JUST BECAUSE
I felt it, yet I really cannot explain
There, it just happened once again
A burning desire to clap and cheer
But hold on, there is nobody here
Perhaps I’m starting to go off piste
I should take a deep breath at least
Why am I stupidly waving this flag
My hope of sanity is starting to sag
It is as if I am celebrating an event
But no crowd, no stage, nor a tent
My smile must appear a rictus grin
Something is making my head spin
Standing alone in this muddy field
Odd behaviour, my future’s sealed
I see no cause for joyful expression
Maybe I’m due for my next session
I stopped myself as I began to shout
Their advice is always to let it all out
This is a fantasy like the Land of Oz
You ask me why, well, just because
ACCEPTANCE
Thinking that I’m happy today
Well now, isn’t that just great
It makes a change, you think
Faking it right up to the brink
What you probably anticipate
When hearing a donkey bray
My smile, almost a rictus grin
Almost as cold as shiny shoes
Joy is an old grainy TV show
It’s canned laughter you know
I guess it’s time for the blues
They’ve arrived, show them in
We are a species gnawing at the roots of existence, hellbent on self-immolation, our every endeavor a funiculus of futility. The argent legacy of our forebears, squandered by imbecilic hands that molded us into hollow effigies, devoid of essence, yet rictus-grinning with vacuous ignorance.
Fear, the petrifying shackles that bind us, rendering us ciphers of compliance, indentured servants to the whims of the elected elite. We toil, mesmerized by the tintinnabulation of trinkets, and the numeric abstractions that promise ephemeral solace, but deliver only eternal enslavement.
We are fallen titans, parasitic echoes of greatness, our nebulous dreams reduced to flickering embers, as we succumb to the siren's song of servitude.
Worst of all someone is reading this right now thinking I am gloomy and need to smile, but can’t say I am wrong, my question to you is, your joking right?
Grimoire enchantress beguiles vetala invictus, slicka min kisse, hehe just kidding, just a u’i lata spreading sugar, a sweet gift. A snarl like smile crosses my countenance as I manifest into a deity of quintessential grandiloquence on this edifice, casting thy maestra symphony to be or not to be liminal esoteric Mnemosyne velleity, but in fact a vatic edict on tantalizing your most intimate sultry.
Necromantic kissy kissy muah, to the necrobiotic, rictus lambent lament, melodious songbird choir of sempiternal complexity to make sanguinary fervid incipient lachrymose flooding the streets. Cross this lycanthropic malediction for I ventriolic assanina husks empyrean arcana dismal fates under thy hex with the depths psychopomp Yggdrasil.
Careful where you tread mortal, goddess of the nigh is here, witchess gazes through the fenestral, nocturne saucers glimmer as the siren lures you with serenades and her visage, just an itty bitty bite is how it starts, catch a sweet tooth and it will splay you apart. Velvets bear jagged fangs emptying your chest cavity of your heart, delicate if it’s eaten before it stops.
Stair carefully dear into the unknown abyssal void.
Pier was once past and now rotted and rictus, petrified.
Hue manatee threaded ten den and garnet.
Ruby teardrops and crimson Damascus drips droplets,
like a leak key faucet in the dead of night.
Scarlet necklace four by one who did sow much,
kismet of my bloodlust and neck crow man sea.
Fools are all burning with me now, how kris pea.
Cerberus let me pass for free or dye dog,
he growls but I remain steadfast and waltz threw.
Welcome to my finally fore Hades is dead,
only pan door ah re mains.
Feet patter through the leaves of the oak wood
Her breaths frantic blond hair bent back
Stops swivels and pivots seeing all she could
Body sways and she prays for air to catch
Then she see it lurch, lips grotesque, “Snack”
Another step, “Come back,” hairbreadth snatch
Her screams echo through the trees, crack
Snap, tearing of tendon and chop chop hack
Careful where thy wander for under the covers,
a monster hovers, in wait, to tear rip and peel
and ribbon flesh from bone, you and your lover
Boogeyman emerges burst reanimates ashes
Looking for little boys and girls souls to steal
Rictus cadaver of a mannequin after he bashes
Your brains in with his talons, meaty meal
to this manifestation that’s not fiction but real
That creak in the floor above the sound below,
in the basement or the scratches in the walls,
he’s there waiting to lick lather eel eyes aglow
take you some where dark and festering calls
He is your fear shhh dear he’s here feel that
Too late for you I’m afraid he sees you
And what he sees he ceases and disappears
Wooden mouth eats word and threat.
Frozen eye stares through vaudeville glaucoma.
The master is mimicked, masked, and mocked.
Doll tuxedo stretched from neck to crotch.
Head swivels to whiplash punchlines.
If it’s all in good fun, why do I want to die?
Neck telescopes and voice screeches.
Tears spurt from stage to footlight.
Two are one, yet double of what cannot exist.
It’s nearly there, nearly a man, a malformed thought.
Hanging on the edge of another world.
A fleeting spectre in a funhouse mirror.
Curtain lowers beneath dying lights.
Gathered terrors are delivered home.
Yet tiny footsteps follow behind.
Remember crimson rictus.
Lips move, but words never come.
On cue the final joke falls flat.
Dr rictus smile hilary jones been on gmb a while; well a long old time anyway'
Had the craic with Rod Humphris writer of the Simon Ellis genre, series
Also landlord of raven pub; in Bath the city; couldn't really understand Jones clear
Derided Rod with a line about dirty beer? as his science weren't up to much as such
First he was giving it out, like he owned each if and but , then said look we doc's are
Still just learning here, only when the cameras turned away from Rod thats clear'
A gang of three of gmb made noise, but no great case that any would see'
Well done Rod, take it in large thanks from so many!
The hand, now cold as alabaster,
the one that stroked my fevered brow,
or applied the Germolene and plaster,
is old and withered and lifeless now.
Kind eyes, the first I ever saw,
watched over my formative years,
watched as I bawled and crawled and more,
but now they shed no tears.
Hair, once lustrous, that tickled my nose,
and shone in the sun like burnished gold,
framing a face that would shame a rose,
now looking lank and grey and old.
Full lips that kissed my scabby knees
and told me, "There, there, that's fine,"
that could charm the birds right out the trees,
now a rictus, no more than a line.
There is no dignity nor comfort in dying,
it robs us of all human trait
and those that say different are only lying,
to spare us contemplating our fate.
The ragged precipice surmounted,
he stands, leaning forward, looking down
into nature's yawning rictus—
pondering flight without wings.
Restlessness in being,
he’s come unhinged in time
whose moments intertwine,
leaving him indifferent to his age.
Neither older than yesterday
nor younger than tomorrow,
life's review passes. Reaching out his arms,
he jumps...and simply floats away.
Corny: I haven't used real butter
In years
Only eat this fake crap now the
Colorful plastic tub
Slather it on the baked potatoes
All you like
Won't hurt you none as a left eye
Twitched some
His gleaming mouth stretched,
greasy rictus
His wife Jo either laughed
Or sneezed
The family mutt stared
Up at me
A faint growl hissing through
Bared incisors
I was really only concerned for
My Alma and
The kids, this being Thanksgiving
And all
Me only caring to deliver
Them to
A dementedly safe family feast
Late in
The afternoon we'd hit some
awful, icy
Weather on the way upstate to
Uncle Skippy's
And spun the Jeep into
A ditch.
Corny was nice enough to invite us
To his place
Wife's got turkey on the table you're
Welcome, join us
It seemed our host was the lone tow
Truck driver
In Paradox Lake, he'd explained,
There wouldn't
Be anybody around to fix
The vehicle
Till near Saturday and I a
Little hesitant
To accept his hospitality until
He argued
Hell,
Where else you gonna go?
© 2017 Michael Jones
The Scuba Diver
we look down
signal frantically
‘come up’,
though it is already
too late
he dances wide eyed
with ecstasy
as the nitrogen
tickles his cells
anemones
cling to the steep
rock walls
fish feed and dawdle
incuriously
we peer through
our tiny windows
into the ink black sea
as he goes
free wheeling
down,
down,
a rictus of laughter
on his face
it follows that
sharp slivers of time
warp like wild geese reflected
across still water winging
faces sway'd as wheat seas
pitied not by thresher's flail
rictus hidden in a camera's eye
fetus, elders left to die
teach and learn as life grows short
moments gulped in forgotten days
sun rays down
casting men without shadows
tragedies in bildungsroman
of children innocent but heartless
folded parchment in dustbins hidden
blossoms thrive in ancient midden
justice, honor, paean to the gods
distill down to cold control
foreign tongues with open hands
empire's wall breached wide within
and so, with prosody quicksilver fled
small words swallowed by larger mien
I, deep sigh, with agon's leap
fall back defeated in dreamless sleep...
A PART OF HISTORY
Our failures in cities burn-forget-
Our failures haunt us-biting heels
We choked rictus stun their neon
We are awaiting instructions-but-
His masked beings see us but do not touch us
They can not protect us day by day our failures
Frenzied adjusting the struggles to not overdoing
I see no valid interlocutors in our failures
unsustainable and necrotic inside
dolls and stumps but only weak
Crawling and scratching kevlar window separating us from living
cheerless, wretched life
failure cycling
gaping rictus of
disheartened gloom
preying on
my soul’s regret
faith chagrined
headlong plummet
into darkness’
gaping maw
I depart
oblivion
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