freestyle

What do you miss in your solitude?

What memory there intrudes?

The way her hip is made wide

When laying on her side?

What pierces the very flesh

What confounds all rest

When you just want to forget?

Let us forget

The Chord, Summer Remix

We gather in shadows
Before screens of light
Beneath arcs of rhythm
Where stories dog-fight

Where nothing is warm
But all is just right
Energy generated, energy spent
And no end in sight

The sky overhead
Boundless, indifferent
Draws it in to no effect
As the sea swallows the shipwreck

The Picture of Alice

The porch was a concrete block with steps formed into it and a visible tilt, or so I thought, like some chunk of brutalist architecture that had fallen out of the sky. It was about five by five feet. Young people were crowding there to smoke, despite the rain having lapsed into the faintest trace, with individual drops coming like random stragglers.

She stood on the corner of this grotesque pedestal facing me on the lawn below. She was a standing shadow shrouded in the halo from the bare porch light behind, a white trash Birth of Venus, and, I knew, no less beautiful behind the dark there, mercifully hidden from my searching eyes.

The outline of her hair was the only discernible, familiar thing about her--otherwise it could have been anyone there--but it was undeniably her. This minimalist sketch evoked the full light of memory, the memory of her still compiling that final version to take her place when she's gone, the dead thing to replace the living, the trace of her arc across my life, documented and filed away on paper already yellowing.

That was Alice up there on the porch, looking down on me with--what? I couldn't see. Was she talking? I couldn't tell. Was she talking to me? Was she smiling at me? Did she see me, finally? See my desire?

That was Alice, midway through her ruin, long after mine.

March or April 2017

Breech Born Boy

God awoke mid-dream
Thus I was born
An aborted scheme
This man you scorn

Purring Satan let slip
In sleeping God's ear:
"Make his breast a crypt
For a heart of pure fear

"Let the cold inside chill him
When ambition will arise
Let dread always fill him
At any shock or surprise

"Let his ardor be frigid
And his passions be dull
Let his habits be rigid
His disgust always full!"

God tossed in his slumber
Frighted Devil withdrew
Now cursing the blunder
Of a plot not seen through

"The blueprint's unfinished
And I had such a plan!
Now he's all the cold fish
And no part the man!"

He carried me away
His evidence to hide
When I brayed he panicked
And cast me aside

And thus I was found
By a mother's good grace
She bore me away sound
To this safe place

So I endure, down here on Earth
Poorly adapted, forever unsure
Not without hope, not without mirth
Turning in circles, a creature impure!

self portrait, March 2013

Freestyle

The Cord

A life I've spent before screens of fury
Among pillars of sound and planes of light
Shrinking below a lowering overcast sky
Where their vaporous residue collects
To blot out a forgotten sun fading
Like a clot of coagulating blood
In this morass of chaos and color
He waits there, beyond our world of artifice
He mocks our shallow fascination
And our fearful, endless diversions
He waits, eternal, and reflects that
In fleeing death we abandon life

Freestyle

Eighth of November

Where were you, when the dam gave way?
What did you do on that glorious day?

Before--we were young--they took us aside
On our blank faces they etched their dull lies

All history's sins were ours to atone
We'd reap Equality, from passion sown

Like Soviet farmers we took to the task
Redoubling our efforts with every collapse

We told our own children, to prove their good worth
Endure the hateful, the dim, the wretched of Earth

These they brought to us, admonishing still
We could never really settle this bill

And when those good people, presumed so meek
Demonstrate the strong and cruel rule the streets

Sacking your homes, defiling your daughters
This too is your blame; on with the slaughter!

Where were you, when the dam gave way?
Did you feel that, like some cosmic sway?

Colossus 2013

Revising the monument:

Not like the noble works of Western fame,

Of conquering race astride from land to land,

Here at bloodied, graffitied gates now stands,
A twerking harlot, some father’s shame, to proclaim:

U S for Sale! Comprehensive Plan!
"Yo World; may your spawn slander, reprimand,

My breed, whose bequest, nonetheless, they'll have,
Keep," mumble her collagened lips, "your fit. Pour:

Your benighted, needy, your just plain bored!

Your aggrieved, those eager to settle scores,
Bloodied hands fleeing their criminal wars,

Bring misogyny, polygamy, crime,
Bring Hate, Greed, 'Vibrancy'; power is  mine!

Hit my cell at the door, for a good time..."

Lyric on the Fly

Poor little guy,
what did he think?
Did he feel the void sigh
as he came upon the brink?

And will I know when
my own time is nigh?
Or go in oblivion
like this dumb fly?

Lord grant me the courage
to face that same abyss
Failing that,
make me oblivious

Original Sin Remix

I was nothing
Before I came to be
I was contentment
I was obscurity

Then I entered the world
And the grave world entered me
The world in terror I cursed
The world in return cursed me
With this dread: mor-tal-i-ty

The Icy Flame, Mad Monk Mix

Live on, thou damned!
--Baudelaire, The Double Room

Life is the lash
Driving us on
Toward the flame
Without haste
Without pause
Calm, cruel, fixed
Indifferent to us
Its raw material that serves some purpose
We cannot know
Into the chilling fire, slave-soldiers!
Into Nature's maw!
This command the only counsel
Of a universe without conscience
And desperate Man takes his own
He imagines worlds beyond
Over and above this grave
Clear of its stench and toil
He peoples them with his beloved
Who wait there serene and knowing
Holding the Secret in trust
He blasphemes Nature's Holy Writ
As He works to will these things
He works in defiant futility
Despite Her daily proofs
Of disease and calamity
The endlessly varied forms
Her harvest of death takes, like
Myriad mutant troops enforcing Her terror
And She claims with equal indifference
Her rebels and Her slaves
But behind Her cold disdain
Concealed by Her advantage in time
Her actions reveal some jealousy
Of Man's last means of resistance
His undying imagination
And frail She may be after all
Behind that horrible beautiful face
So we may as well call Her bluff
Though we know Her game is rigged, and
Sing defiant you fading voices!
We last, we last and
We have no fear, for
In that crucible of ice and dust
In that fire that will not warm
There, final and eternal
Only there
We are
At long last my tiring friend
No longer alone.

Original Sin

I was nothing
Before I came to be
I was contentment
I was obscurity

Then I entered the world
And the grave world entered me
The world in terror I cursed
The world in return cursed me
with this bond: Eternity

Teeth long past repairing
picket a gape, perpetually despairing,
beneath a thousand-yard stare
(as if requisite, bad hair);

Bulbous nose--Satan's choice!
blame it for the toad-fart voice
(Yes it must be Lucifer;
for what divine engineer
puts a head this heavy on a neck this austere?);

With pock-marked skin
and gap-toothed grin
(granted, a not-bad chin):
one mediocre specimen!

His malformed charm,
his fellowship too,
draw only the alarm
such desperate figures are due;

(silence insulates he from you)

And through that silence he says:
alive, still, no less than you...

Self-Portrait, August 2o11

The Obsolete Things

the bond of blood exacts in price,
its own kind drawn from other types,
man too must take his pay in kind,
and pray relief from the divine.

Or so it was, not long ago,
but now men's bellies all are full,
blood and bonds are history,
entombed with Guilt and Mystery.

no blood no burden,
thus no Divine,
pray forgiveness, in such a time?
our hands are clean our minds are pure,
but can we be so very sure?
for
he that suffers away unseen,
bears that burden, for you, and me

Friday

Primal Scream, Loaded


LCD Soundsystem, Home; NSFW (not safe for wussies)

A little intoxication never hurt no one.

Excuse me while I bust a freestyle:

angry mothers and martinets,
drunken brawlers and malcontents,
city dwellers and suburbanites,
phony players and proselytes,
get down, get down tonight...

confound tommorrow with yesterday,
toxic bliss lures woe away,
baptize yourself in neon light,
parry existential fright,
and get down, get down tonight...

our souls are held in solution,
with moonlight's gentle resolution,
rippled with eternal rhyme,
distilling space with metered time,
when we get down, get down tonight...

our cares return with break of day,
we cannot choose another way,
our destiny's the close of night,
we won't escape this mortal blight,
so come get down, get down tonight...

stick that in your Grammy ash-tray, Lil Wayne