Hurl the spear of grief
against the flayed sky
The depth of every betrayal
roots have taken hold in the mattress
- a clichéd fact
Too much pain and too much conflicts
strong emotional currents
The treadmills invisible source
filters through a stone wall
nauseating stench, putrefaction
- chlorophyll-deficient status
Humans sniveling complaints
Neither dusk nor dawn can delude me
Your mode of denial, determines my fate
brooding does not happen on its own
Absence of response is also an answer
but action eliminates doubt
Let the wind draw its final breath
- pack up your trash
Amidst your youth, these suited truths
tailored to suit you well
only a few, but none too new
set fire to all your tells
inside your tailored hell
A fiery shroud, has wrapped around
your doubt, set you alight
amongst a crowd, of timid shouts
from the darkness of your night
delight, a dark too bright
Enrapt in flames, a mind is flayed
a cage to lead you home
upon display, your naked stage
was left to bare your bones
by the fire you set alone.
Christopher Pitts/2017
Soaring so high
fanning the fire
spontaneity angel
of infinite desire.
Sampling the grain
exposing the
straight jacket gang...
love spilling shade
spitting lye and blue rain.
Then they deem you insane.
What they can't control
what they can't contain
they shame into silence then cage
feather and flame
sweet feather and flame.
Feather and flame
golden heart splayed then flayed.
On silver sleeves of stained-glass dreams.
They wish to stain the tigress untamed
what they can't control
what they can't conceive
to blind to see
monolithic egos
of white-hot conceit.
Feather and flame
flying so high
cornucopia of love
Capricorn on fire.
A meteor shower
chandelier cutting the gray
robin egg sky
feather and flame.
Feather and flame
precious petal ordained.
zig-zagging soul
sparkling eye
torn and alone
just another name
on a forgotten stone.
Real-Life Demogorgons
Life felt like Hawkins—
quiet streets hiding screaming sirens.
Mind Flayers weren’t fiction anymore;
they learned my name.
I was lost like Will,
vanished between breaths,
woke up shivering
in an Upside Down crib—
air thin, walls breathing fear.
I walked on jagged glass,
barefoot in my own thoughts.
Locked inside my skull,
my body spasmed with truths unsaid.
My mind—flayed
not by monsters,
but by my own sins.
Arggh!
I wanted out.
The Demogorgon loomed—
faceless, black, relentless.
Should I speak this pain aloud,
or bury my life
in a pit of silence?
No—
I heard footsteps of the other me,
the one who survived.
Friends became flickering lights,
stringing hope through the dark,
showing me a path I couldn’t see alone.
I was found—
not dead,
but drowning
in endless shadows,
Eaten by real-life Demogorgons
with familiar faces:
fear, shame, loneliness.
Yet here I stand—
scarred, shaking, breathing—
proof that monsters are real,
but so is salvation.
Thoughts rush like river—
currents pulling every want
into fevered swirls
the ego clenches its hold
hungry for the next longing.
When a hush opens
empty betwixt between breaths
in pause unforeseen
behests relent in stillness
which the ego can't abide.
In that slender void
the illusion becomes clear—
wants insatiable
can never be satisfied
in the rush of desiring.
Ego's mousetrap waits
baited with its same old ache—
the want to have more
yet the pause disarms the snare
as false hunger wanes waiting.
In the pause revealed
the trap is an illusion—
unsprung, unbound, flayed
the ego fills the spaces
with cravings unfulfilling.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aisle-strayed, the spine-scuff welcomes:
this scent, pine pulp and glue ghosts,
settles dust-flurried lungs.
Fingers graze jackets—crackled vellum,
fresh gloss bleeding promise.
Shelves stand like weathered priests
holding confessionals of ink.
One flayed paperback, dog-eared
at page sixty-three's small triumph—
proof someone else needed saving.
Here, grief grows papercuts;
hope wears library stamps.
Every warped cover a hatch
lifting into borrowed light.
Here comes —
slowly— the greyed fitness with heavy,
clasping hands, that tie up
limbs with the flayed string of life,
in which we build gingerly,
toddle for the last time,
and climb stairs more with our breaths
than with our senses.
If I count the cost, I must first look to the cross, carried to a hill of death so that a life anew may begin.
I must look at His feet, the spikes driven deep, his hands bearing the weight of our brokenness and his broken body.
I must look at his thorny crown, blood streaming down, staining the temple of the cornerstone whom we rejected.
I must look to his back, staining rough hewn wood black, flayed and betrayed by those whom he came to save.
I must look to his side, the gaping hole spread wide, blood and living water flowing in rivulets for an unworthy world
I must look to his words, grace in the face of hate, love in spite of scorn, and forgiveness that tore the temple curtain and the victory away from death.
He paid my debts, but this path is not without cost. For if I truly follow Him, I must take up my cross.
I wonder after his black spectacles,
if I could recognize his phantom's scare
by his bandy left foot, something he'd wear:
constrictor turtlenecks, cowboy buckles
his trials decided by flayed knuckles
his tombstone eyes, the depth of night they bear.
I wonder at the factors of his fear
as I adorn him with cherry jewels.
Your bass breathes, haply, the contents of love;
it whispers to me my shadows' secrets,
but dark articles ingesting your name,
face-eating barnacles that smutch our flame.
I'll be glad —a pigeon may be a dove—
to sprinkle Shakespeare over your Poe's grunts.
I, looking in the mirror yesterday,
witnessed distorted eyes replacing mine;
and, too, the lips and nose, as if a sign,
seemed bent crooked, misaligned in some way.
And, as I, squinting, gazed on that display,
an unheeding hand groped at the outline
of the coldly reflective glass confine.
I watched it slowly mangle the red-clay
body which, lifeless, answered my dead stare.
Tearing tripe from stomach, and from breast
the heart, those fingers worked maliciously,
dismembering each inch of skin less fair.—
I know not who it was who flayed my chest:
I? or that demon called Society?
The canvas waits beneath a tempered blade.
A pale silver knife, not forged for war, I wield.
I paint the silence that the wounds betrayed.
The sky lies torn in strokes of celeste shade,
each slash more raw, no truth left unrevealed—
the canvas waits beneath a tempered blade.
No brush can bruise the dark the way I’ve flayed
these hues loose, their former grace repealed.
I paint the silence that the wounds betrayed.
My muse—half shadow, half cascade—
emerges from each mark I will not shield.
The canvas waits beneath a tempered blade.
No line stays; no form can be obeyed.
I seek what's felt, not what can be concealed.
I paint the silence that the wounds betrayed.
She stares back now, the shape that art mislaid—
a scar turned sycamore across the field.
The canvas waits beneath a tempered blade.
I paint the silence that the wounds betrayed.
Tinge, thy colors terrific.
Weather wave, point where?
Heaven and Hell, this may stick!
Brick upon the bare.
Red the rampant real? Rind? Rhyme.
Tornados in time.
Wind above the city, chime.
Tequila, thy lime.
Yak upon the mountain;
Which way doth trouble lurk?
Rubbish, fill the garbage bin!
If you work, you shirk!
Psyche, soul tormented;
This place sure stinks of doom!
Lyre of love lamented!
O curse on pharaoh's tomb...
Bloom upon the tamarind?
Reality grinned.
Sin, thy light the whole world pinned!
Challengers a-chinned...
Roll that boulder, vagrant king!
Silver is thy sting!
Drenched upon but undying!
Rail about the ring!
Levels sinking in the pool?
Silent lies the spool.
O young people, keep it cool?
Flayed dismayed, fair fool...
Ghoul, thy magic terrible;
Golem, shall we ride?
Room within the brazen bull?
Bailiff, how you tried...
Rabbit was issued an invitation from the cucumber king
He could attend a spa, if he wore his red ruby ring
While rabbit was soaking in the sauna the ring got taken
I bet it’s the king, he thought; he was not mistaken
He was in a dilemma, for if he accused the king
Of not just taking, but stealing his red ruby ring
He might be flayed, beheaded or killed that day.
He decided to relax and enjoy the sauna; what the hay?
Mountains made of waves
tore the flesh from Mother Earth —
flayed and flooding.
The mud grieves beneath her,
clogged with stagnant saline.
She used to breathe — rivers ran wild and free,
forests stood tall and proud.
For she was once lush —
verdant skin stretched over a trembling core,
veins of sapphire seas pulsing with breath.
But we carved into her with teeth of steel,
peeled back her emerald skin,
pierced through her bones.
We didn’t ask.
We took.
Her lungs lit like lanterns.
Birds dropped from the blackened sky.
The ocean soured, bloated with grief.
Coral bleached like the bones of the forgotten —
silent, skeletal, sunken.
And still, we kept chlorine at her flesh.
Now she festers —
her winds thin, her skin splitting.
Cities crust her like scabs.
She does not scream.
She simply waits.
A casualty of your cruelty,
she lies open, emptied —
not for mercy,
not for rage —
but for the stillness that comes
when there’s nothing left to save.
And still,
you look away,
call the silence healing —
but it’s too late
to unknown what you’ve done.
We took it for granted
life as we knew it
our freedom our future
the concept of fairness
karma and justice
And then it was stripped
in one quick painful motion
flayed off like a bandaid
before our very eyes
revealing the ugly truth
of the worst of mankind
Now all we can do is
pray for a mighty Hail Mary ~
AP: Honorable Mention 2025, Honorable Mention 2025
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