le chemin étripé

show a little kindness to that dog of war
give it shelter, warm and feed
wrap it's scars in your loving prayers
for your reward will far exceed

for what this 'beast' has seen and felt
what it has imagined that has sadly become real
what it can transcend through effort of will
we have already been blessed to be spared,
oh yes....he's dealt

we need this guide to show the way
the way through the scuzz,
disease and fire
the way through the mind,
the bowels, the arts
the way to our childhood's
joys and mire
and let's not forget acceptance......our hearts

so follow it blindly, it knows the way
knows it well old friend is he
it can lead us out, away and beyond
behind the troops and far,
oh....away

don't look or veer, don't stray from him,
do not lose sight, don't fail the key
for it is immune, it has seen it all
once and again
twice over times three

....for the chien de Guerre

d ceptus inevitabilis

how am I arrived here?
in these oppressed shadows
hunkered and hindering
a progression slowing to a mundane pace
every glimmer to be accounted for
lest this life steel me

I am the vexed seraph
who lurches and flails
these espied and mimicked embraces
burn and scab over my exposed cheek

to be on point
continually straining the remembrance
of my love's leash
to scout and arraign every moment's joy
that is not my own

where is your touch?
that stroke that coasted
long tangled limbs dewed with exertion
I can feel it's reply still
the whisper of flesh sailing flesh
your eyes
unwavering in their message

I love you
loved you
loathe......

too much,
the routines marked and parroted
their time in the corona slipping through the ring
a fully blossomed cataclysm abounding with crust
......I can't keep this static

help me
don't hinder our destiny
it's cold recourse only an accidental decree
but prey, please don't fret
the casualties need only be caged aquivering
to allow my pulsing moira's romp

rainbow chasm

you left
left me here, here by the water's edge
with no succor....abandoned

you left
a heart, withered and hard
hopes flown and blasted
from the rainbow arced sky

you left
a compass flinging wild
directions left off the itinerary
no crumbs left to swallow

you left
a lone and scarred shadow
with a reckless scrabbling for tenure
dirt flung at the bastard gods

you left
a discarded shell
picked clean of warmth and rapture
the bones ashy and arid
no joy pulsing through these veins

you left
....a chasm

le voyage vide

sitting by the turnpike
left stranded by the ruins
a steady stream of misuse ripples by

waiting for a transit
that seems to have stalled somewhen
where were you going?
have you already passed this way?

this lethargic oasis
is a lonely heart's desert crag
to see the echo of your progress
the rubbed ether raw with bled out zeal

to reach out and almost....is that your essence?
but alas no, just a ghostly mumble
a fledged aura left to mark your journey there

gibbet disco

the soul noose grows braited and taught,
a shroud-lain pretension that was wound with the sun
it prowled in when your attention was on survival

some people know how to play that game,
yes they do....
distract you with weaves and angelic catechisms,
then writhe in and wrap themselves around your essentia,
tighter than the buttresses rammed up against a walled jewel

why do some feel so compelled to harness and trap,
engage and transact the devoutly unblemished?
do the brooders shine with a special beacon of naiveté?
a radical spectrum of fractured narcissism?

or do those preyers long for satisfaction silked and delished,
the feasting off the clumsy thrashings of a novice pundit?
who's only recourse is to dive off the edge of balance,
the right-laid braid snapping, severing, braying
all recognition of delight

yea.....
some people know how to play this game

an absence of view

white......
the blistering absence
of life
or anything resembling
a wholesale buffet of joy,
the sounds permeating
this void of
confounded energies
rip back and yonder
cross shallow streams
of numbness,
the horizon blurred,
wavy and dusted
with vapored
and shimmering mirages
of machinations
rife with the echoed thunder
built upon scrapped
and abandoned
arterial cobblestones

the paths lead
up and beneath
the towering
snow capped blunders
of wars fought
and lives lost
upon the arced rainbows
of opinionated
mounts....

did you ever wonder
why those valiant shells
ran to their fates?

whole heartedly embraced
their warped and dented
destinies?

succumbed and relished
the cataclysmic
defaulted entry
into the wasted vista?

why for the sheer,
luminous glee of it....
why else would you skate across ice?

eolian daydreams

daggered spires
tallied up,
lunging for blue,
vying to grasp
wonder and desolation,
the alleys between rife with hunters
hooded and choked,
weaving their way
through striated flues
to golden ledges flattered
with easy access to pools
awash in blustering vortexes
of energy and the elemental void
that are compelled
to wander echoing avenues
crowded with sun-glinted peaks
of sand-blasted hope
oh sorry....
no one told you?
none here for the wary

don't bother looking
for rouged promise,
it is like the wizened vegetation,
stunted and brown,
ethereal
invisible to the thirsting eye,
its manna
ice cold from the sun's blast,
sandy, vacant,
aloof with shadows
strident and shocking
in their greys

run through these
crowded channels
coursing with the anonymous,
run as fast as you can,
for if you get caught unawares,
the cessation of buoyancy is certain

utopia does not reside here,
it never has...
whoever told you this
was a flimflam savant,
one of those quixotic travelers
on the delusional road to
reality

boffo cookout

one step....
that is all that is required
to meander the itinerary.
will it be
forward or back?
look askance at the horizon,
is the view adequate?

the retrospect,
a once longed for dispatch
down lanes of slick and thrill,
is now just a weedy dirt track
to a bubbling well of hollow
collisions

the grass clotted path ahead?
overgrown and heavy
with pliant proximated vistas
and covenants made in a fugue

to cleave to a mirage,
with such a ludicrous tone
of quagmirish vibrations,
is to strut in place,
bending a rut in your ellipse

and why bother the routed natives
with requests
for direction and affidavit?
when we will all one day vie
for that longed for
annihilation of circuit?