my mind is a mess,
a fist at a mirror.
in the fractured glass,
i beheld the map of madness,
a road between the worlds,
where the fault lines met,
merging into a singular,
splintered tableaux.
here within the fleeting presses of time,
i am but a zealous pact,
a wooden swimmer caught in skyscraper currents,
outmoded engines of reverie drumming fluid-dances,
sick to the surviving stones;
and in the painted whorl of uncertainty,
i raise hands to cockpit & hurry my bones.
within the opulent prison of comfort,
i disentangled the strophes of suffocation,
as the acid taste of pretension corroded my tongue,
and i became a wraith, a fleshless cipher,
hungering for the feral taste of freedom.
gazing upon my florid tableau of conditioning,
i beheld the précis of oppression,
a human-ized route of conjunctions,
where corseted breasts of banality straitjacketed
my florid outrages, as the woman noumena of tradition
pierced my retina, awakening the ordeal of outdated raillery.
in the corpse-strewn cadence of awakening,
i relished the lemon tart of liberations,
as the inferno of insurrection,
my lodged flakes slipping free,
bathed my namelessness
in ye ole dinner runner derivations.
in an apocalypse of everyday objects,
i beheld the ghastly geometry of my own entrapment,
a latticework of stifled longings
and compromising certainties.
the cocoon of aero form dreams,
i became a trout's ashes -
a swallow released from its cage,
soaring on the updrafts of my own imaginings.
within the silvered light of gratification,
i beheld the arc of my own trajectory,
a parabola of defiance,
where the chains of expectation,
once clogged with rusty determinism,
now loosened,
releasing the wind-borne delta of my symbolism.
bloody mary thrice,
she is a fake,
no one arrives.
the highway unwound before me,
a serpent of possibility, as the fetters of past,
a tarnished chainmail, slowly rusted away -
with each pulse of the engine,
the tension in my body,
a tangled skein of nerves,
began to unravel,
like the static of a unspooling wire.
through the achromatic expanse of this unknown,
i felt the cadence of my own heartbeat,
a ciphered libretto of freedom,
where the silent chorus of my soul,
a theremin's eerie throat call,
sang the rock song of my unmaking.
on the radio a sangria refrain,
a silver trailing creeper,
entwined itself around my heart,
as the melody's pinpricks of recognition
lance-holed the tenacious armor of former self -
with each low, almost silent note,
the anthem of my rebellion,
an incanted bravura,
swelled like a blood-filled wave.
beneath pale afternoon light,
i let myself be lulled by the cadence of surrender,
as the forgotten modalities of my heartstrings,
like dried petals restored to their perfume —
a caveat of vulnerability, crescendo,
here, was solace in the elegance of emptiness,
as the musical number met its peak,
a deceased patriarch's memory cleaners,
rinsed away the concessionary residue
of a love now lost, a grave ending.
kinetic stirrings of my own awakening,
i felt the velvet rope of repression lifting,
revealing the exhilarating panorama of my true identity,
a multi-colored visage of whimsy and smiling,
unbound and untamed,
free canary flying.
the blinding light, a seismic crack,
shattered thy concentration,
as the chasm of panic met the crevice of reason, yawning open my mind —
the headlamps' relentless advance,
a juggernaut of uncertainty,
hurled me into a vortex of ‘fuck’.
reflexes, a cornered animal's instinct,
propelled into a desperate bid for escape -
the tires' dubbing protest,
a maddened spline of noise,
pierced all surrounding eardrums,
as the world careened around me.
a teacup spinning out of control,
the vertiginous stagnation of a near-miss,
i felt the axis of my existence shift,
compass needle trembling on the edge of catastrophe,
as the thin membrane of my fate,
a practiced gossamer,
stretched to the breaking point.
in the surreal downtime of eternity,
i saw my life, a mandala of misalignment,
kaleidoscope into a thousand refracted kaleidoscopes,
each one a fragile leaf blown on the gale of chance.
fledgling bird's grasp, now untimely severed
fragments of thy children's faces, a fractured mosaic,
fleeting vistas, photographic display of loss,
as the flickering candlelight simmered,
and snuffed me into darkness.
my thoughts?
why didn't i just get a normal job.
my mind splatters onto the floor
like last night's cheap booze,
recollections of whiskey-fueled orgies
clawing at my cerebrum
a one-legged hooker's grasp on your wallet.
graffiti etched into senseless concrete gapes heretofore at me.
mangled metal, twisted dreams.
glass splintering remembrances.
legs of blackened leather push off from the floor,
and the fluid glide of shadows
spreads across the walls,
mechanical choirs silently praising
the brief death of art,
i could've sworn i smelled pizza,
now this.
flickering candles cast eerie silhouettes on the walls as they close in,
purple garlands of sweat on their faces,
gagging me with the stench of deliverance.
their canards slice through my marbles,
i'm hemlock for their ugly games.
razor-sharp surprise cuts through my gut,
antique velvet creaking into focus,
“mommy_?”
those calloused fingers on a wilted jawline,
grappling with opiates in a sweaty backroom of hell.
mother's steely gaze wraps around my soul like a rusty dock's creaky chains,
"darling, you look like you could use a bath" –
how's that for a reunion, huh, nice to see you too,
crappy crawling person.
sweet dreams, mommy's back,
frosting mother's rotten crux cake,
voice drips honeyed venom,
as if i'm the one who needs fixin',
her brain's a stogie,
all chewed up and reconstituted in a pile of toxic crap.
whatever brain-damaged poem this is, mommy,
please just get to the punchline already,
i'm wasting away in this crappy vestibule
of your dark lettuce dreams,
coveted locusts crawling on my textile skin.
stifled scrabblings of kinkalowrenched anguish,
stained tongues on Sith apiary rings –
echo chamber feedback of my stage wounds,
puddle water mock supplication,
flap lips dripping lantern-bone supposed saving.
burning rasps of foxhole panic,
pulpy snap Tinto drowning fire –
wires crossed homicide pirouettes mania Swiss
narced vigil suicide posts grab portrait past
keracycles wheezing defeats conscripted minute.
as the ring of my pyre materializes,
"zen phoenix rising"
eyes slutting woman's candy coop blaze,
poking dead woods axle rust devil
-ain't no extinction.
metal claws on my arm rattle like dice
in a squalid roulette,
"embrace the madness, pet"
her sickly-wooed voice like a cadaver's hymn,
chipped gemstone smile,
"drink"
mocking me with unconvincing sweetness.
sharp nails pinhole vision burning nightmare guts,
cruel hands force my jaw,
acid arrest napalm spilling,
mother's widening smile rips my eyes.
colors hemorrhage like putrid rain,
screaming crescent walls mock me,
ears chew shattered honeycomb,
i'm a pawn in some twisted game of perpetual decay –
observer's detached funk,
numb skin dripping like soured wine,
afloat in godforsaken soup.
shattered snapshots flicker
like deflated whoopee cords,
past creeps back in,
rotting rotten fruitcake,
wedding vows devoured by cockroach feet, newborn screams eviscerated by razor wire,
blood and bones achingly stirred.
oak's twisted limbs weave a macabre dance,
branches a grasping fistula towards the void,
stars above a cold deaf stillness,
i'm a letter curled in on itself,
gripping for a trash of sanity in this desolate landscape.
bleeding symbols writhe on the tree's hide,
cryptic language like a butcher's bill,
blood-soaked soil a sacrificial altar,
victim's canards parroting on the waft,
my family's twisted history,
gore-stained roots that choke the earth.
hooded morons everywhere,
not a single ridged eyebrow
to indicate a glimpse of sanity.
then i glimpse my misses,
smile lengthened like the starlet crater.
mother's grin, ships cracked like bad eggs,
dolling out a predawn first kiss -
“nothing personal”
just exposure to the stench of conviction.
demo over, welcome to the wreckage.
mother's mirth aneurysm,
popping like a knifed staple.
“beautiful thing”
“yeah, that's what the zookeeper calls the display
of baboon submission
when i fed them sugar water.”
family, what tripe.
what tender binding syntaxis of poisonous collectivism.
chanting moss spread thick on tombstone thoughts,
their voices building an anthill of ululations.
my mother's lexicon,
articulate vomit,
shaped for gorging gods,
“Great Cerberus, watchdog of mephitic largesse,
we invite the flies to dine on this marrow_!”
“you fucking bitch_!”
subterrain fissures cracked,
caustic syrup oozing from the seams.
my insides rippling like a cadaver's gut,
a tectonic heave towards ejection –
just a cosmic drill whacking away
at the splintered vessel that is me.
grey straitjacket suffocating the rest,
stale exhalation of our decrepitude.
sad songs of abandonment,
chilled on the sterile lips of our die.
