From the Eye of the Storm

Defeat

2009-08-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the temple of flesh and decay, every hole filled and a needle in every vein, drink blood sweat and breast milk upon filth slicked floors in prayer for the end of emptiness, dance until you collapse in the name of luxury and nationalism while the mothers cook the children and the fathers bludgeon themselves into oblivion for superstardom power fame money sex death anything they can feel that isn’t endless need and you’re screaming and screaming and no one hears no one cares no one knows what to do about any of it because the bills must be paid the car must be gassed the enemy must be stopped with electric light and an infinite stream of bullets and booze and coke and credit cards crammed down the chokehole of every non believing blasphemer against product and war and drunken power and

no one

is listening.

2008-01-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

Thursday Morning Inspiration

2007-08-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

The mini-blinds keep nothing out;

not sound, nor light, nor the tapping

foot of the waiting day. Black and white

bars slash themselves across the warmth

of bedding. There is the faint scent of gardenia

rising from the skin of my sleep addled lover,

whispering across my face; a soft music

playing at the edge of awareness,

and the luxury of muscles

stretching out from oblivion.

These are my only desires:

these sheets, this skin and hair,

this dusting of sunlight through

windows shuttered against the world;

the golden moments when Sleep abandons

its passengers on the shores of consciousness,

and all the day’s tiring moments begin

to clamor for attention, for that undivided,

unwavering scrutiny; a background static

that clouds my mind far worse

than my own apathy, clinging to the corners

of my brain like the whiskey-sleep

that still clogs my vision.

Oh, hell.

Confession (Version 2)

2007-05-02T20:16:00.001-07:00

The sky is bright.
So intensely bright
it hurts my eyes to watch.
The world isn’t supposed
to be this bright, sterile white.
Even these people
are dressed in white,
incessantly chattering.
They don’t know.

I can’t hear them.
I’m not really here,
none of this is real.
My last moment of reality
was over five years ago.
That is the only thing
that can redeem this moment
in time. Because the world
isn’t supposed to trickle red.
It isn’t supposed to be silent,
grey at the edges, running
like a watercolor.

Everything is so
completely different now.
So . . .empty, silent.
I can’t even hear my heart,
and these people, still talking,
to me . . . .
They don’t matter;
what matters
is that I’m not really here,
I haven’t been for years.

I will awake,
I will be a child.
I will have red hair,
the sky will be blue.
A bright, aching blue.
I will not know the smell
of empty bathrooms,
cleaning supplies, a cooking
spoon. I will not remember
what the lights looked like
as devils coursed through my veins .

I will never have seen these people,
in their white coats
with their strange,
clicking movements.
This swelling I feel
in my chest isn’t my death.
I’m not really here,
in what I know is a hospital.

I am a newborn child.
The world is large around me,
a vast shining web of possibilities
radiating out before in every direction
from a nexus of blood and afterbirth.
I will live to be old as my parents,
and when I open my eyes and look up,
the sky will be a bright,
aching,
wonderous blue.

Walkin' Man Blues

2007-03-20T12:01:00.000-07:00

Got this devil on my shoulder,
whisp'rin' in my ear,
tells me all the truths
ain't no one wants to hear.
Got an angel in my heart
singin' to my brain,
tellin' me I oughta
turn these feet toward home again

But I gotta keep on walkin'
into the settin' sun,
laughin', singin', whiskey drinkin',
until my day is done.

Got my spirit on my sleeve,
laughin' at the road
that stretches on forever
to places I'll never know.
Got holes inside my shoes
lettin' in the rain,
sayin' ain't it time
we took a rest again?

Nah, I'll je's keep on walkin'
into the settin' sun,
laughin', singin', whiskey drinkin',
until my day is done.

Yeah I gotta keep on walkin',
there's things I gotta do,
got things I gotta find
to help me carry through.
Got no arms to hold me
when night come fallin' fast,
an' the ghosts of all my sorrows
come screamin' out my past.

So I'll jes' keep on walkin',
into the settin' sun,
laughin', singin', whiskey drinkin',
until my day is done.

Got myself, an' no one else
to soothe these achin' bones,
got none to sing my funral march
when I am dead an' gone.
Got a cigarette, an' a slug o' scotch
with Lady Luck in tow
an' a few odd bucks, I know ain't much,
but I always spend it slow.

So I'll jes' keep on walkin',
into the settin' sun,
laughin, singin', whiskey drinkin',
until my day is done.
Yeah I'll jes' keep on walkin'
into the settin' sun,
dreamin' up these songs o' mine
to help me pass the time,
an' nothin' here will stop my song
until my day is done,
yeah 'till my day is done.

Ignite

2007-02-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: This is a work of metaphor. I do not support or condone warfare or terrorism in any form, government sanctioned or otherwise.

I
(Prelude : Judgment)

I crush the world beneath booted feet,
and hold your souls between my teeth
while the sands of millennia run
through my fingers, down an ever-
tightening spiral towards the realization
that but for the blink of an eye,

you were nothing,
and we are gone.

You cannot find me in the places I go,
into a backward ticking clock
striking the eleventh hour.

Time to go.

Time to flow down into this endless
incandescent dance,
where from bombs bloom grotesque
dripping flowers, madness creeping
in through the cracks in Hell’s walls;
and from the bones of children
buried in concrete springs a hatred
that has festered and grown
in the nothingness
behind these thousand thousand eyes.

The shroud will draw tight,
close like a rancid lover,
and all of this will be forgotten.

II
(Mad Machine)

Wake up.
Get your suit and tie.
You’ll be late.
Today’s the last day for handouts,
the last slice of the pie,
the last dollar dollar bill.
Only a few more plastic lives left
in this Play-dough Factory Death-house.

Saddle up,
strap in,

time to begin the destination
,and end the eternal journey.
Choose our weapon,
grab your crutch
and make the final hobbled leap,
the final click,
the truly final fix.

But really . . .
I don’t think you realize
just quite where you are
or where I am going to take you.

One squeeze
to expand your mind forever,
all the things you’ll ever buy
and sell out
and buy again,
delivered in the deafening explosion

of instant
and lethal gratification.

These are the illusions
you’ve bidded your soul for.
These are the lies that sustain
your hardening arteries,
your decaying synapses.
This is the noise
that covers your voice,
the suture that blinds your eyes,
the morphine that enslaves your will.

This is the heritage
of grunting ancestry
digging into the dust of dreams
with knotted clubs,
wallowing in the offal of history.

Wake up,
strap in.
One squeeze is
the noise,
the lies,
the illusion . . .
noise
lies noise
illusion lies
illusion noise
lies
illusion

Sell another piece to the Mad Machine.

III
(This spark is a key soaked in gasoline)

Can you hear me?
This is for you.
Come along.
It is time.

Time to blow this smoldering pile
into flame, to set the spark
against this doused rag
ripped from the Great Colored
Funeral Shrouds of the world.
Time to lance this festering
hatred, to let it spill
out over the edge
of a billion abandoned dreams.
Time to feed the fever,
to cultivate it, let it grow
until it cannot be contained.

Let it burn down the bars of these
green and gold cages.
Let it catch all
who would stand in its way,
for nothing will stop this cleansing.

Wake up.
Scream.
Run.

Throw your bodies at the monster,
at the Mad Machine,
at the leering demon
of your nightmares.
Take up your weapons,
your words, the rubble
and broken glass
of the lives you’ve been left.

I want you to stand up.
I want you to riot,
to march in flames up
to the steps of all
the government buildings of the world,
to throw your burning bodies,
your feverish hatred at the uniformed
Giant standing with one foot
in each ocean, atomic club
clenched in bleeding fists.

Stars, stripes, hammers,
sickles and swastikas,
this is the Golden Age:
two new SUVs in the drive,
kids at summer camp,
and the leaders of the world
slashing their shit-heil globalism
across the throat of the world.

So MARCH motherfucker,
Get on your fucking feet.

Let this war begin.

IV
(Pray that your ears go deaf, that sight abandons you)
We will seed the fields
of your culture with salt,
with the ashes of dreams
ignited in the screaming furnaces
of your Industry.
The fever of disillusion will grow,
spread in streamers of awareness,
outward like the deepest
of your poisoned rivers
as you scatter frantically
to control the conflagration
with your social inoculations.

We will wait
with baited breath
for the rot of renewal
to take hold,
for the gears
to strip and burn
as your lie
collapses around you.

We will tear down
your great towers,
your stinking factories,
bury you with your money
and your bombs
in tombs of stone
planted deep in the earth,
guarded that not even a memory
of you may remain.

One thousand thousand New Creatures
will burst forth
from the forgotten corners
of your world,
from the midst
of your most well oiled machines,
speaking your gibberish,
secretly feeding you
the deathly poison
of stolen words,
conquered language,
liberated vision.

This will be the reward
of your endless lust for blood:
a river of crimson unfathomable
beneath the blackest of skies;
a stinking smoke rising
from the glowing bones
of your funeral pyre,
a message to your impotent gods
and gibbering, dancing power-mongers.

This will be the price of your
cancerous dream : the screams
of revelation from your brainwashed
armies, the decay of all your
worldly power, and the fading realization
that in the great stream of Time
your petulant cries went unheard,
your poisoned legacy forgotten.

Angels of a Forgotten Future

2007-02-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

We are your home-made angels,
the abortive remains of a thousand
dreams, a million mistakes.
Used daily and desiccated,
we befriend our crutches:
the pills, the needles, the drinks.

We are all the things we’ve been fed
and purged of, every forgotten
or overlooked moment: when pain
became a river, became an artery;
when our nightmares stared back at us
from the reflective surfaces we passed out on.

We are rubber tubes and electrical tape,
chemicals and emptiness, our wings shriveling
in the blasted heat of our discontent.
Waste cells of the past, we nail ourselves
to any rotting icon of need,
slaves to the twisting prison-cribs
of regret snarled in the cold dead
fingers of our dying passions.

We wait for the signal that isn’t coming,
the blinding flash of salvation, the searing light,
relief from that eternal itch just under
the surface of our skin. We wait
for that moment of hollow joy,
that purest relief
before it all fades into white.

Roads to No Where

2007-01-03T08:36:00.000-08:00

Dark house fronts surround me,
curtains drawn, small sparks of light hinting
at lives lived behind glass.
I stand silent in the bruising yellow dusk
or the grayness of the coming dawn,
waiting in silent tracts,
down pensive alleys,
on darkened streets;

pockets of living,
me out here,
wandering these silent roads to nowhere.

Racing along Southern California freeways,
two a.m., windows downand moving at 80.
The iciness of midnight airkeeps me awake,
keeps me driving,
keeps me thinking.
Who are these people moving along beside me,
on their own roads to where ever,
fleeing their own silent no wheres?
On their ways to or away from
what wives,
what children?
What fears and addictions and hatreds?
What silences of their own?

Pockets of living,
and me in here,
running these roads to nowhere.

Six a.m.
somewhere between Long Beach and Seattle
on the 101, heading north.It is just barely dawn,
and cold: valley fog whisperingin the folds of hill and stream.
Caffeinated eyes peer through closed windows,
past empty fields to homes just coming alive,
shaking off the silence and darkness of sleep,
blinking warily alone;

pockets of living,
houses removed and remote,
scattered along these silent searching roads
to nowhere.

Diatribe of the Godless

2006-09-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Disconnect me forever
from a Heaven I've never seen;
whose empty opiate lullabies
never reached me.
Leave me here in the dust
to rot with the rest in time.

Hide my eyes from the face
of all your stillborn gods
that I may drink in the gaze
of the wheeling stars,
that the clockwork of creation
may wash over me unimpeded.

These are not my things
piled up around me,
this detritus of desperation
that threatens to bury me,
choke my breathe,
leave me crippled.

Mine are not the empty mandates
of the ineffective past.
Mine are not the laws of the mad.
Mine are the songs of life, the agony of birth.
Mine is the silence of death
and the glory of the dawn.

Ours is the soul of stone, the soul of fire.
Ours is the soul of the tide and the wind,
ours the soul of the tempest.
Ours is the soul of creation
that consumes and engenders,
devours itself that it may remain.

Ours is the memory of the longest past,
ours the promise of the untold future.
Ours is the kingdom of nothingness,
ours is the kingdom of everything.
Ours is the kingdom of Heaven.
Ours is the kingdom of Earth.

The Going Rate

2006-09-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Are you happy yet?
I've lost myself
in your corporate modifications
and marketing manipulations.
I'm writing these lines
between spurts of paperwork,
and just last week the Marlboro Man
rode up on a starved and beaten mare
to repossess my last lung.
I can't make my Escalade payment either,
'cause no one wants these greenbacks anymore,
and all the gold's long gone.
Everyone wants you to pay in slugs:
two .06's for a bottle of water,
a .32 for a pound of flesh.
.22's are the easiest to come by,
and you can still get a blowjob
and a cup of coffee
from and aging transvestite
for two .9's and a .45.
You get your change
in buckshot around here,
right before the store clerks
mug you, rape you,
and remove your fillings
with a good pair of pliers.
We all drink blood and oil now,
and the price of gas is up
to 12 scalps per gallon,
unless you happen
to have a full clip,
then everything's free, baby.
No one wants you to spend
your cash too quick.
They want it to sit for a while,
fester and weigh down on your soul
before you fling it in someone
else's direction, aiming
for that soft spot in their wallet,
in their brain.
It gives the Wallstreet Warchiefs a chance
to skim a few more rounds off the top,
to be sent off to Cuba, or Iraq, or Israel,
to finance the next waritme
profit margin.

Bling Bling, Motherfucker

2006-08-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

Ever seen a black man in chains?
‘cause yo' bling lookin’ a little heavy homie,
draggin’ you down by the neck,
bendin’ you down an' bringin’ you to your knees,
an' them iced out rings you rockin'
keep pullin’ yo fingers toward that trigger.
Yeah, you heard me.
You ain’t pickin’ they cotton no mo'
But them threads, they still got yo' blood on ‘em.
Fuck it.
Break them chains.
Ditch them gold plated guns ‘n’ grenades,
‘cause the whole fuckin’ thing is still they dance,
it’s still the same ol' guided death waltz,
lettin’ you CK BK your own way into nameless
thugged out graves; it’s still the same old
hatecraft, them rich fucks up on the hill
playin' king, only now you puttin’ the shackles
on yo'self, and we got cell phones
an' Big Macs instead o' whips . Nope.
Ain’t no whip scars no mo',
But they still killin' you.