Compromised

I'm suspended in some
Viscous murk
And I can't see my hand
When I wave it in front of my face.
My eyes can open whenever I want them to,
But it really doesn't matter.

Because when the sun finally rises,
Exposing wonder to my open eyes
He will still be closing in on me.

Walking calmly and with open hands
In his suit and tailored finery.
He'll be wielding some wicked knife,
Roughly sharpened into a wave
Like a garish knife for ceremonies
Some aztec priest might use
To cut out your heart
And hold it aloft for light.

With every step he takes
He begs me,
Pleads-
And I can even notice as his voice trembles
In desperation
To be allowed to prune my mind,
And weed around the edges-
To cut something out that terrifies him
In me.

But everytime his hands touch me,
Grab me in gloved hands
On my shoulders to comfort,
I'm always confused that he is
So utterly gentle.
That he assures me,
He wants the best for me,
That this is what friends are for.

I find that if I ever consent
To one of his logical propositions
Something in my gut
Makes me push forth flower petals
As an explosive oral warning
To the pressure building in my mind,
And at the back of my throat.
The petals paint the air
In all too cheerful hues
Garish and without nuance
Before falling to nothing.

But pain inevitably follows
When he is unimpressed
By my previous outburst
Proceeding to effortlessly catch me
In one fallacy or another
And I really don't know why
It doesn't wake me up out of this,
Because it has to be a dream
As it rips through me.
Tearing me apart.
As the roots of,
What I fear is
Some malignant idea, spreads its fibers
Through every inch of mine.

But they don't ever stop
As the sprouts spring
From the seed in my core,
Way down past any doubts
I may have posssessed.
They push and rip
Splitting and tearing
Skin from muscle
And bone from sinew.
Tearing my fingers from their nails,
Bursting them apart like little
Red blossoms in the air
Only to have them quickly replaced
By flower buds.
Flaying me asunder,
To pieces and pieces
And pieces
Even worming through from my soul
And forcing through
The ones under my feet
Rooting me so permanently to the soil
That I fear I'll never
Move past this point.

My eyes become hard to open,
Under the shade of a blooming flower
That has grown out of
Where my brain was supposed to be,

It tells me it loves me.

It says that before my eyes offend me,
Before they must be plucked
Like any offending growth,
They must be covered and hidden
From this world of lies.

The bloom in my skull assures me,
The beauty of the grain
And the cool moisture from my roots,
Can be reveled in forever.
But just before I close my eyes
I can see the man-
My friend,
Is terrified of me,
His blue eyes mirror mine back
In terror at the unmoving ornament
That I am becoming.

The rest of whatever is left
Of my pallid and broken skin hardens
Becomes inhuman and strange.
It is replaced by the defenses
The weed from inside me,
Assures me I need.

I eventually stand
At the heart of,
What has torn me apart.
With the remainder of
My life's blood beating only
To sustain the cancer that has grown
From its roots inside me.

I can't hear descent,
Its a wooden echo.
Nor the pleading the man is making
To be allowed one last chance
To save my mind
And to bring back
To wretched friend he loved.

I imagine him sighing,
Weeping a tear for my vanity
Gritting his teeth
And resolving to do
What he feels he knows is right.

What a fool.

When he attacks,
His knife
And every other tool he procures
Will bounce so beatlessly
Without bite
Off of my bark.

When he gives up,
And he will.
I'll stay right here forver,
Unmoving.
Reaching for the sun.

I can feel its love,
Deep within my soul.
So, come stand with me,
And revel
In what I've always known,
You've been seeking.
While you're at it,
Why not try my fruit?
The seeds don't hurt too bad,

Really.

Fungi

Preaching is pretty petals in his head
But on the wind, it brings sickly spores.
Tendrils of mourning, they feast on the dead
And the living, they corrupt to their cores.

Rooted deep in the cool damp of his fears,
Like always in darkness, fungus grows.
Clutching the book, he weeps desperate tears
More spores forth in prayer, repetition's throes!

Thus, as a vessel, he is bursting forth
Spores so thick, you'll choke on the platitude.
They should be hidden in some mirth, but he's
Rooted deeply. He lacks joyous aptitude.

These beliefs make him a small, broken man
Just spreading his spores as far as he can!

Progress

The din too often deafens
As an angry crowd screams,
And they always do.
Against our slow and steady progress
They are always
Rattling and railing,
With their faces contorted,
In poorly considered rage.

Whether aligned along the left
Or right margin,
They all reverberate the word
As a filthy and
Unfortunate curse:

Technology.

I think their issue
Like any other really,
Has all the facets
Of a sickly stone.
Also amusing
And...
Absolutely appropriate to the metaphor,
Is that they often shine
In opposition to one another.

Some see technology
And all the waves it makes
As a chill wind
Puckered forth
From a rotten mouth.
Pushing society sailing
From something they hold sacred.

They often scream of impropriety
Evil in the media
And the joy their teenagers find
Within
One another.
Then in one breath
The very same
Never missing a beat
They will rage at the safety it brings
To a woman's right
To practice control over her own body.

And they snarl so bitterly
When it illuminates
The empty, murky places
Their cherished father
Said he'd be hiding in.

And yet others array themselves
Across picket lines
Against them.
Frothing at the mouth
With breathless indignation.

These newcomers will acknowledge
Mankind's mastery
When their voices can be heard
Cross continents
Fiber optically.

But in Double-Think
That would astonish Orwell,
They will plead for
Magical mystery
And regression
Into some ridiculous Luddite nonsense.

They'll see science
It seems,
As a monolithic
Chainsaw ridden
Clear cutting
Smog spewing
Metal monstrosity,
Driven by an arrogant
Spectacle'd
Fuck
Wearing a lab coat.

Quite frankly,
I have to say that I feel
From the very bottom of my heart
That they've watched
Far too many episodes of Captain Planet.

Rather,
Technology is,
Your child seeing two candles on its cake
And your wife surviving labour.

Any other definition,
Is the raving of a fool
Who in belief, if not in words,
Glorifies the pig
Rolling in its own filth

Get out of the mud
The world is waiting,
And its wonderful.