I can feel it all burning down,
the walls I painted in soft colors,
the corners I swept clean for company—
they crackle in silence.
Instead of exploring other ruins,
chasing ghosts in forgotten places,
I should stop.
Sit with the dust in my own lungs.
Run my hands along the scorch marks
I never let cool.
There is wreckage here
I never named.
I’ve been walking through myself
like a stranger with no flashlight—
stepping over the memories,
ignoring the rot,
pretending I’m whole
because I never stopped moving.
But now,
the staircase from my heart to my head is collapsing—
each step a splinter,
each thought misfiring like sparks from frayed wires.
The chandelier has hit the floor.
Glass teeth scatter across the silence.
It used to shine.
It used to hold light.
Now even the ceiling
has given up on me.
The hairs on my arm are electrified,
I can sense a nasty apparition;
Used to think it was all in my head,
my subconscious just doesn’t lie;
I can sense a nasty apparition;
Such wicked and tainted air
it’s so heavy I can barely breathe;
Used to think it was all in my head;
Just a misfiring of the senses,
hearing or smelling false things;
My subconscious just doesn’t lie;
I taste fruit from another season,
The eternal echo of a haunted ghost.
paralyzed in
hellishly cold
confining space
pummeled by cruel
icy shards
feeling lost & unfound
waiting to get lost as
the past cries
the present sighs &
the future screams
the days collapse into
another expiring year
in the Wild Wild western
& northern hemispheres
bleeding through bullet holes
Apocalypse Not Yet
brace for frigid impact
paradise is hopelessly lost
deluded dinosaurs roam the earth
Big Tech is Watching
Better Text a Crazy Poet
with lunatic visions
of radiant plasma
flowing in the craters of
a brain misfiring on all cylinders
Talking heads are synchronized,
words are replicated like cloned sheep.
Dodging in and out of an unchanging static
I skip the beat.
Hey, something just flashed my drive!
Time to suspend a string of minutes
watching a black and white cowboy show,
there are no straight lines yet
just a suitably jumbled plot.
Snorting horses gallop off
before the radar scanner can blip onto
my disarray.
Great! Now the birds are all pulling together
and swim as one across a cloudless sky.
Every damn silver SUV looks the same.
I'm weaving in and out of lock-stepping soccer moms,
misfiring my way through
yet another replicant day.
eclipse an errant eon
inhale discordant ions
exhale insectile icons
disarm misfiring memes
take umbrage under a titanic umbrella
recede from seething red-holes in sinkholes
just so you know…
Helga and Zohar orbit the Moon
a harsh mistress giggles indifferently
a cold cosmos says nothing
you are (not) what you think (you are)
forbid fallacious words
forget wordy fallacies
forgo fatuous wormholes
FYI, it’s Awesome
FWIW, it's Perfect
TBH, it’s FUBAR
Death appeared in our relationship
The misappropriation of love was the cause
Someone I loved was drenched in solitude
We never really knew that both of us
Shoved each other away with misalignment!
Now we know that every action is important
We said things that was unnecessary
And before we knew it, it was too late!
We still don’t have the full picture
You only came to me twice
And I guess that is the reason we paid a price of misfiring
Mark Frank
Copyright 2022
in the fragility of dreams lies their opportunity
to chose between the royal road to consciousness
and a random clutter of misfiring synaptic transmission
cotton wooled clouds harvest seeds from a fallen day
gift a single candy apple or fruit basket case assembly
grow roots as they float into visions and fanciful exposure
at their will they dare to collect a soothing fragrance
of cinnamon and lavender perfume and scent at slumber
evaporate in doubtless measure a myriad of sacred rest
as harbingers in disguise even nightmares offer redemption
once taken to the task in search for terrors’ cause and signs
they speak uncomfortable truths like courageous guides
delicate in their ephemeral essence they tease illusions
highlight unspoken boundaries and sound divisions
which interpolate conflicting reason with emotions
frangible reliability enters realms of disbelief and faith
when morpheus wanders paths of underworld’s mystery
and that fragility reveals the strength of passing dreams
18th May 2020
Left for dead.
Rocket on the floor; dead men in a war.
When you hear the call, come prepared to fall.
Picture on a door shows the face on the dart board,
Through which the injured will soon walk.
Blood on a wall;
You have been here before.
Ghost in the night at last has found its sight by misdesign.
The ghosts disappear in the morning light.
Pocket on a leg, left there to forget.
Written on a tissue in lipstick red.
Numbers to regret, words I never said.
All those people you left for dead.
A soldier talking about peace is an oxymoron;
Put down your weapons of misfiring neurons.
(C)2019 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
I am tarnished
I am stained
I am damaged goods
I need to be cleansed, wiped clean of the darkness that envelops my body and mind
The daily cycle starts
Anytime night or day, as I close my eyes, praying for the shortest respite
I am drowning in a putrid mix of misfiring chemicals
Two separate entities harbouring different agendas
My body wants to shut down, slip away peacefully - It wants to sail a boat towards Tranquillity Bay
My brain is full of manic thoughts as it races up and down Overdrive Boulevard
Accelerating, uncontrollably in a maddening incoherent state - it has no intention of slowing down
This is my ambivalent, degenerate existence people
Welcome to the cycle
Welcome to the lives of the millions of silent ones amongst us, paralysed by the cycle and suffering in silence
The drum roll slows its beat
It stops, the cycle has ended – For now
I am not cleansed, clean or refreshed
I am blooded
I am stained
Bruised, battered, drowned
Even more damaged.
Please help me!!
Cut the power
Silence the drum
Show me how to break the cycle and sail again
When Meaning Is Meaningless
The value of life is delicious debris
When meaning is meaningless
The victims search bread crumbs in the bounteous stale loaf
The light of nude night blinks blindness
What does meaning mean for life at the edge?
for ant’s feasting in farmished frocks
I find flames from the bottomless fire of life
If you seek meanings on this ploughed lanes
You sing museless songs of leprous crochets
When meaning is meaningless
Those who saw off meaning say:
‘See this sense with little sense and
keep this lunacy living in the silent hut’
The dire strait of sense- less bigots
Stifle the lobes of logic-quotient that can midwife meaning
What meaning is in our meaning?
Around the carnary class of misfiring mermaids
What meaning do we allot a life laden in scars
From fiery vaults and heart brakes from many lovers.
We shall find the missing syllables and symphonies
And sing songfuls in the sweet seraphdom
I sat down on the grass above you.
The dew drops drooping as I delicately
Drew my hand across
Your stone head;
the way I used to
run my fingers
Through your dark hair.
I, staring into your name, almost
Saw your green eyes shine
through the etched, gray letters.
“I owe you an apology and confession.”, I said.
“On January 5th as John the Revelator
was mistranslating your verse and
carrying you to Apollo‘s gates;
my cupid was misfiring his own bow.”
1.
geese fly backward--
across the skies of my brain.
a winter foretold in my lungs…
2.
a word is forgotten--
as the wheelbarrow turns,
a forlorn wheel
the corruption of rust the only blessing…
3.
most of words i have tucked--
into my breast pocket,
have blown away
constellations without names…
4.
as leaves glide into
the spaces of sentences--
my footsteps hidden,
by the winds emergence
as i step on the mysterious
punctuations of sunflowers
as a touchstone in uncertain times…
5.
my lips soundless as my cane--
finds the right path as paragraphs merge
into their own engines of meaning…
6.
i have chosen not to say--
for my language holds
no beauty no comfort
as galaxies swarm stellar
tipped over hives,
in impossible dog-eared dictionaries…
7
for in the night a moon--
like a shapely nude
i touch with my eyes
my eyelashes brush gentle like a moth,
end-month moon
blooms in misting window,
my misfiring synapse bend
a spoon i have barrowed--
a worn metaphor
left behind in the empty poem.
perhaps a child may find it
and take it home in a glass jar…