Author: poetryfest

What if death
The gentleman caller
The arc angel
Is not the one
That brings us
To whatever is next
But is the one
Who saves us
Who brings us back
From those moments
The ones you read about
Or see on the news
When someone
Sees the light
Feels the darkness
Closing in on them
But comes back
What if death is
The hero of the story
Tirelessly running around
Giving people the heimlich maneuver
Making us look both ways
Before we cross the street
What if death is just
Late, alot
With so many lives to save
What if he just can’t
Get to everyone on time
So he’s left watching tragedies
He knows he could have stopped
A superhero whose spidey senses
Are just overwhelmed
So when we lose someone
We are never alone
In our mourning of a life gone to soon
Not alone in all of the what ifs
Death is there
Standing next to us
Thinking the same thing

Pandemic, country swept
wine flows, souls smolder
humans live without touch.
I share with you the fears that
lie in my heart, but only through
the mask covering my face. We
are no longer allowed to exist in
the same intimate spaces.

Some appreciate the
reprieve. Grandpa did not. If
someone was to ask me
what the hardest thing about
the Coronavirus was, I would tell
them, it was losing one of my favorite
people. In the end
of his life, we had to stay away to
keep him alive and, I think,
the distance might have killed him.

I often think about love and
the human condition. The way we
give love freely but also want
space. Until space is the only
thing we’ve got. Grass is greener,
I guess. Why is it so hard to love
what we have, when we have it?

Grandpa had love
to spare. He never needed
space. I fear forgetting
and yet I remember him like
no time has passed, his
Smell, his
Smile, his
zest for life and the fight he
showed until the end.

I never imagined that I would,
one day, pray for his
death. Until his death brought
him peace. And relief from
the pain.

Life is full of conditions. This
condition and that condition and
I don’t care for them, to be
honest. I want to go to
his house and pull up the tiny
white stool that was the perfect
height to sit face to face with
him. Just high enough to hold
his hand and let our arms rest
together
on the arm of the recliner.

It’s been nearly four
years and I’d give anything to
just sit and hold Grandpa’s
hand

(for Rodney and Richard—Johnson)

from a schooling
comrades were Russian commies
from an education
comrades were soldiers

basic training during Nam
we were bunk mates
no dna brotherhood
and the band yet to play

bonds of
practicing weaponry
bonds of
weekend brothel boozing

time of danger
brewing on a far horizon
time of reality
mortality at hand

flesh and blood
torn and flowing
I remember your face
those times from pictures

those times of pride
friendship and toasting
roasting in jokes
laughing arm in arm

decades later
I finger touch
your name
on a granite wall

inspired by the famous hit of instupendo

you advance
and advance
and advance –

until you reach beyond the land beyond the gloom and withering owers –
and become submerged in a new kaleidoscope, a new illusion.
your tendons feel the nails of the
reaper, who traces intricate and
thoughtful patterns on its canvas.
your mind nods away, the air
tattooing incoherence on your
senses.

is this real or is this another fucked up dream?

voices whisper,
as your descent
into ________ (MADNESS, SADNESS, EMPTINESS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!)
ensues.

you advance
and advance
and advance –

until you realize, there’s no dierent
path you can take. it’s the same cycle –
and once that realization settles, the
reaper grabs your ankles and drags
you away, while the symphony of
the trees, the ground, the land –
recite an ode, only they hear.

to hell you go… to hell you go… to hell you go

The shaman shrieks!
The world is looking bleak
He adds another drop of blood
He’s a mother-fucking freak!

Dark is the night!
How may I help you sire?
Just unleash my hell
And come and start the fire!

CHORUS:

The shaman shrieks!
The world is looking bleak
He adds another drop of blood
He’s a mother-fucking freak!

The spell is complete!
The shaman rules the realm
With his mate Judas E
And Satan at the helm!

(c) The ShrunkenHeads 1979

There is what was a man
who walks October storms in darkness.
On sleepless nights I see him striding
all wrapped up in sheets of lightning
or flushed with the sodden rain of fall.
The gentle nights are spent without him
who rouses for the howl of wind
that consummates his passage.
I think to join him in his trek
but fear that he will tell me
of why he travels in this violence
or worse, for whom he seeks.

9/1 a thesis on thirst
Ambiguous in my apathy
Industrial cathedrals summon the ethereal
Sacrificing the children of the molten cross
We waste away in gods jaws

Genderless genocide keeps those who dare blind
The hooded martyrs indulge in masochistic mechanisms
Vomiting forth the remains of religion
Bathing in the septic stench of salvation
Our fingers plunge into loves throat searching for numbness

Cannibal cardinals preach hedonistic sermons
Begging to be released of their burdens
We seek what we can never find
Left to bleed for a material shrine
Eat your fill of the gutters grime

Hell is for the heroes
In fields of fire we are all zeroes
The wicked will of man has slipped its leash
Unfettered and unbound
We burned what we found

Through gods hateful eyes I look down on packs of rabid mongrels of men
Their orgies blessed by the blood of innocent
You adopted the empty stare to protect yourself
From the horrors of a mirror

Peeling back the dead skin of the sky
Curious as to what you will find
Salvation lives across a serrated sun
Just out of reach as we die

The front door peels wide setting in motion its foul display
A ravenousness beast upon return from terrorising the night
Dance chandelier
unsuspend yourself from ceiling
dance in the howl
loosen your pointed crystal fragments in such interference
drop upon the creature’s skull below
oh…but a bare miss
The terrified monster arrows the eyes
I’ll fucking kill you… I’ll do it
An absent mother awakes from upstairs
The cunning cat-self alert to thrilling suspicions of something exciting
It sharpens claws against the bedframe
Joins in the sport of murderous possibilities
The monster whimpers at sight of its wife
I need you Lel,
I need you Lel,
Lel, I need you
It tightens the wet suede jacket against dripping skin
Soaked from hellish uncertainties and
a diminishing appetite to drown the neighbour in a pool

A sleeping child awakens and creeps to the ballistite
She overlooks the ordeal
Petrified by the creature orchestrating her nightmare

Daddy?
Are you okay?
but there is no daddy here; eaten whole
He fucking pushed me in the pool Lel
I took the asshole in with me
The child grips the round edges of two railings
peers through a gap with one salted eye
Daddy?
But all traces of the father-figure are gone
I kept his head under… just kept it under

With such a horrifying confession
the child withdraws to her bedroom and cloaks herself
in a snake suit
delivered by foul creatures in other sunken dreams
It slithers across the walls for a closer view of daddy remanence
encapsulated in the almost murderous
Lel, my suede jacket, he ruined my father’s fucking jacket
The cat-mother hunts a chest under the staircase
kneading the items between its paws
Retrieves a silk that it wraps around the husband’s waist
cocooning him for an unlikely redemption
to an almost drowning of a neighbour
an almost death
over a suede jacket

The poisonous child scales the roof unseen
intending to sink its teeth into the daddy imposter and draw out her real father
Crack chandelier snaps the tail

It chimes, swings and snaps
releasing an ungodly effect of surging pointed fragments
Decadent shards attack the mother’s cat eyes rendering it blind
Stab the cat claws diminishing its skill to scratch any ludicrous ego
Silly kitty…Silly kitty hisses the child
And as for the ravenous beast whilst his wife meets her end
Why, he is cradling the suede jacket and whimpering
insensible to the crystals slicing at its swollen tongue
Lel
it garbles
pointed vessels lunge at the bolding head
protrude from the skull
Le
e
l
and it is dead

The girl slithers across the stained tiles to bath in crystal blood
Removes the white silk and tosses it away
With such wickedness
she releases her jagged teeth
to bite deep into the monster’s chest
Wrapping its mouth over the heart
She shrieks I will free you daddy
The reptile withdraws splitting heart from flesh
allowing blood droplets to drip upon the suede jacket
The creature sinks into the night with the heart swallowed whole
bloated gut
towards the neighbour’s backyard

Remanence of party goers paralysed by the presence
of another wild creature

The full moon casts particular attention over the pool
as the snake slides over the edge and into the water
to be rocked in a paternal embrace
Daddy? The snake-girl whispers
revealing her face from the snake suit
You lost your heart
I fetched it back for you

The daughter regurgitates her snack
offers the heart to a shadow below the surface
She hears his true voice
Forgive me my darling
Forgive me and allow me to be your daddy again
a bright red flow with the moonlight to the beat of
lub dub lub dub lub dub
Yes daddy, but of course you can
The shadow lightens and the child adjusts its snake suit
covering weeping brown eyes and
leaving the father alone in the pool to drown wonderfully whole
in his suede jacket

The front door peels wide setting in motion the snake-like girl
who is oblivious to the foul odour of the night

without fear
barely cares
shedding snakeskin
Sleep awaits

The trees shook and trembled
Dropping their winter coats in fear
Snow, now new mountains on the ground, create a wall
It melts
The water singeing as it touched the fallen star
Red and angry

Brown elsewhere
In that it’s like an eye
And maybe it is
The eye of God, or a God, or an Angel, or even a being we do not know of
But it must be an eye of something past the stars
Something that has the right to dictate fate
The crimson of the two young, known simply as
Cub and Kit,
Looks more related to the burning eye than to the bear and rabbit from where they came

The two
Separated and opposite
The eye in the middle to keep watch
The bear first to look at the sky
Ideas of night and day
-Irrelevant-

Screams to the cosmos

“Why!? Oh gracious evil universe!
Why have you done this to I, great Ursa Major!?
You have taken your own cub, the small Ursa Minor!
Great and ferocious was the fate!
Why!?”

The mother rabbit
Quiet as she was with all things
Thought in her head

“Oh cruel and unfair sky
I thank you for this moment of mercy
For giving such a fate to
My kit
The small suffer destinies much worse
I worship you for making it quick and painless”

Mother bear stares back at the eye
Mother rabbit runs away for mother bear
Is near

Crumble my bones
Dry out my lungs
Force moisture from my eyes
Make me scream before my demise

Take who I love
Take who I hate
Take the only joy
And make me gasp for air at their wake

Make it hurt to breathe
Make it hard to stand
Make me look in the mirror and not remember who I am

Make the night when I thrive
But also when I try to die
Make the day when I’m gone
But also when my mind has no tone

Give me peace when it’s vile
Give me agony when watching the golden sun dial

Teach me to find home in blood
And teach me to find fear in love

Make it hurt.