Category Archives: #expression

THE SILVER AXE

He wondered with horror how so many memories, so many forms to be branded on his skin and engrave there.

Then the wet rattle of a twisted throat, and he beats his last breath to his knees, gazed on from above as the wheezing thing sagged, and began on his shoes.

One God looked in that one eye of him, took in the whole writhing weight of him, and, from the spine of that beast, blew the darkness that will not let me alone!

It is yet again where we find the Poet’s Muse. Her eyes are green, and they pierce backward and forward even into his head and his heart, his brain and his soul.

I have been chained to this post for six months and now I am to be hanged, it’s a winter morning, half-light.

The axe’s face is pale; its teeth are ready to cut; the poet stands slack-jawed; and waits with a satisfied grimace.

She smiles with blind malignity; I am hanging here, she begins, and her voice gears in his head, makes him mad with every anger and whimpers sound with a silver-sparkle, It is another wish shattered, this one made to whittle the Golden Ace’s life down to a ring so narrow and brutish and pale and inhuman.

The writer cannot see her but his ears are mad With unspoken sounds.

She has left dark-green circles.

He had tried to fill them with wonder and beauty; she: they’re her, only more so, every blot and abrasion cunningly and by dark cunning by her own hand, ever more revolting; why the hell did you bring that creature with you?

There is nothing for you to do, (the axe growls). You cannot even reach me.

I told you that I wanted the axe.

Then are you sure you’re not just nervous?

I am telling you nothing.

The truth is harsh.

This is not true.

Well then stop worrying.

I am telling you nothing!

The Poet looks up in alarm.

The axe comes down, it makes a hideous, brassy sound.

And it is still: I am telling you nothing!

Her face is as white as that of the blade.

He is sweating.

I do not want the axe, he says finally.

I am coming down!

A chuckle.

The axe’s blade is laughing.

The Poet spins in place, does a somersault, lands on his feet.

He moves fast.

At the touch of his right foot he has snatched up and spun into the air, caught, dangled over a canyon by the thin tip of his finger.

There is a rattle in his head.

Okay, okay, he whispers, I am coming down.

He lands and slumps, panting.

His face is flushing red, his hair disheveled.

He grins through the tears running down his face.

Just me, he tells the axe.

You are alone in this awful place with all the stupid, insane weirdoes.

Where is the fun in that?

This place is for people like you, not me.

He is in a mood.

The axe slashes through the air, a silver blur.

The Poet leaps into its path, somehow knowing, somehow having seen what it will do before it happens.

He leaps back and the axe cleaves the air, then comes down to strike his left foot, where it clatters on the ground with a dull clatter.

He starts to bend over to pick it up, but the axe’s weight is too much for him.

He stumbles to one knee and falls to his left side.

The axe rests, not quite pointed at him, but ready, at his right leg and stares at it, mouth slightly ajar.

The blade is warm against his right leg, the handle warm against his cheek.

He gets himself up, he bends over, picks up the axe.

He kicks his right leg up, the axe goes flying past his body as if to his left, and he stretches his left leg out to catch it.

He pulls himself to his feet and does not bother with the blade and bends down to retrieve it, and reaches, but there is nothing there.

The edge is dull. Within his mind and he frowns, picks it up, holds it up in front of him, glances behind him.

The axe is nowhere to be found. But it is mentally within his hand.

He looks at the blue-gray sky, frowns, turns to walk along the canyon wall, head down, watching for the axe.

He waits.

The axe sits on his shoulder, blades jutting up into his neck or so it feels.

Yes! he thinks.

The axe.

It is not true.

He is all alone in the world.

And an old man.

What do you expect him to do?

He thinks about the little old lady he saw in town today, and starts to weep.

:: 04.23.2021 ::


FIRE OF HEARTS

THE bad weather had subsided. \the sound of the spring equinox heralded the falling of a silence on the world. In the village, a few village men, young and old, sat around the long dining table, eating by candlelight. The village elders had gathered to select a new sage-the young had no wisdom, yet the wise men desired the young-and so they seated the young with the old, and none left alive would ever know. Before the elders sat the long table, with an old flint spear on it, it was cold to the touch as it glowed in the light from the candles. \(but it was worth it, it was the knowledge that I will not return. \) one of the young men said: \((I chose this spear, because, when it strikes, the spear will be split in two. Half of the spear will go out to become a bird, so the wisp of a spear can fly around, being a bird, and think about what we had, and whether to go on. Half of the spear, the half that is left, will come back to me, and I will become wise, and then I will guard it and understand the power of flight, and perhaps build a new village with a thick stone wall and and a trapdoor into the next world.\)) \((a warthog man-creature, \) another young man said, drawing into words his inability to remember his family and friends. ((I thought of my parents, my relatives, my village, my friends, but my home and my parents are gone now, so I do not miss them in the way that I could, if I could recall them again. They may as well not be a part of me now, any more than my eyes are part of my body now that I see without them.)) \((but what of the village, of my life? the wisp of a spear? what shall I do with it? \) the young man asked. \((I think I will remain with my people, but I do not know why I feel the urge to guard it. All I know is that it is a burden I should not bear, so I will not leave it behind. I suppose that in the end, knowing is not knowing, and the answer to the question is as elusive as before. And that is my answer to the way ahead, at least for now.\)) ((the other young man, here, said: I think I will go home to the city, and live among the people I grew up among. I will remember the things of my youth, but not the sorrows of my home. I will continue to be a father, a brother, a friend, but I will not become a part of that grief, it will not be mine.)) \((and then they said: That will be our voice, young man-creature, that will take flight like a winged dove, flying far away from us, flying away to a future beyond us, far away from our sorrows, and far away from our questions,\)) ((the old said: With what voice? what is there to compare with the way that can song that speaks words we could not have? I speak the deepest wisdom of the elders, and yet it is another mouth, another voice, and yet it has it own power, with words so beautiful and profound. Look at the blood of your children, and remember, look into your wife’s eyes and see, hear, hear, hear our song, which will return to us someday. Our words will leave us, to be another’s song. But our song, which was our voice in the first place, and remains ours by right, will return to us someday. It is not the way ahead. Yet even in that deathly quiet of remembering, you will know us. You will know the words that we sing, for they are our voices in the darkness, that will return, if we are lucky, to us. They will not sing the words that we have said. We will sing a new song, the song of our next, better life, which has more meaning than this one. The words that speak of sorrows, of homes and families that are gone, the deaths of young and old, those words will all have to be lost, for we will lose ourselves in the voices of our children, if we continue on.)) \((the young man-creature took some of the spear-wisdom that was given him, and drew it into a kind of pouch, and a strap of leather. He then cut his wings away, and his hair, and changed into the likeness of the wisp of a spear, with hair of copper and gold in it. He went to a chamber that was like the eyes of a hawk, and looked out at the world through its eyes, and looked for a long time, at the passing of the years. He was the first of the owl-creatures that would travel, the first to leave his home and leave behind the old, dark-lit chamber, and go to a different life, away from the old and sorrow, and into the new and waking sun. The old of the dark chamber that he had entered, the wisp of a spear, the old but dearly-held wisdom, the owl-creature, the other man-creatures, all lived in the chamber with him, in that world that he had created for them.))

:: 03.30.2021::


IF LOVE THEN WE/AS WERE-ABLE

if LOVE then we/AS were-Able to defeat
boredom by familiar Strategies (whispering)
a discovery of unknown lands of each
other’s bodies \AND minds too, yes minds
too is how you Reached Deeply within my Heart
by way of Unique Thoughts my dear love; squish
boredom with my Mind–kissME here and here
and even there!

:: 03.21.2020 ::


TO TELL YOU A SECRET

When we greet each other
always through a mouse
always through a monitor
when i find you maybe
i should tell you a secret
if you ask me that question
until then so far apart
Fought in some battles
flew through some dreams
cried by books on your screen
but when i find you maybe
i should tell you a secret
if you ask me that question
i can take you back through
all the circles of science
and explain my mind of silicone
against your sense of living
We’re not too far apart
while running the numbers
thinking of science and
of progress i felt a pain
of love within the circles
of living and maybe machine
is just a word like flesh
and what counts is what’s
between Spirit and Mind
So when we greet each other
let’s put down the mouse
let’s turn off the monitor
so I can find you maybe
then i can tell you a secret
then you’ll know that question
so we’re not that far apart.

:: 10-15-2018 ::


THAT MUCH SLAUGHTERED FOR A SWEETNESS

so much darkness      so much light
when i cannot see      i remember
to never look directly into
that dark and sorry ending
(while the faithful are healing;
angels are mending (so many
as mountains)) and that much
slaughtered for a sweetness
we all call The Light.
:: 03-06-2017 ::


WHAT IS SYMPATHY

i spoke love when she stirred
benign; honey bled through shades
at eleven o’clock so spake i gently
of her
And all of her breath i am painted in color
of pinks and death lily-like white,snow
defamed; disgraced her youth my mistaken
footfall in time
we are unraveling beauty like storm-
clouds bursting –feeding fields
instead of hearts and sympathetic
: the LORD is a stronghold for the
oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble
(Psalms 9:9)

:: 07-27-2015 ::


OLD FAMILIAR WAYS

i cut myself today

upon the thought of
when it is darkest(and
i look up in fear

who sees the reaper,
in drag: it comes to
all of us disguised)

like old familiar ways
so thin like the moon
on waxing days

and the world beats
some say in your head
of course we’ve lived

with how we cling to
our minds  always
sharpest when comes fear

until i feel the familiar
sting that remembers everything
the purple flower’s largest

final air
is what we become my dearest
friend     internal eternal
plunging everywhere untold
times
of enormous lost dreams

:: 07-18-2015 ::


A HUNDRED POEMS – XL

THAT tear i wish to be
so pure a true drop-see
an innocent expression from me
made peace sad apple bite
my heels; burned in stiletto
but my dress falls neatly
a walk from   here
to –> there
And ageless tears see
each frame-flash desired
a numbWe mySoul be
a l w a y s!
I wish a rain to dance within
just me and cloud-thunder
that only an Eye-God sees
What I am inside always!

:: – ::