Beneath a bruised and suffocating sky,
The horror creeps on pale, joint-socketed legs,
A towering wreck with one wet, milky eye
That feeds on human tears and broken begging.
Its flesh is stitched with silver, rotting thread,
And from its palms sprout mouths with double jaws:
It swallows whispers spoken by the dead,
And unweaves flesh through ancient, bloody laws.
It bends the shadows, folding space like thread,
To step inside the ribcage of its prey,
And replaces every memory of the dead
With screams that never melt into the day.
It drinks the light and leaves a freezing breath,
Then coils in minds to breed an endless death.
(Unknown Is a Blessing)
Remembering the curse
of those I once thought gone—
gone before they even left.
Now I look in their eyes
and know exactly
what lingered inside.
But there is no closure.
Only unremembering ,
haunting me forever.
The unknown wakes,
stirring a silent revolt.
Whispers edge the sharp silhouettes ,
echoing,
lost in yesterday’s memory.
A clash unfolds in murmurs,
perspiring between
what was reality
and what was memory ,
and everything
that exists
between the unknown .
The echoes of what
was and what is collide,
and the unseen pulls at me
with persistent hands .
Shadows stretch,
memory twists,
and questions whisper
louder than answers .
Step closer again —
into the tremor of emotion,
where the mind resists ,
the heart remembers,
and the unknown
begins to speak.
The spiral continues ,
and you are invited
to follow.
Calm down.
It's steady as she goes.
Shadows flutter in the curtains of the open windows of my heart.
Fall days crisp the edges of lips in incomplete connections.
Feelings play together with a butterfly in the panic room.
Clouds pass.
My heart races from phantom fears.
Sighs cherish light years of youth that is on the edge of these streets.
Fall down.
I move too fast.
The way I miss you is on the flutter of angels wings.
Just an undreamt state of mind.
The way we are stuck in moments of time.
Haunting the various passerbys.
Stuck in these dreams where you come back to me.
Sitting on the edge of sunsets summers fade, fall embrace.
You were my one wish, an arcade cocktail of hymnals that we cannot preach.
Find me where we let go.
Moments in spaces I cannot yet speak.
Homesteads echo, on the sunlight, and farewells.
Come down.
Because I can't forget.
Leather jacket bowties swoon in summer night
Eyes alight in soft somber roman candle smiles
Running starts into sky diving the coastline in her smile
Painted sky lines of dying suns swirled in amber spread across the embers of daytime
Hanging hopes like fairy light the music of fluttered heartbeats escape into heavy blue scene
Promises, hearted eyes dot the lines where she parked on the lawn
Disguised in possibilities the words so spoken and sweet
Abstract in my thinking the way her way of human has caused me to be
Fine art on the horizon, hair that dances with no invitations for me
Holding my breath for the moment as the dream calls out
Dreamers alight and spread out like birthday candles
All breath, all heights, feet dangle toes touching stars
Floating up, swelling in protest as the downside is all up
The orchestra marches on in Gothic dark
The guitar brigade lights the night with a spark
The ***** angels with furled black wings
Take flight as the alto sopranos screams
The tenor tangent scratches the stage lights
The overloaded cannons shoot at the sky
And the backup witches writhe with the king snake
And the decibels start the earthquake
At the demon soiree plays each heart string
As the masses are swayed by each catatonic ring
And the charging bull, the rhythm section
Pounds to the misery of each predilection
Bombast and bomb blasts
I've not seen a crescendo like that
The smoke clears and the arena comes into view
With the bodies spent and strewn
And the vixens and sirens screaming
Like a queen who’s king died in the war
Splashes and crashes
As the debris floats to the shore
And the conductor (that ******)
Can’t keep a beat
The beast has now had enough
As he begins his retreat
War torn and forlorn
The stage lights finally go out
But not before the medieval four
Sound the trumpet blast, Ahh! at last
Elizabeth Bathory Wakka
Was awfully good in the sacka
She'd jump on your face
And writhe with such grace
Then spit out her bright red tobakka.
Under a wooden cobbled roof,
In the somber yard out back,
The full moonrise, misted in grey,
Legend memories flood of the ancient,
Of a knight long passed away.
A king of lineage noble,
That's whispered of through time,
And rooted in a legend,
faded warrior, of this rhyme.
Le Roi where is your palace now?
Le Roi, du chateau?
I pray you dwell in heaven,
And the True King walks with you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Goodbye my favorite forever
Eternal fragments lost in abstract soup de jour
Our handshakes full of tremors
When the memories rain it's sore
My heart in freefall, falling up and out, forever's too soon
The paragraph on the backs of pictures stabs the point home
Skeletal strangers with nothing left to prove
The distance signals in real time leaving the breadcrumbs of
jarred hearts, painted candied hearts and Pacman ghosts in slow pursuit
The light of pumpkin eyes, rhythmical in pursuit of boyish daydreams
Girlish looks of starving hearts depreciated, are less than pennies now
Parting words circled in funny papers still shaking with regret
When you see me in the folded memories
Just know you're not alone
Your light smiling on in the hollows of my eyes
Smiling in hindsight begging you to come home
Begging me to be brave
Goodbye my favorite forever
You're my long way out
In fading and in passing
Set me a long way down
O fall, let this lore of love be the last...
as your tight, chaotic grip holds me hostage.
Don't count against me my downfalls,
but the endeavors that have stitched the fabric of my days.
Still, this mask of anguish shapes its heavy cry,
wrapped tightly against the core of myself—
absent of mercy, mocking that pure moment in time
that allows us mortals to be human.
Yet, neither dusk nor dawn can delude me.
They try to imprison me, and hate may fill me with sorrow,
but the flame carried within shall never be dismissed—
a hunger not easily satisfied, refusing to die.
Discarded, a silent alchemy works in the dark.
I am the fire the shadows could not smother;
I turn the leaf, rewriting every page,
rising far above the ashes of my pain.
Last standing—strong,
amidst the dust and foliage of farewell!
Note: AI-image generated to visually reflect my poem's themes. Written for the "Leaves of Life" poetry contest sponsored by poet Hiya Sharma.
I met her in the dark, her breath like stone,
A predator carved from some vast unknown.
Her gaze a weight, a grave of quiet fire,
Unchained from what the mortal soul could own.
There are no pacts where lions tread the dust,
Their truth is claw and silence, raw and just.
Yet still, I stand, a fool before the shrine,
My blood a whisper, offering ash and trust.
Each word she gives is fanged, with edges sharp,
Her laughter hums, a brutal, hollow harp.
The ache inside me folds beneath her grin,
As though her teeth could sever guilt and harp.
No common bond; no mortal tie can weave
This force of ruin clutching hearts to cleave.
Still, from her weight, I breathe an alien calm,
A portrait burned in charcoal, fierce to leave.
Her truth is art, the savage kind, unbound.
I wear its scars, a silent battleground.
No treaties hold, no hand can tame her core,
Yet in her chaos, I find something profound.
There are no pacts where men and lions meet,
Our truths collide, a thrum, a lethal beat.
In mirrored fangs, I howl my darkest self,
And let her teeth consume my soul, complete.
Shared atmosphere vapor trails in blank stares across a room so crowdedly desolate.
Always there, always filthy. Slideshows flicker like the magnavox eyes shuffle lid to lid, moment to moment as time fleets like dust shimmering in my heart. Always filthy.
Brought out of the infectiously swollen cardiac arrest, through the waters, so thick drowning with due care. Peeled back potential baking like hot glue amongst the weight of glory that was never there.
Love against the glass ceiling swimming above while the sharks swim below. Sinking into the black and blue that ensues carbonated lungs scream alone in the waves below a somber rock a bye into the phonetics, into the pride less afternoons wasted in silence.
Alone in the drink as all the hands let go awaiting always filthy waiting to sink out of mind and out of sight.
Daytime ghosts
Windows bring light that exhales a dead-end world
Softest intentions drown to sleep at the bottom of shallow wells
Neon memories bubble to life the static scores that bodies hide
Mouthed confessions of loveless intimacy that knows no swirls of radiance
Soft embrace of the life above from the cold souls that swim below
Hugless lovers reclining in the bleak blue edges of summer lights hung on horizons
That never knew the scores composed from names that never met
Fainted in pleasures unknown to sender as the tape decks click B-sides search for depth
Tears for two at an empty diner booth that is abandoned along travels to far off destinations
Reservations for taped confessions of vows never thought, as the food comes shared aloud
Relief by numbers in collections of good vibes, better company and lives well lived
High tides come and go as wells stagnate the fishtank below
No one is home.
The address is returned to sender.
The user you desire to speak is no longer available.
To send a numeric page please press five now.
Ferment in the waiting room of life.
The catacombs of the mind are empty.
From the grave they will not rise.
The life you once knew is now fleeted.
You're out of time.
Exhale. Inhale. Exhale again.
False memory is not gospel.
Queue the piano, and bring in some coffee to go.
Crack a smile.
Adjust your tie.
Goodbye.
The heaviest sound lays us to rest
Tied to the steak and eats our heart out
Composure fixed to the evening sky
Swivel the scenery then throw me away when I am colored dead
Let's all pose then fall down the well together
Understudies for the part we weren't meant to play
Courage for cowards in the rewriter's chair beating the around the rose bush
Sink thirty thousand feet into the shoes too narrow for human feats.
Back to factory settings until you can learn how to sing let alone speak our names
Caution tape leashes the struggle bus in gear on your best days
One step further than slipping up on a Monday, blue and battered
I wake up to the sight of the out of boundaries shred to pieces
Water for the pills stuck in swallowing fashion
Wings tied to the bed abstract as ever
We dreamt of the rise and fall of the house of us
Blueprints of further disappointment with marble inlays to hold onto this moment
Shock jocks of jealous siblings gnashing at ankles going home
Nostalgic for chaos and that bitter root
I didn't know that I was this obvious
Innocence donated with and without the will to live
Lover, Lover
The nighttime sings our names
Ballads of the figurative Juliet
Radios hiss hearts spilled the shadows hide naked ambition stilled
Neglected emotional hills wafts through valleys of past lives
Karmic backlogs review their closing percentages
Futures flood the floors hold the line between fate and tears
Shadow people alone in the twilight
Illuminated letters, walls woed to sleep
Dreams from the shoreline as phantom vessels waltz on the silver linings
Postures of stable footing, top of the line, kings and queens of value
Thumbs circle the knuckles, bone kisses bone, the familiar taste of home
Haunted hems lines explored in tribal pursuits
Please keep me waiting
The specter of tender frames evaporates
Morning ghosts caress the memory in travel
Neckties versus deadlines
Power brokered, breath that betrays the dream
Folded napkins
Cocktail napkin epitaphs
Check please
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