Katharos

Lost up in the shame scout, caught up in the waves child, drudged up in the Chains I know your games.

The look, the tired look of downcast glazing, of Leary waving, and I, get up now to face the rainfall, to face the pain

calling of the hour.

Vernacular of mine scout, Ballad bringer blue child, Profile are you, I know your brain.

The thought, the only thought of weary laking of unfair taking, knock on, the fearful door and let me in lad, I'm soaking

wet sad of regret.

 Run away Angel, Run away, know your name. It's Calling. Run away boy, get away gal, from here.

Run away Angel, Run  away, know your name. It's Calling. Run away boy, get away gal.

The years that read like blue become the red

And you breathe white instead of grey because today is pure.

Made pure lad. Washed pure lad of all the world.

I'm at the door, but I will never knock,

How could I knock, oh God don't knock me down.

On the soiled ground. A silent sound to make me deaf.

Run away Angel, Run away, know your name. It's Calling. Run away boy, get away gal, from here.

Run away Angel, Run  away, know your name. It's Calling. Run away boy, get away gal.

Katharos,                                                                              Katharos 

I've never known what it means to be clean.             I've never known what it means to be seen .

I've never known what it means to be clean.             Katharos is a dream not meant for me and you.

So what do we do now?                                                    And where do we go?

To breathe what we see now.                                        And bleed what we know.

So how will we get there?                                               And who will we find?

The fresh and the joyous.                                              The dumb and the blind.

Cause sight is the Devil.                                                  And Hell is to see.

So strip us of eye sight                                                    And give us a cause to fight for.

Last Act

Someone kiss me please and tell me I am worth something more than sometime wealth and could be chances.I am not asking for much just someone to tell me that me existing makes me valuable. Not even valuable as diamonds or pearls or gold or silver, but valuable as a promise, as a friend.

You see a friend is much more than the word implies. A friend is a fire escape from fear and a gateway to healing. Notice I did not begin with Love. I began with a kiss. Not cupid's kiss, just a kiss, an acknowledgement. This is not about love. Love is ideal but earthbound tangible touch is reality and reality, sadly, is what is real.

I can not make love, I can not capture contain or destroy it. I can not tell it to follow me to the end of the line and cross over that line with me. I can not promise it that I will never despise it when it blights all my ways and makes the passing of time create a quantum ache in my heart. I can live beside it, above, below and around it. I can worship love.

Did you know a person can worship what he can not see?

Sure you did it's like believing in air and we all breathe don't we?

But enough of love.

What about body?

What about feeling?

What about an experience of physical embrace?

O how I wish someone, anyone really, would take me through the browed night and make warmth with me out of body heat. Fingers interlaced with fingers, hands mixing with hands, toes curled around toes. Actually forget the toes because I'm talking about heat not passion, being not eros, presence not the contrite " Oh this is wonderful" because that is too much like love. Not even romance, not even lust, the basest of all sensuous sensations. Just contact. Someone there and alive knowing that I am alive and that I could live and die by them.  

Hold me.

For the love of God someone hold me and make that dream I once dreamt real again.

Make that demon and that fear and that running and that face and those streets and those lights come back to me. Especially the street, make the street extend as far as the moon will take it, and have those flashing northern lights engulf the world once more as it brings down the shadow of the night. But more than anything bring back that face and that girl running with me.

Running from whatever murderous lunatic that wanted our bodies for trophies.

Running from some kind of dark and dreadful figure as it chased us all around that haunted house taking the lives of our friends.

I don't even know if it was a dream or a nightmare but baby I was alive. I need to be alive again. Not to feel alive, but actually be alive and enraptured by fear and excitement as this beautiful girl and I leap through the streets taking long strides. I take her hand and she takes mine, but the actual connection does not come from the touch, but from the intensity of our grip on one another. A lion like grip that seems to say

" This is our last act, make it count, and make it real"  

And as the dream descends a whiteness surrounds us. A thick overwhelmingly bright whiteness not belonging to Heaven, nor the angels, nor God Himself, but belonging to that unknown dwelling place I think I am seeing when I close my eyes. The world stops. We stop. For fear of being captured I tell her to " Kiss me" and I am not being coy this time, I say " Kiss me" and I mean it. I am thinking " The world is with me right now" but as the thought ends the whiteness begins screeching, screaming, screaming in some language I can not understand. I can see the fear in her eyes growing, and in a motion quicker than the speed of sadness, she turns my face to the side and pecks my cheek and in a motion quicker than the first she is gone. Just like that... she is gone and the whiteness takes over.

I think she died for me...

I don't know what her last act meant or why she left, but baby it was real. Realer than any fire that ever burned through my faith in companionship. Realer than any red headed fox that swiped my last batch of forgiveness. Realer than any fabricated French named Jesus Dweller that left one of God's daughters abandoned and alone for the devil to invade. Realer than this life, this reality I am bleeding through.

This is me.

This is me at night lost, angry, stir crazy because I want the world to make sense.  

Because I want my world to make my sense. I want the moments I lost to come back.

I want the people of this century to lay on top of their friends just to feel their heart beat and in the same instant strike up a game of chess.

I want to act now. Live now. Really live in what reality is supposed to look like.

I want Emily Webb to know that "human beings can realize life while they live it" every every minute.

Old Boy Song

O come back all ye antique world wonders, come back.

Back come the old ways of civet, when the duty of man was put before the hastened yearning for power and grandeur lust that has burned away all of our Peace of mind.

Before Morality mixed with Brutality and coffins were any mans desired safe haven from fear and loathing.

Before the diabolic calamities that have plunged the sun into coldness froze our human hearts and replaced it with ice,

before the wild usurpation of renowned souls that truly knew how to wear the crown with faithfulness and grace began its havoc.

O Grace, come back

Back come the golden age where courtesy and service paved the roads on which everything in this world rides. 

Where " What can I do for you," came before " What can the world do for me?" When "Your Highness" was more than a sneer at having to submit to the Will of God. I long for Queen Elizabeth to rise out of the ground on that Glorious day and reign over us once more.

Back come the " Old Robin hood of England" that rascally man in green with his devilish disposition and his adventurous bow of truth piercing through the vanity of greed, the vanity of hypocrisy, the vanity of oppression, the vanity of gluttony and all other selfish indulgences that have been monsters in this land.

Back come the majestic bow and curtsy of the vassal, that familiar subservient bending that even the most powerful kings and queens are not privileged to understand. Where to be dutiful and not lacking in honor made those of royalty and pride of baser births than all the law defilers and thought changers that they have sent to die by the rope. 

But the rope itself, come back. O how I wish to dance at my death.

Back come the mounting of scaffolds and the blasphemous laughing of condemned souls who knew better than believe that witches came only in the form of lowly outcasts and wretches.

Back come the stories and ballads the ancestors told our mothers and fathers over playing cards, throwing them down onto the scarred kitchen table with exclamations of "Two for the queen!" and "jacks! as that little orphan boy and that proud young girl once did in that old Victorian story of redemption.

O Come back yon loves, come back.

Song of the States

Once it was Solid, like a lumberjack's home, newly built from carefully cut pieces of cherry wood surrounded in sylvan vernacular. And when it was solid, it was bold. And when it was solid it was warm, it was sun, hot, burning gold, and every care inside that house was fullfilled, carried out, brought into the sun to be made ripe. When it was solid. Small animals thought it a fit place to start their families. Small birds nesting on the window sill and benevolent ants scampering around the kitchen floor eating their small content little appetites out. When it was solid, it was strong, seemingly insuperable, suspiciously joyous. When it was solid, it was real. It was sanity, but better than sanity, it was insanity. When it was solid, contradictions made sense. When it was solid it was solid, and boy did it breathe, and boy did it flourish, and boy was I solid, and boy did I breathe, and boy did I flourish. 

But then it was liquid, like murky lake water too dark for any live thing to have a sense of where to swim.

And when it was liquid it was gossamer,

                                                   thin,

                                                        slipping at the ends of my fingertips.

When it was liquid, it was hell spilling on to land. When it was liquid there was drowning. And when it was liquid there sinking. When it was liquid it was frightening, violent, torrential, wild, fierce, cold, wet, chaotic, Odyesseus caught by Scilla on Poiseodens vengeful seas.

When it was liquid it was gas muddy,

                                             brown,

                                                unrecognizable and every morning brought a new stormcloud over our heads and every stormcloud brought rain down from Heaven, but this rain was not clear or pure, it was poison. But worse than poison it was Time. When it was liquid I lost what yearnings to write. When it was liquid it was liquid, and boy did it sting, and boy did it hurt. and boy was I liquid, and boy did I sting, and boy did I hurt.

And then it was Gas,  spaces and spaces of escaping gas rushing out of some silly blown up raft.

And when it was gas it was nothing, no more, oblivion whistling air into a void unfullfilled.

When it was gas it ceased to exist.

And when it was gas we were hardly there.

And when it was gas we could hardly taste.

When it was gas, nothing could be felt or seen.

When it was gas the animals no longer felt safe and no longer felt warm and no longer felt burning gold.

When it was gas it was no longer solid.

And when it was gas, it was no longer liquid.

And when it was gas, it was no longer anything.

When it was gas we could no longer laugh, breathe, walk about, drive around.

When it was gas it was worse than afraid, worse than death, worse than fear, worse than blood, worse than poverty.

It was silence.

And when it was gas, silence was more painful than calamity.

When it was gas, silence was calamity.

When it was gas, it was gas, and boy did it doubt, and boy was it empty, and boy was I gas, and boy did I doubt, and boy was I empty.

House Broken

They can break, Sir!
They are but new born pups that need the whip, Sir!
They will break in do time, Sir!
Beseech me if I am too bold, but I say be patient and they will give way to your barks, Sir!
They are breaking before your very eyes, Sir!
I knew it could be done and now it is only a matter of time, Sir!
They are broken at night, Sir!
Day time clouds have distracted their day dreams, but the dark is where you have won them, Sir!

                                  You broke them, Sir!

They are ready for you now, Sir!
They are perfect, Sir!
They are perfect because their expressions are eyeless, Sir!
They blink back only what you tell them to see, Sir!
They ask no questions, Sir!
They bleed out the way a body dipped in the river should bleed out, Sir!
Starting with the past they flush out who they were, Sir!
Ending with future they forget to take their own steps, Sir!
My hands feel wrong, Sir...
They feel as if they have stolen a world of guilt, Sir...
                  
                           Forget guilt?
                 
                           Forget feeling?

Did you dip me in the River, Sir?
                                            (Of course)
                            Oh, I think I'm bleeding nothing, Sir...
                                            (Come again!?)
                            I'm sorry, I mean I think I'm bloody nothing, Sir!

                                      (Thats what I like to hear)

House Broken by Gabriel Michael

Ma Rainey by Sterling A. Brown: Recited by Gabriel Michael