Half Life

Soft as the downy skin
that covers the fruits,
fat and fallen,
of summer and spring,
as delicate a sheathe
does cover my own
make-up of pliant skin,
blood and bones,
but unlike the fruits
of the tree,
who take their food
so easily,
I am made barren,
emaciated and at loss
in taking the nutrients
to make the self ripe
and plump,
for I feed so rarely
these days
and the skin gets weak
and breaks in many ways,
ripped, or pinched, or sliced
or gripped, or torn
as easily as a new born
babes- a fine cut like
hair across a razor blade
will leave my hands stripped
of their primordial clay
and adorned with all
the evidences
(pock marks and scabs
and body malformed)
that's indicative of strife
or battering, bludgeoning, force
that causes aches and spooling
pools of claret to emerge,
and by the bite of
teeth, or some other
course, the liquid is
made to pour forth,
and of all the extensions
which from me reach,
it is, particularly,
the hands I need:
these hands create the
language I read and leave
behind the signs that
indicate that I once were,
which is "to be",
and yet, for my indelible
pains,
it befalls that I rarely
eat,
and consequentially,
as I write,
I am cut,
and brought to decrease
while before me, I create
an inexhaustible totem,
and all the while behind
me, I bleed.

Eve of Mercy

A satire.

How can it be
That man won't war,
To peel back flesh
And part of blood
When man hath fallen,
(With due course to Eve)
And ever since
Hath done no good.
Stripped of our virtue,
Crown and wings,
(The ilk of which
Our muse doth sing)
We become such folly beasts
And set loose upon
Our mistress Peace
And Justice, both, so
Virginal
Of whom we ravage
And abhor,
And for their innocence
Don't know
The heinous crime
That does befall
Them
That do not wish for power
But seek only meekness
Until their final hour;
An hour of which, us;
Man, will bring to be
About so much more quick
With our fire and iron and
Malice, all as though we deign
To make the thunder fall
And as by lightning-
Scorched,
We leave the land
And profess a fallacy:
That it were His command.
And for all the well,
We make double ills
Afraid as though
Our kindness
May spill,
For our mother, mercilessly, did
(For ill begotten gains!)
Quest for knowledge
And for what she found
Condemned us all to sin.
For the truth is known:
Humanity is nothing
And humankind is little more
Than a plaything
To our natural laws-
To be shot, or burned or drowned
Or left to some fate
So much worse,
And for it all,
There's little to be done
But to ceaselessly follow
Our course and run
Our piece of earth
Beyond its ruin,
And all because
Of a woman's doing.

A Song of Springtime Sadness

Generally, with the lightness of gentler weather, we often find ourselves infused with a preternatural happiness that eclipses our worries and makes us all feel so lofty, to be one with the changing nature of the earth. Generally, this is the case, but not always. And so much more rarely does one feel this love when they feel as though their own source of joy had been disrupted by change otherwise than the purely climatic.
With the passing of time I've felt so often a pain now so that the pang itself is ever so familiar, and yet it never gets any easier, and every day is just another day I live with suffering.

Around me are so many noises;

the manifold voices of singers

ring out from out their box-speakers

like phantom messages of the past.

The wind blows, as always,

rustling leaves and carrying clouds,

the blue sky burns into my retina.

This day should be so complete,

almost, it is, but…

There is an untraceable element

that compounded my happiness

and it dissipated

the day that you dispersed.

Now every day is just as bland

as the day proceeding

and each is just as saddening

as the day that follows.

Every song rings untrue

that any song be sung

without you.

And even should that element

of happiness ever return,

how could it ever fit the same,

when it will never be

as it was

on the day you left me

On sexual frustration

Where do you get
off at
Being so hot
and always waiting,
Anticipation
rising for the moment
where we might
at last
just
drop down to each other's side
to lie a while
and shut our eyes

Something old

Such a lithe figure
I cast-
a spectre
and little more,
little being all
that can be seen
of fat, attached
to my body and bones.
What serves for repast,
a vector remains
of where once
there was a hole
within my moral fibre
within my very soul.

A truth

Of late I've lost the gumption to keep doing what it is I am. As a consequence, I've inevitably been trying even harder just to do it more, and not allow myself to become comfortable with resting. I have tried to do all the many things that have been needing to be done, and ultimately, I have worn myself so thin that now my vocal chords hurt just to speak or swallow and my brain hurts just to turn my head and process my new sights.

Today I felt like sitting down on a cold wall and never thinking to get up from there.

I work a job I hate, to scrape together a measly survival, so I may continue to exist in this place, where I fall ever and ever into greater debt to those around me, who I must ask to bail me out, so I might work more and harder still to pay my rent, which permits me to live here and write my novel in the spare hours I so seldom get where I'm not wanted to be doing something else.
I need an advancement from a publisher, so I can quit my job and pay my bills and sit down to write with a full stomach.

Right now, I have an empty stomach, an empty cupboard and an empty wallet all of which I must put to use to make empty promises of payment to a man who doesn't really know or understand me.

Today I felt like never coming home again and just walking in an ever continuous line until I wore away to nothing. My muscles threadbare as the hole in my jeans. The holes in my shoes and boots and trousers. The holes in my t-shirts and jackets and coats and jumpers... There are holes in just about everything I own.

Today I have felt destitute because, with my rushing body striving to be in so many places and always on time, with my ailing health and failing memory- I have left behind me a trail of my possessions, and as I look back and expend my energy to reclaim what was lost, I fail to see the complications amounting in front me.

Today I felt like crying. I have not, in so very long, been sure of anything as much as I am of this: I am slowly losing to everything. There will not be much of me left.

I never claimed
to be anything
more
than what I am.