With Unwinding Time

And now, the explosion begins.
Expanding. Exodus from the central point.
A point that I found you in.
A point I was making
with unwinding wires, strings, and pavement.
This, the Apocalypse.
This, the odyssey of losses.
Do we come together
when our skin and bones come apart?
With faltering faith and foundations.
With unwinding time.  Unravels slowly.
You were a sparkle in the dust
at the bottom of the river.
You were a vanishing sound
fading down the vortex.

Behind the wall.

Behind the wall. 

He is a shadow in the walls of this house.
And when the tornado comes,
it will suck up the bricks and he and I.
This house. This point where things come undone.
Now I enter the hallowed grounds.
I must call you back from this
with a blinding sign.
With a blinding strike of lightning into the darkness.
Yes, you tried to make it up to me; to restore the past
with unwinding time we never had to spend.
But I still see you there,
though you lost yourself so long ago.
I still see your shadow.
And we are still, like the dead.
Our hearts are still out of sync, and I am
studying my gash to the head.
This battle has gone too far.
And, I can't convince you.  Or,

the image of you.
With unwinding time.
With unraveling skin.
We make a path to the start
with unwinding time
we make a path.

The Impending Spoon

Unhinging his mask for the impending spoon,
he takes his cold carrot soup
from a can.
In a celler beneath the parking lot
of Lottie's Emporium,
he has lived - in a sense of the word.
For fifteen years in the poorly lit silence
of this place that keeps him kept.
And, the parking lot
of Lottie's Emporium
is a husk of the place we once knew.
It's where we would stray
down aisles, unguided, seeking stretch wrapped treasures
until that fateful day.
When on our way to church, we did find
the sky above was now sickly, yellow and grey. . .

He puts the mask back on.

He locks the hinge.

He feels his rubber skin again.  It's the life he knows, and chose.
The life lived caged, clean, safe - so safe.

Cosmos

From separate sides of our apartment
we wait.  Forcefully awake
and stifling our yawns. We cling
to the comfort of our cold bayonets,
hiding from sight.  Victory is impossible, but
our stubborn banners wave invisibly in the central air.
We are right.  They are wrong.  Let your sticks and
stones take flight.  Above all, remain strong.
The cat slinks neutrally into the kitchen, either
unaware or ignoring the clear zones of allegiance
in this struggle.  The channel changer
is on his side.  The television is on mine.
The fan overhead sweeps clean air onto our faces,
making us tired.  And the night outside is injected
with a faint hint of purple and blue, warning
of the Sun's arrival.  My defense weakens.
In war, we are together.  I should have
thought of this sooner.

In war we are one, refusing to acknowledge.
We are two sides of the conflict, but we stay.
We stick around, till the glittering, dusting sleep
clouds out heads and we are two forces left forceless.
In one house.  In one conflict.
Clinging tightly to our egos until
the cosmos kicks in.

In a Lucid Moment

She finds herself with a pencil, a crossword puzzle, and a napkin.
They know she will never do the puzzles, she never does much with her hands.
She finds herself in a lucid moment, and she begins to scrawl letters across
the napkin's stale and fragile texture.


Gleaming.  Fleeing.  My memory, it goes floating in and away
like dawn into evening.  I can't tell where the hours go.  I
hear the clocks ticking out of time.  Will my bones, some day,
remain here when I forget how to live?  I am faced to the wall
today, as I speak too much of what I see.  I can see so much,
dear, I can see the truth.


She places the pencil down.  Her mind leaks away.

the watercraft

now we can get acquainted
meet me in the center
short circuit my little mind
shrunken down
calcified
stinging with such salty words
moving fast as humming birds
bleeding like the bloody rest
the circuits fry when they are pressed
selling my soul door to door
tranquility rots on the floor
my head is toast
my brain is pulp
every day a dollar lost
every night
electric dreams
creeping like a king of thieves
only to drown among the reeds
stealing out to the dismal shore
the drunken guards abandoned for
slumber in a dirty cave
my dreaming mind is left vulnerable
to the enemies at the dismal shore
the watercraft arrive for war
the silent blade is sneaking
up the staircase
my dreaming mind is left
gibbering and injured
bleeding like the bloody rest
the circuits fry when they are pressed
every day a threat of war
every night the insurgence of
the watercraft

AOJETY, Part One

               The sky had always been patches of grey swirling around in confusion. The ground was in shreds and chunks, little islands that hung over an abyss. Aoj had been standing on a patch of land with one leafless tree and a blurred object. At times, the object seemed to be a chair or a box. At other times it looked like things do when you see them in the corner of your eye. Aoj was not sure how long he had existed. Nothing ever changed, so it was difficult to perceive time. But, he had been created with the torn world. It had felt like a long time though. Twenty years, fifty, a lifetime, the edge of his mind quivered at the thought. Aoj put his hand against the bark of the tree. It felt cold and weak, he was sure it was hollow as well. The world never had a chance for trees to have cores, for civilization to have more than him, for anything to be complete.

              Aoj stood in his world, without hunger and never tired. He was not sure why the creator had failed to complete the world, perhaps it had died. Aoj was tall, with black hair, and eyes without color. He felt something he had never felt. Vibration, from the tree. Aoj instinctively put his ear to the bark. A soft, almost inaudible humming was coming from beneath the skin of the tree. This was new. New things did not happen. Aoj drew back, and kneeled. He placed his ear to the dirt. It was coming from the ground as well. Something in him stirred. He felt an odd rising sensation inside his chest. He put his hand to his heart, and was startled. His heart was beating.

The Fall of [Kingdom], a Recurring Tale

In the end, they call you by number.

The gates are stiff iron and they creak

a softless tone as they stand,

feeling you pass. Enclosed is a

kingdom dethroned and defiled

by the citizens, former patriots, now

grabbing at the causes each self proclaimed

savior invents. But do not be deceived, it

was the structure itself

that caused its own collapse.

The kingdom

was dragged to all fours by

her marauding children. Her governing and

governed disputed, kicking and shrieking,

which brought her tumbling to her knees.

And when they had dragged

her to the floor, they encircled her

and danced 'round her, singing a lightless

tune and saying: “This is no mother, see

her crippled demeanor! See how she cannot

provide!” And the children were no longer

governed, they held high

the freedom to founder.

In an open world they found

themselves. Where other

children play. And through their

differences as they had crashed

the kingdom down, they gathered

arms and divided themselves, building

walls and laws, and a new, tense air.

Men can be factioned down until

one remains, and even then he can

dispute himself. The children fought;

weak parties raging campaigns

for power. Each dreaming to

sculpt an empire of fellow people

with the same sensibilities. And

in their discord, they did not spy

the enemy, teeth sharp with desire,

waving the banner of their motherland.

The kingdom's children were overrun

and left in hopeless gaze. And

the last of them were chained together and

dragged to the center of

their nation's hollow-eyed corpse. The

enemy had stationed there, and crowned

her with foreign iron gates.

And as the children are dragged in, they

then repent, but cannot remember why.

So many years since the head of decay

writhed around the once upright towers and

houses. The snake spun 'round, fueled

by newfound ease of life. Wherein intellect

and compromise are protested and contempted.

And so, away they fade.

And the kingdom is replaced

with a kingdom, mighty and

proud, and the people are content.

And they manufacture and forget the children

their fathers buried long ago.

And in the shade of the chapel, a

snake guards her eggs, as the bells

ring a lightless tune.