This stillness of grief Like a soft veil caressing my skin Comforts yet tears – shreds What lies within At times I claw Try to find a way out of myself Leaving more wounds inside That have no sound to imply… This stillness of grief – Seems a very strange thing No help from the Universe No salve to calm the burn The pain masked behind my eyes Raining tears down my throat Still can’t calm the fire – Smoldering, sooty, rubbly – as I choke No revision for these words No voice to be heard A soft place to land A blessing and curse Stealing my lonely breath Demanding my spirit; acquiesce As my fractured heart withers like time My soul forgetting that it’s divine…
This disparagement of love Cupids arms overwhelmed, exhausted with sorrow And I; in my grief I dismiss my significance If I had meaning, or enough meaning Would this catacomb be a sacred resting place?
This stillness of grief Is unlike in the past – Where raging and wailing were thrown from me – Cast Through the night and the valley, down walls, over fences… Unveiling my haunting with no recompenses Now I lay torn and crumpled, like a leaf beneath a stone Hope, a ghost – forlorn, dismissed, wandering without a home Where love should be soft, where love should be sweet Instead there are barbs, rusted wire gouging me As my hurt creeps inside this twisted cage crushing my heart The cherished faith that love abides busted apart Raging tears form a sea where I wish I could drown Get lost in this burnt landscape with its sorrow bleeding down But there’s nowhere to hide, no great escape from loves wounds Even death won’t end this agony much too soon This stillness of grief at this moment defines me It’s all I know, all I feel, all I am… All I see Turned within, flowing through yet pushed down, deep into – Where no one else could ever bear to be Lost although I seek… This stillness of grief
I took you to the keeper of secrets Your webs spun in the ceiling corners, thick and heavy with bits of blood, bone, truth, lies and pain Too late to forgive or forget monstrosities built on deceiving ground There are no demons that can withstand your venom – But there are demons that can crawl in your hell Shaking destruction and death from their ratty hair Spitting cynical vengeance from their empty-holed sockets While their gnarled, sticky fingers scrape the ground into wounds – Caverns deep and horrid, that weep years of disenchantment and abandonment Slithering tongues that lick at bitter shadows, sucking down bile like candy Beneath a cursing moon, churning with despondent love There is no light falling here, to soften this dank, mossy wasteland To caress its loss Or the futile sacrifices To slice through screaming, begging words, that litter the frozen ground like crumpled corpses Anger and hate co-mingled in passionate syllables – Built from blazing memories – An inferno of screeching blades as they saw through breastbone To mangle, eviscerate vein from heart Spurting unspoiled sweetness onto crumbling headstones Red-stained devotion turned to tears of tar The dead don’t sleep here Misery picks at bones Emptiness swallows time and drowns it in a bloated belly – A whirlpool where bereaved shadows howl Wispy fingers reaching for their displaced afterlife Charred misconceptions, bloodstained recollections, infested deceptions Hissing through the trees – A death rattle A thousand limbs writhing, rejected by mercy The dead don’t die here Their shadows don’t speak of memories beneath this caustic lunar sea…Stillbirth Despite words and gestures – Fate is the fearful masses solace Best buried and left untended, left to the curdled weeds – No words harvested onto cold, smooth cement to worship its fallacy No tears, no lust, no blood lost to this graveyard Let its bones dry and crack Wait for the full moon and I’ll meet you there where our madness Will muddle those bitter fruits into sweet We’ll drink until reckless and blind to plebeian, defective drivel Smash our way through the acerbic crust of this suns bitter harvest Lay naked on the flowery hillside spewing words of noetic soulfulness into the ashen atmosphere Until our last breath gives up our hummingbird shadows Shadows that speak
The haunted are strangers to death They have no familiarity with the last rise and fall, how it gasps and rattles Catching in the middle of the breasts, deep, strong, feral – As if to name its course, in defiance, and howl its final earthly indication Death harbors no animosity nor is it complex But there was no ordinary in your simple death Cold, metal rails, tethered to warrior wrists, strange eyes in a corner, privy to your last truth Fate has fallen into disrepair and karma into ill repute But even as the demons churn, you remain a sacred vessel Every scar an exquisite poem or novel, minus words, of your measure – Your catastrophes, drenched in blood and sorrow, washed with rain… And your pinnacles, passion and joy – mountains of fire, lit goliaths that tower over the sun, keep its secrets Now, that last push from inside out, against your bony armature, and breath gives up its ghost Your body lurches up, then back, cooling, fracturing – hisses out what its held in… Sage eyes still gaze through closed lids, your spirit wild as it leaps from those sturdy, fierce bones – To circle the room, long, dark hair whipping at the air as you climb the walls on muscled haunches Hand to foot… hand to foot… round and round the dismal room
In a spectacular ascension to the further
And I stand in the doorway, your image – that no one else does witness – echoing in my eyes Smashes my sanity into fragments, jagged pieces of me that slide down myself onto the cold, beige floor I wait for intruders – hunch-backed, putrid-breathed demons with diaphanous wings to entomb me – Scoop me up and shroud me in those wings, as if I’m wearing a second skin – to take me away from myself In this moment I would resist, if my insanity would keep you here But while I imbibe you, in a thousand ways from these thousand pieces of myself – I see you shift into golden, spun strands… floating, to hover on the ceiling – Disturbingly, unforgettably beautiful. Disquieting every truth, every reason, and then Swaying as if dancing, spun strands of infinities of eternities, delicate, graceful, heartbreaking… Arching and twisting, molten threads intricately weaving I peer at your glorious rapture, entranced, lost in the moving, rooted revelation This shattering of nowhere that is everywhere More divine than any miracle made sweet and pure by angels breath Enthralled with this insanity; I feast on its sweet ripeness, gorging until satiated… Juices stain my lips, and run down my mouth Drunk on this clumsy feast – The river of pain rushing toward me is damned, diverted into channels burrowed by those who have gone before If only for a moment, the demons scatter and I sink into a spongy catacomb of oblivion Then time claws at my mind, ripping it open, its insides falling out – dripping down my throat, choking me The plump moon, ripe with frenetic lunacy, fondles my eyes, blisters my feet as I run barefoot into the madness –
Madness is a sweet distraction, like a sadistic lover in my pretty bed
Every small, exquisite torture a way to quiet myself… I am the demented, the wicked, the delighted damned, the depravity within, without regret… These are not vices. These are sacred madness – my essential being Your dark is my beautiful I want to lurk in this alley, slink into the deep recesses that crave my fiercest pain, my ugliest truths – Invoke the healing of my battered soul
As time moves on, it devours everything eventually, without conscience, rationality, scientific generosity
Your human form has long been gone and I wonder where you dwell around me now Are you the breath of the trees? The murmurs of the rivers? The roughness of the stones or the softness of the grass? The crows watch me from the tops of the evergreens that you never got to see Do they call your name when they see my tears? Do they call my name when they see your meaning? I exist in earthly form with gratitude for all of the beauty and the sorrow I celebrate your existence, then and now, until I join you and we exist nowhere and everywhere
Theater of Sorrows 