Climbing Centipede

Climbing Centipede

A Poem by R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)
"

A collection of poems, or one big poem. Feel free to read some of them or all of them, but for the best experience, as they are all deeply related, I suggest reading them all, or at least, in order.

"









Centipede

 

Schizophrenic weathered emissaries renovate the heavens’ gate

Reverends of severed Everest

Penitentiaries weathering florescent testament

In the obsidian blizzard (like a) swill of lily guillotines

Serenity’s obscenity fills extremities metalling in all corners of the room

Malting altocumulus of junipers lose their bulbous columns of breathing leaves

Lonely crows in golden foliage toil in oil portraits corporeal

Along the roads of champagne grenades

Abel, Cain, candied by animosity crisscrossing

And runaway freight trains of the gray mayhem of remembering evergreens

Rusting lustre in the rustling percussion

Of an echoed chamber beneath a spiral staircase

In my revolving heart

Getting loaded, taking shots, and playing with magazines, triggering cataclysm

We watch and stalk the crossroads of apocalypse

From their overhanging rooftops of ramshackle scrap

Golden primordials glow in the afternoon sun

Origami menageries cauterize the little lilac astronauts in rapture’s baptism

Moonwalking docks of nocturne in the phosphorus octopus clockwork

Watching the aquamarine of thoughtlessness from God’s sarcophagus

They were lost in their chalky gospel of concocted metropolis

Blossoming Cocytus from docile dreams

A centipede of identity

Planted in the stampeding mantlepiece

What is an ant to a man?

Countless limbs

Does not make you a God

We morph into one creature

Our many features preaching

Face bleaching urethras of umbilical priscillas

Skin tags of hanging fantasies of gangrene dandelions

Sanguine amputees canopy like wind chimes climax lactescent effigies

Fixating in simple mimicry of limping symphonies

Teeth of metal and wood like gears in the mechanism of a jaw

{Cutting the chord from the man}

{Overlapping astral apple tree chapels for Lovecraftian astronauts lost in phosphorus}

{Daffodils wrap their passionate contraptions around the scaffolding rhapsody of lapis lazuli}

{Cast in Rorschach tapestries of glass afterimage swimming mimicking stygian Veridian}

{Unravelling gravelly metallic galaxies in the cowering bowels of Valkyries}

Sowing and reaping (beacons, the sweeping ferns of decadent land)

{In single file}

The smile of a kaleidoscope

The paintbrush of a tongue

Rainbows like chapped lips of eclipse

Hiding unkissed abyss from the riptide cisterns

Kindled by the cold breath of billions

Our empty eye sockets

Our pavilion, the gills and frilling ventricles

Trills of ventriloquism

We hear the rhythm

So we move

We don’t need new women

New men

New fools

We don’t need new arms

New legs

Only the torso remains

The heart an egg hatching into a fetal moon (of glass)

Until it too

Stills

(Here we are)

 

Climb

 

Intertwined rhinestone of vinyl irises

Squandering origami choreography of convulsing constellations

It was not in the cards for me

Life is getting out of hand

Yet

I stand strong

Shackled ecclesiasticals of Rorschach Damascus

Elastic basilisks of rapturous eclipse

In the basketcase abyss masquerading maelstroms

Crocheted from spaded halos

Rails of Beowulf like vast astral canals

Like carnivalesque hexagrams perplexing presbyterian Alstroemeria

Cabals of frolicking florescent incandescent necklaces

These ramshackle turbines and cogs

(Rammed into the societal machine)

Transmogrified wrapped in daffodils of fog

I want to drown in life

Until the waves wash over me and my dry humour

And watercolour once again flows like a river

In my drained veined vessels chiming in vinyl pines

Leaving a paper trail of valleys like alleyways

I may not get to heaven, but I’m on my way there

Partway there

Watch me climb

Music of altocumulus pitter-pattering a smashed guitar

Cavernous plateaus of afterglow stowaway

Into vermillion basilicas of architectural mechanisms

Like a threshold outstretching sepulchre beckoning wretched requiem 

The more we win the more we lose ourselves

Possibly to the madness of some meagre success, clinging to it

No longer alone and able to dream of yourself fully

To bear the flesh of the mirror

You lose who you look like to look like the crowd, with every blemish

To talk, act and walk with them

Driven over the edge of insanity just to be stained sane

You do not have a choice but to show your true colours to the blind

The black and white

As if every person were words of letters same

The colour of ink-blotting out the afternoon sun

Only loneliness can breed a good writer

The loneliness of being at the bottom

It sharpens you

(The heaviness of time a paperweight getting harder and harder to lift)

You constantly aim for the top, and in failing

In the constant sharpening of such a life

You may involve yourself in cuts and bruises

You may bleed brushstrokes of depression in the depths in the abyss of a canvas

But when your words are finally able to cut

And you no longer hang from others’ strings

There is a small sense of freedom within the cage

Disentangling the blander lavender anvil of labyrinths into a lengthening hallway

Smashed and hammered like a crushed beer bottle

Cellars of cerebellum that umbrella cello mandalas

Reverberating tourniquets of crocheted bays and everglades of clay hurricanes

Your body (is) more art piece than man

Smile lines written in prose (sketched, etched) across your patchwork face

(The art becomes man, the man art)

(Diluted once, becoming concentrated, pure [as moonshine])

(Upon the breast my manifesto, a phosphorus apocalypse)

Unravelling balaclavas

Scalpels of the balconies of stars

In the surgery of midnight

Cutting out the word from the man

Severing the pulse from the rhythm of the lines flat on tables

A page lost somewhere in between

Living out endless sentences to your God

Your voice his handwriting

His(,) ignorantly infinite mingling shingles of ringworm calligraphy

Tongues of tundra under wildflowers that paint the eastern hills azure

Like symphonies of idiosyncrasies

Crinkle in the wrinkles of his lilac eye

Unburdened by the murmurs of eternity’s winding horizons paradisiacal

Of dilapidated shrines to the rhinestones’ glow

Scapegoats climb the mountains to reach the halos like a chained crow

In a blizzard of scimitars dismal as the shiv of river

Touching each ridge and every crevice, feathers of the reminiscent

Howling gallows of fowls bowing to hallelujah

Maneuvering their lucid pupils of grey across the endless unknown paltry horizon

Folding golden origami tsunamis

Of bottomless poinsettias with heaven’s leather nebulous residue

Cemeteries of derelict marionettes, crosshairs, and their palpitating reverberations

Carving gardens etched with repetition

Deathlessness and western winds that shimmer chrysalis

Of distant wishes for Eden

Planting a kiss on the face of the earth

Offering up my flowery language to the weeds

Together with the night sky

Our onyx eyes, searchlights, feel for fault lines

Between them,

Mistaking wrong from write

Learning to start blaming ourselves,

Again, we cry, onyx shrines to the lilac iris winding

The colour bleeds to bone

I am still painting faces in my ink

Nothing grows there, anymore, but

Harvested memories in the ashes of rapture

Dream in terpsichorean speleothems

Join the legions of daydreamers

Continue to force your way into the albums of cloudy Valhalla

I see them ragged and torn

Never to stain the fabric of history with their dead voices

Their empty poems

Caught fluttering in the gutters of gangrene Elysium

Their rhythm

Their lines of believers

Cross the borders of the empty page

And wind like stairways beyond the paper

And into the skies

Like centipedes with no wings

Endless feet

Trotting upon the word of God

Reaching for the moon’s reflection in their hungry eyes not yet shattered

Finding nothing but glass

 

Mountain

 

The crawlspace below the stairway to heaven

Harmony incarnate under harbours of auburn sky

Nirvana's of unravelling pianos javelin

Of inanimate caverns

In the battered labyrinth of stratosphere

Carving arteries from the stone

Vibing in the silence of our crying out wireframes

Beneath the skins of windowpanes

Rhythm riffing-with-the-wrath of gasping caskets gastric acid Damascus

With a symphony’s intricacies of minuteless bliss

Like the sulphuric phoenix of a helix

Blasphemous blackberries of basking cactus

Blackened ashes

Rorschach gelatinous acid trips

In prisms of astrophysicists

Like atoms of cataclysms labyrinth through avenue

Babbling pianos rioting manically paradisiacal

Cannibals of pandemonium dabbling in the resurrected Nephilim of decibels

Winding baptized wyverns geyser-like champagne waves

In grey crusade in stark naked acres

That matrix aether shapelessly unbreaking

In the wake of forsaken faces misshapen

Gaping elation the gap between rapture’s acupuncture homunculus

Steampunk umbra sunbathe in the after blaze

Conclaves of enclaves of wavering azaleas unscathed by the grazing flame

{Singed by eagle-eyed maestros}

{An Everest of hallucinogenic webbings of heaven’s cemetery penitentiary}

Unshaven in the pavement of a flailing maelstrom

Conifers of nickel Icarus shapeshifting eclipse the rift of abyss

Of mithril omnipotent hieroglyphics

Crippling the sifting polycrystalline infinite fingerprints

Graphite lightning knifes cyclones grow among the mossy cobblestones of osmosis

Groping hopelessness close to one's heart

Cat of woollen suns arching its back in the crotched guitar strings of morning

Shrieking onomatopoeia speleothems through the spiralling choir of lilac xylophones

The clouds amalgamate polymerizing Gaia’s finite horizons

The moon grins with the schism of equilibrium

Its headstones of heaven’s parthenogenesis hallucinogenic remembering dead reverends

That beckon their florescent wretched beaded necklaces

In the cotton fields of neon mirages

Pollinating revolving menageries of unravelling sabotage

Cliff racing glaciers of pathos wraithlike spiking the sunrise with Kahlua

Kaleidoscopes croak of deciduous visionaries like marionettes of the breathless depths

That crept through sepulchres of requiems for Bethlehem

Stretching through resurrection effigies of pestilence

Ephemeral mementos, centuries of wrenching cemeteries

Echo strep throat mechanical animals bound in the annul hands of flannel canvas

  Amorphous porcelain of keratin chimeras

Crestfallen halogens from hollow follicles of neon creatures

Like empyreal murals of spherical quarries of aurora borealis

  The ilk of sylph milquetoast wisp whispering lithium chrysalis

Anchors of cancerous answering sacrosanct chrysanthemum

Like canyons of antlers of bantering amaranth branching out velvet

They buried me beneath the mountain

Until my roots spread to the rooftops and over the mouths of the earth

Bound in chains

I steal names from the abyss and become forgotten men

I grow from the scarecrow’s pheromones like baritones of roaming chromosomes

Tomes of dystonia closing in on the curtains of a tourniquet

I follow the devil onto an empty page

And the heaven’s critic my performance

There is always further to climb

No matter how high I reach

The stands remain above my head

In their rows of seats

My words are the foundation of their stature

I was born for this

Born to bring the bottomless darkness to light

On top of this world

Or brought down to the bottom of the slope

I (don’t care if I have/have the time) to climb a hundred mountains more

Every step is a journey

There is always further to climb

There is no phoenix

But my legs push on

Gears in an engine built from broken men embodying the same dream

Muffled screaming growling guttural

I feel the beat of a drum

Scrap metal and scarred skin smelt smiling like a stray flower

Among these scarred dogs off their leash

That lost their owners to time, freedom, or God

We howl to an unborn moon

As shards of glass long to be diamonds

Or ground to dust

 

Dust

 

Stiff fluidity, liquid still

Deconstructing lustrous brushstrokes that stoke the fire of the heart

Mistrals of eucalyptus sift through viscious lithium

Death draws nearer than you know

Pastel cardiovascular palpitating lackadaisical in dilapidated happiness

Painted pictures of wickermen trickle through shattered glass

Portraits of distorted orphanages, morgues of the expurgatorial

Making their way through the crowd of discombobulated words

Lost like runaway trains derailed

Consumption of our own fears stomached vomiting reality

Fluidly lucrative lucidity vividly mimicking infinitely

Metallic stalactites unraveling battalions

Of malleable towers flowering talons of Excalibur

Algae crusted creek rinsed dry from the lick of rivers in mother’s tongue

Rusted fountains of faded dreams gallop through metal gates

Scream water in delirium

Hangmen dangle from balconies like alchemy

Like vital signs from woke neon gods

Blooming irises

That blink in and out of existence

Having an eye for visionaries and blind men

Like a waxing and waning florescent moon

An out-branching lamppost of dead ghosts incorporeal

A lactescent incandescent web of decrepit crescents

Sepulchral echoes the spiralling silo

Of one note bending and crescendoing slender (incendiary) hallucinogenic hemorrhages

Through the empty streets of shadow dragging dawn

Ballooning (altocumulus bending tendons)

Into endless (crescendo’d) nebulas of tenebrous poltergeists

Who wield the scythe of midlife crisis

And put their dead weight of full bodies on crossed staves

Upon their camelbacks drawing straws and painting portraits

Coursing in porcelain voice of dusk

Dusting everything

Feathering Armageddon

Sinfonietta threading into renaissance gospel of colossus phosphorus

Clockwork Cocytus under the fibres of barbed-wired highrises

Shining with sunlight’s blight

Ticking away into twilight

Galloping through the metallurgy of hot iron suns

Melting, oozing, through the cracks in heaven’s doorframe

The glow of orange ghettos like flower petals dishevelled by the wind

Cast shadows on the walls

That cast their own like dice upon fate

Over the greybeards of dusted mote in afternoon bright

The willowed gizzard of pavilions shrivelled chiselling amaryllis

Like wax figures melting into riverbeds of men

Ink dissipating into the arrogant spit of crying mountains

 That once

Were nothing but dust

Hinging

Like linen prisms of rhythmic mistral fistfuls of grain and bread

Watched upon by the dumb and heavy stones

Following the narrow winding road back

Into simple intimacy

And remembrance

Of what was formed from nothing

Before time closed its eyes, started counting

With each flick of a metronome, and

Played hide and seek with existence

Under the mosaic of frolicking philharmonic constellations

Rivers running with endless comets and fallen stars

Snakes chasing their tails into eternity’s mouth

Singing from the most beautiful of valves of ritornelle

Fingers that tap at pianos into oblivion

From the root of every questioning tree

Watching shape unfold itself

Into madness, dust, sound, silence, nothing

The origami of a flatline of moons

Made of paper-thin glass refracting imagined creation

Spindling humans, unmapped contraptions of crepuscular being

Embodying shape

Force unmoving

Bound by the written passage of time

Ageing into obscurity

Dyeing the fabric of history without colour

Pages upon pages

Worn into dust

 

Stillness

 

Liquid viscous apparitions

Christened in syphilis omniscience

Stretch strept in repetition

Go the distance into whispering epiphany

A line of sentences

Makes its way snaking over the page

In rivers of inkblot letters

From tongue-tied suicide notes

Slipknots hung up telephones from power lines

Sewing and reopening cornucopia

Folding accordions of corridors

Forged from war-torn worlds

The mortar of metamorphosis

Hurling insults like thunder and lightning

Upon the dark staircase spiralling under the earth

Cherubin slither their fingers

Through the rim of empty glasses

Mortals of chlorophyll flourish and blossom like possums

Grasping at the taxis

Wrapping their afterimages around their cloaked shroud memories

Worn fabric

Trenches of endless dead

Heaven’s where scarcely a person lives

Everyone is down in the dirt

Someone is calling my name from the cemeteries

Someone is following me to a dead-end

Someone is forgetting what it means to be alive

I no longer smile

The lines on my face are my (best) poems

I am my best art

People read my facial expressions

Like an open book

And like the wrinkled spine of a paperback

My eyes are stapled shut

Someone watches as I write over the scars in ink

Someone is writing my story

Someone smiles without any meaning hidden behind their teeth

And neither are selling

They line the prairies in their spit

And so

I bury my emotional baggage

Time capsules

As I cannot join them yet

And so, I give them the gazillion tears that won’t sell

Because they’re worth nothing now

And so

The world turns over in its sleep

Forgets them, along with their delicate wilting dreams

Like flowers planted by their dilapidated graves

Like waves of grey

Under the walls of the city

That forgot them

Holding in their arms

Baskets full of sunflowers, azaleas, honeysuckles, and poppies

The scraps of coloured yesterday

From a faded world

The moon is laughing

At the shattered glass

The signs of life, signs from God, signs of directions, on a billboard

Mazes of Mediterranian maelstroms

That lead nowhere

As The Killers said

“Smile like you mean it”

As I can, and they can, and we can, no longer

 

Dreams in the Lost and Found

 

{Among oscillating crossroads}

{Mosques lost in the frothing phosphorus}

[We lost track of the record machine]

[The trail of music]

[Dropping plates and shattered dreams of glass, pipes, and moons on sidewalks]

[Star-crossed lovers of fallen stars]

(Tripping, trampling memory in muddy water under our dirty feet)

(Until we no longer hear its beautiful melody)

(Crying, sweating, blossoming, from wallpaper under our skin)

(Like that of a house abandoned by love)

I wish I could tell my younger unbloomed self

The beauty and the power of childhood dreamland

Before I dreamed so vastly

That my dream became my nightmare

But no

It is all gone,

Empty of a single shadow shingling the darkness

So smile

In my silence

Smile

For me

And do not give in

To age, and death, and colourless despair

There is a tomorrow

Even if it's not yesterday

And someone is calling my name from the backyard

Even if

I no longer want to hear them

As they

Are not real anymore

Only echoes of vascular decibels

Screaming for the mercy of God

Why do you torture me so?

Why (do you) taunt me?

With so much meaning meaninglessly out of grasp

Nothing but the white page

And the black night

And the same streets that I walked

Are worn bare

Of life

Or anything beautiful

At all

But

I

Still

Remember

Bits

Of

It

Gone

With

The

Rust

Of

My

Skeleton

Trailing

Away

Into

Wind

Time

Shadow

Death

Effervescent

And

Beautiful

And

Dead

Again

And

Again

After

All

What

Is

Left

Of

It

But

I

My

Body

The

Seed

Of

Tomorrow

Or

The

Last

Tear

Of

Yesterday

And

Yet

(Somehow)

I

Remember

It

All

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Musical End of All Things

 

A climbing centipede

Made of glass, bone, moon, dust, stillness, and dream

Mangled together of and by everything

Under the heavenly sun

Reading books with blank stairs

Flights of bleached blocked sentences

Climbing into the heavens above the page

It tosses, twists, and turns in its endless sleep

Watching over the great pastures of eternal Eden

With its great teachings

And schools of many pupils that blink neon signs in their tear ducts

And plant irises within its splendour

Blind to the readings of God

Seeing eye to eye with the passage of blind visionaries

Making out the form of nothingness

Fumbling around in empty fields of grain and cornstalks

Or muffled by pit black rooms without windows or doors

Craving

Grasping at the air

As if it were any more than meaningless

Caring about the fleeting infinite

Gazing upon the setting sun

Passing by in the arcing snake of automobiles on tied rope chained roads

As if it were any more than everything

Raving incoherently of every understanding misunderstood

The static of their next meal

Of their hollow wandering spirits

Stoned to death by the brightness of day

Everything will go on without me

And with my knees bent, I prayed

And my arms pretzeled in mantra-like hummingbirds bumbling on tendrils of trees

Branching out to the zeppelins of ballooning clouds

That ballad and clamour around my infinite empty

My great insignificantly plain beauty

My life full, a brimming glass of beer, of death, of graves

Mass burials of tears

Of seeds

Planted where

Our last words were whispering to the wind

The last forest under grey clouded Canada

The brushing of leaves and bushes by the flowing rough draft of foliage

I heard it ring like a dropped coin

In the silence

Tossed out like a freeloader

In the glimmering seconds that pass

Flipping tails and heads

Until they followed each other into the depths of that forested night

Watched as the silver gleams

Under the sweat and grime of fingers that touched them

Watched as the bluebirds spindled in the air

For all but a few seconds

Before they too knew (of) the cage

Waiting outside freedom

For the last flap of their burlap wings

Watch as I type away

My fluttering fingers that fly through flailing letters

You could say

That the nuisance of each word has meaning

The nuance of every sentence is colliding, calling into them, a story

I say we are smothering ourselves in emotion

There is nothing but everything

That is nothing

There is everything

And that does not matter

And so another drink is poured

Another moon rises into a stygian sky

We continue to fall into contingency

We continue to care

For nothing, and everything that nothing is

Everything

And so

Nothing but the yawning abyss

Cares for dawn

The world will continue to burn

I will continue to cry

The homeless butterflies will continue to die

The unwinnable battles will continue to rage

The bombs will continue to drop like pianos

You will continue to look away

Continue to breathe

Continue to live

Until eventually

Existence will forget you

And no one will care

Left behind

As the world continues its trek

Past your insignificant beauty

It is past your present

Past your empty

Full of your kind

It will not listen to your meaning

You think you’re special?

Unique?

You think you’re better than someone as below you as I?

That it will answer you any differently than it did me?

It will continue to crawl through minutes

Through the crawlspaces

Under heaven’s stairway

Under the heavenly sun

Mangled together of and by everything

Made of glass, bone, moon, dust, stillness, and dream

A climbing centipede

Scratching away at the baseboards of time

Our last words were whispering to the wind

Carried away into the night

It never stopped to listen

It kept walking

Through its rust-covered Autumn path

And left me to the forest

Left me to my static

To my meaning

To my attic

My understanding, a grain of sand

In an endless shoreline of rushing waves

Left me

To the end of all things

To the angry crowd

To God and his angry subjects

To the earth

To my white noise solitude

It never stopped to listen, the cage, the centipede, the abyss

Whatever it is

It doesn’t listen

It doesn’t watch

It doesn’t feel

Do not expect your existence to be meaningful

It likely never will be

The band will continue to play

Life will continue to writhe

The fires will continue to burn

As long as I am here

It never stops to listen to itself (sing), but

At the very least, I

Come to hear the music

 

What’s Left

 

Mantras gondola symphonic

Saffron andromeda bombardier stardust

Waltzing altars blanch

With the malting sulphur sculpture of altocumulus

Blooming and ballooning clueless

Sweeping beacons of heathens

Terpsichorean seamstresses breathe in delirium

Streaming mapping tapestries cacophony canopy humanity dangling

Within the murky serpentine weavings

Seasons of creamy Elysium

No

I am not a/the monster

Chewed up and spit out by the factory, by the machine

That birthed me from (the conveyor belt of eons,) the assembly line of life

A product of my own demise

(I live by the barcode)

(Written on the back of my hand in the calligraphy of tattoos)

(Lost to the tongues that mouthed their brilliance)

(Like the hills painted by the sunset baking forests with fireflies, smoke and clouds)

I sell my body with the soul purpose

{Walking miles in different shoes like footprints in sands forgotten}

Of walking away from my dreams lucid

Which slide by as carelessly as a smile in a limousine

I no longer wear

And my mouth no longer screams

My eyes no longer water

(My body no longer fears the setting of its sun)

As there is nothing but the featureless page of my face

Holding back the tears of ink

That bleed from the crevices of my papercuts

(The caves of my pores underneath the waterfalls of sweat and blood)

(The braille of those who lost touch with reality yet felt nothing)

(Reading my movement)

(Watching bodies crawl numb)

(Who swim in fiction to find something real)

(Their fingers running down my paperback spine)

(Feeling, fumbling their way through each wrinkled crease)

Torn from the mosaic of my everything

 

Grey Colour

 

Shadows cling to my legs at night

And rest their heads on my shoulders in the grey morning

Like my own children

Quieter than my empty bedroom

Where I count the countless shades of grey on the walls

Or sheepishly paint them across the face of the moon

My parents don’t see the tranquillity of my lovelessness

Of crude solitude

Of my blue-stained ego

The way it rings through the unbearable empty

Empty bliss leaking from my floating neon body

Strangled hangman muffled and asphyxiated by my pillows

Crushing nothingness into the shape of a guitar

Shoestrings that twang in anguish

In my guitar heart

In the shadow of God

In the grey-faced moon

Younger than the seconds that creep past like cockroaches

(Longer nights like) centipedes

Made of glass, bone, moon, dust, stillness, and dream

Making mountains out of molehills

Climbing over the bodies

Hiding away in strawberry fields

Bound in chains to the clouds that cluster rusted rustling custard in violet skylines

Runaways of wind

And rain

Like rays of light swim skimming oblivion

Singing to the symphonies on ice

Quieter than my empty basement

Grinning to the cold and crimson skies above my soundlessness anchor

My amaranthine sanctuary

A riverbed of dead songs that live on somewhere gold

As the clouds roll by on their carousel of wildflowers

Laced in moonshine

I know it all, but

I am no monster

Am I?

Only what’s left of the mud in the heat of the summer sun

Or of green grass in the cold of winter

Or of the weeds after a heavy rain

Or of man after the purity of God

For I care for nothing

And nothing cares for me

In the wake of bleached colour bleak

In the sick monochrome pandemonium

Of dandelions painting meadows in dreaded bedlam

The whiles of spiralling vinyl asylum

Grey canyons span rambling pianos

Labyrinths of hands bangled by amethyst

Autumn’s mahogany choreography

Nook and cranny, (tossing and turning), waxing and waning halos of Beowulf’s stale maelstrom

(Stalactites and stalagmites like)

Grey hairs of paradise

Greying over the desperate abyss

Rolling in and on by the waves of suede

In the rearview heirloom of wilting silken quilts in bloom

Grey

Like my mother’s cold eyes

Ageing into obscurity

Clipped wings of blackbirds that never learn to fly again

Where the cold grey light dyes everything

The sidewalk lilac

And iris black rapture handcrafted

Basking in afterimages

(Slipping through the cracks)

(My figure snakes through fractured tapestries of mirror)

(The mosaic of my image pixelated visceral rippling Icarus)

(Embalming insomnia in Shinigami’s calming polymerization)

(Braille azaleas that that swivel under the lily pavilions of dishevelled elegies)

(Melting into) psychedelic melodies of cavernous avenues

Hallway andromedas bathed in hazy suede halos, jade sables of grey fables

Caught in the traffic of Ragnarök

Prismless, quiet as the moon

Perhaps the whole world is murdered grey

Like I

A mistake

I pity them

For they are not monsters (,either)

(Are they?)

Just my fellow creatures

Neither good nor evil

Neither wrong nor right

Neither loved nor hated

Just a mix of black and white

The two ends of a horseshoe

Come together

They are learning how to walk

Where people only crawl

Learning to listen

When there is only static

Learning to love

When there is only hate

Learning of colour

When there is only grey

Learning of difference

Where, in their madness

They are all the same

And yet they preach

That they are right

That they are better

That they are not just grey

As the world that birthed them

That they are not just

Monsters

And we

That we are not the same

 

Nothing (Lost Body)

 

Memento mori

So easy it is to hate someone without a face

And easier still when you already know what to look for

As the (terracotta colosseums,) dodecahedrons (like mahogany mausoleums) speleothem

(As a sea of words black slowly churns in the deep abyss below lamplight)

As fleecy creased clouds amalgamate of paper mâché

(As a vast meadow of humming umbrage twangs the strings of wildflowers)

(As the boughs of rocking ships ricochet)

(Through forests and oceans crocheted of frayed yarn, strings, and pianos)

{As the envious sun sets in an empty sky with no love for itself, anything, or anyone}

{As the specks of dust listen to the wailing raving}

{In the bowels of Valhalla’s gravelly palisade of jaded angels}

{As the tomes of soma chromosomes scrawl their ancient messages}

{Across ebony and ivory faces; in double helixes, scrolls like photo reels}

{As the key to music is locked behind closed doors}

As the prides of lions cross (and stalk) the endless fields (and plains)

As the children weep (for spilt milk)

As the bombs drop (like seashells upon the shells of men)

As the hungry retch (from their slim empty stomachs)

<It is so sickeningly beautiful>

<So perfectly ugly>

<The hands of the clock point out the obvious>

<Time passes>

<Which is to say love passes>

< (Which is to say) Life passes, leaving us to continue onwards in our trek through the storm>

<Until we can’t take anymore>

<Until it passes>

<Until we pass with it>

<Meeting the overwhelming overlapping flow of an endless current of tears>

<Embracing Mother Nature tearing at the seams of elysian ravines>

{I say}

(There is no easy answer to all your difficult questions)

<We are a continuous series of compounding sin>

<Joined together by those who died sinners before us>

<It is light itself that draws us into the darkness>

-The shadows are drawn in by every silver lining and ray of light-

<It is unyielding beauty that creates the greatest ugliness>

-It is the greatest perfection that leads to every flaw-

-And in that flaw is excellence, trust me-

-<Because I built my broken busted body back up >-

-<With nothing but the strength of my every flaw flowing through my wind-torn veins>-

<The still image of success is born from the depths of failure>

<It is (the grandeur of) peace that causes (the impudence of) war>

<Shadows of the men birthed by us>

-We simply are-

-I simply am-

<We were>

<Flickering candles with wax flowing through our in hearts and veins>

<The wicker is short>

<The road is long, (it lengthens straight, snaking into tomorrow)>

<We take what we can (what we want)>

<(Leaving nothing)>

<I say>

<I was born in the nothing>

<Lapping up whatever piece of meaning I could cling to>

<From a river of lucid thoughts>

<Whatever supple neck I could get my hands on>

<There was no hate>

<Only wanting>

<Despite the constant battle that I despised in me>

<Despite the roar of voices building in the mould of my freshly minted mind >

<Despite blooming ludicrous illusions illuminated by yet free from hatred>

<Despite the inevitable continuation of nothing in my nothing filled life>

<Despite breaking away from the frame of my skeleton and this dismal grey-black earth>

<In its conclusion>

<I felt nothing>

< And I cared for nothing>

<For I was nothing>

<Without a(n honest) smile to give to you>

<Which is to say>

We believe in nothing

And we are nothing

For we come from nothing

And we go to nothing

We know nothing

And are taught by nothing

For we care(d) for nothing

And/so <now>

Nothing <else> cares for us

<(That is all we are>)

<(Only what is left of carrion paradise>)

<(A morsel of love)>

<(For endless mountains of hate)>

<(Nothing but my truth)>

<(Nothing but cruel)>

<(Nothing)>

<(But reality)>

<(Kissing the forehead of an elderly God)>

<(Soon to pass)>

<(And we know that)>

<(Who can no longer change us for our better)>

<(And we know that)>

<(Yet still we try to bend the destinies forged to bind us)>

<(And somehow be better)>

<(Than nothing)>

<(Specks and flecks of sparks, embers in the midnight bonfire of life)>

<(Scattered to the wind)>

<(Icarus)>

<(Prometheus)>

<(Centipede)>

<(Elongated arms that hold the universe together)>

<(God is in the palms of our hands as we pray in a cigarette smoke fog)>

<(The clouds of another mushroom)>

<(Psychedelic evangelicals with mouths welded shut)>

<(Like huts in the shrubbiest gutters of guttural shuttles of rubbish and ramshackle capitalism)>

<(The rut under the wheels that continue to turn eternities)>

<(Burning into dust)>

<(Becoming)>

<(Nothing)>

<(Burgundy)>

 

Memento Mori

 

-This is as the night passes-

-This is as the day drawls-

-This is as the dawn breaks-

-This is as the sun sets/falls-

-Frayed edges of bedlam’s renaissance blanched by the hands of humanity-

-Pages on the fringe of oblivions of civilizations-

-Created from aether and hatred painted in homo sapiens-

-Wastelands of sands and amber and what is left of those who spiral into madness-

-The choir’s dialects of maleficent hecatomb flowering in the bowels of Valhalla-

-Lives caught in the roping throat of hangman time-

-Pendulums remembering embers of the hallucinogenic bending dismemberment-

-Vicarious chariots bearing marionettes of the serendipitous eclipse from a slit wrist-

-Blessings of intestinal testimony-

-Blackberry cemeteries-

-Suspended in endlessness-

-Centuries like penitentiaries-

-The gift of repetition’s witness-

-Memento mori-

-Know that I reaped the sweetest berries of this forest-

-Each plot of earth and tree-

-Raw and bare-

-<In the bending of the breeze>-

-Tearing my heart inside out to give to you like a wildflower-

Plucking it from its roots, in a harp’s melody of loose threads and strings

-<My prized possession is a point in time driven into my skull by the hands of a clock>-

-<In the attic of my mind shuffling through the bookshelves of rhymes I never mouthed>-

-<Ahead of my era>-

-<Until like it, the pain dulled>-

-<I lost my sharp wit>-

-<And all that was left was blunt force trauma>-

-<I dreamed you were waiting for me there>-

-<You weren’t>-

-<I’m stranded on the edge of my own mind>-

-<My honed craft grinding myself into dust>-

-<I cut class to sit with you by the abandoned train tracks and cry>-

-<Hungry for a slice of yesterday>-

-<History is cut from a different cloth>-

-<And I wear my heart on my sleeve, stitched into the fabric>-

-<I’m going nowhere>-

-<(And) nothing can stop me>-

-This is the way the world ends-

-And (I find) I do not care-

 

Field of Dreams

 

Zigzagging fragments of dragging stagnant imagination

I can taste it

My own body in my mouth

This is why I eat

To taste, cleanse the pallet, to recover

Painted in tongues

Instead of sitting in my own death (and filth)

Just to die alone

I’m a relic of the not too long ago

Oh my forgotten soul

Daydream drowning in day-water

Where the sun don’t kiss the moonshine from God’s brow

Until the horizontal tide of white circles of light

Reflect on their actions and mirror stillness

Under the knife of bright lights (in the cities and towns)

And midnight wives

To the lengthening shadow

That leave stretch marks on the walls

Birthing the beasts wearing wreaths sheared sheep under the leash of bleak sheets ether

Where every newborn hour skins itself like an onion

Leaving the meat and bones to marinate in the dark

Until we ravel ourselves out of the mortal coil

Layers upon layers

That eventually peel into a full moon again

And we are all wholly half-hearted

As we peel back into place (the packaging of) reality like a chainlink fence

And try to recreate stagnant dreams from this barbed wire vinyl

That only birth more onions

As existence is layered upon layers

Until we peel back (the) fiction from (the) concrete

(The) Incorporeal from (the) palpable

Existing with all the missing pieces

If we ravel the strings

Theory of music of roped twine knotted into the willow of a guitar

Will we treasure each missing piece of a broken puzzle?

The fabric of music, dance, history, time, life

Are worn double helixes frayed by the breeze

I wear myself to sleep sometimes

While I still have dreams

Cloaked in flower petals, these roses

Which I wretched free from every tooth that ever smiled

And planted each elongated root in a garden of men

As their cold words bite to the bone

Cracked window panes where kaleidoscopes of tapestries mosaic into structure

Composition

The flow of a universal milky way

And all I have

Are broken daydreams

That never sleep

Unhinged from the joints of a doorframe ripped from my cellar of a heart

Halls of choreography mantras palpitate in the follicles of polymerization

Walking through corridors as they worm their way through hell and heaven

Angels that smoke will-o-wisps in high spirits

Until they’re over the moonshine

Perched in the balconies hidden in the clouds

Watchers that do not love the cold damp cities I know

As they rain down their bombs of justice on

Like heralds to every Adam that split the apple with Eve

Where each elongated rib opens from the cage

Another step on the staircase of bones (rattling up the latter’s rungs to the bladder) in the attic

And heaven

Is just a daydream

And Eden

Is just a memory

And honestly

I forgot what it means to love a long time ago

But I still peel back the skin

Imagining

My ripe not rotten flesh dangling on the meat hook of a tree branch

Pretending

Until my flesh is as red as that apple

Are we really human at all?

Or are we just apple cores

Dancing in Septembers’ rot under hangman maple trees

Forevermore

Stretching out our brittle bones among the saplings in the dirt

My world is sewn together by the roots of the knotted tree’s knuckles

Five fingers that punch vigorously in anticipation of battle

Pugilist’s fists to the sky

They take in the crisp air

Pluck the telephone lines

And grasp at the clouds in wonder with their pleading leaves

Asking for mercy from God’s searing one-eyed glow rusting red in the sundown

Knowing they will pass much like the day and night

And I look through the eye of the needle

Blinking in and out of existence

Drowning in the city lights

A neon sign from heaven’s entrails

(A magenta centipede of endless entropy)

Like the grail’s halo

There is nothing but this dull pain of the ridge over the ocean

On the edge of the earth

And I just reap the harvest like any good scarecrow

Like any good scythe

But I do not hate the cornstalks

I simply need to eat

(I do not care for the system <that rejected me>)

(But the gears of this machine <called society> must continue to turn)

(I do not love the dirt, <as I work it now>)

(But) I did not break my back

For nothing










© 2021 R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)


Author's Note

R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)
Guess what? I wrote probably my best few lines so far as a poet, and was just going back to fix some stuff, and due to a computer issue, I lost them. Remember to be careful not to lose your work. It sucks.

PLEASE READ:

Most of my poems can be differing lengths depending on the time you want to spend reading them. You can avoid reading anything brackets, or read it all. If you want an in-between, you can read only the ( ) brackets, or ( ) and [ ], or ( ) [ ] and { }, or all these mentioned brackets including < >, or these brackets all the way up to >( )<, and finally, up to - - or -< ->. It must be in this order though if you wish to read some of the brackets. Obviously the more brackets you read, the longer my poems will be. The purpose of this is simply to allow leniency in how long or short you want the read to be. The lines in grey are particularly optional. This is not a way to ruin art in order to string in more readers, nor am I doubting a reader's capabilities to understand, or even how much they're willing to read. It is much more something where I simply do not know whether I consider these extra words be the core, and see them in a sense of not entirely understanding whether I consider them "canon", as they often change the flow of the piece, for better or worse, when or when not they are included. In a way, making it a completely different poem, as is their intention in a way, to add more, and to sculpt words differently. Think of these added brackets and words as the fat of the piece, rather than the bones.

I promise I read every single review, and I generally will reply to them. I look forward to my next review, because it helps me learn. Even if it's just one word, I promise, I will be happy to hear anything you feel needs sharing. Whenever you write on my shortcomings or breakthroughs, or the themes of my poems, or share ideas and friendly criticism, it decides my next poem to an extent. I will listen, learn and be thankful. And 99% of the time, you'll get a reply unless you're trolling me.

Going nowhere can be quite the journey. Madness, quite the guide. Sanity, a fleeting devil that refuses to understand the Godhood of hallucination, and the martyrdom of the abstract, different, crazed, minds.

My Review

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Reviews

As usual, you've painted a powerful image here.
It was a long read but it worth it. Life and it's mysterious existence and the fate of everyone; dead, alive and yet to be born. Who knows where he's going? Heaven or hell?

Keep writing, RJ.

Posted 3 Years Ago


R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)

3 Years Ago

Thank you Kay.
hello RJ / aka sinister potatoe,
very interesting & most unusual work.
i see your poem more as a collection of amazing phrases (which to me) often seem unconnected to the following phrase.

I'm astonished to read in your profile that your age is so young!! your words seem to have a depth of having experienced so much more of life than most young people, i suspect you're more perceptive than most.

I'm glad to have read (most) of this page. maybe it'll help me loosen up my narrative style poems.

although I'm not keen on those dark image pictures, I'll have to exorcise them out of my head. though i do like the picture of the man fishing from an octopus leg... rather whimsical!

have a sunny day, cheerio carola


Posted 3 Years Ago


R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)

3 Years Ago

Glad you got something out of my work, thanks for reading!
i would suggest you utilise the book feature coz you can make this a book and then all the other poems chapters, so its easer on the eyes, otherwise one would think this was a singular long poem

Posted 3 Years Ago


R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)

3 Years Ago

Thank you so much, you have no idea how much that means to me.
FaeryQueen

3 Years Ago

i probably don’t. i have a list of phrases that i take inspiration from. it motivates me to see th.. read more
R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)

3 Years Ago

Thanks! :)
A cacophony of visceral dark imagery panting stark truthful messages. I have always had a revulsion of these multiple legged insects but here they carry a mystical bleak quality about them. The symbology you paint just blows my mind R.J. and the illustrations with this poetry will haunt my nightmares. Incredible writing my friend you take me on a kafkaesque journey into the dread.

Posted 3 Years Ago


R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)

3 Years Ago

Sorry it took me so long to respond, I actually thought I had, but I suppose I simply read what you .. read more

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Added on August 16, 2021
Last Updated on October 24, 2021

Author

R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)
R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)

Burlington, Halton, Canada



About
Most of my poems can be differing lengths depending on the time you want to spend reading them. You can avoid reading anything brackets, or read it all. If you want an in-between, you can read only th.. more..

Writing