Howling, rabid emptiness chases the velvet night into a wildfire
Like the tall meadow grass is set to flame, when a wildebeest races across it, and coal-flung hooves collide
Clack spurs breeze spurs spark; Ignite…
And you, you seek refuge from your demons in this industrial, urban cave
Lean over the dark-stained, diamond-patterned, leather-clad and red velvet bar
Fidgeting fingertips drumming contemplative brooding into the stale air
Amaretto sour in a lowball, like a smooth, solid paperweight cupped in your caressing palm –
There was a time, in your glazed reverie… a warm, solid breast cupped in your caressing palm…
Oh those starburst eyes, spun from star-death kissed dreams, engulfed in yesterdays closely held far-aways –
Those young, ripe aspirations, like invincible silver-screen tutti frutti morsels
Almost turned the mountains to gold
And now, reconciled and bored; You pull at frayed, tender threads
Ply the mocking hands of fate with slurred quotes from unfinished poems that tremble
As you recount needle-sharp trials, that left clichéd burnt dreams rife with ghost souls –
The aftermath of cruel, crushing disappointments
It doesn’t actually matter how you got to here
To this here; sitting at this bar, belly warmed by this Italian-crafted aphrodisiac that melts the webs in your mind
Lets your skin breathe and loosens the macraméd bondage of your tongue
Until there are no walls, no blurs nor lines to censor the blunt within your words
You consider that while you are typically congenial; Blunt will do just fine at the moment
As into the liquor-fumed air you direct your attention toward fates tyrannical existence
Launch a stern admonishment to remove its sadistic tentacles and reacquaint past with present –
The babies breath with the lamb
Reignite the tingling anticipation you once felt up and down weathered and stiff vertebrae seams
Fill your head with origami clouds that spin your mirages into jeweled wings
Which carry your shoe-boxed reflections, metaphors, notions and half finished creations
Into this current, resigned, vanilla existence
Carve the dim air surrounding you into the dazzling fireworks that swirl through your imagination
Like the wheel of life nailed to that stubborn tree in the corner of the yard
Its spinning needle spitting sparks that heat your blood –
Snap your gloom like crispy bones
Burn into your skull, to relieve the pressure that your contorting fingers can’t massage away –
Husk that ritual, of fingers to temple, that provides an impotent mute at best, of the riotous, tolling spasms that throb
Or at least maintain some semblance of mediocre pain between the fingers and the booze…
It’s funny how no one knows your name
You’re like a smeared chalk outline on the wall
But your face kind of resembles someone that someone thought they saw somewhere, some time ago
You suppose that’s better than nothing
And return your attention to the molten liquid that loosens clenched vocal chords
Considering that possibly no one would think you sane if your lips moved in an attempt to scold demons
Despite those same cynics revering a faceless, bodiless specter called karma –
Of whose evidence you’ve never witnessed, and whose name you’ve spat toward hell
However, you have wintered with fate, its stingy, cruel, decrepit fingers twisting, squeezing your hand
Dragging you into its bone yard of the puppeteered forsaken
Where it climbs on the backs of demons, its egg-sized, wobbly eyes and arthritic claws digging beneath their thick skin –
It goads them to suck the juice from lottery ticket souls until they wither into shrunken tombs
To harbor nothing more than disappointment, faded eyes and sawdust…
Demons have known you well, dwelling in your mind, and in your house
You’ve seen them creep from behind the curtains
Seen them drag their dead limbs across the room when sun dust settled and the shadows fell
Heard the bed groan as they climbed in beside you
Hissing, yammering creaky-breathed soliloquies about a wasted world
Hammered into your pounding head lotus dreams unfolding 13 years of nightmares
Where crow, feather, beak and bone foretold that this apocalypse was your Everest, and –
“Another?” disrupts, returns the present, so you study your glass in its knuckled perch
And decide that there comes a time when fate must learn that you’ve had your fill
“Whiskey, neat, I’ve had enough of the former,” you remark, as you conclude that we each have our own demons
Some haven’t entered battle yet, some have already lost, some are still putting up a fight, while some have won
And insane can be a lovely distraction; You’ve no quarrel with her allure
So they can be damned, with their pointy fingers and clucking tongues, you think
But now, it’s time to scoop up hell and send it raining down
While you stand firmly on the ground, and on the brink