Textures

The rake of calloused palm against worn, sallow face; the loom of perfume on handkerchief lace

The dither of moonlight illuming the grey; the noir from afar to a time cast away

The burning eyes cooled by drying of tears; the sleeve used to grieve before anyone hears

The venom overheard by the children at play; the words that assure through the mind’s disarray

The throbbing, red lip with a taste of fresh blood; the blame, and the shame, and the memory flood

The shattered glass soul and phyche near rend; the long to go on, but a lust for the end

art: Pendulum by Margarita Georgiadis

Die a little more

Awake to fake a smile and conversations
Surviving on lies to avoid the questions
Counting minutes, enduring the moments
Meaning irrelevant, memories forgotten

Breathing to seethe from the brokenness
Suffocating in silence on shattered glass
Staining the pieces with threats and epithets
Shaping a self-portrait with knuckles and hate

Alive to dive deeper into harking darkness
Fading reality from egoic preoccupation
Draining vitality with insouciant acquaintances
Drowning in imageries of finite ideation

Waiting for fate to shade the trap door
Writing eulogies on crumbling brick walls
Envying time passing away with such ease
Living each day only to die a little more

art: MF009 by Eric Lacombe

Rocking chair

Cool air, disturbing hair, the
breathy whisper of convenience;
rocking in safety and boredom;
shackled to obedience and fear

A foot brushes carpet in the darkness
of a screaming mouth; hoarding silence
as gold; looking through the soul to
only desolation outside

Hunting for treasures in the dung of
afterthought; finding, as expected,
only dung; the more things stay the
same, the more they stay the same

Given time, give it back, too much
nothing to fill; an ebb and flow of
nonsense and rebuttal, with no
words to suffocate the emptiness

Dilated pupils, open yet unlearned,
capturing dust in the moonbeam
befriended; its life turns to shadow
in an instant, free and purposeful

Pain, a reminder of life, and the reverse;
self-distinction an impossibility; bland
and abrasive, like a stucco finish on the
inner cheek

Hear the steady hum, without a tune,
from the fan overhead; dangling brass
metronomes hypnotize and familiarize,
orchestrating

The rocking chair, in screaming boredom;
with breezy chill air, disturbing hair;
as disturbing thoughts surface to
suffocate the silence

art: Triptych August 1972 by Francis Bacon

Whether the storm

Alone in the frigid cold, the stars her only guide, while consternation constellations in every direction, threaten to hasten the end

Whether the storm of tempests rage against the sky, the shifting plates fault the land, the rising oceans swallow the continents piece by piece

Or while ravaged by the fire from an untamed sun, her soot steps across time growing ever blacker, the heat haze on the horizon heralds a hellscape

Or plagues of rat and man fester and boil, infect and decimate, slaughting the innocent and guilty alike, without remorse or recompense

Or humankind devours itself and all around it, through violence and greed, bones of war atop bones of history, nuclear winters of madmen

Still she carries on; her journey incomplete, dragging humanity into destiny, hurtling through the emptiness, our steadfast custodian of life

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

The many gods

Tongues and fingers light the
path, flickering this way and that,
casting hawkish shadows upon the
mosaic of dimly lit memories

Twisting language and shifting grips,
searching for the righteous words
and propitious angles, hoping the
past is forgotten, thus forgiven

Begging and bargaining to their
one of the many gods, to be
favoured above their brothers,
flattered above their sisters

Praying hands of preying minds,
a torch to illume singular devotion,
to blind the suspiciously sighted,
and to set ablaze invisible foes

They then wait; dazzled by a distorted
reality, a quirk of evolution; led astray
by their desperate desire, left
betrayed by their clutching pyre

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Corvid

The corvid whispered his secrets feared, piercing his flesh with nail; he tried to scream, but could only hear, the corvid’s wicked wail

They’re watching you, he knew it true, because the corvid said it so

She pecked and poked for the writhing worm, buried in memory’s grume; he could not flee or fight or turn, just absorb the corvid’s doom

They bring the noose, he knew it true, because the corvid said it so

She slid a remex across his throat, and he swallowed the realized truth; her words like pain he knew by rote, and sank into his ruth

You must make haste, he knew it true, because the corvid said it so

She brought him twine, and wove the line, to bear a life of waste; he did not know, on him she’d dine, a soul to suit her taste

Retain your power, he knew it true, because the corvid said it so

A murdrum not befell that day, for he swung to save his pride; with still a twist and gentle sway, he heard her ‘fore he died

You are forgiven, he knew it true, because the corvid said it so

art: (untitled) by Peterio

The march

One beside himself;
hand over fist,
disgorging the shrapnel
to bestrew his perditious path

He tries in vane to tame
the memory-go-round;
the golden ring long begone,
yet his mind it shackles still

There’s infinity in every footfall,
of his never-ending journey;
timelessness preempts salvation,
with a deafness of damnable knells

The solemn march of a good soldier,
forging into the beknownst unknown,
whilst forgotten ivory towers
tumble like knucklebones in his wake

He forever lacks elocution,
only inexpressible idyllic dogma;
as Providence bites her tongue,
behind an opalescent sneer

A mantra for the madman,
the grind of tread beneath his boot;
it’s with a privation of forgiveness,
he murmurs his heart’s lament

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Buried memories

What buried memories have I?
Those that would drag me to
  their perfidious depths;
  where the skeletons of sanshi await
  to cradle an ancient woe

Those that would evulse tears unbidden,
  ignite the searing guilt,
  encite the burning questions;
  lead the rings of fire to shed shame
  amidst blush and fluster

They who would turn a deaf ear
  to apologies and promises
  whispered in the darkness, and
  ignore pleas for forgiveness
  that are without cause for forgiving

They who would loath to be swayed
  by endorphic rocking in empty corners;
  are immune to violent nails
  and gnashing teeth;
  ignorant to forearm carvings
  and knuckle shatterings

Those who would taunt my mind
  behind tightly closed eyes;
  shadows in the eigengrau,
  penetrating the walls of my penetralium;
  painting convincing portraits of a me,
  who is not me

What buried memories have I?
Invasive inquilines planting
  and supplanting realities,
  controverting the fantasy of perceived sanity,
  convincing their host that they belong,
  whilst he never will

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Hung up

Not the first, but likely the last
Waiting on the line for a caller

Hung up on a busy signal
No time for a dead end like me

Tongue-tied, strung up
Tied up ‘neath the crossed T

Dotted eyes are now closed
Accord, without consensus

Benignity failed, depths scaled
Knot the time for a swing

Bad reception, lost connection
I’ve got my own number, zero

When I try, the receiver’s silent
Yet hear it, crackle with delight

A life on hold, what’s the point
When I can just hang up myself

art: gallows alley by Peterio

Asylum

Do not touch within the asylum,
lest disease and madness spread

Stay disconnected from the others,
to keep the bogeyman away

Keep your gaze tracking low,
and you’ll not aggravate the violent…
or see them coming

Hide your many opinions,
or the truly insane will posture and prevail

Walk the streets in daylight,
for the asylum is treacherous at night

Take pride in your own sanity,
while paranoia grips your ego

Live by your every assumption,
to proclaim you’re at least halfway right

Look out for your own skin,
while looking out for those unlike you

Dimiss the calls for restraint,
as there are plenty of other planets

Anticipate the coming mayhem,
that frees us all from our common asylum

art: Fracture by Margarita Georgiadis

Crumbs

untrammelled fingertips
scratching
for crumbs of dignity

frenetically lurching for a morsel,
searching across a society
that’s failed

no fraction of compassion
to justify a place
for humanity

no sliver of transient sanity
to quell the delusions
of misplaced hope

clawing hands cannot wring,
and digging fingers
bear the filth of truth

praying hands sit idle,
and so they open
the workshop’s gate

not a whit of will to stay the frenzy
of maniacal mentation
and demented laments

only the frantic pursuit for a reason to live,
a cypher to crack with broken nails,
read in flowing red

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Left behind

Dreams departing like webs on the wind
Each new endeavour more transient than the last
Erstwhile wishes begetting ersatz desires
In a tangled bramble of silkless litterfall

Every chip in the ego, births a crack in the psyche
And the stretching interstitial tendrils grasp wildly
Trying to hold onto the mind, hold fast the shattering
Still they escape the awareness over impotent pleas

The stench of mummified memories burn the eyes
Dynasties of pharaonic ghosts gather in periphery
Exhorting successors and forebears to coalesce
Diminishing the titans into lillies and afterthoughts

Even the final hope cannot free the straitjacket
Bedazzled by bloody bite marks and thrashing scores
Too tight, too small, like a throat in shock
Scars screaming in the darkness without a word

An eternity in a moment bearing throes of regret
Paradigmatic dysphoria bows to bewilderment
Leaving a shell devoid of viscera and vitality
Until emptiness is all that’s left behind

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

The man

It was her favourite time, when
he would slip into view on the
horizon. Who is he, she wondered,
what is his name

She gazed for days upon his malaise,
from afar.
Insouciant fate made the man hers alone,
serendipity smiled at the irony

He bore a pale, shimmering pall about
him, a ghostly glow.
She lit up at his very presence, or was
it the other way around

He swayed peacefully with the evening
breeze, beneath the sturdy oak, while
reflecting in the pond before him.
What thoughts had he,

why did he look so sombre;
she always had too many questions.
His clothes were in tatters, falling
away; indeed, his shoes had already

kissed the earth. Unkempt hair framed
his haunted face, as subtle clouds
of dust were whisked from his shoulders.
She knew her obsession couldn’t go on,

eventually he’d be gone; a heap of
broken bones and mysteries, then nothing.
Day by day he will fade away, from mortal
memory. She consoles herself knowing

that there will be others; there have
been many, the world over. Destined by
isolation and hopelessness, marked by
surrender and periligature

She recalls them all, across land and
millennia, but soon again she’ll be
ushered off by Sol’s approach.
No matter, time beckons a gloaming

elsewhere, and time is impatient.
It’s always the same, ruthless and
precise, efficient and unforgiving.
Yet she would return…

It was Sol’s favourite time, when
the man would slip into view
on the horizon.
Insouciant fate made the man his alone

Though his fiery stare hastened the
man’s decay, he’d gaze for days, wonder
and appraise,
from afar…

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Ever hell

When I within my darkness stumble,
it’s you on whom I dwell;
for you are she who let me crumble,
alone within my ever hell

I rip and tear the wicked prison,
of my rufescent shell;
in hope to find a light yet risen,
lo, naught within my ever hell

My pleas and prayers fall deathly silent,
by toll of prescient bell;
with weakened will and sickness violent,
I’m lost within my ever hell

Then answers come from blackness hollow,
the pain my demons quell;
alas it’s they in whom I follow,
succumb within my ever hell

My thoughts will stray to meadows flowered,
though to myself I tell;
this place my soul is oft devoured,
it’s home within my ever hell

art: reject.ed by Peterio

Bullet dodged

Bullet dodged
Havoc unwreaked
Throat unlodged
Secrets unleaked

Sight unseen
Lover unravaged
Interest unseemed
Hater unsavaged

Seeker unbound
Hider unsought
Reason unsound
Danger unfraught

Path unclear
Fate unraveled
Presence unnear
Steps untraveled

Embrace unfelt
Love ungived
Desire undealt
Life unlived

art: (untitled) by Marcos Beccari

It’s there

He prays for the crack in the ceiling, to betray the crack in the sky
An ever-present maw agape; its mockery salient, its derision sinister
Hidden, but from suspicion, and the winding, wicked words he mumbles
It’s there

He prays for the stain on the ceiling, to allay the pain of the lie
Split across time and azure; a panopticon, judging and cursing
Thunderous guffaws from the lofty coffin, eager to gnash and swallow
It’s there

He prays for the light on the ceiling, to away keep the night from his eye
His sweat pours in torrents, as the chill of its needles pierce his skin
Darkness approaches, and it hides in the shadows of contempt and vengeance
It’s there

He prays for the whole of the ceiling, to obey and then never ask why
Swept away from the nightmare by halluciations whispering calm
Forgetting to know, that when comes morning, like every other before
It’s there

art: by Zao Wou-Ki

Cobalt sky

Never had she witnessed a sky so wise, and vibrant blue
Cobalt, as her arms reached toward the vast, and distant hue

Her eyes heard the visions from milky clouds on stark display
In them, she reckoned joys, and forgotten dreams before this day

The wind induced her locks to lash about her sallow face
Penance for, perhaps, her tremendous falls from hallowed grace

Alive, now she feels, with these newfound whipping stings
But more so, from dulcet songs, and nearby breaks the ocean brings

Its sounds fill her body from naked toes to peaceful mind
The voices in the music from memories left far behind

As the waters sang more loudly, her beating heart was nearly filled
Abruptly, it was then that all perceptive motion stilled

The saline scented mist, flooded thoughts of what she’d lost
Her family, and her friends, and her future, the final cost

Her eyes disembogue into the lapping, salt and crimson wave
Always knowing she’s not the type of wretched soul that people save

Her tongue tastes the life that swaddles her broken form
She’s numb to her pain, to her shame, and inner storm

As the shadows pass her eyes to smother from deep within
The existence she never welcomed, will be gone with every sin

Then away casts her gaze, past the cliff top upon high
So forever she’ll see herself in the waiting cobalt sky

art: Cliff at Grainval by Claude Monet

Man down

He had his heart attack the page, in its native tongue; a language he alone understood, but to utter it was a gift beyond his wordless grasp

Each stroke bore more emptiness than meaning; enticing loops and inviting spaces, where the devil lies, where the details breathe and suffocate

The same patterns, the same lines, fed to him by familiar foes; now the sermons languish from a man down, as he barrels deeper into obscurity

He can’t remember why the ink flows or why his trembling hand writes upon the wall; only the sillage of failure bethinks him of his worthless, wandering words

He knows he floats with the agent of his demise, on growing waves of discontent; for to fall upon his pen would be too perfect an ending

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Placeholder

Absent desire, but alacritous disdain, the vestiges of his mortality drift away; away with his memories, as dandelion passengers in the fading light of day

Sinister sickles punctuate the path as undeserved smiles shed in their fall from grace; the seashell razors left behind as reminders where not to tread

Happiness hewn begets a visage of cold, cracked stone; unnatural edges, yet an attrition of angles, accentuate the homely crag that teeters atop the crumbling mountain

Penance is no longer a means to maintain control, as madness molts like withering leaves within the pluviose violence of a forgotten forest

In the distance, the thunderclaps for the windsong, while a soul cowers in the shadows of the blood-crusted, rust-dusted walls of ineptitude and solitude

Empty is the hand that chokes the empty heart; a husk, a placeholder for life, this human simulacrum awaits the corporeal waste of time to catch up to his own

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Of fate

Of wrist and stripe by razor swipe
or tracks for miles as death beguiles

Of neck and burn by slipknot yearn
or choking pill to hasten kill

Of pan and grey by leaden spray
or running leap to six foot deep

Of funeral pyre by fuel and fire
or hemlock glaze by goblet raise

Of truth and will by madness fill
and wilted rose from question pose

Of blessed peace in sorrow’s cease
and fateful end by destined rend

art: untitled 41 by Peterio

Puppeteer

As his lips were sewn by the iniquitous hand, noisome iron streaked the stubbled grey, loosing ferric wishes upon the deafened earth

The pretender, the fraudster, Life, with bewitching, infectious glee, mended its marionette bespoken; into compliance, obediently broken

He painted himself into a corner of his mind, with colours of ignominy and humility, using broad strokes of incredulity; trapped by the never was and never will be

When then these coercions forced their way through the welling windows, as each pane betrayed the pressure, the cascading saline adulterated the sanguinolent pleas

Mollified by the pink, swirled confession, hypnotized by his own warped reflection, he languidly hangs from the noose beneath the fingers of his puppeteer

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Albatross

The albatross, she hangs desperately about his neck; delighting and smothering his senses

The weight of her coercion pulls him ever downward, into the depths of her eternal sky

He can’t bear to look away, for fear of forgetting; he won’t dare hold her gaze, for fear of forever

Choked by the thought of her, the strength of her grip, and bearing the rictus of delusional peace

His flesh rots, weaving through her skin and time and memory, as if to remake her with his sacrifice

She sings so only he can hear, a siren for the shoal; providence for his madness, damnation for his soul

The albatross, she won’t release him; the albatross, he can’t set her free

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Until is here/Until is gone

What had he done,
but tempt the star

When warned it keep
his wish afar

Until his time,
come be it still

No strength befell
his wavered will

His days forgotten,
gone by too fast

When then until,
would fall at last

Until is past,
until has passed

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Fellow Man Not

Alone, but for the innumerable, in a cacophony of pandemonic howls; he weeps inconsolably, an outpouring for the downpouring

Hollow and immovable, akin to those withered rampikes propinquitously poised; one within a wilderness of wails, yet never felled

Tremulous and numb, as the thunderous wrath disturbs the brume that consumes him, assaults the superego that subsumes him; a fellow man, not

A beggar bound in mute torpidity by their vanishing touch; the maggots feed and the leeches bleed, for mere nourishment, is he, beneath the boots atop his shoulders

Their discordant gnawing – picking and clawing – strips the dignity from he they tread; a destructive perturbation of diminishing identity

An ever-growing grove of rotting madness remains; greying roots and spraying splinters, tearing limb from desperate limb; if only, to be seen

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Broken Does as Broken Is

Watching noir in the cracked rearview / petrol pools beneath moonlit dew

A fire’s rage berates his prayer / too late to save, too lost to care

Carnage lies in forward cast eyes / ever drawn whither madness cries

Afraid to live, but scared to death / a swell of questions, yet naught to quethe

A siren’s wail then splits the night / enticing hope, and horror’s bite

She proffers hand, the offer lingers / ‘fore kindness turns to dagger fingers

His broken head can’t bear the bait / as justice deems, just blood will sate

So pressing hard, his essence low / for all a broken gift bestow

To swallow smoke and ash and ember / to spare the world, who’ll not remember

art: psychodelicious by Peterio

The Deadening

Memory is the bane of impermanence, and impermanence, the enemy of memory

His salivating eyes dine on the beforeward and afterward, hungry for what was, never was, and shan’t be

Straining against the current, he’s awash with sins of the past, for to take away the pain, would be to suffocate

Survivor’s guilt for this one, who undeservedly exists; while the living embrace the breadth of his present wasted

His bridges adust, trembled under the weightlessness of quotidian, phatic chatter; threatening, promising, a benighted isolation

Thus, overmorrow or what then follows, he awaits the numb of decay and sublime windchimes to perturb his silence

When finally, behindhand, whithersoever he lies, he shall relent

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Trying, very trying

Very hard, I’m trying, very trying; apologies drip from my every pore; unbalanced, I can only clumsily trip over the mystifying vomit of images and words

These eulogies for mere existence, I offer from abbey to abattoir, as they paradoxically dam my mind, yet let the rivers run rapid and true

My fleeing footfalls disturb the understory, leaving a flutterance of palliative epistles flowing behind, in corkscrew exclamations and damnations

They borrow time, while sorrow convalesces in its private, cordate suite; evagations that stay the journey to barathrum from a double-knotted swing

Very trying, I am, for the exiguity of patience in the kindest of hearts; for the plaintive howls of distress that demand an absent shoulder

For comforting the crying wolf in its death throes, innocently suffering the sufferer; for slapping the palmate that bears empathy and camaraderie

The guilt gives chase and the corkscrews pierce; guiding a circuitous flight to the end of beginning, to the beginning of end; all the while, I’m trying, very trying

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Die

The diffident moon, having failed hitherto, betrays her desire through furtive ado

She hasn’t the pow’r for arcipluvian light, thus summons to his feet, her tidings this night

To live or to not, he wonders aloud, undeceived by the sorrow, an answer he vowed

She watches, she beams, as he fingers his fate, prepared to call chance, his destiny shan’t wait

This steward of providence may upset her take, so bethinks him, she does, with a churn and a wake

No joy in the future or long whilom days, his perception has shattered, leaving only malaise

He bears all these memories that none else will see, memories that forever shall vanish with he

Propelling him next was naught but his pride, as he faced with a purpose, the watery guide

Taking no chances, for life he’ll atone, with her he’s assured, he’ll not die alone

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

The horde

Astride a tattered apishamore, the gossamer flesh of perception interflows with her own translucence

Harassed by the frenzied sycamores, as they gaure through contempt and dissonance

They blindly hurl their calumnies, rendering her angelic glow foredone

She bears in this chaos her harmony, smearing just running kohl into war paint

Emboldened by the vile loess, she detaches from the ignorant horde’s reality

And behind her petrous passivity, she’s deafened, but for the soughing at her breast

art: (untitled) by Zdzisław Beksiński

Objects without a story

Not lionized or accursed, not a source of wisdom or song

Objects without a story, unburdened with sentiment; devoid of outward interest, lacking a beginning and charm

Pitiable and stagnant, awaiting their decaying epoch, as no roving eyes pause upon them, disabused of desire

Resigned to dwine in their shadowed box unbidden

They abrade no memory’s surface, yet steadfastly collect the dust of ages, and ash of bridges

They neither twitch a lip to herald a smile, nor stitch a brow to presage a justified frown

They are nothing in the overwhelming nothingness

No one remains to inquire, no one qualifies to respond; unrecollected, she exists; an object awaiting

Begging of her breath to halt its march; pleading with the rose to wilt with her prose

Lest she be forced to remember herself

art: void of non-existence by Peterio

Fellow

Atramental remiges occulting her light, an embrace from the silver-tongued magpie, lone and sorrowful

Stelliferous flickerings perturbing her sight, a clench of the eyes, thrust behind the wicked iron constriction

Echoes from the bloodnouns surrounding her plight, a subfusc serenade, mesmeric premonitions of her vagary

Colubrine ligatures binding her tight, scales of their justice, pressed on by the alarm of the feathered Svengali

An aboulic arain army patrolling the night, in a swelling chaotic cluster of disquieting deference

A wish through the wire for freedom and flight, as the intersilient moon offers her empathy and condolence

Psithurisms taunt the immured weeping wight, while the warden longs, desperate for the safety of his cage
art: fellow by Peterio

Heartland

He breaststrokes through the bogland, with a mind, twilight-kissed, thoughts too heavy to keep him adrift

So succumbs to algedonic toxicities, of wayward desperate diversions, yea, sly reality perversions

Breathing retribution when his face embraces the mire, beclouded, befuddled, malicious memories afire

A pyre, now his form, drawn to depths by the quag, his ensuant joy obscene, and then hope intervenes

The unwelcome host, turns his body afloat, treading conscious morass, he questions the violation, that it would harass

Then poses dead man in the heartland, with a mind in stark reverie, a nepenthean reprieve, ever destined for brevity

art: days by Peterio

Irreplaceable

Cresting the familiar stairwell,
to disfamiliar emptiness; no
riant beacon of thrill, to
welcome this vessel home;

trails tracing trails of memories,
beneath shadowed, swollen
sunsets; dew-ladened lashes
languish, as lids in denial

clench; idyllic flashes of fancy,
in the squeeze’s ensuing darkness;
desperately seeking delusions,
in reality’s unforgiving light;

too much time remains, of
not enough time remaining;
too little time for weeping, in
his heartbeat’s eternal pause

art: untitled 22 by Peterio

Blooderfly eyry

Palms to the sky, he questions and suffers ex animo; his ullage ever deepening, as cerise streaks escape his stretch, assoiling torturous trespasses

Disdainful dissatisfaction flutters from the alabaster perches, offering a brilliant contrast to the cerulean above and cimmerian within

A blooderfly eyry where he stands, while he withers, sins taking flight from grieving scars and open wounds, on the gale of his penances and profanities

This moribund monstrosity – a manic, maudlin menagerie – seeks forgiveness in his own infandous sacrifice, with pillars of rust and moons of salt

He melts into the earth, a deliquescing denouement, bathed in ignominy, wallowed in repentance, and forgotten by memory and futurity

art: by Zao Wou-Ki

2L2S

Will I feel more than pain, will I cease to exist

Will my memories forsake me when the moment comes to pass, must my memories be forsaken to see the moment through

Do I follow to conclusion the natural path, do I rush to hasten the stroke of time’s impassive hand

Will I grieve for myself and what I might have been, will I rejoice in the unknown and what I might become

Will I melt into the embrace of a grander scheme, will I lose who I am to commune with oblivion

To love or to suicide

art: street photo 04 by Lee Jeffries

Annularity

At the ineluctable end of his penannular path, he glares into the blackened filth of the gap, now merely six feet deep; never satisfied, nor fulfilled, nor complete

Unrested grains of sand felled at the edge, presaged his harrowing horizon; he’ll close this opening, this rift, this gift, a final offering to the aedicula beckoning

Bound by obeisance to life’s sisyphean shackles, pushing regret and sorrow ahead of time, filling the once bottomless abyss with a bounty of abysmal alterity

A resting place after a restless journey; lying atop failure upon forfeit; decaying compost his only contribution; his body, a bridge, naturally spans into existential cyclicality

art: MF045 by Eric Lacombe

Madness

Blood filled her mouth, before spattering tea leaves and carmine weaves into the porcelain that steadfastly steadied her wavering savouring

Madness then took her hand, leading her through an oneiric wasteland; it beckoned spectres, who danced before them in sinister circles of möbius machinations

The coward cowered beneath ego and judgement, clawing the grip of Madness, tearing skin and tearing eyes, seeking elusive elucidation

She awakened, and welcomed, the taste of iron and fear; cool linoleum caressed her cheek, while her eyes reflected at the bank of incarnadine

No footfalls found her gaze, save the tracks she now embraced; then vaguely she wondered who it was that carried Madness, while Madness carried she

art: wordless in painful misery by Peterio

Dead canary

Stepping over innumerable dead canaries who bear my likeness strikingly, I embark once again on a perlous path thinking it my first bravery

As I approach a complex nexus of that which connects us to each other, I hear echoes from a voice redolent of mine, yet a mouth, I remember not

Chills consume me as I witness in the distant, stygian soot, hands holding, smiles growing, joy sowing, and life flowing; an eye witness to this, and to this, witless am I

The outline of a doorway burns through the ancient granite before my searing eyes; a load bearing wall shouldering the world, denying me a rapturous escape

I raise a hand toward the glowing brand and feel the warmth disabuse the darkness; a slideshow of impossibilities and impracticalities ensues

A bird man who flits and weaves through impotent masters and in-born disasters; a corruption of humanity who alights to the earth, in a cave, as a slave, to a grave

When only then I see my downy skin turning lemons and daffodils; I feel lightheaded, and fall toward the floor amidst the din of my tentative footsteps drawing nigh

art: by Zao Wou-Ki

Carrion on the carousel

Frustration rears its peerless fear as
fearless peers move forward; unveiling
avarice and hubristic expectation

He turns away his longing gaze in a
forfeit of forbearance; while life flies
by, his skin crawls to flee the flaying

Hidden eyes can’t hide the lies, when
time torments his tender flesh; through
tempestuously violent slipstreams

The gale of failure, whips like nine tails
in flagellatory avidity; the cat rending
meat from marrow, calm from sanity

A tumultuous duplicity of right and
wrong, outspread as wide asunder as
mytikas and tartarus, divinity and villainy

Confidence slain amid folly and shame,
only himself to blame; as the raptors
pick clean his final, delusional dream

No rousing claxon, no call to action; no
coming attraction or devilish distraction;
just night and day, carrion on the carousel

art: the cage by Peterio

Lost memories

He was once a boy, too,
Although I didn’t know him then
He was never one to share
His how, his why, or when

He grew
He loved
He lost,
He reared
He lived
He died.

Scattered in the mountains,
On an autumn’s austral breeze
What then became the resting place,
For his lifelong memories

His first scraped knee
His first real kiss,
His first broken heart
His dearest bliss,
His deepest passion
His darkest abyss.

I’ll never know of his best day,
Or if he recalls when last he cried
I’ll never know what he thought of me,
Or hear of the childhood he hid inside

I only have my own memories,
Which is half our story’s tale
Perhaps one day we’ll catch up,
In an austral mountain gale

art: Autumn Descends by Tracy Webb

The ring

The ring, everlasting; sometimes, unbidden, he can feel its annulus metallic chill, the phantom sensation and horripilation of an infinitely symbolic, twisted lemniscate; an unraveling thereof, which is no less forever

When möbius memories turn aback, he’ll depress the hoop seeking an idyllic, rockwellian innocence, one that he was never comfortable wearing; a pressing reminder of what has always escaped his grasp

Finitely symbiotic, the ring preys at the temple amidst the hoar, the seventh circle’s center, and he hears the clamor approaching nigh; gorging upon one another, the ring and he, teasing the hitherto elusive climax

Once removed, the cyclic debossment scars him for moments thereafter, before fading into numbed cowardice; an instant would change everything, a simpleton’s squeeze would repair the wayward id’s indiscriminate carnage

It is flattery of the sincerest form; for with every rosy impression it leaves, each blandishment it seethes from its cold, steel mouth, it draws heavy lids and heavier focus, though hasn’t yet the strength to draw a single finger

Scoring a merry-go-round imprint, a revolving rapture he ever bears, it extols echoes of peace through temerity and quells maudlin madness through casuistrous clarity; portentously, a searing ring for the ages, once thereupon the hammer falls

art: Q34 by Eric Lacombe

Swaddle me, Suffer

Swallow me, Sorrow
That I may choke on the rotten soil in vivisepulture; fodder for the screwworms, fare for the dermestids, swell the bellies of carrion with the fattened tormentors, yet spare me the escape of peaceful death

Punish me, Misery
Bruise and abuse me in my isolated tenebrosity; give no quarter, spare no skin of your facinorous mark; let fly fingernail and nine tail, stripe my body, lash and hash, tally my elder iniquities with meticulous fervor

Shatter me, Agony
Rend my mind, tear my flesh, leave lying a coquelicot congery of sinew and marrow; flay soul from sanity, into shards of havoc and mayhem, loosing hope and forgiveness into the vacuous abyss of contrition

Remind me, Penitence
Save me from disremembering the reasons, the failures, the wasted time, and eudæmonic opportunities; shame my sensibilities, blame my inadequacies, name my fallibilities, and enflame my indignities

Silence me, Unquiet
As my pleas for mercy would surely sway; grant no tongue to overcome, let no silver fly, lest it hew my ribs asunder, stealing breath; allow no howl to pierce an ear, nor invite a hand of ephemeral kindness

Swaddle me, Suffer
Dry my eyes, tend my wounds, whisper tauntingly of impending doom; fortify my resolve until then by rote, I want, I need, I deserve; let not a doubt dissuade my function, as now and forever Sorrow awaits

art: suffering by Peterio

Strident brio

He bared his heart with timidity,
and with brio was cast aside

He feared for marked insanity,
with the many times he’d tried

The booming beat within his breast,
hushed lunacy’s strident calls

Until he stilled his throbbing heart,
when then those voices died

art: Anomalie 7 by Eric Lacombe

Symphony

Still I feel a symphony of agony,
though the blind see it not;
consumed by self-serving inter-
pretations and cheshire duality,

a moment not taken to vivisect
nascent dubeity for the benefit;
ensconsed in backstabbing morality,
mercurial quicksand, planting seeds

in a wasteland, only to witness the
struggle; honesty would bear fruit
consentiently, yet the witness too
struggles unbearably; primacy,

duplicity, ravenous infelicity,
incapable of common culpability;
hallmarks wherein a maniacal,
unjustifiable personality is born

art: untitled 25 by Peterio

The box

Dust in a box, uninteresting save
its progenitor; in truth, a mere
pacifier for those grieved souls

Redwood blonde, lined by age, once
a titan of might, now molded into
an honorable death, at Its behest

Lifeless plaques, shiny tchotchkes
of distraction, adornments scarred
by dates past and words empty;

Human constructs, ill-befitting records
and sentiments, impossible attempts
to define worth and pure happiness

Descriptions of the nondescript, a
paling comparison, an appalling emb-
arrassment, inadequate and iniquitous

A wooden coffer subduing a life any-
thing but wooden; ash of a bridge to
goodness burned, of inimitable affection,

of contagious élan, and forevermore
unattainable humanity, an uninteresting,
eternized box of dust; priceless

art: Sorrow Floats by Susan Hutchinson

Spaces

He paces throughout this prison,
barred by the abandoned spaces,
only remnants of remembrances,
naught remaining in periphery

breathing subject to parsimony,
being always reticent to continue,
heaviness of heart to aching joints,
he can’t embrace the empty spaces

rather he zealously oppugns reality,
avoids the missing yet not unseen,
at the mercy of the vacant spaces,
caged by the enclosing nothingness

his stride transports him memoriter,
closing his eyes affords a wider view,
the vast open space of the eigengrau,
graces him with anamnesis anew

art: Nigredo – Morgenthau by Anselm Kiefer

Forsaken

Plight unseen within his sombrous
haunt, he whispers wolf as not
to draw its attention, for it is real
in its agency and monstrosity

Turned aside, his whispered cries,
as part and parcel of an Alicine
adventure on his dark side, despite
the blantancy of a soul barest lain

A horse carriage canters within his
cage, each beat of its hooves staves
the stalking of lupine predation; the
vacancy in his eyes, an unbidden

disguise, vacillates from deepest
despair to the wonderment of this
guardian; he takes not the hand of
Faith, Hope’s deluded sister, nor

of Hope herself; instead he’s simply
succumbed to the latency offered by
an inexorable stampede and a disused
throat ripened for its ensuing slaughter

art: lama sabachthani by Peterio

Void a void

The stalwart walking chalk outline,
a bone-white sillage swirling behind,
in a dramatic paisley murmur of aloof
pursuit; his barely throbbing corsage

sheds its wet petals for a burgandy-
pasted path of disenchantment; my
steps slow in the crimson sludge, as
I desperately grasp at the beckoning

cloud; chasing Plutonic perfection,
what I was meant to be, always one
step ahead of me; a void to fill a void,
a voice to fill an echo, a fate feigning

fulfillment, in the unbroken dust of
an unlined palm; each day brings
hope of reconciliation, each mourn
welcomes his ruby breadcrumb trail

art: Portrait of a weary ghost by M Tumulty

I wouldn’t

I could try to unsee the seen

I could try to unhear the heard

I could try to unfeel the felt

I could try to untaste the salt

I could try to unlove the loved

And I would disrespect the time

art: A Troubled Soul by Ferdinand Hodler

Needlestack

Overwhelmed in a subsumption
of rapier steel, a slender stalk
of hay in the needlestack, every
eye encircling him in judgement;

each piercing their displeasure
in a mental bloodlet, no hand
would brave the chromium cage
that traps his bridled rage, lest

they too be lashed; no way to
thread an escape, he sets to gaze
in perpetuity upon the pleasance
at his reality’s edge; self-inflicted

destruction would surely end the
improbity that surrounds him,
presses upon him, crucifies his
every pore; yet he yields in

torpidity beneath the wake of
life’s defining failures and the
weight of obstinate oppression
that steels his own imagination

art: Idle Hands by Will Barnet

Homage

Paying homage through pain and suffering,
any distraction an afront to his memory,
any relief a disgrace to his tenderness;

my love will abide until the falling pall of
darkness flutters to rest upon my eyes, and
the final tear to streak my cheek has dried;

an hourglass of ashes, counting down the
sentence; a condign repentance overflowing
the void, suffocating acceptance within the

throat hushed by broken glass remorse and
voiceless reports of choler and dolor; upon
my heart and mind, restless he will ever be

art: by Eric Lacombe

Perfect storm

Enveloped by nubilous darkness
Transfixing the lightning seams
Entreating, bolts for forgiveness
And a coalescence of solidarity

Deafening, the raucous thunder
Rendered silent by a lesser man
Listening to every transgression
Synchrony without and within

Consumed by torrential offerings
Pouring heart and passion forth
Inundated by tearful effluxion
Drowning in sympathetic remorse

Touched by the blossoming fingers
Embraced by the incalescent form
Consoling, the stentorian whispers
Welcomed into a perfect storm

Electrified by savage potential
Illuminating falsehoods and truths
Commingled, they the outcasts
Evanesced beneath brilliant dawn

art: overcast by len-yan

Turmoil

Bloody knuckles and broken heart,
barbaric breathing in tender breaths,
uneasy lies the head that wears the
frown, weighted memories, life bereft;

wall of innocence, dotted hue, departed
love, the vacuum filled; fester, blister,
boiling blood, dawns the night in
unexpected bruises; now with eyes,

the wall stands judgement, mock the
man in swelling weakness; staring
contests, blaring silence, idle hands
with masters violent; wringing, wanting,

calling out; no succour, no escape,
besieging grief in cryptic reminders;
coherence forsaken, harmony shaken,
turmoil wakes in remembrances taken

art: by Zao Wou-Ki

Serenely sleep

sweet smother, serenely sleep
the shadows sense wherein to creep
a raptor whispers secrets keep
slip away in silence

masked madness, molly please
free of freedom, binding frieze
foolish hope on mindless seize
alacritous alliance

when upon an umbrous sleuth
awakened awe uncovered truth
overwhelmed with unctuous ruth
rebarbative reliance

tripped and taut, cataract gleam
eyes torn tight, tantalized dream
twist the secrets, tautologies teem
visions of the violence

raptor breathing poisoned plume
plight and pallor, palling brume
the answer lies, impending doom
death within defiance

art: untitled 35 by Peterio

Nameless

Why does he bother… deprived duende, marred by a sombrous mien, building bridges with deadwood, in a language he alone speaks; farouche, and paying the tolls to navigate the ashes yet to be, hopeless to redefine that synecdoche

An innominate one, extending his naïve tongue for the whim of a wafer, an exegesis literatim; marginalized for the well-adjusted, he’s left inviting an invective soliloquy for the lack of intellection and for the simple company… of another

Walking barefoot whereupon the crimson let, a macadam packed with ossified offerings and reified refusals; a cramoisy craquelure of his sanity beneath a lazuline skyscape, blemished in perpetuity by a thunderous tumor over tremulous shoulders stalking

He dares straddle the liminality delineating equilibrium and deliquium, controlled by porous hands bearing pious guilt; a back-scratching, favor-hatching collective society who shuns purgation, while lamenting hestern and filling entitled shovels to tamp the exploitable dirt

art: Three Studies for a Crucifixion (2) by Francis Bacon

Doll

Layered psychoses
swelter her brow,
helter-skelter sans
clemency of a breath;

nested neuroses
bombastically loud,
she’s a madness of
matryoshka dolls;

infinity mirrors of
dwindling sanity,
bearing distant truths
of her diminishing self;

the taunting homunculi
with unreal expectations,
synchronize chides for
Platonic perfection;

this ephemeral Form
of unattainable need,
is found unapologetic in
the auspicious greed of

the commercial zeitgeist

art: The Cloud Seed by Margarita Georgiadis

The foundation

His light slinks away through the
dormer down, cowardice cleaving
an ever present foundation of
atrament; the vagabond splays

its seductive lumen, as shadowed
steps abet its getaway; the down-
ward darkened stairs impair a
festinated chase to the reproachful

hardwood below; he watches the
trail of unrequited repulsion,
lamenting his apathy to follow;
swaddled in irascible blindness,

he saturates the suffocating silence
with a verbigeration of long for-
gotten importances; a vegetative
brume consumes his perversion of

life, each heartbeat a cheville within
the foundation of miasmic emptiness,
each exhale germinates festering
fissures with dying undergrowth;

sightless, mightless, and lightless,
rooted to wishlessness beyond
hopelessness, he waits until next
his cornerstone crumbles to dust

art: by Eric Lacombe

Hell

Risen out of favor, the
demon lost its wings; a
momentary lapse of evil,
granted to a more pathetic

soul; its transient spark of
compassion, an elemental
blink of its eye, heaved it
into the mortal realm, a

punishment for corruption;
it awakened within the
wretched soul’s mind, as a
dark passenger, perhaps,

for he who felled its villainy;
a retributive satellite wherein
malefic skill could be honed,
and a return to the deep

could be forged; it was soon
accosted by madness and pain,
the likes of which it had
never inflicted nor imagined;

it fought for control, to no
avail; rent into submission,
insanity flayed by something
beyond; crushing blackness in

a frozen cell, it soon realized
the sin of its failure hadn’t a
second chance, but an eternity
in Hell’s unspeakable Hell

art: autoportrait by Peterio

To continue

He couldn’t write to save his life, evidenced ad nauseam; nor would he want to burden words with such an execrable chore

It wasn’t writer’s block, no – not that he thinks he deserves the moniker – it’s rather akin to a nietzsche niche

There isn’t much that occupies him, though he’d come to welcome that particular distraction from his quotidian routine

Often, however, as with most of his endevours, the struggle is finding a reason to continue, other than “for something to do”

It’s clear that his style – if, in fact, he can be said to have one – is never going to win him favor or a place at the writer’s table

His writing is now little more than a masterclass in insipid repetition, a neverending exercise in ever rending prose…

art: Listen by Jeanne Bessette

Life is beautiful

Life is beautiful, or so they say,
poetry in motion; he could only
play along amidst the throng,
imitating the art around him;

an æsthete desperate for a
glimpse through the framed
roses; a forger cutting paint
with turpentine, diluting

delusions to bear the greyscale
that taints his perception; he
can only see a masterpiece in
what could be, the potential

pentimenti when his eyes close
and his mind is free from the
onslaught of this garish reality;
painting with words in the dark,

his impression of what abounds;
an oeuvre of fantasies, a gallery
of escape, beauty in the still life of
half-eaten apples and candles spent

art: The Disillusioned One by Ferdinand Hodler

Jigsaw

They told him, with pride, to pick
up the broken pieces, instructing
him first which ones to let lie

Striven by a delusion to justify
failures; evidenced by illusory
jigsaws, their incomplete pictures

Putting together those remaining
pieces of his h-e-a-r-t and s-o-u-l,
has left him only another h-o-u-l

Where the sewage of draining
happiness streaks the urn with a
hypnotic flow of verisimilitude

While a choler gale whistles with
incredulity; an obdurate reminder
of eternal, inexorable solitude

art: untitled 36 by Peterio

Oblivion

Swallowing laments, coughing
up stained glass, her voice is
lost in the shattering barks
rending the silence in twain

Vitric dust settles in layers of
carmine remorse over bare feet
and choices wanting; painted
into a corner, and into oblivion

Ocular leadlights with cames of
tear, a cranberry gloss no longer
rose, reflecting life, her tormentor;
rolling eyes, leading to salvation

Her back against the wall, she
vanishes into the pale embrace of
waiting white, leaving behind only
footfall islands in a crystal sea

art: anesthesia by Peterio

His rose

The boy would stop to smell the rose

When he grew tall enough to reach

Abrading his nose upon a petal frayed

While he suffocated on the redolence

Rooted from his rafter for the dearest of life

Suspended by its thorny vine, the hanger hung

It was ever there, of his being a part, apart

No other flowerbed was so enticing

No other garden welcomed him so

art: gallow.. by Peterio

Potential

It lies not in the belief
that you’re a butterfly

Therein lies the dusted
iridescence of insanity

Nor in the misguided
extolments of strangers

Therein lies the birth
of a disfigured maggot

Potential lies only in
one’s ability to exceed it

Most will never soar
amidst the kaleidoscope

art: butterfly by Peterio

Whittle

Lip chewing

Making waves

Beneath heavy lids

Going down stares

Led by come hither fingers

Dripping darkness dares

To steel my clenched fist

Whittle flesh, make a man

Bereft of bone and sinew

Pedal and brimstone

Whet with gore and malice

Grinding shrapnel for dessert

Soaked in lies and afterthought

Napalm charring the bowel

Of a soul encrusted chalice

art: too late.. by Peterio

Amble

Closing gaping open wounds
with tiny searing nooses

Stitching burning questions
in lamentous deadman sutures

Itching ambling fingernails
in obeisance of their masters

Tearing at the sentient seals
withholding all the answers

Flaying scarring keratin
with mindless zeal abide

Knowing flowing remedies
are hiding just inside

art: by Paolo Troilo

Wild horses

Drawn and quartered memories

Wild horses on unbridled courses

A whipping fury of tails and manes

They, reigning without reins

They, unsaddled by saddles

An unbroken stampede of nightmares

On anger benders, biting the bit broken

Bygone woebegone won’t begone

They, the slaughterers

They, the rider renders

art: Four Horses of Apocalypse by Lorenzo Ghiglieri

Integrated

She deploys her apparitions in forward ambulation, and watches with desperation as they carry out their vocation

With her imagination, in each direction and interaction, she’s intently searching for an end, to her crippling life retraction

Spiritual substitutions feed her relentless observation, investigation into the world, a long sought integration

Each ghost has her own mission, to report their information, of every disasterous distraction and failed exhilaration

Knee-buckling osculation, or simple interdigitation, she’s just looking for extraction from her lifelong isolation

art: by Ivana Besevic

Petulant

A doting son, a distant father

A gulf of petulance between

Taken for granted, disenchanted

A landfill of shoes to fill

A landfill of time to kill

A lonely son, a father deceased

A gulf of emptiness between

Grown to contemplate, appreciate

A curio of shoes to display

A curio of time to dismay

art: Death on a Pale Horse by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Solace

My mind, ripped from fantasy
like a child from its mother’s
arms, searches frantically

for an escape from reality back
into dream and solace; wherein
the darkness anonymous am I,

while the banquet of my soul takes
place with loathing, sorrow, and
guilt gorging upon misery and me

art: by Eric Lacombe

Abundant

Sunlight sparkles whispered
through windblown autumn leaves

Hidden buried treasures
found forgotten in the trees

An abundant wealth embraced
within nature’s loving limbs

Amidst the gentle rustle
of windblown autumn hymns

art: by Olivia Mae Pendergast

Deviate

Too young to fear the coming jeer
from a host of bitter grey

Left unprepared when venom flared
for living her own way

She would deviate and elevate
to rise above the horde

Then was ostracized and lobotomized
for striking her own chord

So she hid the fire and bid the pyre
to keep her warm at night

‘Til come the day when come what may
she unleashes all her light

art: by Guillermo Lorca Garcia-Huidobro

Wasted words

He writhes and tries beneath
the watchful oaken knots bleeding
down the panderous wooden doors

They silently listen to his silence, but
react only to the tumult of enamourous
heartbeats behind their truer sides

Imperfections in the window panes
warp his warped view of the painful
imperfections he’s been shown

Dissecting his reflection, and others
he sees through, his features don’t
stand out amidst the banal amalgam

Staring stolen daggers into his wasted
words, reloaded from the broken back
he no longer turns, leaned on too often

Wooden man swallowing the knots in
his throat, deafened to the rapturous
fracas chiding his sensibilities

Insincere gratitudes, obligatory read
throughs, misplaced attitudes to fill
their waiting pews

Alas, he left no daggers for himself,
so must step into the fray, and release
anew more wasted words

art: Circumcision by Jackson Pollock

Not be

The searing reminders of innate fallibility,
subconscious pillars of darkness wept,
supporting the crumbling azure high

Recurring rejection in sobering plentitude,
feigned adulation for favors in the interim,
naught but nothing remains

There’s no escaping the erubescent sear,
holding sway beneath the eyes, from
consuming the hymns of songbirds

There’s no escaping the being in being here,
the destructive reality of misguided fantasy,
except to simply not be

art: untitled 42 by Peterio

Mad Kate

A severe widow’s peak favoring aquilinity,
nested over a murder of crow’s feet clawing
at her eye’s marge, with fresh, lunatically
hewn laugh lines creasing her etiolated

countenance, these lineaments on her face
presaged those on the page; her fingers vomited
words in widow speak, while anoesis urged the
violence in her closing strokes and the antre-

expelled extempore leading her to destiny;
dolorous and dour, like the oceanside plinth
upon which she was wont to perch, where
wicked waves maieutically persuaded her

already splintered intellect through orphic
repetition, to quash the squawking squall that
drew her nigh, as she craved the embrace of a
kindred spirit; she lost her love to the jealous

sea, but in losing her mind she’d found her apogee;
all that was left behind were the echoes of sanity
that reinforced her descent into madness and the
final wild-eyed dive into providential infamy

art: Mad Kate by Henry Fuseli

Silenced

He tires of the magmatic struggle, the viscid
tiger crawl of liquid basalt enveloping his head;

The vertiginous plume consuming his vision
in a latticework of soot, smoke, and sorrow;

The thermic surge, a thigmotropistic urge,
seeking to enflame his fuming faculties;

The sweltering seduction of fervid lips,
brushing his cheeks to glowing rubescence;

A wheezing weasand, charred and choked by
the muted words of his sempiternal reproach

art: by Eric Lacombe

Conniption

Bleeding out from self-inflicted conniptions

Deafened by the ear-shattering report of rage

Jabbing and stabbing, craving and staving

A shudder in the stillness of vespertine

Another epilogue, for another volume on impuissance

Midnight eyes, rain clouds in her sky, staring at the ceiling

Asphyxiating words dying in the air

Reaching out from self-constriction, limply hanging from her slackened maw

Sardonically dripping onto the pillow

art: Tide by Margarita Georgiadis

Emphatically

With thinly veiled testosteronic verse, you think
it’s poetic prose, but you’re just a poetic poser

Thrusting your priapic pentameter rather erratically,
flexing your lazy wrist and tumescence emphatically

You think the louder you write, the more they will listen,
show them your manliness, force your muscle to glisten

well word slinger, words linger well

They befoul the atmosphere when the airs are put on,
and then leave an aftertaste once the postering is gone

They attempt to obfuscate your apparent inadequacies,
but each line exposes your delusional fantasies

Of a long, silver tongue and matching silver fingers,
when all you can lay is your hand on the paper

art: Selbstbildnis by Ludwig Meidner

Obtusion

Obreptitious obtusion, a brume
blurring periphery, turbid blinders
marshaling the focus of roaming
attentions; phosphenes dancing for

distraction, a seductive temptation
to engage mental vacuity; his defense
mechanism hiding horrors and masking
merriment – horrors in their own right;

zoomorphologically thrusting his head
into the sands of time, waiting for
the remains of his body to join; an
evolutionary dereliction of societal

participation, insouciance learned
a posteriori; life is a merciless pedagogue,
rapping the knuckles of its insubordinates,
the recalcitrants of its self-proclaimed

preciousness…

art: Masterstudy 39 by Christian Klute

Obtuse

he thinks he thinks

outside the tesseract,

since a box has too few

of the right angles;

he must be obtuse,

he never knows how to act

and it’s never acute

when his tongue tangles

*I sincerely apologize to anyone who has read this

art: hypercube by Gian Luigi Delpin

Careless rant

To care, about anything; anything
in everything, looking for a reason;
a propensity for nihilism, but without
really caring if there is a purpose;
thinking in circles, corralling the

dragonflies through rings of fire,
writing one down before one of you
expires; anhedonic submission, blank
stares, habitual nods, and smiles
seconds late; forgetting to be there,

in the moment, any moment, appearing
human to stave the questions, to hide
the emptiness; an emptiness without
questions or concerns, acceptance of
the way things are, because it’s the

only way things could be; seeing the
paths, extrapolating their outcomes ad
infinitum, predicting the conclusions;
perverted chess with life and death,
without a king or queen on your side;

a war between willpower and attrition,
with exactly one possible outcome;
why bother looking, they don’t want
broken; two brokens putting their
parts together, begets only suffering;

one broken plus one not, equals two
broken, too broken; offers proffered
and rescinded in a single breath, a rotten
carrot for the ass; buridan’s ass agonizing
between a catch 22 and sophie’s choice;

…can’t even care for a cathartic post

art: Immortal Ephemera : Insecta – Dragonfly by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

Notorious

Hers was a notorious disease, crippling. The lamb’s slaughter for most, the lion’s share for those whose madness was brought to bear; until they too were brought to slaughter. An existential blemish, she found nary equipoise nor heartsease in her quotidian quiescence.

An only child sans a brother’s stillbirth, whom she always supposed was the more sagacious; privvy to ominous knowledge that escaped her – about the world or big sister, she was keen to know. His brief presence, inhered in her an avant-garde avarice to quell this question.

Left pacing outside the cages, the lioness concluded that the best source for the answer she sought, must be those who have yet embraced that fate. Fortunately, she found accomplices in her patients, who supported the quest, albeit unknowingly.

She trusted her intuition after their office visits, a sense for which little ones were conflicted. They number six now, those she’s asked, after the mothers were lured to her clean room. It was the only way to question their unborns.

Often the last word she’d hear was “why,” which was a gratifying confirmation of her purpose. They, too, wanted to know in their final breath. Why their baby? Well, why hers… Or was it brother? It was confusing, her mutinous muddlement.

The gorging predator rarely thinks clearly beyond the carcass, unsatisfying though it may be. She’d found no answers yet to assuage her torment. So she’ll rouge her skin instinctually, on the hunt for her share of the truth, until to her slaughter she’s drawn.

art: The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches by Henry Fuseli

Mystical

Love, a spellbinding; when then
the incantations abruptly end;
what remains is the shockwave

of a mystical ensorcellment
nettling an atavistic hunger to
consume that which is beyond

the comprehension of the charmed;
an addiction to the enchantment
who answers no worship, obeys

no ritual, and rewards no sacrifice;
it grants only the illusion that
those engagements may unleash

the bewitching magic once again

art: Deliberation by Mario Sanchez Nevado

Vehemently

The ghosts insist, in the vilest
vehemence, that he lay down
his arms in obeisant fealty;

the spirits spin the marionette,
until he’s bound by his own sinew,
in the edge of their favorite room;

the spectres spread the pall
in a sinister flourish, over the
tremor in his deadened eyes;

the past whispers heart-halting
fairy tales of twisted truths
and manic manipulations;

the phantom pains remind him,
with a tick upon his psyche, that
he yet lives in this nightmare;

pandemonium unbeknownst, mutes
his tongue, lest others discover it
hiding in a corner within his head

art: serenity by pekthong

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