I flail,
a swimmer drowning in a teaspoon.
Watermelon empathy—
bloated, barren.
A clock face melting, Dalí’s sky.
I am Picasso’s fractured mouth.
I am Van Gogh’s shell-ear,
smashed on the rocks.
Amy Winehouse cries, hollow,
vodka-veined, restrained
inside a music box.
Maya’s muteness.
Florence’s failure.
Mary Seacole’s poverty.
Nightingale’s lamp guttering.
Angelou’s song stilled.
Seacole’s hands trembling empty.
Yet outward—
instead of inward,
instead of into my pocket-gazes—
there might be,
just might be,
a shimmer of stardust,
a touch of moonlight.
Hope, a dot of light
in a cavern of dark.
And yet,
it illuminates the sky.
I felt it break,
I saw the shards,
the frame hanging limply
in it's wake as it crashed down.
I never wanted anything but her,
so I kept the curtain open.
But now the glass shines, where it was
embedded deep inside my disembodied soul.
I try and try to pick up the pieces
but they cut at my skin.
I struggle through the pain
the glass still shines without her.
I can fix the shards
of the window
but there is nothing
left inside.
I could reach for the pieces
but all that would do is hide the tell-tale tracks
of a poisoned soul cut too deep,
to ever be whole.
The more I try
the more I scream.
That's the price
to ever love again.
Glass scattered
to the mist,
but that's what I get
for feeling this…
Corrosion seeps into a floundering mind,
Disembodied memories unbind.
Set free, lacerating into a trembling spine,
Threads of a soul spill, taunting it’ll never be fine.
Abandon the white-knuckle grasp you have on sanity;
You’ve become perverse, a mere profanity.
Watch as we dismantle your facade of vanity,
Swept away on sulphur winds with any remaining humanity.
Stripped bare, exposing inner turmoil beneath,
Into the flesh your darkness sinks its sharpened teeth.
Malignant chaos has been unsheathed,
As to the Nether your soul has been bequeathed.
A few articulate with humor and grief,
others are hinged
so that ears can hear each other.
Many bones are scaffolds
for vision, prayer and procreation.
One hollow bone hums in the throat,
it channels the smoky saxophones
of consciousness.
When death comes to nibble holes
into breastplates and ramparts
an osseous honeycomb of memory
forms caves,
cavities for disembodied thoughts.
Mind, of course, has always had
its own immortal bones and marrow,
and so even
the humble bitsy sparrow.
An unearthly fog thickens nocturnal’s peaceful aura.
Scents of lamenting petrichor mix with slick, decomposing leaves.
A disharmonious death knell calls to me,
Untying the red strings of fate from the celestial loom.
My heart weighs heavy against a faltering ribcage,
Standing in front of the wilderness of mirrors.
Disembodied voices duplicate—
Head spinning, whiplash ensues.
Reflections distorted, coated in soot—
I've become both saint and sinner.
Looking down at my hands, veins darken,
Burning from within—realization strikes:
I’m the ashes, the smudges obscuring judgment’s view.
I’m sitting on the edge of time
For just a disembodied pause,
While pointed hands o’er rounded chime
Obey the pendulum’s swayed cause.
Where kinetics’ course is lastly laid,
Comes forth the pointing to a door
That opens wide. Be not afraid,
I think, to thereupon explore.
And there I search the sea, in stay,
For those few drops that speak of me.
Below a crystal clouded day,
I look for cause and clarity.
But deep inside, my inner clock
Is calling forth its metered rhyme.
Inclined I am to learn like Locke,
I’m also tuned by trembling tine.
The edge of time is thinner than
The fairest maiden’s finest hair,
Yet broader is the settled plan
That puts us just exactly there.
Across the room, I saw-
A disembodied claw.
Waking my mom is not possible.
For some reason, the popcorn bowl is full.
A haunted spirit.
Who won’t quit.
So watch the TV, even though it’s off.
I laugh and start to cough.
My mom never wakes up at dawn.
But here I am, starting to yawn.
Can a ghost-
Make me some toast?
The toaster dings.
So I started to sing.
She never liked being woken up early.
She is tired and surly.
I don’t think she saw the ghost.
He hid in the corner, munching on toast.
I fell back asleep, until noon.
I sometimes miss flying to the moon.
Mom, you don’t remember the ghost, do you?
My mom worries, that is true.
I look in the corner and see-
Half eaten toast, it wasn’t me!
I really wasn’t mine…
My mom says- fine!
I fell asleep again.
Until the ghost awakens from within.
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