Felled Again A Horrid Year

crushed skull
under the weight
the percussion of Suffocation
sifting though my pain
searing serpent
waits to devour
cower in frustration
immobility reigns like a
Norse tyrant
pinned to my velvet bed
I howl and whine
more piteous animal than human
Winter is a pall
like an annual death
but this weakness
with me always
is a slight damnation
it and I limp off
the beggar kings
trailing their one crutch
though snows amassing

Disappearing in The Details

I have been reading
Why Hasn't Everything Disappeared
by Jean Baudrillard.
It is not about nihilism
the empty wish of some for the cessation of existence
nor the extinction of environmentalism
We are disappearing due to the fact that we are
extracting our essential selves from the real
by defining our world
we reduce each defined thing
to smaller manageable parts
this reduces the context and nuance
of each inter-related piece
thus limiting the scope of existence
by blinding us to so much
of the real

I love heavy metal.
The distortion the throb and hum
To me, it is the growling expression
of human alienation
an alienation bred of the modern dilemma
we are dislodged from our ancient sacred pathways
we are lost on ground
that was once clearly mapped
for a humanity engaged in surviving
now life is like a piece of paper
with a list of enumerated properties
weight, speed, phylum, hue saturation
in this we seek to express
our need for an ordering principal
the quantum descriptions of time
small inert pieces of space

naming and describing our way to a secular godhead
we strip away all of the layers
of mystery and meaning
we are left with a fixed typography
and an ever shifting plain of human values
the peels slip from our fingers
adrift on the wind
we can hope for little more
than a well written description
in a lexicon of disappointments

Attachments to Forms

When casting a bell for the temple
the craftsman asked what metal to use
He was told
It does not matter
No one will hear the bell
reverberate with simple piety
The craftsman persisted
He was told
All men will love the sight of the bell
if it is made of gold
All men will love its tone
if it is made of bronze
All men will love profits and war
if it is made of iron
Men will worship correctly
only if there is no bell

Out of Our Control

He is angry at the mute intentionless rain
he feels thwarted by a summer of injuries and bad weather
the summer was short and joyless
like a sail with no wind, slack
it was a horrible drowning in time
helpless in a small white room
listening to their shouts and laughter
as they run and ride bicycles
a few feet from his ruined body
rain and chronic injuries and time's unrelenting thrum
the tantalizing sounds of others' joy
wrapped in a cocoon so tight
only bands of slate blue light
seeping through as a preternatural twilight

Thoughts from a Serj Tankian Video

The image of a flower
crushed under the tracks
of a tank
insects swarming
over its crushed petals
this is an image of life
of nature's inexorable draw
the things of nature
will be drawn to nature
even in its most debased form
natural things will
derive strength
from the creative animus of God
as embodied in something
as small as a crushed flower
and they will draw from that flower
the exhaled breath of Creation
the mighty OHM
that God breathed
into inorganic matter
to give it life

Extravegance was Once a Sin

That's right
extravagance was once a sin
your big TV was not a venial sin
atoned for by easy sacraments
No, it was one of the mortal sins
Image each turbo sports coupe
carrying a demonic destroyer of grace
storm clouds gathering over FAO Schwartz
a tempest beset each person exiting the building
once upon a time, the faithful wore hair shirts
as a symbol of earnest devotion
having forsaken luxury and embracing the death of baptism
the wanted to be uncomfortable in their cloths
a constant reminder that their desire belonged
in another plan of existence
now the devout purchase glass cathedrals and gold crosses
wrapped in modern fashion from head the foot
no one ever need wash a brother's feet
nor dry them with their hair
all of the obvious stories of faith
seem to be in the past
now they are so subtle and sly that they are wasted
on the children of cinematic imaginations

Lust, Oddly is Not Listed in Proverbs 6

She was so pretty
when she was younger
that is the way to the end
and then the eye is hooked
by desirous form
the way the monk breaks his vow
and catches a carp barehanded

but there is more to it
it is not for love of form
that the married stray
there is so much loss of self
as one progresses towards death
a loss of purpose and future
an inability to pour desire
into the crevasse of every moment
living as a carapace discarded by time
we are deafened by the drone
of routine,
of competence,
of familiarity
it is hollow and we weep
there is nothing left for us to feel
deeply down in the core

and then the devil walks in
a compliment a smile
a light touch on the wrist
a word whispered throaty and warm
lead down by an illusion of self
lead down by a longing for
for what? for sex? not exactly
damned by one last opportunity
to dream once again of defining
this life in new illustrious terms
to throw off the shackles of a
worn and thoroughly familiar domesticity
with its easy charms and simple peace
this is not what we pictured as our legacy
instead we want to embrace everything
alive and voluminous and unreal
so strong the desire for potentiality
we are lead of the precipice with out even a whimper
and even a pockmarked husk of desire
left over from a thousand dull carcasses
can seem like the last thread of hope
of youth and of fortune
and holding on double fisted tight
it severs and you fall
a wasted body
whipped down hard
into the rocks

The Iconograghy of Death Gods

Sails of trade brought Shinigami
death gods stridently crawling
across the islands of Japan
an exogenous agent to explain
the decay or feudal morality

The Reaper lives with us as a hood
a ragged robe and knurled hands
darkened by his work as a hard honest plague
apart from the human hands that sew it
forcefully detaching death from our bosom

Apollyon has a rotten job, for an angel
a curse to humanity resulting
from the folly of human character
daily awash in that which is
deadly sin for mortal hands
I bet none of the other angels
will eat with him in the celestial cafeteria

Atop pyramids warriors were given
obsidian wounds to appease the gods
who, hunkered down on their scaly torsos
feathers draped over the clouds
peer at us with sanguine stares

This fear this crime reigns over us
our minds and spirits quaver as
releasing our tenuous grip
on the shadowy things we know
we migrate to an immutable other

The Hatred of the Faithful

I watched as she cried
cried because she was hated
hated because she was gay

Callus jackals of a hateful god
a human deity crawls from tunnels of spite
covered in the blood of Satanic glee
wrung from the bodies of burning witches
carried like torches down corridors
made of indigenous bones of conquered heathens
martyrs slain by self righteous rapists
who wiped the fluids of their offense on their habits
to pray pennance for lesser sins of better men

widows dispossessed and children sold to foreign lands
a history defiling the whole enterprise of Faith
virtue and divine law called into question
a history of evil in the name of a shadow messiah
like a cartoon villain twisting his mustache
you are fooling no one you sons of Abaddon
no one will weep for you at judgement day
You hate anything that is not you
that is not the God I read about in Sunday school
That is not the divinity more expansive than the universe
your god is wood and metal, rape and greed
your god is small, carnal, and full of hate
You have no faith because your god is waste

The Creator does not need to despise diversity
God is not afraid of the complexity of reality
A cosmic mind grasps all potentials without error
Gather the hems of your holy garments
and fall to your knees you pile of dispair
this planet is chocking on its own bile
a planet dying and lousy with zombies
corpulant flesh of the impotant future
in need of the true faith of the Living God

Defacement of Innocence

So soon do we rush to tarnish
and then, with sad guilty hands
to deplete utterly, swiftly
the innocence of our youth

the garish defacement
of the imagination
that intuitively grasps
the truth of the fabulous

A jinn and the carpet ride
the theft of the silkie's skin
This hunchback so sick with love
all and more we cast aside

what did you hope to gain here
fine passion bleeding away
as an endless equation
soon lost to hard cold numbers

This is a poem of life

Basalt and falcons and motion and freedom
a physical communion intoning prayers
the wind holds the whisper of virtues
long lost in the city
the water has a course that it chooses
in dry seasons the easy course
In the wettest seasons it swallows the flood plain
Powerful fish struggling against its current
year in and out - moon waxing or on the wane
There are no bear here to eat them anymore
just giant mechanical turbines
and a wall of concrete taller than a fir tree
against this too they struggle
to keep their ancient family alive
blood and scale and water and man
to fight and love and give birth
to something like a vibrant future