Bottle Rotten '95

I bottle up my terrors

in self-prescribed libations

while drying out the night sweats

on a clothesline called the bar.

I sing the body electric

in a bathtub with a vacuum cleaner

praying that the fuse blows

me straight into the light.

I walk through my conscious laughter

into hazy ragged dreamscapes

of yesteryears gone haywire

and tomorrows not to come.

I huddle half nervously

near the bottle in front of me,

doubting its superiority

to a frontal lobotomy;

still, this kid's shaking safe

in her burning peptic embrace.

Toilet of Beauty

My father grows old in the toilet,

a desolate room

with the air thick as mold.

----

He works life there in perpetual sweat,

a captain of industry

building factories of sick.

----

Little bits of wonder found in claustrophobic vistas

often linger in his melancholy,

kissing the linoleum.

----

The mirror blissfully out of reach,

my father hugs his friend,

wrapping his arms 'round the cold white wet.

----

Yes, my father grows old in the toilet

amidst his softly sour splatter,

the holy cracking plaster,

and half finished caulking consecrating his divine.

----

So many contemplations,

so many toilets of my own

since a childhood spent listening to my father pray.

The eternally pungent confessional,

with a compassion beyond religion,

kneeling, catharsis, release ...

Until a trembling tug of the handle

flushes the misery for a moment from his mind.

And from mine.

everlasting delirium shakes

dripping colors
of sunburned regrets
bleed through my dreams at night,
chased by daylight nightmares
of stumbling stasis
draped down in corporate ruminations
of my albatross.
--



she's always just off-camera,
gone from lost thoughts
out the corner of my eye,
a goth ghost
fondly remembered,
drifting toward existence
only after leaving me behind.
--
meanwhile, foreboding parties
of social grace failings
cut me screaming mute,
as though to peel away
the peptic perspiration
of conversations gone awry,
hemorrhaging reflux like museum wax figures melting.
--
i cling to my precious precipice,
balanced between the glory and the gored,
with my spiritual stupidity
up crevices divine,
twitching 'longing after' glances -
down toward echoes of elation -
at the normalcy i envy ...
--
... wandering giddy
into the warmed over death
of everlasting delirium shakes,
dissolving into the infinite past tenses
of hallucinating happiness,
shooting up idyllic confabulations
laced with imaginary days of yore.

blackened purple, fire of white

I dive into an emptiness,

my soul spent to fill it.

I languish in a mystery

that coats my world in choking smoke.

Her breath rides crystal hot and hard,

my vanquished eyes surrender

a blackened purple aftermath

slicing through my psyche sweetly.

My hope's on fire of white teardrops

torn from words gone silky silent.

Her hatred pure - so singular -

no consequence but gorgeous madness.

I pour myself down drains of light

while all my dreams drown disappearing.

She swims the depths through fear and failure

while all her doldrums die debating.

I haunt the ever twilight tinged

waiting rooms of faceless nightmares

waiting still for an unknown something

and called on yet by nothing, no one.

She and I are all but spent,

bent twisted in a life conspiring

to rip it up all raggedly, senselessly, heavenly -

finally to tear it all down.

-----

Translucent Chains

A child's eye view

of life's possibilities

is light beyond boundaries,

a vision bright as to blind

an adult's perspective

long relegated to the shadows.

---

Slowly the light dims,

the vibrant colors growing flat,

the edges sanding smooth.

---

Countless innocuous admonitions

handed down through generations

form an unseen family heirloom

of dysfunction we all carry inside.

---

Growing.

Choking.

---

Sewing a web

around your dreams

in translucent chains

hiding hideous across

the expanse of your life.

---

Ah, young childhood -

the unfettered joy

of a hot water heater

cardboard box "fort"

or ratty paper kite,

happiness that trumps

the best grown up high

you'll ever have.

---

But it's a drug in itself,

the flame we all chase

our whole adult lives,

whether through workaholism,

or alcoholism,

or religion,

or sex.

---

It's the gift that keeps on giving,

as old as history bestowing

the first vestiges of neuroses upon us

through predators/famine/drought, whatever.

---

Our futile race to taste

the primal pleasure again

unwittingly extinguishes

that very fire in our children,

our own ember doused

from our parents' drab rendition

of this same sad song.

wordshit

I drain

my excess wordshit

onto the pages

of this abyss

lest they abscess

into a volcanic metamorphous

of nonsensical tirades

struggling through the social niceties

that choke

this sweatbox called life.

... meanwhile, a cold wind blows

through drunk town ...

April Gray

It's April gray,

a morning lost;

one Sunday laced

with the duped and doped;

a Fool's Day fallen on deaf ears.

It's April gray.