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

Learning to Be

                                 To the Burning Sun longing to echo the Nocturnal moon.

                                 The white ghost gazer of this train wrecked world
                     
                    that is always moving,
                                                       always fleeting,
                                                                               always fading,
                                                                                                   always never fully returning,

Because the Edict was written by God.

Because I do not know what the Edict said about my destiny.

Because a destiny, I am told, is something worth having.

       To the boy wanting to be like a leaf. Wanting to drift on Sylph's Autumn winds throwing breezes at Sycamores,

       Wanting to be a leaf owning nothing but the star ridges of its boarders as it floats along,

Because a man is too much like a pain.

Because a leaf is always better off torn about its branches.

Because Autumn is what he likes.

      To the lamb white wanderers who have lost their echo. Who have said "Hear me, I need to be heard, hear me."

Because an echo is green and I am brown, dirty, ungreen.

Because this is my own life.

Because to have a life, is to belong.

      To the boy sweating through Summer suns,
                                                    shivering through Winter wastelands,

                                                                      soaking through Spring showers,

                           the edict was written for you.

                 Because a name does not become a man.

                                              Because a man says who he is.

Clarity

Out of the sound the answer came.

Like a thief on some memorable stormy night.

And it sang to me as it came.

Singing sweet soothing revelations into my eager awaiting ears.

I was drowning, drowning so slow I didn't know what was happening.

That answer, that in reality was disguised inside a beautiful apology, that answer I longed to hear granted me that peace I groaned for and wept to feel.

Evangelistic glass can now be swept into the furnace and burned to perfection. That holy perfection the Deceitful One could never come to understand.
My brother, your perfect answer was all I needed.
No more rocks will fall now.

No more talk of darkness.

Get back Father of Lies.
                         

          "You bastard" I say "you are the nameless shadow that loomed over my bed ripping to shreds my powerless dream catcher. You tried to break the love brothers have for one another by dragging us down to your resting place. I pity you. But not enough to die for you. But I would gladly die for him. For he who loves me"

                                                  Together our faith equals His love.

Happier are Those who Busy Time

Screeching...

         Leeching...

               Teaching...

                     Breaching...

                          Reaching...

Raking...

      Breaking...

            Faking...

                 Making...

                      Taking...

Turning...

      Yearning...

            Burning...

                  Earning...

                        Learning...

Crying...

       Prying...

              Trying...

                   Flying...

                         Lying...

Such is life.

Polarized Participles poured out over a pulse of destiny.

A heart beat always in motion, never in idle.

Each moment dragging into the next ringing like some bell bringing word of the indefinite bomb.

The untimely walk in the park. The day we left our doors unlocked.

All actions echo back a penalty, a posture, a price.

Down down the rabbit hole we go. Up up the busy stream we row.

Never sleeping.

Always peeping.

Forever leaping torwards some full fledged inscrutable (i n g).

Without Us

We could have been all that ever mattered,

all that flashed between streets of Victorian neighborhoods shot in frames of black and white ,

all that could be concieved from the covenant of rainbows and sand dollars.

For life without love is no life at all.

We could have sat down at the table and drank to memories that shroud the past in kisses of passion that trail themselves into the lense of the camera man.

Valentines would have meant more to us than chocolates in the dark and red wine stains on the carpet. Aniversaries could have seen more than Frank Sinatra songs about ladies and luck.

My love I see that time is sentimental in spite of us and flourishes His clockwise turn against our promise.

Our promise to never spin backwards.

If we can not speak to each other plainly then I will not speak at all.

And if we can not see our counter parts as stars in our own galaxy then tis better never to see again.
O my little flower never wilt for death has claimed too many blooms and it will not devour you as well.
                                      A world without you is no world at all.

Comes Back to You

The day was long, the the light was harsh, the road was wet, the air felt brittle.

The boy remembered, the girl called back, the heart felt empty, the past was little.

Yet when all things flash and fade away thoughts come back to you.

Yes you.

I have been faithful and never forgot, though you might have.

Not that there was anything to remember.

The past was nothing more than a dream within a dream, in which laws proved more brittle than tattered glass and I begin catch your eye.

Catch the deepest part of your heart and the hottest vessels of your blood.

The past seems so long ago, even for this man.
But I cling to moments of our presence amist one another and the seconds of minutes of hours of nights we laughed and danced.
The time your name was proud among my lips and your fire draped magestically about your ears.
I am waking up from this stillness and when I do I will run back to you and when I arrive you and I will laugh and dance once more.
And there will be no more dread of heartbreak but blissful uncertainty.

Fallen Down

If I told you that I loved you would you cry with me?

If I told you that I need you would you die for me?

Come and follow me and hear my last song. Come and follow me it shant be long.

If I painted your world red strings would you spin them round?

If Heaven rained down all my tears would you dry them now?

There it is, that song I long for.

There it is, love that he died for.

Please help me.

God save me I have fallen down.

Do you love?                   Can you love?                  He has fallen down.

If I sang you all of my dreams would you dream with me?

If I hurt you, if I was wrong...... if I was wrong...... Could you forgive me?

Here is my final love song, sing it to me to lift me off the ground.

 If you fell back and I caught you would you trust me then?

                                    Every night I still dream of the way things might have been.

Never Over When you Give up

What visions I had of you this Eve, my shadow.
For when the figure of my figure took shape and waltzed around my chambers, I knew the God of sleep was at large and I must have been dreaming.
Waiting for that dreaded knife fingered Sandman to leap out at me from any angle and cut me to shreds, I began to cower underneath my blankets.
They say a dream can still you and a nightmare will kill you.
You my shadow halted your angelic waltz and hurled my blankets across the room.
You seemed so incredibly eager for me to listen that I could no longer run and hide like some child.
That is to say I could no longer run from myself.
I could hear the Sandman's knives lurching up the stairs and it was time to fly.
I took my shadow by the hand and leaped off my chamber window and soared through the London town. Leaving behind all traces of foul play and tracing my own future with images of the Tower and Big Ben and the stones of which the strongest London buildings are made.

                                 And in an instant the dream dissolved, it all did.

Sanitorium Song

I am not confined!

The world outside these four walls is full of cinderblock and granite stuffed souls that feel naught and speak naught, and with each passing breeze and with each drowsy roll and ebb of the water, erosion mixes stone with more stone creating pride,

but I am not confined!

In my mind the light is always going to rise up.

The night is never going to fall down.

The silence of being something short of perfect will always hold its tongue,

but I am not confined!

If Mary is truly and happily insane for commiting adultery, am I insane for knowing celibacy?

And if being a woman was her crime, is being a man mine?

Lunacy we may see and malignant memories we may recall,

but we are not confined!

It just takes longer to crush the light written across my eyes and though my passion for teaching tips the scale against my love of learning,

I am not confined!

I am not confined to mans greedy fears and hopes and dreams, but instead resigned to wonder what You are always thinking.

Grey Matter

They say Love can cover a multitude of sins, but is that really so?

What if love at his best can only disguise a multitude of offences until that dreadful Unmasking Day in which our true heart's intentions take advantage of this nakedness inside our achilles heel.

When did all the truth in the universe go grey?

If we had gone green at least we would have stood for something definite such as

                                                       Jealousy

                                                                or Greed

                                                       or Earthday.

Since when did Venus spew lies about her amourous sojourn through loving hearts?

Is "A pair of Star Crossed" whatever the line is, just a fable?

And this sentimental scout is not speaking of romance!...
He is speaking of
                                                            Trust
                                                      and Truth
                                                      and Tenacity
                                                      and "will you stay?"
                                                      and "do not leave me"

and what ever it takes to believe that we are not a forsaken people.
Is there no black and white?...
Or are all things in this galactic planetorium, a dissapointing shade of grey?

And this sentimental scout is not speaking of color!... I'm speaking of ...

                                                   

                                        " Do you think we could ever be happy?"...

Play the Game, Set the Fire, Watch it Burn, Let em Win, and Never Look Back

What a shame the world became,
this sorry spit out place,
a tiny boy was made,
the only hope there is.

Oh the many games that we have played,
the billiard board stars and stripes,
these diamond diced marbled spades,
the chips that fell were his.

Fie the lies the dragon sprayed,
those sears and swells that scar and sting,
all the emptiness they drained away,
it only meant one thing.

Mourn the things that men have stained,
the foxes who dared to dream,
the flower who's sap remained,
open your mouths to sing.

Recall the days when we were new,
when sex and love were drugs,
the November Adventure crew,
the bug riders ruled the school.

Walk down the lanes that lead to "who?"
the gossip that brought the fun,
the fathoms of bows and cues,
age limits and broken rules.

To hell with playing nice,
to the devil with waiting in line,
forward we drive from hate and vice,
make way this is our sign.

I told the truth I never lied,
not once or twice although I cried.
You left the way the Fire bolted,
you bluffed, I folded.

Game.

Ode to a Princess

            We are beautiful because we love.
            We are radiant because we laugh.
            We are magnificent because we dance.
            We love, laugh and dance because we stay.

After all the warm words that poets write and truths that liars break and hearts that people abandon, we stay and hold the other through the storm and if one dies the other will follow.

We will always question that kiss on the hand or that hug tight pressed against our body and promises will never mean a damn thing, but we will always have each other.

I live for mornings you arrive and save me from the night and together we conquer the streets with song and dance, proclaiming nothing but the taste of mint coffee on our lips and repititions of "always be there" against the air bag.

Filling the sqaure with laughter and memories of when we thought fire was the Savior. However when the fire burned and that lying jesus dweller ran away we understood that we are each others splendor.

We may not solve world peace but we have peace within ourselves because we never left.

Set me Free

Tonights the night that goes down in history books,
marking its place on page five- hundred and something,
that place

"living between the trees".

Tonights the twighlight hour in which all the shifting body language
and all rolling of the eyes
and all the Jabberwock pecking and prodding is granted Notoriety.

Its vital we learn!

So much so, that the Freuquency Phenoix of the air will remember Their voices and tell the matter for what seems like years and years to the forgetfull Lethe lizard of the river, until the day Mythology and Legend becomes real and those dark waters that Charon rides upon, tell Herodidas to make room for

"the New Heaven and the New Earth."

Tonight, in an ordinary house with ordinary furniture
surrounded by ordinary walls,
bouncing blow for blow off the adjacent homosapien- sapiens passing here and there,

evil ended.

In a kitchen crammed for space
and two workmen damming that crossway which lead into the foyer of that house
stuffed with warm lighting,

Good began.

                    We became Chain Breakers

Eternity Dance

Tonight you and I dance for dominance.

Fox trotting into the night leaving blaze soaked footprints in our wake.

Tonight our Electric Slides will conduct enough spark to bring the whole world down to ashes,
               but we do not sweat the small stuff do we?

No instead we desire anarchy inside turbulence
                                                       inside chaos
                                                                 inside stone walls, as we tango with a possesive gusto that makes the spectrum of discoball bullets look tame.

Tonight it's going down hardcore as black light illuminates the impossible and there is such a thing as water breaks in this club.

There is such a thing as
                                                        "I love you... class dismissed "

And if the music of the night does not cha cha away the negaforce your spitting, well then the DJ is just going to have to turn the volume up to Unstoppable.

He is worth the sweat of my brow and the fatigue of my dancing shoes that even if this dance of death costs me my life I will never give over such worth.

So you and I can tapdance all night buddy because when the music stops, I'm still dancing for love.

Innocent Ashes of the Yellow Star.

Who can ever replace the memory of the dead?
Who could ever dream upon a sunset and wish the light was not brighter?
Who could tell that young girl's ghost that her death means something because she wrote about goodness and believed in the power of a diary?

Dear God,
Father,
Savior,
Messiah,

Life is the most precious jewel upon the world.
We live and die and prove magnificent by our breath.

In an attic of eight people owning nothing but calloused stars and fading hope, there was a young girl who knew the face of beauty and died in the dirt of disease.

What does it mean to live anyway?
I can't look at things hard enough to enjoy it all.

But I can dream can't I?

What is the dream amidst the ruin?
And what is the prize inside the ashes?

Inside the book.
Inside the attic.
Inside the world.
Inside the dangerous blackend battleground of the heart.

If that young girl knew that answer, does that mean I have a chance?

Dear God I hope so.

And if I see the magic can I make a wish upon the yellow star and turn back the dial?

Something to Keep me Warm.

When words are never enough,
          
            I pray to the sky that my tears can undo the shackles that captivate a nation.
            On Sundays I kneel before that very same sky, that same blue pool of wonder,
            that same three- person Royal existing above my world, and ask for a another Castle.
            Another piece of rock that holds all of the faces that have those twenty- three basic chromosomes.

When words are never enough,
          
           I sit beneath a tree at some cold and melancholy park.
           It is winter then and it seems like this tree is the only chance for warmth.
           It is winter then and my breath is more solid than the castle I asked for on the Sabbath.
           The sky is grey now and I am frigtened.

When words are never enough,
          
          that park means more to me than love.
                             
                             I hate that.
          I hate that sadness holds a pang in my heart as great,
                             or greater,
          as when a child is born, or when that same child grows up to die for us Unworthies.

When words are never enough

          " God Damn!" I scream, "is there nothing I can say to you blue pool eyed Something, that is ever enough to keep me warm."

Roots

I can remember the day as clear as sandpaper. I was five-years old and it was the first day of school for me. Kindergarten to be precise. My mother took me to the bus stop and I remember the sky being a cool and bright white that day. There was a small child about my age waiting at the bus stop with his mother. I had never seen this woman and her child in my life, or at least my young mind could not conceive or re-collect their pale and blue eyes Visage. The woman was so excited to see me and greeted me with a plethora of smiles and words of endearment that only seemed to ad to my confusion. But, nonetheless I remember being very happy, and that is the point of it all. My mother left as soon as the woman escorted her son and myself to our seats on the yellow submarine that seemed so much Grander when I watched my sisters before me ride, than when it was now time for my destiny to start. But nonetheless I was happy, which is the point of it all. The woman's child's name was Jacob and I remember he had an extremely paler complexion than his mother and his eyes were unmistakeably blue. His eyes were kind  but oh so impressionable and I knew even at five years- old that this "Jacob" who never wronged me in his whole life, would not be mine for long. But I was still so happy, and that is the point of it all. His mother told me stories of how Jacob and I would play together and How his mother and my mother had known each other for a  time I, to this day,still  try to remember. The time to fly was upon the world, at least my world, and the woman left, as all mothers do, in that same over-protective but resigned way. Kissing her son goodbye and waving to me and slowly walking out of our lives, for a while at least. But nonetheless I was happy, and that is the point of it all. As the bus slowly made its way to the school of the "Gators" my mind was flooded with the stories of my young friend and I in our youthful glory and even though the images and smells and sounds and senses of that woman's childish tales could not penetrate my mind, the joy of knowing that somewhere in my short  boring  lonely uneventful life a door was being opened, a door that to this day I can not close. My imagination gave way to the things that did not make sense, and suddenly playing in my small brain were montages of two small boys getting into messes in kitchens, and breaking pottery and stupid sweet talk of mothers gabbing on about kids and husbands and the joy of having them. My parents were through with each other by now, but I could make them love one another in my dreams. On my comet I could freeze all discomfort and shoot across the years to a time of water and strawberries and contentment. And everyday as I rode next to Jacob to school, I told new stories filled with unopened remembrances of a time that did not happen, but I wanted to happen. And everyday he would tell me "Gabwiel" for he had trouble with his "R's" "Gabwiel I am tired of talking about the past. I don't remember any of it and I'm tired, just leave me alone". And that was that. The Raconteur within me stopped and patiently waited for the submarine to reach the Bayou. At five years old I understood that all things go and nothing stays,... at five years old. On that first day of school I remember wanting so desperately to connect to another person. This pale Irish blue eyed child who I had no attachment to, except through sacred ceremonial storytelling that made me want to live in the past and recall the time when I did laugh for freedom. How far back does it go? Did I ever have a chance? Did I see some dark and dangerous shadow that scared the innocence out of me the moments I first began to walk? Did the Devil jump out and knock me down when my first words screeched out of my mouth? Or did I become asthmatic waiting in my incubator and that is why I can not breathe for dreaming of my own solitude? Or when my cord was wrapped around my neck, did some snake come to life and choke the normalcy out of my eyes? How far back does it go? I was only five and seeing the dark became the dark. But I grew. My God I grew. I saw the light and I live everyday to see it and grab it and kiss its photons. When I finally do I will weep for happiness and I will no longer need to make up dreams of reality that mix together with the centrifugal force of a young boy's heart hitting life's brutal windshield and crashing through the years stumbling and weeping and gnashing and spending nights oh so lonely and frightened. I am still scared. Shaking for reasons I do not know. Perhaps because the night before I smiled and danced and sang with friends and such happiness is to good for me. I do not know. I only know that when I was five and rode that yellow submarine to school, I was happy for a time, and that is the point of it all.

Gone to Ye

Gone to ye is the pain that thou hath sown among my playmates and my breast. I drank your presence like a sword and bleeding thou didst leave me. Bleeding! Bleeding until dry my bod became. Ye who have sighed a breath or two and having the heart to follow through didst wipe a tear upon thy face, for he is the reason, as all men know, for which you drizzle. Gone to ye like wind on water are the sorrows that I hath drunk. And drinking all that could be thirst a choice that I did make. To be the executioner and whip the whipper who struck the first offence. And coming to and fro were birds that told the matter and sang with harp hoping splendor a song into my ear. "Young boy do not cry do not wilt and do not die. You are far wiser than he and more vibrant than he. Do not keep with sad and longing but we say go to him all ye hurt and wronging". And when the finish of the song was near I fell a boulder on the fang and dust it didst become. Dust to him and dust to all but to he the coil doth enthrall. The end is clear, as all men know, to death goes pain, and comes the snow.

Poetry Out Loud Performance Mortal Sorrows by Rodney Jones

Royal Ruin

Desyat,
        Starting 10.
              Devyat,
                     Falling 9.
                          Vosem,
                               decending 8.
                                    Sem,
                                        Not so lucky 7.
                                                Shest,
                                                      Meaning 6.
                                                            Pyat,
                                                                Halfway 5.
                                                                    Chetyre,
                                                                         Counting 4.
                                                                               Tri,
                                                                                  Shouting 3.
                                                                                      Dva,
                                                                                          Almost there 2. A'deen,
                                                                                                                      Arriving 1.

                                                                           "Execution!"

          The verdict was. Little Anya cried "Papa!" as Olga begged God to "forgive men for they know not what they do", her final words just at the end.
          Before the terror could set into his eyes a bullet the Tsar did kiss, spinning into his skull and ursurping the mighty Royal.
          A scream and a scurry and a sadistic chaos devoured the room.
          Alexandra began the sign of the cross only to be obliterated by silver deception and drenching her babes in gore that was all her own.
          Blood for blood spilled as young Alexei lay leaking lifeless while the executioner blasted into his ear forever silencing the young Romanov.
          Then in fear and fright stood Anya, Tatiana, and Maria all three.
          Blast after blast could not not slay the Grand Duchesses for by diamond jewels they were saved but by the sword their end did meet.
          "Dasvidanya" said the music box playing on the floor. A dark knocking remembrance on that mournful door.

If in Another Time

We blew out our candles and said "Goodbye" but when we stood and took our bow, the blank faces in that abyss did not recieve us well. For though the lighting could not have been more right, and the cues we hit were perfect, the stage on which we played our part and the lines that which we spoke could not have been more wrong. Had I known the liberty I took would set the house against me perhaps a narrower course I would have took. And there you are. Instead of drinking the vial that called for death, in an instant your repentance called for you to scan the line a different way. And when we kissed my God we kissed. The abyss uttered forth a parching scream but care we not of what it seemed. In the end we did not descend gently as Orpheus did in ancient myth but the stage gave way and when we fell my God we fell down to the foundations of the world. And what began as a lovely scene was nothing short of a twisted dream. Our own adaptation of forbidden love in which we do not die, but we do live, and we do love.

In the Abstract

I am wondering what remains of all those invasive memoirs. The secrets that which the universe begins to fall back upon when everything turns to ash and that open eye in the constellations decides that plan A is "no longer with us." What does that eye see anyways? What Majesticies are in those retinas that my near- sighted starlids are not intuned with? I blink at the thought of it. At the very idea that we are being run into each other by a divine pen, guided by the memory of some unknown manifestation in the spheres. Have we cut our own threads or have we been cut off? I can not say anything for certain, for there are no certainties within the blaze. No gray piece of concrete that little boys and girls can ride upon and strike off for adventure. There is only abstraction and inside that is hope. Hope that when we lay down, we can dream ourselves to sleep and be the writers of our own book. Sounds sentimental I know but Albert Goldbarth would understand I'm sure. Ah Old man inside the urn, this blue boy is so mixed up.

The Coronation

Damn the rivers and flood the land! Give those bastards a show that they will never forget! I am not eccentric because of what I say or do, but rather I am condemned to be fanatical by what I feel. However, it is not I that condemns the way and reasons for which I groan, for I neither condemn nor do I convict. Nor will I be bashful in seeking that which I thirst for, because idleness is not a life to know. So I will continue to set fires and submerge any power that rises against me. I am the most radiant of creatures. When I step outside and tread through the town, infecting the primitive workings of the Earth, I become something like Gabriel, a messenger angel bringing word to those ignorant children. I am proud to be what others would shrink back from. A breed of terrifying closeness that can drum the mysteries all ordinary hearts beg to hear. I am the mystery itself, the only proof that when we Scream only then can we roar. So let me be mad, let me love lunacy, because when I do, a crown will then be set.

Heads Up

We move around and about each other, and here we are suffering so long to be seen. Waiting out the wheather and watching out for the fog to clear. Watching as it both rejects and accepts the wandering vessels that stumble into its snare. But nothing is there once that condensed whiteness clears and we never realize that the thing we have been searching for just waved to us a moment ago. Layer upon layer are we weighted down until we forget the ideas and solutions to solve the disturbances that parade about like a gypsies idea of dancing. We have become so skilled at telling our mind to go to sleep during the nights self indulgent talk has the floor. Far too many "could have beens" have these pupils gazed upon. It seems that every person remembers to forget to speak so as to belong to a simple unadressed people. Well I do not desire simplicity. I know what twere to be a man and what a beast and only the behemoths of the Earth are to be dumb in their fuzzied heads, but we are given hearts and with them we beat savagely, and that is the true nature of our kind is it not? To string a chord of disruptive words as lovely and deafening as the clang of pots and pans that fall to the floor. As lovely as the songs songbirds echo through the air and climb up on sped up eighth notes till everything is moving in God motion. This is what I want to be and these are the fruitful harvests of my thoughts. "Heads up" says the wind, " the leaves are everywhere."

All That is Wet

At dusk, the wolves come out. Running with such a terrible speed that the diamonds of the ground only seem to reflect a murky passing of black and gray water pixies. It is raining this night. Midway between midnight clouds and dampened shrubbery the molecules echo back the wayward workings of the forest in its dimly lighted glory. A Heron's scream is born through the orifice of a small and dainty stag as the wicked sprites sink their carnal magic into the animals neck. There is something unmistakeable about the openness of the moon on twighlights such as this. The way Diana and Artemis appear to get along with each other and take turns keeping watch over the shadowy trees. The trees tell a story in itself. They are the ceremonial watchtowers the dogs leap around as the shade of those huggable towers mark the dirt on which everything in this forest stands. The rain has picked up. A paladdin wips through the sycamores like lighting. He cuts the dusk in two and splits the night among purple hourglass pellets.

What Now

If but the hours that have passed within the ages I have trod, had cast a fortune over my lids as such: "inside the ire of the Leviathan sleeps the answer and there lies the stifled memory" only then will I gargle this train wreck life and walk. Held together by the firm notion that mystery and ruin distract the day and night. Partly relieved, in truth, knowing that wrath and abandonment were strown through holes I could never sow. Thinking how long yesterday was, lingers the pasted thought and this boy is now nostalgia's nightingale.

As I Walk Through this Winter's Night

As I walk through this winter's night, my thoughts with images of you distort. Imagining the blue and white orbs about your eyes slowly capturing the dominon of stillness lying before us. All things in sight are frozen with the chilling servitude in which the landscape around us waits for a sign. Some kind of frigid answer that gives authority to the blankets of snow furrys that o'er run the path before us. Are you cold darkling? My body heat will warm you but I suggest taking to the cold. Inhale the melancholy pine and let this night be enough. The lake about the forest is frozen as well. Some say at the bottom rests a rare and precious spirit. O my angel how many wonders I would give to see it. As we stand together in each others arms, I can not help but weep and want you to lick the water from my cheek. I know you would too and I thankyou for that. If we keep walking through this winters night, will you say that I am enough? And if I freeze, will you dip me in that lake and let the warmth be done with me?

Lovely Martyrdom

It reminds me of that moment in the story when Gretta says to Gabriel " I think he died for me". Except I envision myself being that "He" dying for that dame. To speak true, I in fact dream and yearn to trade with the sick young boy sinking through the rain, fever taunting the bones to ache. Something lovely about that Arch Angel's death as well as tragic. I am lovely am I not? Or sullen in such spirits that the melancholy Dublin wind collects my Lifetoll for passage through the wet hills? Will I die for a face I recognize? "I think he died for me."...Died for me? He... Died... Me.

Where am I anyways?...I think I really am almost dead now. But not in my brain.It is real. I am the boy. I have crossed the threshold of the rain. I have arrived and my body is getting used to Hypothermia's companion. Not to mention that Consumption; the death taker of old, has almost completely devoured me... I am dying now. Dying... Slipping... Fading... Falling.

However Irony is rising with a vengeance!

You throw the blanket around my body and walk me back to my lodgings... through cold and disease, but you are not strong like me. We arrive. I am warm now. You are cold now. Like I was. Like the boy was. Like Michael was. You leave. The toll of the hills is paid. You die... I think you died for me...........and then it began to snow.