Jargon jaunting: part moolah rue

scented notions
of presented potions
writhe in poisoned
rivers of time

lethal doses allotted
to many, diluting
the delusion of immunity

all suffer, gated
in the suffocating
swell of research
datum and polls

jabbering pros scoff at
profiting profs and
prompting prophets' parables

in the set tables
of these fiddled fables
sedated debate
fizzles out in stalemate

and perplexed experts
vomit many more exerts
of the tainted painted play

In the waking days

heights glow, burn
sentinels to lost time
mourning for minutes
in morning hours

shadow plays upon
the temple skin
blinding and warming
in its absence

half slumber slips
past possible matches
and briefcase cars
dwelling stale

gray dwindles in
rivers of burdens
flowing in ticks of
the impetuous revolution

shadows cease their
dance upon the temple
with loss of
solar contribution

a day lent for a second
or sixty times sixty more
a day to clean, to ponder,
to forgive or to explore

in loving someone never met
and in loving one never to forget...

Trees and the Damned

inflamed, they steadily
knock at the gate ajar
their limbs long to dance
with those from afar

their gnarly fingers flail
in the stir of eve
the living and dead
this night they'll weave

their fingers grasp for
the latch to the earthy gate
impatient they are
after a long year's wait

scratching at the dirt
mad hens after worms
tossing soil and stones
into piles and berms

raps upon the caskets
their feet had disturbed
lifting off the lids
to souls quite perturbed

from putrid state and
lapsed memories they steal
and of many the graves
they've made their meal

thieves that long to revel
with their own prey
they will spur them on
until the light of day

a sordid resurrection,
they raise rotten remains
that lack this and that
some skin, a heart, brains

bones dressed in their finest
lift on sinewy strings
the swaying limbs serve
as their gruesome wings

marionettes climb from
soiled cribs in misty mire
renewed youth and hunger
any blood they'll desire

both parties uprooted
to savor a night of mirth
until the dawning ray
whence they return to earth

Pieces leafed

careless... broken chances
remain on frozen pavement

now that I have fallen
fallen and touched my flesh
to the frozen pavement

I am pulled to pieces
careless broken chances
remain behind

you saw me and wanted
me and touched me and
pinched me and pulled...

me to pieces by your
ravenous touch freeing
tearing me away

what is left, what
remains on the pavement
my prison cell

what is left, what
remains for you after
you plucked me from hell

tears I shed cement
me, merge my soul
to the cold frozen whole

yet you have grasped
and gripped and fumbled
and wrenched and toiled...

to hold me in your hands
whatever remained of
my memory bygone

careless... broken form
scattered in the freeze

Enter the underground

Shroomacow

a single herd of
Farmer Morel's cattle
wondered off into a
jungle last year

when the bovines
returned, knowing they
had been in a forest
fungal was clear

their hides were
glowing luminescent
from rubbing against
many a foxfire

and each took on
some rather strange
hues, ravaged from
any a pox so dire

upon their heads
sprouted overnight
a fright of 'shrooms:

cloisters of oysters
corrals of chaparrals
and "load-fools" of toadstools

cattle calls vacated
the farm as the herd
was waylaid by
champignons' pow

yet one bovine
"high-brid" lived on
Farmer Morel named it
Tri-shroom-a-cow

unlike the others,
she bore only three
of the fungi upon her
broad roof and brow

and as some sporing
beings do, she gave
birth to none other than
Quad-shroom-a-cow

Pilgrimage

a journey was made past
whispering grasses along
a discarded road to receive
the river's anointing touch

humbly through silver
seas of spicy wormwood
to the shore where my
perceptions would erode away

at the sandy river bank
below lacy tamarack boughs,
blanketed by leaves bronzed
by the turning of seasons

aroma of soaked clay and
evolution rose, the ancients'
incense amidst towering
pale trunks and verdigris canopy

currents of silt laden
unseen depths passed
before my adolescent knees
bent in naïve reverence

yearning within churned
as an earnest symbol, desire
to taste liquid memories
of epochs and golden idols

cast into the sweeping flow,
I watched fires float, daemons
drown and surety sink as they
drifted onward into the east

misread words of an unspoken
prayer drifted in the wind
and rested in the ears of deities
rollicking in the upper branches

my knees rose to numb stance,
a cicada emerging from its former
shell, and left below the lacy
tamarack my own former hell

from the sandy river bank
I flowed into the ocean of wonders
far beyond whispering grasses
and silver seas of spicy wormwood

Farewell fleur

 

mourner's black you will don in the morning

dawning dew crystallizing your veins

showy vanity to melt in the thawing ice

your obvious but overlooked vice



Red stripe

painted stripe of red
across flesh of breast
seeps deep into sternum
and rains upon constant drum

the rhythm that began
when energy stirred
and rose from its heated
and cloistered existence

an initial reach beyond
what had always been,
known and honored,
the center of it all

a reach that breached
the sanctuary's walls to
enter the depths of unknown
hollows, pores and pits

a breaching stretch of light
swirling from spinning galaxies
discharging from molten vents
rising from broken bodies...

pulse beat beat, pulse beat beat
pulse beat beat

painted red stripe
licked across the chest
saturates the beating heart
in an ocean of breaths

inhaled dawning tears,
bitterness of early hours
exhaled illuminated fears
abandoned in crumbling towers

inhales written leaves
falling on faded blades of grass
exhales swords that
loosen the grip of an unknown past

to inhale body's passing
in a temporary goodbye
to exhale into eternity
in a sudden wink of an eye

pulse beat beat, pulse beat beat
pulse beat...

beat of drum echoes into
the chasm of the cosmos
where red ebbs and flows
in infinite tides

Scenes from the Blue Garden: part 6