Puppet show

Greetings all. Today, I have another semi-mechanical poem, inspired by the below picture by the lovely and talented Sarah Hogman. Enjoy.

Puppet show

Mimes in the form of god on high,

wandering, wishing at the will of the one,

the one who rules from the clouds and the sky, the one holding all the strings, commanding, controlling all these misbegotten earthbound things,

this battalion of half-baked, blank-faced creatures on wires,

hanging slumped, jaws slack,

joints swiveling, like someone started building toy soldiers, someone had a dream of something great ,

something that could lift earth to the heavens, shine brighter than an immortal soul, and talk to gods.

But the toys turned ugly, and their creator could not stand to look at them, so he abandoned them, twisted his dream, and started trying to drag heaven down to earth instead.

And now these half finished crash test dummies hanging like a world full of incomplete suicide attempts,

and all the demons staring up at a torture even they couldn't devise:

Hundreds of marionettes hauled up by the strings and made to make war on each other, no evil in their minds, no goodness in their hearts, because they have no minds to manufacture good intentions to pave the road to Hell with, no hearts to be pure of to ascend to heaven with,

so nobody wins.

Except for the termites feasting on fallen toy soldiers, littering the rocks, because eventually when you make puppets dance long enough, kill for long enough,

they cut their own strings.

and eventually the termites will devour all these puppets, and nothing left but sawdust.

and eventually the demons will find other worlds to corrupt.

and eventually all the gods they made will fade into failure, just like their string-bound servants.

But those marionettes are laughing in whatever afterlife they may be occupying, singing:

"I've got no strings, to hold me down,

To make me kill, to make me drown."

and the gods would be enraged if they hadn't disappeared when their minions had.

and eventually in this empty land of sawdust,

new rulers will arise over all others, simply because they are the only ones left.

and eventually every world ends in dust,

every mechanization ends in rust,

and the crown always falls down to those who are willing to survive after all others have died.

and, eventually, in a land of wooden warfare,

the termite is king.

Yet another mechanical poem

If you are wondering, yes I do have a fascination with things mechanical (although I have virtually no knowledge or experience in the area) and have several poems on the more philosophical side of machines, and which I have made an effort to explore in my writing recently. So expect to see more in this vein in coming weeks. Enjoy!
Wired

Electric connections hold us together,

I've got my own animatronic birds of a feather,

We're past the point of now or never,

now it's nevermore.

Like a bird made of wires, it all comes together in an engineer's mind, an artificial world of perfect clockwork, always ticking, never talking, mocking all the real things that never rust.

Combust, all the metal in the world will melt, and the heat will be felt by the sun, the son, the one, and still the engine never stops moving in slow-motion towards the furnace of failed attempts at steel immortality.

Free, from all those pesky things like breathing and blood and body and mind, mine, mining the depths of the very surface of a home sweet home on the ranging from cities made to build themselves, to a clockwork mosquito that steals the iron from your blood.

Flood, of liquid gold shining like the fires of Hell in a hall of mirrors, reflections of reflections of a world that could be drowned in steel, steal, stolen the dollar signs from our eyes, used them to build an empty room with walls lined with lead so the sound of the silence of all the things once alive can't leave.

Believe, in something more than life itself, a land of barely remembered ideas in the engineers scrapbook, where lizards lay in wait for their gears to rust, for all the creators in every holy book to come down with screwdrivers and make them again, men, sending spears of misinformation in formation flowing through the veins of an automatic homeless man with a tin cup,and a sign saying:

fix me.

Angel

Angel

She is light shining off of a picture window

she is soft sleepy-time moments and held hands

she is steam rising up from a mug earl grey and the haze of an early morning

she is bees buzzing in the bushes between backyards

she is the patron saint of spiritual silences

she is words that are left unsaid because you don't need to say anything

she is sunshine on a rainy day

she is a smile when everything is in a downward spiral

she is the song on the radio that makes you sing along

she is love letters lost in the mail

she is time well whiled away

she the best angel you'll ever accidentally fall in love with

Transparent

Hello all. Yes, I'm finally posting again! Apologies for the long sabbatical, but there should be more post as of now.
Transparent

All I am is just another transparency, another set of developments of store-bought bones of somebody I never thought I never knew

I am just another X-ray of a bedtime story told to a Chemo patient bombarded by searchlights trying to find what's out of place

Just another photograph of a ghost in somebody's machine

Another see-through messenger who got shot by accident by a somebody with a loaded tongue pointed at the man in the mirror behind me

Another spiritual spirit praying to something I know doesn't exist except in my head, but my head is all that's real to me and my invisible self

Just a monkey wrench in the cogs of life, a spanner in the works of somebody's daydream of a better world

A scanner darkly viewing my own insides like the covers of a book by Philip K. Dick telling of a see-through skeleton in a glass coffin that nobody even knows is there

I am everything you cannot see, and neverything you never wanted to

I am all the small things the experts say don't exist

All the toys in the attic of your mind, tossed into a cardboard box and forgotten but not lost in the shuffling card game that is the mind of its own of the mouths of children

Just a lost soul in a fishbowl on a bookshelf in a library of obituary notices in an empty house

I am a man made of glass who throws stones at himself

I am a photo negative of a holy ghost's imaginary friend

I am transparent.

Shadowtown

Hello all. This week was the end of my teen writing group for me, as I'm turning nineteen this year, and the age limit is eighteen.

Sad as it is, it was an awesome experience while it lasted, and I have to show for it, an entry in a chapbook created by the group, titled Elemental::.

Here is that piece.

Shadowtown.

In Shadowtown, where the sun beats down,

and there’s not one leaf on the trees

there are things ‘neath the stones

that would chill you to your bones,

and make you shiver despite the heat.

A friend and I were passing by

when we came upon this land.

The heat made it shimmer, and I had just a glimmer

of what I would see firsthand.

The people didn’t speak, their faces were bleak,

but what made us stop and stare,

was their feet hit the ground, but made not a sound,

as if they weren’t really there.

Then we looked at the trees, and went weak at the knees,

as the branches seemed to grin,

for there, hanging loose, from every bough was a noose,

empty and blowing in the wind.

They creaked in the gusts, caked, covered in dust,

Mocking us with groaning bones.

For though empty as holes, the ropes they hung low,

with the weight of a ghostly death row.

The tumbleweeds clawed, the crows they all cawed,

as our skins began to crawl.

It looked as though this is where you go

if your evils are dreary and small.

We staggered around the silent crowds

until we reached town square,

where our eyes found another surprise,

in the dry and dusty air.

A statue black, to us his back

was turned, though we could see

it was of a man, his charcoal hands

were reaching to be free.

And then it turned, and my vision blurred

as this silhouette lurched near.

Its face was gone, its limbs too long,

a ghastly silken smear.

Its hands reached out, and it looked to shout,

though it had no voice it seemed.

We ducked around it, and we could feel the sound

it would have made if it could scream.

And out of the gloom more shadows loomed

like puppets without wires.

The people ignored them in silent boredom,

like trees ignoring fires.

We ran through the street, the sound of our feet

in the silence unnaturally loud,

until my friend said ‘We’re as good as dead’

and suddenly turned around.

He said ‘Why bother to run, when what we run from

could catch us before we could blink?’

I put a hand on his back, and his mood seemed so black

I felt my hope starting to sink.

And then he turned to face me, and I’ll never erase

the image burned onto my eyes.

My friend of ten years, his face disappeared,

a creature, blurring, and blind.

I let out a cry and ran until I

was weak, and my breath came in chokes.

To the ground I crashed, and I thought, at last

this was it, and then I awoke.

I was safe sound and home, in my bed all alone,

no silent people, no shadows, no ghostly trees.

I lay back and sighed, thanked God I’m alive,

and finally remembered to breathe.

Swung my feet out of bed, and then shook my head

to clear my ears as I rise.

For though my feet hit the floor, I could have swore

that they didn't make any noise.

In shadowtown, where the sun beats down,

and it never turns to night,

nothing ever grows, and though it always glows,

shadows are darkest in the light.

Of gods and men

Little worlds all built of dreams, everybody king of his own realm making things dance and jump to their own drum,

building castles in the clouds, sculpting gold bejeweled crowns,

and never even noticing when it all comes crashing down.

All are deities in their own head, all fancy themselves kings among sheep, all are supreme, everybody rules over everybody else,

nobody thinks themselves a servant to anybody but somebody sitting in the sky looking down.

But what are gods but humans with a superiority complex.

And what are humans but gods with blindfolds on.

An essay on emptimess

Many Shades Of White

Nobody knows the nothing I have seen,

nobody knows my boredom.

Dreary days, when nothing changes, all the time washes up in your basement,

All the clouds drift, and all your thoughts slip,

into a slowly shifting maze,

And you start to categorize the apathy passing by,

until it flows away.

Because boredom comes in flavors, after a while you start to savor

all the different doldrums you can taste.

All the days they stick together, like wispy birds with paper feathers, drifting towards a milky way.

and my brain cells start sleeping, the dreariness keeps on keeping

all the words I never said, and never say.

there's too much gloomy light, and there's many shades of white,

and they all blend into another shade of gray.

All that glitters

Golden

Evr'y twinkle's a diamond, all that glitters is gold,

all shimmers are silver, or so I've been told.

they say happiness comes from shining truth

it's truth or falsity is moot,

'cause honesty's not gold's strong suit,

and all that holds us, sparkling glue.

Simmering, shimmering, flickering, glimmering,

sparkling, twinkling, hovering, shining,

burning, fading, gleaming, flowing,

glowing like a diamond mine.

Fizzing sparks, beating hearts,

gilded gold on Noah's ark,

light so bright that it seems dark.

Syrupy spirits in uneven flow

counterfeit coins like a firework show,

and all this shining, blinding slow,

standing still, you can feel it glow.

Paradoxes in motion

Don't worry if this poem doesn't seem to make sense, it's not supposed to. That's kinda the point actually.

Nothing is ever as it seems,

What is truth, and what is dream,

The difference between smoke and steam

a neverending solid stream.

Impossibility lies in shards,

as the elements fall apart,

molten bone pours out my heart

that always stops but never starts.

The world churns and twists and turns,

broken water starts to burn,

I hope that we will start to learn,

that truth begins in a ceramic urn.

Flowing forests of molten glass,

through fields of blades of sharpened grass,

and the world flows right on past,

until it all is brightened black.

Coming to life

Sometimes in my writing, I like to have the poem told from the point of view of and inanimate object, making them come alive.

This time, I'm wondering if they already are.

Awake.

We are intelligent. We are sentient. We are evolved. We are.

The only question is who we are.

and are we the only creatures that can think? That can imagine?

That can ask these questions?

Or do machines have dreams?

Do stones sleepwalk when nobody is watching?

Does my desk remember what I write on it?

We think we are alone on this world, but maybe we are looking at things wrong way 'round. Maybe your car wants to travel the open road, maybe the trees are trying to talk to us,

maybe skyscrapers reached for the stars, and couldn't quite make it.

Maybe once we destroy ourselves, our tools and machines will stand up and walk and talk, and start all over again.

And maybe their tools and machines will try to talk to them,

and maybe,

this time,

they'll listen.

Weather Report

Good morning.

Today will start off with light confusion and scattered bleariness in the morning, followed by heavy footfalls.

In the afternoon doldrums and cynicism will set in for the majority of the day, with frustration increasing towards 4:00

and alcohol levels increasing dramatically as the workday end.

The evening weather has a high likelihood of take-out and cheap beer, with a 75% chance of Kraft dinner.

Minor arguments will break out later, accompanied by hurt feelings and insomnia.

Secret meetings will increase tonight, turning to widely scattered limbs and disorganized clothing.

Also tonight a steady increase in muggings, overdoses, alcohol poisoning, an suicide.

In global weather

The middle east will experience brief changes in atmospheric pressure and government, with a 50% chance of hostages.

During the afternoon tempers will flare briefly with scattered gunfire and rising body counts.

In North America morning will see a precipitation of government misdirection and human rights violations, turning to a steady rain of terror in the afternoon.

By tuesday, worldwide weather will have changed to widely scattered panic and confusion, with a 100% chance of chaos.

Goodnight.

Only Human

.

Only Human.

Teeth and claws,

blood and bones,

fur and fire

is all that remains in my dusty attic of a mind.

But I still remember.

I remember death.

I remember the ground painted red.

I remember fighting every accursed day to be human,

in my house on the hill. All alone.

The children threw rocks at me,

their parents hurried them away.

and tried to burn down my home.

But still I fought it, fought to keep what little sanity I had left,

and then it all became

too much.

The jeers,

the curses,

the attempts on my life.

All I wanted was to exist!

But a monster they wanted, and a monster they got.

It all became a blur, but

I remember,

the dead,

the wounded,

the hunters trying to kill me.

So this is what I have been turned into.

A creature who lives to destroy,

who lives to cause misery, because I do love company.

A creature harried and beaten, twisted and hated by everybody who drove me to become what I am.

So I ask you, my civilized friend:

who is the animal here?

For the ones who've found and lost

A Brief History Of Romantics

Tall trees, dead leaves, and pockets full of memories,

Are all that's left of what started with

tall trees, summer breezes, and you and me.

It always starts with a heartbeat.

A heartbeat you can feel from across the room,

a heart beating out to yours,

a heartbeat of a second that it takes to break the mirrors of doubt and say the first words.

It always continues with two heartbeats,

two hearts pumping in time with each other,

loud enough that you can't hear anything else,

and strong enough that you don't care.

And it always ends with a heartbeat.

A heartbeat all by itself,

a heart beating out the rhythm of footsteps walking away,

a heartbeat down in your feet, as you walk through all that's left:

Tall trees, dead leaves, and pockets full of memories.

Swung

All those who are patrons of music, this is for you guys.

Swung

I am. One little drummer playing to his own tune.

One little chord of dissent

jumping up and down, out of time with the rests and pauses,

one little note hopping on and off the beat,

EmPhAsIzInG EaCh WoRd A liTtLe DifFeReNt.

I ignore the score they try and make me play,

I write my own lead sheet, and improvise my own lyrics,

just to keep 'em guessing.

But to be fair I leave them clues, I write them notes that form

blues riffs,

and ragtime runs,

a staircase of paper music that collapses when they try and jam it into their 4/4 C+ prison.

I am. One little drummer, playing to his own stumblingly syncopated tune,

but,

I am. small and quiet next to the crashing, crushing crescendoes of an orchestral armada,

they try and stuff me into their dusty, joyless, four-beat, straight-laced, symphonic cell block,

they've made a musical morgue, frozen in time,

moving so fast it's run out of time, time metronoming tick-tocking tick-tock, tic-,

and then suddenly we have no time 5/4 or 6/8, no time for

swung bars or pushed notes.

A jazz-free jail, a classical closed door that has thrown away the C#- key to it's own cell

but,

No jarring, geometrical sheet music

is going to stop me from cake walking my way through life.

I've stopped paying the piper, and started to write my own songs,

I am. One little drummer

playing to his own tune.

Lonley

This fun little piece is about those times when you feel happy and lonely at the same time, and aren't sure what to think of it, but you decide to not to think about it and just enjoy the moment.

Hello Lonely

Hello lonely, my old friend,

it's good to see you again.

It's been too long since i've seen you,

but now I'm by myself, and feeling blue.

Everybody else left before I knew,

but you were there for me, so I stayed for you,

the rest of the world passes through:

there's only room in my head for two.

Hello lonely, my old friend,

it's good to see you again.

Let's sit here, you, myself, and I,

let's let our mind wander and not care why,

let's close my eyes and play I-Spy.

'Cause blues for two isn't quite as hard,

'cause two can't fall completely apart,

two can go through the razor of life

and come out with only scars.

So let's just sit here and soak up the sun,

days fly by, over before they've begun,

but for now i just want to sit here

and say 'Whoops, there goes another one'.

Hello lonely, my old friend,

it's good to see you again.

Whether you're sitting beside me,

or flowing out of my pen,

it's nice to know there's always someone,

without or within,

who can get into my head and under my skin.

Hello lonely, my old friend,

it's good to see you again.

Life, love, and math.

This poem is an attempt to make math and numbers possibly seem slightly alive if that's possible. (I'm not the greatest fan of things numerical, as you may have guessed.)

Theorems

If confusion is to sadness as life is to pain,

then reality divided by perception equals sanity.

If we walk at ninety degrees to to what we believe,

then do two wrong angles make a right?

Hell+heaven multiplied by people divided by limbo=earth.

If fingers on keys type love notes or hate mail,

does my keyboard cry bold font tears?

If i slide down a ruler, do i end up in the sands of time?

Or the dust of ages?

Or are rules broken by figures fired from the barrel

of chaos theory?

Anger+crowds times fear=riot divided by police action+violence multiplied by stupidity-apathy+mob psychology=life.

If I don't travel a third of the way around the wheel of life,

do I still get pi in the sky?

if music is to madness, as ink is to imagination,

then life is love is light is loss is lethargy is luck is life.

And if names were numbers,

would you+me equal us,

or them?

Mail order Armageddon.

This next piece is somewhat depressing, very cynical, extremely dark, and hopefully rather funny.

For those of you who worry about my mental health, don't worry, I keep it in a box in my closet.

Mail Order Armageddon

Are you feeling down? Depressed? Gloomy? Suicidal? Tired of life?

Well we have just what you need!

The end of the world as we know it, freeze dried, bottled, vacuum packed, made to order, biodegradable, closed captioned, polythermal,

and it comes in all sizes.

For the christians, muslims, and other assorted religions, we have the "divine wrath" model, you can choose from the "great flood #2" or the heavenly flame beta version.

Plus, call today and we'll throw in three tablets of hellfire and brimstone, absolutely free of charge! It's our way of saying thank you.

For the atheists we have the "church starts a new inquisition" line in which the world sinks into fearmongering and chaos,

complete with book burnings, stoning homosexuals, and public executions!

and for just a few extra dollars, you can get the all-inclusive package with the reinstitution of the templar order, and a leatherman multi-tool!

And you agnostics, don't think we're gonna leave you out of the fun!

For you we have some more specialized options, including the

"mayan gods turn out to exist and eat us all, the "christ comes back to earth and the planet dissolves into theological war" and the "Stephanie Meyer decides to write more sequels to Twilight".

And, because of our customer-oriented attitude, each of these products can be adjusted to suit your personal shortsightedness and prejudices!

For the more scientifically minded, the simple yet elegant "earth's orbit deteriorates and fall into the sun", is a must.

This model also comes with a thirteen and a half million year warranty, so it's an investment you will not regret making!

The other long term option we have is the, "humans drain earth of all resources, and are left with a lifeless rock".

Also included are your choice of "starvation" or "cannibalism".

Environmentalists may enjoy such products as the

"melting ice caps, second ice age, day after tomorrow", package, the "earth is baked into a crispy delight by global warming, or the more creative "plants become sentient and overgrow everything".

As well as the more affordable" freak monsoon, hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, tornado, warfare, or other natural disaster.

And while they most unfriendly to civilization, they are friendly to your pocketbook!

We are the Apocalypse Inc. and we hate humanity as much as you do.

For more information on any of our products, phone us at

1-800-we're-all-dead,

E-mail us at: lifeisworthlosing@apocalypse.com

Or check out our website at: www.tohellwiththepeople.com

Mail order Armageddon.

St. Patrick's day special

Happy Saint Paddy's day!

Because today is a holiday, and a very nice excuse for a party,

I have decided to do a little piece on/about/around St. Patrick's day.

If you are Irish, I apologize for any offense I will probably cause you inadvertently. I myself am part Irish, so hopefully you'll forgive me.

Enjoy.

St. Patrick's Day Parade

One day every year, we all decide to get smashed

and blame it on the Irish.

We pick the stereotype of the emerald isle we like best and wave it like a flag,

drunken people the world over will, for today,

be drunken without the guilt that follows them home like an AA member pitching the spiel.

Green top hat wearing frat boys will crawl out of their houses to spread that festive viridian racism to all sober enough to listen,

or drunk enough to care.

A conga line of shamrock waving, green face painted, Guinness drinking, professional slackers, all the fault of the Irish.

Well this year I propose a toast. A toast to all those who laugh every time St. Paddy's day rolls around, laugh at the insecurity of a world that has to have an alibi for being so drunk they think they can dance a jig, an alibi for being humanly weak,

this one day of the year only, and decide to blame the Irish.

A toast, I say, to everyone who has the spine to get drunk without

pointing fingers, or needing a reason.

A toast to every lime-faced, stumble-footed, kilt-wearing, Jackass,

that gives us something to make fun of today.

Here's to the Saint Patrick's day parade.

Okay, that kind of turned into a rant, but it was a damn good rant.

Ghazal time!

Today we are going to do some form poetry, specifically a type of poem that comes from what was, at the time, called Persia.

This form of poetry is called a ghazal, (pronounced "guzzle"), and consists of many rhyming couplets, not obviously connected.

Of course they are connected, otherwise we would have what we in the trade like to call "complete and total screwed-up nonsense", but they are connected much less blatantly than tradition english stanza poetry.

Anyways, history lesson aside, here goes.

Home away from home

People in cardboard box towns,

Buried in cardboard caskets in the ground,

People collapsed and folded into briefcases

in their own hands on escalators forever going down

White line code written on bathroom stall walls

Spelling out trash can fires dusted in brown

Rusted tin soldiers wearing moth-eaten coats

and hobo glove crowns

Empty three-piece-suits doing

only what the television tells them is allowed

Assembly-line rebels

marching in time with the crowd

Deaf homeless with canes

hearing voices through the ground

Flight plan laid world

turning backwards around

The Hunt

This is a fun little poem inspired by the hundreds of wolf spiders that inhabit my yard.

The Hunt

Patient, in the browning grass,

all is still, time made of glass.

My prey remains as still as i,

but a movement in the earth i spy.

Time shatters, the world narrows

to a half blurred circle going past like an arrow,

eight legs beat a tattoo on the ground,

all the watchers they scatter as they feel the sound.

Low to the the ground, i skid through the dust,

pounding legs threaten to break the earths crust.

wind through the grass blades, fly through the flowers,

the seconds are rubber, they stretch out to hours.

A wolf in the gravel, i race and i run,

my quarry is tiring, my chase almost done,

then finally i catch him, my vision stops spinning,

I'm through with today's "population thinning".

I remain the assassin of this waving green ocean,

my name is spider, natural selection in motion.

Wheels

This is a poem i wrote after spending several hours waiting for a bus that didn't end up coming.

Wheels

Sitting on a bus stop bench, cold crawling over me like a concrete spider.

the city spins around me, a little point of solitude, concrete bench pinning it to the ground,

as the cogs of the city grind all the people around in between them,

so i sit here and watch the wheels.

wheels of buses, turning in time with the concrete heartbeat of the city,

worn-out drivers, giving tickets, taking change, but never making any, even though they wish they could, they just keep going, slow moving blood clots in the city's arteries.

slowing and speeding as they see they are not the one to carry me today.

wheels on minivans carrying mothers and children,

their tires ground down, their rims wrung out,

their brakes screaming in tune to the children yelling, the mothers yelling back,

the radio yelling at them all.

worries piled into the trunk with the soccer equipment,

resentments bottled with the gatorade.

wheels with massive tires underneath the

jacked up, flame painted, exhaust pipe adorned, surround sound stereo pumpin' ,

"real man's vehicles barreling past in clouds of carbon monoxide and testosterone.

wheels with rusted hubcaps under the old green pickup

of a man doing the same job for twenty-five years and he isn't going to stop now.

He will keep working until his pacemaker stops keeping the peace,

because that is all he's ever done.

slow turning wheels on a hearse, celebrating someone's life and death

by adding a few more cells to the city's

ironclad arteries,

his soul spinning down and out through the wheels and into the

grinding cogs of life in the not-so-big city.

after hours of waiting, my bus arrives.

i decide not to get in.