Monday 27 March 2017

Frustrated


Cut my face to ribbons and stab me in the eye.
I want me badly broken -- I really want to die.
Fling me through a windowpane or drive me to my knees,
I want you to destroy me, or to die of some disease.

I want to go run screaming into a wall of brick.
I want to spin a pistol, and never hear it click.
I want my throat ripped open, and for my heart to stop,
I want it to be over: this hellish mortal flop.

I want to die by choking, or fall beneath a wheel.
I want my cold heart broken, and nevermore to heal.
I want to go out leaping, and fall upon a rock.
I want to die by fire, or from a fatal shock.

I want you to deprive me of light and food and air.
Asphyxiate me, would you, and end this dull despair?
I want a fatal virus, or infection through my blood,
Oh please, dear world, disown me, and end it with a 'thud'.

Armistice Day - A Remembrance (for Dad)


How can I explain the terror,
Or the pounding that shook the world,
The disorientation
The smallness of me?
I can only say
The War! The War!”

I can't describe the numbing, the brokenness
Huddled in my trench
Awaiting the barrage of artillery
Creeping across the blasted emptiness
That separated the enemy and I,
I can only cry:
The War! The War!”

I can't make sense of the propaganda
In suspicious tone and accent
Blaring out across the plain
Ransacking my certainty
And filling me with doubt of my rightness
In my cause
And wondering at my own sanity
As I simply whisper:
The War! The War!”

I can't bear the loss
Of all my comrades
Who fell beside me
In the trench, or
Defected or
Were granted leave or
Sent to another posting,
As I cowered in the familiar muck,
Driven mad by the rats and fleas
In doubt and shame
The starvation of loneliness
The vacuum of touch
And the Cholera of despair
A seemingly endless sentry duty in
The War! The War!”

I dread the shame of reporting
The failures after failures
Of my tactics and campaigns,
As I lost ground,
Fled, broke, or lashed out at some
Phantom enemy position,
Going over the top, wildly
Desperately dashing
Vulnerable across open land
Toward strength and entrenchment
Looking the fool for my incompetence
In battle in
The War! The War!”

I can't bear the anguish, as
I see the faces of those who stayed behind and
Made lives and loves and grew into this world.
Who found connection and meaning and joy and peace
while I lost so many years in an arena which
Taught me to speak a language they do not understand,
Far away in
The War! The War!”

So I talk of tyrants and butchers,
Majors, Generals, and combat assaults,
Creeping barrages, Enfilades,
Triage, misery of cold and
Imminent death and disfigurement.
The devastation of divisions lost, routs,
Disease, discomfort, and powerlessness,
Scars, madness, and amputations,
Annihilation of squads, platoons, companies,
Battalions,
A terror so powerful every cell exploding
In a different direction with each falling shell,
As they speak of the same time --
Of the same place --
In a different language, and
With different emotion and call it
Family, childhood, playing, growing, learning,
School, first dates, jobs, houses, lovers, children, and
Optimism of the future, while I can only
Mutter dumbly:
The War! The War!”

And now comes the dawn,
Comes the early-born, rosy-fingered dawn,
And now a strange silence,
The last echoes of
Bombs fading in the
Crisp new morning
Bouncing a diminishing
Repetition around me
It's Over! It's Over!
The War! The War!”

Thursday 23 March 2017

More of My Drawings....




Daughters - A Chant



They'll take you out and fuck you up,
They'll toss you out, my buttercup.
They'll lean and poke and drive you mad,
They'll hurt you kid, they'll treat you bad.
They'll tie you up and beat you down.
They'll break your bones or rip your gown.
They'll twist your tender mind and dear,
They'll leave you shivering in fear.

You'll hope for nothing more, it seems
Than emptiness and foolish dreams.
You'll hope that life will treat you kind
And waste your days, but you won't mind.
You'll do what's safe, or nearly so,
And where they point, you'll surely go.
You'll watch your minutes rot away
And vomit out another day.

And when your mind is nearly spent,
You'll spend some more with no intent.
And when you're living by a thread,
You'll lie and cry in empty bed.
And when you're tossed into the street,
You'll kiss some ass and lick some feet.
And lastly, with your final breath,
You'll welcome in the voice of death.

Comes the Dawn - On the Death of My Father


[I killed my Dad in a car accident a few years ago, and spent about an hour pinned under his body, trying to keep from drowning in a ditch full of water.  They finally got me out, and the next few years were legal Hell until I was found not guilty in court of any wrong-doing.  This is about the most coherent thing I've written about it....  I'm kind of a mythology geek!]

I.
Comes the early-born, rosy-fingered dawn
Across a Zeus-fallen, mud-wet road.
Fortune wavering in sorrowed age,
Thumbing a ride bright-eyed
From drink to field.

Comes the early-born, rosy-fingered dawn
In grief and loss and Chthonic terror.
Comes a corpse-sodden son.
Comes the fattening field and drought-
Drenched mind in wine-watered loss.

Comes the early-born, rosy-fingered dawn
And shadows groping
From Eumenides long-balanced memory.

Comes the loom de-threaded.
Comes the father-slayer broken.
Comes Tisiphone in scouring dread,
Casting evil panic upon trusty hope.

Comes the scudding drift.
Comes the split-tongued sorceress's
Bewitching delicate chains;
Glaze-eyed swine queen with blackened
Heart.

Comes Poseidon's lumbering fool.
Comes the wine-black sun.
Comes the early-born, rosy-fingered dawn
Rending its Fury'd talon across forever.

II.
Comes the blackened, chaff-sparked night.
Father-burdened, Nyx-entombed,
Naiad-coupled.
Here climbs a Sisyphean boulder
To water's top-rippled edge
And tumbles again drowning.
Comes the dead and comes the dying.

Comes the blackened, chaff-sparked night.
Comes a lament from father-drowned.
And a father, Charon-bribed
Milling a son in wine-black terror.

Comes a son, father-ground.
And here there is a mill-wheel shattered.
Here a grist-shovelling soldier sneers
And baker kneading for Eumenidean feast.
Here the burning ovens.
Here the crackled loaf.
Here the dough encrusted.
Comes the blackened, chaff-sparked night.
Comes the early-born, rosy-fingered dawn.

Monday 6 March 2017

Haiku - To a Beautiful Woman


Reaching for the door
I stand groping in light and
The scent of flowers

Sunday 5 March 2017

It Could Be Worse


Mandy had a phobia
So bad that she could burst.
She shook when she was looked at
But said it could be worse.


She scarfed back lots of Ativan
She kept within her purse
But often hid in terror
And said it could be worse.


She really was so lonesome
She tried hard to converse
Overwhelmed with panicking
She said it could be worse.


Brian was all broke inside
In childhood was coerced
He thought he was unlovable
But knew it could be worse.


He walked among the normal folk
And hoped he could reverse
A life of no affection
And feared it could be worse.


He tried to meet some lady
And daily he rehearsed
All the gentle things he'd say
And thought it could be worse.


Kimmy was a young girl
Who swore that she's accursed.
Lived trauma after trauma
But said it could be worse.


All her living memories
From recent back to first
Taught her she was worthless
But still it could be worse.


She drank so much that every day
She drown that inner thirst
And as the world would beat her down
She cried it could be worse.


Trevor had a family
Whose treatment was perverse
He often tried to hang himself
But said it could be worse.


He talked with many therapists
Their responses all were terse
At least he had his health they said
And know it could be worse.


The pain it finally led him
To ride within a hearse
And as he dropped into the grave
He laughed “It Could Be Worse.”