040916A
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That friendly poison
leaves one’s blood slowly,
creeping as caterpillars creep
within the limbs,
allowing butterflies to enter
in the sun drenched afternoon.
The first blood stains
appearing on stalwart autumn trees,
reminding of the price of dreams,
and how one exacts it from another,
leaving the earth stained
with all manner of various intentions.
If the sword had not been pulled
out of the stone,
with such explosive force,
it would have meant more cutting away.
Something is always being cut away,
when the loss is least expected.
We are always cutting away,
at vague suggestions, cutting for treasure,
leading up to explosions of rage
at the constancy of treasons,
where neither blood nor oath has power
against what cuts right to, and shatters bone.
Why skull and bones is the lesson
as to perpetually breached hopes
rather than any Elysian reward,
as if there might be any honor
among such damned creatures
as ply their trade and their forgetting.
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040916B
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The future talks to the past
only in its riddles,
while looking back
always sees more than too much
and much too deep for any comfort.
Time being that jagged saw
that constantly cuts off
across most of what is most vulnerable,
leaving the stumps of history,
in hobbled advance,
propped up on ancient crutches of belief
singing the old songs
as if they meant anything more
past the echoes of their own past time.
There is all that hunger
for going back,
while ignoring future warnings,
as if the past holds some lost key
to doors that never opened and never will,
though made so seductive
the way a whore house is seductive
to a sex starved savage.
The way a gold coin is seductive
to a money starved pauper.
The way a stray whisper is seductive
to one who never really knows.
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040916C
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Whether you are a sparrow or a man,
there is always someone
that is trying to make you,
into a dinner, or a quick snack.
The worst of it is when it is someone
that you considered significant,
or someone that you believed
that you loved.
For it is proven endlessly true
that to be in the talons of a romance
is most often much the same
as being in the talons of war.
They say the big fish eat the little fish,
but the little fish
still try to even that score,
usually from behind of what goes forward.
I knew a woman once
who always liked to play
as if everything is on the edge of a knife.
She knew exactly where and how to cut,
to keep her victims alive.
Perhaps that is why I miss her
despite the scars that she left behind
from the bite of her blade.
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040916D
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I had not written to you,
in what amounts to the longest time.
You must have taken me for dead,
knowing some would take that as a blessing.
There is so very much that I need,
that I felt it was a conspiracy to distract me,
away from any thoughts of you,
while making me feel too broken to ask anything.
The kind of thing that happens
all too often between wars,
and other more brutal and common pastimes,
designed to create frustrations of passage.
I stare into my glass,
savoring the flavor of the moment,
as to a sixteen year old virgin,
stripped naked and aged sweet.
I have lost all taste
for most anything not of the spirit.
A sort of celibate whiskey priest
tasting of the body of a single malt.
Touched by that peculiar madness of sacraments
that drives one to being more and more alone
knowing that what is desired and dreamt
is always better than what appears in life.
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