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.

She's Crying at the Mic

If I'm adrift,
Cast off and drowning in
Some sea of ages,

Because,
The shifting spotlight
Of my life,
Moved out from under my feet-

Would you pull me in?

Would you take a piece of me with you
And let the weight of
Time's water, drain itself
Out of your eyes?

Or could you bring yourself
To stop the ship?
Drag my waterlogged body
Onto the deck,
And put it on display
For all to see?

Stand at attention and proclaim
With guitar in hand,
All my greatest qualities.
Perhaps even,
While a piano downplays
My most grievous faults.
Witness to the world,
My dripping wet,
Frightening and cold
Immortality.

Would you manufacture
Everything-
All the things I was missing.
Perhaps
Let the water refract
And shift alignment
So the light of your words
Goes off its mark?

Like a spear fisher
Taking solace
In his empty stomach.

Letting time stream
Out of your gut-
Straight to your mouth,
And all over
Everything I was.
Covering all of my sins
So that I am just,
A salty still life
Painted thick in
The pigment of
Watery platitudes.

Drowned
In the perfect memories
That never were.

You're Doing It Wrong

Children,
Trying to skank
In a circle pit.
The music is good,
But what the fuck
Are they doing?

Goddammit I feel old.

In my day,
That shit got you,
An elbow to the neck.

Is this their first concert?

Oh, there they go!
Someone fell.
The universe
Is right
Again.

Masculinity

Boys,
Turn to Men.
And Men,
Turn to dust.

I believe there's
A vital moment
Somewhere in there.

Scholars say,
That adulthood comes
Tied to knowledge,
Sex sweat,
And thoughts of
Six feet of soil.

How anti-septic.

So what of those,
Who believe it is tied
To the moment his
Face breaks
Under your fist,
And he screams for
You to stop?

Some would sneer,
In self satisfied smugness
At the honesty of violence.
Contented in their,
Fang-less toothy smiles.
They,
Who have never needed
To last the night.
They,
The unproven for whom,
There is no well of strength to draw from.

They,
The Emasculated.

But,
I am not one
Who breaks bones
Simply to grow.

I do not believe
That the change
Is some finite,
Discrete instance,
With manly horns,
Drums
And a great big brass band
Simply to herald the dropping of
Your testicles.

Rather,
I believe in the best of things,
Being built on,
The best of foundations.
That an avalanche can grow,
In a properly prepared mind.

This vital moment can come.

The world,
Piling on around you.
Your back,
To the wall.
And those you thought you'd need,
Are nowhere to be found.

That you can reach down,
Past the place,
You keep
Your nightmares
And find the strength
To stand alone.

Your power will surge
In glory
And you can summon
The strength to proclaim,

"Fuck the brass band,
I'm a man now
And I don't need it."

Evening's scribbles

Like every night,
I sit bathed
In pale computer light.

As I scratch another
Witless retort to
Whichever partner
I've found for the evening.

I don't yearn
For the sound of
some banal video.
Nor the ringing nag
of a conversation window.

Only for your merest greeting.

The effect is
more or less constant.

I need to be quiet, however
To notice the rattling
of that empty
Part of me
That you fill.

I know
You've never understood.
Doubtless,
You've disbelieved.
You never did get
Why I feel the way
I do.

There's something
In your eyes,
And the slowness
Of your smile.
It just brings

A fire out in me.

But every evening's
Dreaming is answered
By itself.
I know,
When I think of
Your eyes-
Those lips-
Some joke off your tongue.
Or your every
Wondered
Curve.
That they are
In the arms
Of another man.

My want for you
And your perfect,
Happy living
Emasculates me
With all of the
Kilometers
That we are apart.

But that slow smile
Still sticks with me
Every time.

Every time.