Nothing At All

"You're only a sword... without a sheath, filled with scratches and bloodstains, with a fatal nick, a broken sword." (Godot's words, From the masterpiece known as Berserk By Kentaro Miura)

Nothing At All

 

 

Nothing

 

 

You cannot know peace without war

Or war without peace

Pain without pleasure

Pain without numbness

Numbness without pleasure

Pain without God, the absence, the hole, the gap in the chest without a heart

But no

I know nothing at all

Just the way the world ends

And begins

As the flower opens its innocent petalled palms

Like the hand of God

Unapologetically tethering hemorrhages

Blemished cemetery of spiralling hieroglyphics

Like gypsies in whiplash fishing glyths for blissful Icarus

Falling down upon the sun like a lover would in the early morning

Before finally; being brought back down to earth,

Returning in dismay plummeting below the blistered trees grown messily on Gaia’s back,

Drawn together in their parting words of colour

Before the grey sky swallows decay

And spits seeds into dirt forests; forever

Once proud to have conquered the skies, now, nothing

Some would say I was nothing

You could say I had nothing

But the dim light over the horizon;

The bulbous sun wilting maple leaf red

The yolk of lampshade malformed amorphous and incorporeal

Under spiderweb nebulas like a mouth of lost alphabets

Unable to skip over their bloated tongue;

The carcass of their own words like an eternal hurricane

Etched in depths of crepuscular necklaces of trees

That weave through terpsichorean genomes of stone

And rows of euphoria in midmorning’s Gregorian corneas

Chanting in a banquet for the grimoires of stars

Iridescent testament of tempestuous resurrectionists

Scintillating creation like pistol-whipping ricochets of Icarus

Knots of crisscrossing phosphorus offerings like a bloated kaleidoscope

Poinsettias like reverends bow to the headstones of the cemetery;

As if the play were to continue in the wind of all our sins

Tumbleweed of kneading helixes speleothem like a bohemian gangrene phoenix of onomatopoeia

Reaping life in the lamplight of shadows

Cast like sparks in a bonfire of broken dreams

Each scattered piece of blasphemous masochism like astral vassals of daffodils shrill in shillings

Scaffolding rapturous fate denying safe passage in the masses of atrocious cornucopia

Black with anathemas like shrill cerulean villas of willows and vermillion bougainvillea

Quilting wilted amaryllis syllables in the weeping willow’s guillotines

Of Elysium crocheted from blades of glass like pastels of castles in asphodel

(Battling pianos bougainvillea of mademoiselle’s elegies elegant melancholy andromedas)

(In cowl of malleable hallowed gallows towels of the bowels of wildflower borealis)

The dishevelled swivelling meadows and headstones cascading in the halo of maelstrom

Looming cumulus of plumerias (barren with the marrow of harikari baritones in the snow)

Plumage of druids who roost from their nooses

And the nook and cranny of cavernous amaranths

Slathered in the Lazarus

Cadavers of jasmine and jasper rafters of taffeta

That bloom illuminating in the dew of a new moon

The crescents of crestfallen crepuscular incandescent

Requiem beckoning sepulchres stretching from the phosphorescent Bethlehem

Of droning pandemonium in the roses of epitomes

Fiddles of shrivelling amaryllis chiselled

In the biblical chisel of dribbling cerulean

And the blasphemous alstroemerias of miscarriages

In the barren lands of a thousand crownless hands

That perched crows of the universal telephone poles slack and phantasmagorical

Foraging for the origin of it all in the windswept gaze of gauze

Like newspaper spiralling unravelling the hollow Stygian figurine of God

Until there is no skin but the leather-bound hallowed ground

Where the dishevelled rebellions swivelling in the billions

Of bougainvillea civilizations where the broken springs of their tendrils, arms, legs

Whisper lithium with drifting sun shapeshifting lickerish

Leaving the strands of chrysanthemums in the wake of aether’s tribulations

As the tributaries of marionettes chase the wreck of a sunset’s depths

Like an amethyst’s calamity grating grasslands in the swirling whirlpool

Of fools who lose their grip on the lip of photosynthesis

And the bangles of their sanity, their showmanship, their dreams, and their realities,

The maw opens;

And swallows the swollen imprints of humanity

Of what was left behind undivined by the divided skies

Of a lilac bible rising like isles of violet fibres and spires of chimera

Toppling from the towers that were me

(The glee of weeding speleothems of onomatopoeia like frail veils of nightingales’ halos)

(Ribboning infinity skipping in whispering of chrysalis lithium)

The cauliflower cauldrons of discombobulation

Born from these words washed from the etched crevice, (willows and lilies)

The sanguine guts, the black trenches of the page

Razed down to their cold foundations’ of flowerless empty, a bed cold;

Under the sheets of midnight, sleeping restlessly, devoid of air in this sun-kissed abyss,

This prairie land, this fairy of rotting corpses that couldn’t find their way back,

Or back out, of home, false battle scars on an unending body,

And if there were anything more, I would have found it by now

For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken

 

 

Riff Wrath

 

 

Riffing lithium in the autumn lithography

In phosphorescent exodus molested by iridescent convalescencing essences,

The windswept effigy of requiem, of pestilence, of festering festival’s

In the polyester decibels of reckoning sepulchres

In the grasslands of alabaster mine shafts

Of glass castles in the cardiovascular molasses-like a statue of church pews

Like a hill of vermilion amaryllis basilicas in the butterfly twine

Of spiralling rhinestone under the thundering sun of tundra slums

Like yellow arpeggios of swelling ghettos

In the perpetual resurrectional complexity

Carving arteries in the cartilage of martyrs

Reincarnated by the marmalade grey of yesterday

 

 

Molasses

 

 

Felt a helix twist in my fingertips

As all their colours bleed unto one sunset

Under the curtain herculean all serpentine

Swathed in the phosphorus brothels

Like swastikas of apocryphal gigantomachy

Where the sun swallowed down the sky in an astral gulp

And spit the stars into orbit like contorted satellites of lazulite knives

That dig their fingertips into the ridge of flesh the umbrage in the umbrella of swelling cellos

Like mademoiselle of archipelago mandala elegies in the welted velvet gout of parhelion

Swivelling melodies of cinnabar

In this shattered glass jar

Where the formaldehyde geysers of blindsided horizons

Wire around this prairie town, in the burying grounds

The promised land bequeathed to me by a leaping Prometheus extends its hand;

It is still a swastika better left discarded and broken in by the discord of dusk

Dusting the succulent homunculus that crawls from the empty chamber of the heart

And spits bullets at us like stars that fall from high mountains of death

And fall from heavens of genocidal gods

Who do not watch as the sun swallows up the restless ghosts

Hungry for a resurrection that will never come,

Let the endless stars die for me now,

And rest my head upon the temple of their rust:

And the tributaries of their tears stamped into the mud

Written into arms of trees and bare on my forehead

Like the excuse of a haphazard unwanted scar bearing the children of their smiles,

Fathering the dead and those that should have died

In their sprawling follicles of gigantomachy

Discombobulated in their hatred coronating obliteration

 

 

 

Zion

 

 

Zion in the iris of a wildflower,

Seeing all but the downfall of mankind

Lost on the tracks of a blackbirds’ vinyl wyverns

Tsunamis of caramelized horizons

Like an unbridled bridge of sigil amaryllis

Widowed to the rigid briars of hyacinth

<Wrestling hectors of decibels under the length lamppost ghosts of chrysanthemum>

<Glazed in champagne gaze of hurricanes crocheted in aeons>

<Bleeding through the fields of greased gears>

<Of rearing mirrors to the creeping elysian empyrean murals steering veneers of the lyrical>

<Splintered in their whimsically disinterested symphonies of skin scintillating infinites>

<From the rim of rhythm and whim that schisms seraphim with visions in their endless prisons>

<Still the stygian prisms ribbon whittling rivers unforgiven by livid obsidian photosynthesis>

<Civilizations like the trill of umbilical bougainvillea shrivel in septillion skillets

Of frivolous waterlilies like pillars that riddle the literal with cremated aether of mother nature>

<Seeing all but the downfall of mankind, blind)

 

 

Birds

 

A barge of cardinals in the Tartarus of arteries

Bargaining and opalescence questioning of carnivalesque destinies

Of amaranthine banshees branching adamantine canvas

In the outstretched treble-clef Everest

Unapologetically tethered to every leatherback hemorrhage

In the nebula of skeletons rebellious melodies of tenebrous parhelion

The celebration of condemnation of primordial orchestras

Of metamorphosis phantasmagorical celestial effigies

Dishevelled metallurgy of the circus of interpretations

Ripping lithium precipitation through collaging walls of a colosseum

In the stalls of their hallowed follicles as vengeful emeralds in the mithril centrifugal chrysalis

A wishing-well of jasper riffraff daffodils

In the jazz of asters in waxen alabaster grasslands

In the fields of sunflowers and asphodel shells

Of shrapnel asteroids in the void of turmoils’ soiled immemorial amorphous porcelain vortex

Of limbs swimming in the obsidian river-ways

Of grazed hazel ocean waves of stale frayed greys

In the steel speleothem of bedlam’s crevices

In the venomous heavens of riverbed bled sediment

Leaden with the embers embroidered embedded malevolent

To those who know the world below

The silver snow of crumbled homunculus

Steampunk voluptuous umbrage penumbras of wanton mantras

On the mantle of chrysanthemums

Crepuscular repetitions in the crocheted bays of crystalline lithium precipitation

In the maze-like haze of the braille halos

Of maelstroms combing the slopes of dystopian opals

Incorporeal as the immortal moon

The immaterial ethereal speleothem peeling back the eyes of God from the frolicking façade

Rolling in the dirt of uncertainty

Merging with the inferno of surgical burgundy

Churning with the word-whipped eternities courteous curvaceous wake

Of laboured aether in slabs of labyrinthine symphonies

Off the skin of a rhythmic photosynthesis in glyphs of lithium

Ricochet into earl grey glades in the cannabis cytoplasm of Lazarus

In the oozing hubris of altocumulus gelatinous cardiovascular mass of plastered alabaster

Caskets in the attic of alleyways stray through the thread string of sunray

A helix in the hand of gravel and enamel

Devoid of the humanoid form of death and war

In the marrow of those with broken bones

Stowaways of jade marmalade tornadoes

Like a godless tsunami of origami poems

Written into superstition’s eclipse

As Icarus ricochets in eclectic resurrection

Of epilepsy in the debris of parted seas calligraphy

Of strawberry dreams and summer jeans like honey bees

Under stygian wings of spriggans’ prisms

Circumcision within linen twigs of jigsaws’ jaws

That spit the moon and swallow us all in sea breeze

Where bent to heaven-sent trapeze longevity of river-reeds

Reverends, gospels, apostles off the lease of reapers

Of godetia leaping from the mouth of page

And into the polyphonic monasteries of andromeda

Indomitable in drawling polymerization

Calling drawn into melancholy the frolicking tobogganing of songbirds wordless

Before the gurgling girdle of a hurricane

A fat belly of breathless lungs from the highest rung of forgotten tongues

Cauldrons of molecules in the crepuscular musculature

Of rushing thrushes blustering into the suffocating cremation

Imprisoning defibrillators of deliberation

Stigmatized nations reverberating in the fingers of tributaries

Like strings of carrion Ferris wheels

In the prairies of alstroemeria interrogating marionettes

Of the blossoming nocturne’s prospering phosphorus colossus apostles

Collage of fallen andromedas

Cauldrons of columns of thunderclouds’ colour motherhoods summit,

And a house full of brothers in the bronze obelisk of concrete speleothems

That reach up to the wreaths of Elysium

In the wreckage of their necklace of sepulchres

Where the September Armageddon dismemberment of severed heaven’s

Leathery cemetery embedded in the tremor of renegades

The institution of wrinkled instinctual instruments

Of disfigured ligaments to the obsidian flow of fallen snow

In the hippocampus and pancreas of a mangled God

Under the domes of clovers like chromosomes

In the window frame of broken glass tapestries of me bleeding silver daffodil vermilion

Guillotines lost in the phosphorus Cocytus of flocking mockingbirds

In the suburban hurricane of my life the liquor of gypsy

 

Crooked Teeth

 

Teeth of the urethra 

Like a spiralling xylophone reaching from the basement,

The crawlspace, to the attic

Biting into the fruit and spitting out its seeds;

Cherry-bomb ensembles of andromeda in the virus of fireworks maniacal manifest manipulation

Megalithic megalomaniac lampshade of rancid lampposts of opal ghosts

This life of happiness is impermanent;

You have to enjoy the moments of stagnating beauty;

The scaled-back time of music notes in the hazy white noise of the black void

The ragged fabric of history

A rippling Rorschach of taffeta

Vast and endlessly blowing like God’s beard

Flowing lucidly in the wind; the impermanence of beauty;

A music track in woods coated in the hairs of viridian moss

Caked on rocks with flowers between the handfuls of dirt,

Fireflies in the glass jar moon sliced into seconds that keep leading nowhere;

Wandering the trail that no longer straightens into one long grasp at life

With serendipity and serrated nails

Hooking inukshuks in the books of the trees

Constellations constantly conjuring like an unafraid saviour

Washed from the brine of mankind

Unmapped wrappings of madness scattered among the brush with death like life on a canvas;

A canopy, a gateway when there is no entry but the word of mouth

In the voice of storms and thorn-bushes;

Lush with repercussions of concussive percussionists

Rusted in the rain of umbrella mandala

A bottomless collage of broken bodies

The trouncing trees and the bounce of leaves

In the bulbous melancholy of the umbilical cord oracles of ouroboros

Of broken chains in the glass asters

Cast in the rapturous molasses of alabaster graphite

In the unabashedly smashed guitar of my life

 

Stretch of the Guitar

 

 

As the stretch of time unwinds my dandelion strings

Unravelling in the patterns of my sanity;

A quilted wilting guillotine of daffodils

A patchwork of eternity howling in the towering palaces of disembowelling Valkyries

That split the skies like the dissembling heavenly blocks of a jigsaw puzzle

In the gallows of a sunflower

And the answer of chrysanthemums

And other potted plants untrimmed,

My heart the clamouring amaranthine campfire of lilac twine

Silent in the mineshaft labyrinth of the buried pastures of rapture, the promised lands

Bequeathed by a wreath of priests to Prometheus;

Blinded visionaries who burned away by the light of asylum;

The scythe of the grand titans

In the writhing white skies of spiralling sirens

In the Nihilism of irises and hyacinth

Unravelling in the gravelly insanity of mangled mangroves

Of dreams rambling in the ramshackle taffeta of candelabra

And brambling pianos

Among the scattered candlelight avalanche of scavenged animals

 

 

Impermeable

 

 

Smoggy fauna of mitochondria andromedas

In cars on the freeways

Floating in bloated ambrosia motionless oceans of them,

Oozing balloons of fuming luminous hues of lucid cumulus,

Fat bellies of air ballooning in bruised helium,

Like specks of dust over cracked highways,

Dangling from the air like the still-painting of a piano yet to hit the ground,

All the balloons cysts of humanity,

Blooming flowers bulbous;

Ready to pop

A mausoleum of phoenixes

Like double helixes rewinding in the briars of cytoplasm

Like wriggling spriggans of calligraphy’s ligaments

 

 

Lonely Forest

 

 

Green hairs of moss in the crisscrossing of phosphorus

In the tableau of flowers

Like reconstructing lustre of rusted musculature’s brushstrokes

Of opalescent crescents

In the crocheted page of our vertebrae

In the offstage malaise of phraseless memories

Melodies like the swivelling chisel of a billowing guillotine

Wavering lackadaisical haloes of braille

To not grasp the world within my palm;

But (for) myself,

Desecration’s oasis of shapelessness within the violet of a smile,

Between the valley of my teeth,

Civilizations spiralling violin of barbed wire,

Metaphorical oracles in the dread of bedlam’s heavenly Everest

Of bevelling rebellion resurrection’s hexes

Ambidextrously severed leverage in the boondocks of dreadlocks

In the flock of clockwork

Phosphorus mockingbirds of murmuring hurricanes in the blue jays of rain

 

 

Bevelling

Milliseconds’ exodus,

Pressed into pestilence,

Off record requiem

Iridescent crescents questioning perfections

Of the crepuscular maleficent incandescent wreckage

Of double-decker effigies breathing terpsichorean Elysium

Like forests of ouroboros choruses of metamorphosis

Orchids in orchards orchestrating aurora borealis

In a glass chalice of Valhalla’s amalgams

Dowries of a gallery of collages of trapped colours

In the thunderstruck percussion perched between Ursuline herculean reapers

Of the creeping Prometheus of featureless creatures

Of the night ripe in the limelight of rhinestone chromosomes

In the soma of ambrosia’s osmosis

Interloping

(Petrified Poseidon in the isles of a hyacinth)

(Horizon of fibres writhing within irises like spires of ironworks)

A kaleidoscope of cornucopia formed from the carapace of aether

Evaporated halos in the lackadaisical maelstrom

Of foaming oceans of dopamine poking through the new moon

 

Skin

 

 

Follicles of chronological andromedas

Sonata rollicking rolling hills of farmland under coniferous eclipse,

Riffing the hieroglyphic cliff of lithium Icarus

Crippled in the lilac eyes of formaldehyde Gaia

In her anathema of daffodil pathogens

In her Rorschach grasslands

In the hands of God applauding

In the knotted metropolis of mahogany and terracotta

Crawling (kilometres) through (rollicking polymer) mausoleums

Dreaming reavers of bulimic helixes speleothems of helium

In the cerulean whirlpools of fondue funerals

Luminous with the feuding altocumulus

Blooming construed in the polymerization of constellations

Multiplication in the poinsettias of metallurgy

Frayed feathers of pandemic thrones to pandemonium

And lacerated pastures of relapsing taffeta

In the rapture unwrapping black daffodils

With the willows like pillars in the pavilions of amaryllis

Swivelling umbilically

Trilling in riverbeds of red and cedar

Bred from wedlock clockworks

Provocatively doxing the nocturne’s esophagus

Swathed in the crossing coffin of a blossoming apocalypse

You live in the limelight

While I die in the dark

 

 

Ignorant Words

 

 

There is no defence for ignorance

The crisscross-legged of walking moccasins

Stumbling over bumblebees of the steampunk homunculus

Making its way through the strawberry snow

Of a blood moon's cumulus

Plumerias and alstroemeria caricatures in the blur of insurgency

Within the braided crochet of decay in the lackadaisical maelstrom

I scream without a mouth

They are ignorant to my words, to my love

Know my sentence

Or know nothing at all

Do not deprive me of this endless heaven

This is the way I pray

There is nothing else for me to believe in

Until the stars rot into forestland

Until God’s balled up fists open

Until these ignorant words taunt on the rope of a tongue

A whip I am hesitant to crack

Remember how to speak

And scar the rockface of my skin

For you cannot know peace

Without war

Or God

Without pain

Fear without bravery

Love without suffering

And lust without hate

Unreadiness without anticipation

(Waiting until the fist of God, his right hand, the blunt edge of anticipation)

(Hits your face with its secondless exodus)

(Its beautiful, true, façade)

(And bloodies the devilish imprint, the bored impression, in your featureless smear)

(And its endless expressionlessness of vacant emotionless cold and hardened with deadpan hate)

(Glazed over like a field of snow smothered blank, tantalizingly feeling, indifferently numb)

(More <than an> empty page stained white)

(Than coal pupils black)

(Again, and again, and again)

Look at what you’ve done to me now

You cannot know to (hide a) smile

Without (showing) tears

But no

I know nothing at all

Just the way the world begins

And ends

Nothing

(Nothing)

<Nothing>

At all

Again

And again

And again

Nothing at all

Look at what you’ve done

(To me)

 

 

World Breaker

 

 

As I watch the world tear itself apart

As I rip the strands from my slipknot heart

Hanging like a planetarium

I cannot help to laugh at your weak attempt at barbarity

Falsehood and weakness

You reek of it

Your smile is ripping at the seams

Let me sew up the wound of your face

Smooth and featureless

Once more

Wrenching free the nail from the wood

The song from the bird

The man from the heavens

The innocence from the sin

(The lesson from the hell)

The black night from the sun

The ink from the page

The breath from the bethel

The devil from the angel

(The sermon from the coffin)

As the flower opens its innocent petalled palms

Coming down upon you and I like the sledgehammer it is

Like (shaking) the hand of God

Crushed by the pain in these fingers (of roots)

I am

Reaching out in the silence

I am

The sound of stillness

I am

Yet it left me feeling nothing

For I am Atlas, and have grown weary, tired, used to this weight I carry precariously

Happy for the broken fibres of me to stretch into tapestry, into mosaic

Crocheted and quilted and entangled

The vines that circle around my limbs outstretched like a vast tree

I reach for the sun

And grasp nothing

But this earth

But this temple, full of blind men with visions, and visionaries better left blind

And the torn fabric of my ragged wilting silken body in its splintered intimacy of photosynthesis

Yet I still wear the shroud, the shadow, the flag (of clouds) ravelling revelling around my figure

Billowing in the wind

My bath of blasphemous taffeta transfigured oblivion of squinting cymbals of Indra scintillation

This multicoloured scarf of mine

(These emblems of pendulums)

The framework of my skeleton bending in hallucinogenic crescendo, (heaven’s parhelion)

Clothing the naked figures of angels

Worn out by empyrean mirrors of godless facades of august applauding in the gauze of polymers

As the (menagerie of) leaves fall upon the soil and dew in the grooves of cumulus ballooning

Oozing through the confused blooming of this musical illusion

I am

The (sum) result of it all

Everything

I am

There was a time when it all bent itself on one knee

And proposed to me in the sound of silence

<In the space of eons>

<(The song of mitochondria in the mahogany of andromedas; each tree before my forest)>

(Withered by tooth and tongue)

<Twisted on the cross>

<Wearing the crown of my own creation>

I knew the way of land and the hourglass of sands

I held between the lines a symphony of Olympians

I (once knew/was) the hand of God

And (what am I) now?

<A deprived wyvern, a beggar starved of riches>

<Tipsy in wisping lithium of picturesque ricocheting through the bands of chrysanthemums>

<The strands of amaranth anchored to sanctuaries lacquered handkerchief of riverbanks>

(The space, the shadow, the parchment)

(Empty)

Nothing

 

I Am

 

(For) you cannot know war without peace

Or peace without war

Yet (now, battered and broken)>

I am free (from the tendrils of both)

(I enjoy the wine of nothingness; and)

I am

(The wrath of God)

(Laughing in the face of (my) madness)

I am

Comfortably alone)

(And resigned in that lonesomeness)

<I am>

Lost to the archives of time’s library

A secret passage running through schizophrenic pages, pictures, literature yellowed, frayed

I am

My own god

Of stillness

Knowing

Suffering

And death

As every crevice of it all lies in the palm of my hand

With every bloodied sputter

Of my ragged breath

With the current, the stream of this consciousness swelling over the riverbank

The sound of mind is silent to an empty ear, deranged by forgotten names

Old friend, remember me and this voice turned static, turned tongueless, drawn out of line, metre

Bar, and tuneless

Let these words be a headstone for tomorrow

A crown of empty promises (that promise emptiness)

Worn away by the grit split down the middle and whittling away at the rock of my mind

The crocheted coast of my ferociously woven oceans

Bloated like a tongue over the lips of the once young beaches and sun-drowned skies

Half buried by the sands of time

As we slip through your infinite fingers, o god

The meadows of our renaissance crescendo into bending memory of hallucinogenic heaven

Like grains on the fields of alabaster asphodel and the nectareous depths of Elysium

Worn away by the grit

Split down the middle with our spittle

A river (of mud) whittling away at the rock of my mind

Under the yawning (lithium) cliff of (mithril) omniscient indifference

Wandering the blunt treeline of blind wilderness for the aimless graveyard of words

God wouldn’t allow me to find

Digging with my splintered fingers at the endlessness of stripped away sentences

Wrenched like a screw from the scaffolding and plywood of my pages

Housing my shivering spirit under the shelter of a tar shingled roof of clouds

So much of me left behind in bending streets

And the forked trails of azaleas a fortress of trees in my orange coral forest of Ouroboros

Soaring in the metamorphosis of incorporeal oracles born in spores of chlorophyll

Dancing mannequins of shunned men free

Chasing their own shadows lengthening down into the night

Wanting only to hunt

Perhaps for meaning in their empty lives

Hollow drums without an orchestra

Welcomed by the static noise of their homeless oasis

Hiking through splintered scintillation

In infinite mimicry of the skinning whispers of photosynthesis

Slipping through the bloom of a ballooning broom of looming cumulus against the dusty floor

Wound up by the out of tune dunes of the all-consuming womb of full moons

Howling into the balaclava of faceless night

And the featureless day

Worn away in its different shades

Shapeless clay heated and kneaded into bottomless terracotta menageries and mausoleums

Freed by the speleothem of a cartwheeling helix

And I find when I look up to the stars cold as ice

This flat old sky is bottomless, lipless, without teeth or tongue, but smiles upon me

Still, (unmoving, immemorial, and immovable)

Like death

I had forgotten

How to accept it

To hold it in my hands and feel the weight of its pommel in my never-ending palms

I hear my fingers scream

You should have died

You should of died

You should of died-

Into the crippled son of the morning light

Into the deep depression of its setting

This is it

This is all I am

Death, I had forgotten

I do not know the touch of gods on my scarred body

“You should have died”

“You should of died “

“You should have died”

Should never been born

You should of given up back when it was easy

“You should have been better”

But I’m not

I am not better

I am just human

Just the mirror image of you

The shadow of my former self

Not ready to fully accept myself, or you

Both ends of the spectrum colourless

Chasing my tail from morning till night

Reaching into the night sky for the moon

And grasping nothing but snowflakes and ashes

Into the early morning

Tossed from the turning churning sea of my own spirit, drowning in it now

Let the armor weigh me down

Let the sword fall from my fingers

Let the grooves of the riverbed feel the smooth sharpness of my spotless, immaculate blade

Let me climb out of the depths of (heaven and hell’s rivers) defenceless

Let me hoist the flag of my struggle, (my defeat, my colours, feathers turned grey)

Let me leave the cage of my mind and fly in freedom throughout these incalculable skies

Let me yearn for the sun and fall back to earth as Icarus did, splintered on his own curiosities

Let the grand pits of Tartarus in the stomach of Gaia ground me now, welcome me to Valkyries

Let my heart (of Yggdrasil) yearn to stretch its branches and roots throughout the realms

Let me bring myself into fleeting moments and bite deeply into its plump bulbous fruit

Once more

I’m sorry I had forgotten you

(Both ends of the spectrum colourless)

Life was all I knew

I straddled (the middle road)

The line that separated the three of us

Alone

 

Sparks (Drawing Heavily from the Manga and Anime ‘Berserk’ by Kentaro Miura)

 

Sparks, the light born in the clash when two swords meet

They serve me as well

Throughout my life, the moments, and people, that have defined me

Have all been illuminated by sparks

This is it

All I am

I don’t know my dream

But from this day forth I wield my sword for no other man

I will seek you out

And sparks will light my path

As the clash when two swords meet

Has served me well

These tenebrous nebulas shredded by September reverends of Neverland

These torchlit orchestras of forked tongue paths in the wrath of alabaster chapters

These sundown’s melting caramel aurora borealis on the geyser horizon

These bonfires of dreams teeming with dead men’s innocence

They shroud, they breathe, they wriggle, they cry, they consume me

The night is calling

I answer back

With fallen stars pouring from my eyes

There is nothing I do not question

Anymore

When we see things differently

How can we share the same views?

With our different ideals of perfection

Blind to each other

Seeing freely

Incendiary windmills glisten with lithium precipitation

The ridge of ideals kneeling before the wheels of wheatfields

The golden barley, the sapphire stars in a cobblestone sky

The clouds, and the whetstone, the millstone, and the sun

The sum of it all grinding itself, whittling away until all that’s left is the fingers of splinters

The end of some thing, some small figure, no bigger than a loaf of bread

The teeth and tendrils of combing trees that wear crowns of clouds

Their pitchforks raised in defiance of the heavens and their long stretch of empty

The mob moves on, builds a campfire, sleeps for the night

Before terrorizing the morning, too beautiful to be praised by the spawn of men

Their sparks call to the night sky

Drunk on the wine of riverbeds

It does not answer

It does not care

It nonchalantly makes its way across the (split) ends of the earth and back again

<Time and time again, without (a pleasant way to) end>

As everything else falls into (scrutiny, absurdity, and) obscurity

It watches the ending of all beginnings

And does not make a sound

Until the last bored nail is beaten into submission

By the hammer of God

It is the welcome matt for angels

Something to wipe their soles clean of this earth

(As mortal men renovate his house)

I am illuminating this scene somewhere in the long hallway of my mind, behind locked doors

I am the light born in the clash when his two swords meet

I am the empty when the spark fades

I am the parchment

Without the burden of these words

I am the song

Without the mouth that sings it

This is it

All I am

I am the memory

Without anyone to remember him

I am the human

Struggling to be

This fight called life at least shows me that they still value me

Enough to bleed for

I am not the light

I am the long stretch of black behind the gold statuette of God

Illuminated by the maple leaf-stained sun

I am the shadow brought to light under brush and foliage of canvas

The moment before yours

Fleeting and docile and alone

The cold wind that murmurs to the pits of your ears

I am the man dangled by another man’s dream

Wishing to more than his shadow

Wishing

To be better

An imperfect copy

Of an imperfect copy

Seeking something more

Than just myself, wielding my sword, the hesitant enemy, and (thinking about) how I’ll kill them

But I suppose in the end, we were all one man

Right?

I didn’t choose this

This is who I am

How about you?

Are you the only man

Who doesn’t dream?

God?

So where do you go from here

Is this not the path that will lead you to your dream

It is what you believe in, right?

What’s holding you back now that you’ve come this far?

You were always looking skyward

Focused on it, rising, climbing, soaring

Like a hawk flying alone

Reaching for the highest precipice

Always watching us from above

Never down here

Crawling with the rest of us

Calm, cold, supreme

Letting nothing stand in your path to victory

If that’s the way that it really is,

Then what does that make me?

A (wild)flower?

Burning in the flames of the (phantasmagorical) orb

(Backing itself canoeing) over (the lip of, the waterfall, of) my own horizon?

The nothing

In opposition to your everything?

The yesterday that fears tomorrow?

A dance that ends

In the same way as its own beginning, forever

The seed left behind by the burning flower

Is gratifying

Its virtue

Is enough

 

A Broken Sword

 

How can you gain anything without losing?

How can a diamond change?

I am finite and young

Infinity cannot say the same

Timelessness is pointless

I care only for the fleeting sweetness of the moment

(Berries) Tart and then inaudible over the eons

Gone in an instant

Fondled by history

Forever is boring, (permanence is everlastingly vague and purposeless)

Beauty can only be attached to the evanescent

The crescent moon will always be there crocheted in the ripped fabric of the (tie-dyed) skies

Let me be better than that

Let the crack of my whip write volumes out of a second

Let the end be remembered, (until it is not)

Endlessly, until no longer (there is an ear to be) heard (from) in the roar of time

Important, greater, in contrast

Only in comparison to the great boredom

The scarcity of true meaning found in something that is truly endless

Truly undying and infinite

Ugliness

The gnat that will never leave

You and I will know everything, (overlook everything), and overthink everything about it

To see it as more than what it is

And that freedom to be without opposition

I will not let it mock the wilting flower

Of its moment

For the second passed, that is truly, only felt, only loved, only tasted

Once

You could say

That which (cannot/will not) die and disappear (like smoke over a bonfire into the night)

Does not know

What it means to live

Does not know

What it means to die

(Does not know)

(What it means to lose itself to age, and doubt, and forgetfulness, and change)

<And with the beauty of that, it cannot compare>

And (so it) loses all its beauty (to me)

(Within) all its feathers

Living only on the ground for eternities, (waiting still-framed, for nothing)

Instead of perched on the precarious twigs and branches of the trees

(Never ruffled)

<Crumpled like silk sheet pages balled in the soft steady hands of a writer>

(Never tested)

Without ever having the ephemeral chance to spread its wings

And (attempt) to fly

But I do not hate them, or you, or even myself

For any of this

Hate is

A place where a man who can’t stand sadness goes

A corner in a pitch-black room where the (painted) sun will never reach (with its yellow brush)

<Of curdled light under the milky way>

It is simple to be this way now

I am just human

<Impermanence permeates like a cry from the soul, fetal, wild, yet as weak as a newborn>

I cannot wait until the end of days

Either leap from the branch

Stretch past the canopy of the mind

Or never be born (with wings) at all

Author's Note

I was having trouble with the website, so I was unable to share the latest version of this poem, but now it is here. Also, there is more work to be done in terms of sheer density and writing. Enjoy.

"I'm the bug inside you, I have your back to the wall, Survive the fall from grace, Drink of the wine of the wrath of God" Excerpt from the song 'Forced Battle' (By Shoji Meguro)

Most of my poems can be differing lengths depending on the time you want to spend reading them. You can avoid reading anything brackets, and anything in grey or lighter text, 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.

Reviews

[Pete]

there is so much depth to you. reading you is like trying to climb out of a well.

Blemished cemetery of spiralling hieroglyphics
Like gypsies in whiplash fishing glyths for blissful Icarus

i always need an oxygen tank after reading you ... :)

[R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)]

Thanks so much Pete, always happy when you enjoy my poems. :)

[Brad Dehler]

Wow a lengthy poem indeed. I had to take it in a few steps. There was repetition, I felt perhaps was to emphasize anguish potentially. I liked how you wrote "As the flower opens its innocent petalled palms". Very long, I can see your style all in it.

[R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that you enjoyed it, and my style of poetry. If you ever want me to read and review your work, message me.

[Brad Dehler]

Ok thank you. Yes- anytime

[KWP]

IT's rather long, and also a tad repetitive, and also very telling, perhaps try and use the language of showing a bit more so the reader can stay with you .. it's a big expanse you are covering here, do you think you could condense it?

The greatest of seeker / sufi poets who tackled the bigness of the universes human complexities were able to show us the hand of god without ever mentioning his name ...

Please, it's just feedback, I generally say it how I see it :D

[R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)]

I respect your honesty, although I disagree, I know that your opinion is just as important as mine. Thanks for the review.

[KWP]

At least think on it … any successful author will tell you there must never ever be a word unnecessary in any piece of writing …

[Gee]

Which is why my "epics" are so, so short :)

[KWP]

Oh! I see.

😊

[R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)]

I enjoy writing the way that I do. Completely up to you how you judge its value, but it has value to me.

[KWP]

Good - that’s all it’s about.

I feel the same way. But I do like hearing thoughts and opinions contrary to my own. Helps me learn and grow.

Enjoy the write 😊

[R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)]

Thank you, I feel criticism can be quite healthy, and you sharing your viewpoint with me helps me understand what people like.

[Davidgeo]

There is a song called "emerge" by a band called Fischerspooner.

I don't have a lot of purpose but I promise it has a bit of meaning.

[Davidgeo]

.... this song is relevant to not just this piece.....

I do really want you to collaborate with me if only to show you brevity. I love your work but, it's painfully long. Not to say you should change just to say you might want to adjust.

[R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)]

I’ll check out Emerge sometime this evening. We might still be able to collab, just send me a stanza through messages and I’ll send you the next stanza. Or we can find another way to do this, so many ways to collab.

[light and ashes]

You have to be quite brilliant. Your vocabulary is ridiculous. I wish I could keep up with it, but unfortunately I can not. I have to confess. I end up looking up many words I don't know.
On to the poem: Amazing read, I do have a couple of complaints, though. One, it seemed like you repeated yourself too often, or the same point too often. Two, I feel it could have been condensed a little (but I guess that's not your style).
Also, and this is not really an complaint, just an observation, I've noticed that almost all of your poems have a somber tone and a dark message. I enjoyed, Zion, as well.

[R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)]

It's fine, when I read other poems even there are constantly new words that I want to integrate into my works, and occasionally, I even end up forgetting certain words and coming back to them months later when I feel they fit a new poem after reading an older poem. The really problem with this whole poem was the feeling of repeating itself. I felt while I was writing like the words weren't coming to me, and that I wasn't at my best, so I had to repeat in order to gain ground. There are cases where repeating certain phrases in previous poems had been a way to present parts of a poem back into the main light of the work, rather than seeming repetitive. But I was unable to replicate this, even though I tried. I would never try to condense my poems, as many fellow writers and poets tell me to, but I feel takes away from my ability to reach every corner within the work, yet I understand where this can be troublesome or cumbersome. I have several mental health issues, and suffer from depression, as well as a love of all things dark. You're absolutely right that there is often a dark message, as I view the world from a negative perspective much of the time. Really glad you enjoyed the poem, especially Zion, thank you for the review as well.