Nightmare

A nebulous night approaches, encroaches an exhausted mind,

Harried horse birthing a vision into sleep after lullaby,

In suspense, suspended heavy fog, roots tangled a haunting bind.

Hell bent, the bell sent shrieking screams awry around the town, call cry.

Grandmother’s sleep trapped in an iron tower that pierces the sky:

Black like Bucephalus, untamable, only the strongest could reign,

To scale these stairs would take generations to reach, to breach, so high.

There were whispers heard, a myth people were afraid to name, to deign.

Entering with your sanity about you, escaping insane,

Who’s to look in your mind, say your hallucinations aren’t real,

It pains me to hear your unconscious replay of past conscious bane.

Her perception became reality, a hand to play, to deal.

What have you seen in daylight hours that has never had chance to heal?

Regrets from commissions or omissions? Responsibility,

For moments that continue to punctuate deep sleep, all surreal.

Framing your innermost fear into sedated reality.

Is this my last Herculean task, a test of ability?

Torn about heaving you out of corrupted dreams, bringing you home,

I worry that helping will only weaken your resolve, you see

A caterpillar must emerge from cocoon transformed, on its own.

A butterfly’s wings gain strength by breaking shell, start of a new tome,

I wanted to get her but some things we may not do together,

Eventually we must all stand alone in order to reach throne.

My absence didn’t make sense to her, but it was for the better.

Realize that you’re not alone now; I’m with you through the weather,

Remember that if I tried to save you from the monsters, the pain,

I would only achieve in leaving you crippled, to life a debtor.

Wings no longer able, you would have to take on the path with cane.

The night is old, dawn approaching, a struggle battled not in vain,

Mother mare gallops into the recesses of her forest to rest,

Day becomes the eye of the storm, the worst at bay, a hurricane.

Living two lives, one in bed, only option left – to give her best.

Soldier Son

Soldier Son carries on,

Through minefields of muddied memory,

Soldier Son gone.

They said it would only be darkest before the dawn,

That we would be fighting the easiest enemy,

Soldier Son carries on.

Oh… how they got the story wrong,

Fools underestimated adversaries’ ability,

Soldier Son gone.

Moved about the chessboard carelessly like a pawn,

March marked a meat grinder, no plan B contingency,

Soldier Son carries on.

Wanted to see if we had what it took, brains and brawn,

Participated in the great game, sacrifice marked our history,

Soldier Son gone.

Developed bond, above family, the lot previously drawn,

Brothers shared war, covered sixes, forged fraternity,

Soldier Son carries on,

Soldier Son gone.

Cancer

I can be critical of myself, burning

as I examine my skin under scope,

micro issues whose potential could

turn to tumours, malignant rumours.

I harden a soft exterior, growing calluses,      

but leaving a heart exposed, disposed to

love’s blows, denying it time to turn callous.

The Eagle and The Wolf

I found time to walk outside, rest after hectic days,

Watch a clear steel blue winter sky blend into bleeding reds,

A palette that matches, reminded me of your eyes,

So bright and vibrant, ever more so piercing when passionate.

An eagle flew by, guided by the setting light,

Heading towards a new hope, a new day, escaping the night,

The chaos of reality that I sense myself slowly being bound to,

Destined to grind ‘cause of the circumstances my personality found itself in,

In order to sprout wings and fly out of this trap, ideas never big enough,

Expecting my mind to craft new bars for novel cages,

To work toward breaking out of, more years invested into,

Individual independence, despising ever having to depend on others,

Clashing against my wolfish nature; a need for family,

A community to support, to erect, to inspire, set a fire under,

Hunting with my brothers to feed our sisters and mothers,

Raising sons to overcome fears, ghosts of lost fathers,

Daughters infused with confidence, values above all others.

I understand an Eagle’s need to fly alone; I feel it within myself too,

But to see a lone wolf surviving without kin in the world,

Is an aberration, a Wilderness’s wild, nature’s mutation,

I couldn’t handle such a sight, a vacant existence I’d fight.

So I came to terms with both sides of the coin,

Intertwined but at the same time happening in order,

Stopped chasing tall tales of tails, screwed head on right, tight:

A focused development of me, to envision, eventually see the best return on we.

Thesaurus

You may flip through the thesaurus,

Searching the pages for evidence,

Of synonyms for my sins,

Feelings that came

  before principles,

Moot points.

  Cases to be

     cared for,

      found no

more.

I deaded him, abandoned the boy,

Murdered at night, and let the man be born,

Snow fell to wake anew in the morning,

Mourning over desire no more.

Death arrived on

a winter day,

With heavy

snows carpeting,

Dancing around,

Foxtrot found:

A distinguished existence,

That was meant,

To extinguish – or to be? No,

to be no more.

Festina Lente

I hustle hastily… slowly,

See, one and the other are part of the same,

Cause I got patience for our hour of the game,

Everyday moves move quickly,

Composing decades that build up gradually,

A speed boiled down to a steady molasses.

As a crab I relate to the tortoise,

An ability to introspect, introvert into self,

Meditate on movement, stay in the moment,

Hurry left to the harried, a hare’s race.

Dissolved

With how long I’ve worn my heart on my sleeve,

I’m surprised to sense my spirit still kickin’, stayin’ alive.

Suspected hope was becoming worn down and tired,

Rumbled from sleep after dreams were constantly humbled,

Found an opening, bled out, and got up to leave.

So you understand why sometimes I’m scared to say that…

I missed you, in case you misuse

My emotions, the commotion that clouds

My head, wrestling, twisting with the road ahead.

You abuse the power that now swells your mind,

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely,

Vesuvius erupts, ruptures this connection completely,

A Roman Pompeii covered in negative energy,

Twisted love you see, you influence all of me.

And I understand the game, yet that only makes it worse,

That I know you need to be suspended into suspense,

Slowly, without seeing it coming, make it exciting,

Senses acute, hearing, touching, sights frightening,

Running away to give me an opportunity to give chase.

Two type A personalities crashed together, face to face,

Found that games couldn’t B part of their case.

Fuck it, my maturity finally reached a critical point,

Found the bugs, overwrote my insecurities,

A new code programmed for how to live life,

To say what you mean, mean what you say too,

Even if in these tense tenuous moments,

These sayings have to extend into the nether, be mean,

Cause I only got one go at this, it was not meant to be facetious,

Becoming true to who I am, I let reality crowd around.

For how could I call myself a friend if,

I strayed from laying out the truth;

A partner without capital invested?

A lover with conditional devotion?

In order to see this problem solved,

I would need to dip my ego into solvent,

See its atoms come apart, become dissolved.

Finite

Witnessed my mentor, and certain family members pass away.

Experienced feeling a friend flee, curtail the call, turn astray,

Plague took hold, spread waste; he barely kept it at bay.

Another relative lived by the gun, to work up to dying by it:

Riddled end-to-end, fountain job, rolled up in a carpet,

They bunned his existence, smoked up like a cigarette.

It’s all relative; where we stack our chips, the sum of made bet,

Some ancestors succumbed, rock bottom, their wills became bottled,

The rest laid to rest by stress, old age, a character coddled.

How could I not value life’s demands,

Let down those that believed in, imagined tremendous

Potential in a man that could at one point fit in one hand?

Buoyed by their beliefs my nature stayed conscious,

Hard won blood, continued to odd daughters, even a setting son.

I couldn’t bear lowering their memories nautical miles, thousands of feet

Into fathomless trenches, deepest ocean depths where light is shunned.

My spirit – a ship sailing strong stormy strident seas,

Caught in a hustle, navigating strife, I followed technique:

“I was left to die by the doctors in the Children’s Hospital,

But I never lose hope, success is psychological.”

Understanding this concept, I was able to get over it,

Climb mountains by standing on the shoulders of giants.

The philosophers, scientists, and generals that painted literature,

Intertwined with the past generations that carried me to this place:

A time, an opportunity, you see – me to we. Intimately finite,

With the possibility of becoming, travelling past, infinite height.

Hands

Ink stained, wrist strained,

fingers callused:

A writer’s.

Untraceably

quick, kidnapee:

A thief’s.

Left, right, hook, cut,

rearrange bites:

A fighter’s.

Blood coat painted,

sainted to save:

A surgeon’s.

Rough terrain, strength

beyond restrain:

A laborer’s.

There is much to learn from one’s hands.

If you look closely at these lands

you could begin to understand

the inevitable struggles,

multisyllable successes,

commute through community that,

engineered this individual.

Rhetoric and Reality

I’m slumped in the train station, watching

passerby’s walk, run by, taking deep breaths,

they heave and sigh, tremendous loads to bear,

every man Atlas, woman Amazon, all amazing,

carrying absent others above self, not to be

bothered by the nihilistic academic ivory tower

fantasies, when they’re steady building dynasties.

Projection

You can see it in their eyes,

the want, the desire, the need,

the hope, the despair, the love,

the hate for something lost…

Or they’re all my projections

projected, black and white film

transposed onto the racks of

people’s brains – dolls, puppets,

marionettes I’ve all twisted up

in my attempt to breath life

into my ideas, see them dance.

A perspective lacking nuance,

lenses fogged up, missing focus.

Lucid

Technically my thoughts are in Technicolour,

visions multisyllabic, alight, an audible hover

vibrating through raindrops, rainbow covers.

Say My Name Twice, Baby

What happens to a dream differed?

Does it dry up like a raisin?

Or does it e        x       p       l        o       d       e?

People didn’t know what purpose brought them here,

Most only knew that they didn’t fit in with their families, schools, and towns,

Were welcomed to a criminal underworld, prostituted to produce, finance art.

My cousin started smoking cigs, then succumbed to sucking on crack

after moving weight, but only ended up losing money and mass.

No wonder I had no dreams; I only had nightmares back then,

Police was no help, extorted own, had their gang protected by badges.

Anarchy prevailed when the hand of the law was complicit in crime,

Citizens were left to fend for themselves so we took the times into our hands.

My visions were vicious, circular; squares didn’t accept them, tangentially me,

They figured I had a shady past, so I was left to sell to shady characters.

Without people to engage I was delegated to minding mine own business,

Did what I had to do – Black? White? No, my world was, is grey.

I liked the bleakness of it all, cause you could dream in that,

Dream new things – innovate from the rabble, the rubble.

Opportunity to project self from the projects, an astronaut builds a spaceship

in New York City – economic engine of the world! Hot, yet was

on the cusp of going chill that winter – bankrupt.

1981, a most violent year bubbling over the New Year in New York City.

Lawlessness led to a population jaded, desensitized to violence,

Milkmen had to protect wares with guns, crowbars, broomsticks cut down,

Whatever they could get by with, pick up from where they left off.

The challenge lies in acting or forgetting, no in between half step,

Try to engage in this dance and you’ll get stepped on.

Without a wholehearted attempt, good or bad, you can’t be in it and not of it.

I was immediately schooled when I entered this jungle,

On how to avoid violence, shelter oneself from evil doings,

But sometimes you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time,

Sometimes you have to do some wrong to turn your life right.

Saw a kidnapping, but shit… this wasn’t a kid, this was a major drug dealer,

Decided to turn a blind eye, mind my business, but the greedy keep pushing,

The next week they attempted to kidnap me, and I wasn’t about to take it lying down,

They lied, so I ended up lying in a pool of my own blood,

Shot in the back, exact position of the .38 slug in the base of my neck.

This was a violent, chaotic, dark, grim atmosphere, an incredible fall out –

A duality arose, incredible positivity, stemming from a culture of authenticity.

The times kept changing but we enjoyed those years. Was it tough?

Yea… it was tough, but I refused to give up – it's the challenge,

I couldn’t live without challenge, and I can’t live without it now,

I need those OH YEA moments – OH YEA, you think you can get away…

You don’t want to live the rest of your years looking over your shoulder,

Coked up sleep, eyes wide open, sweatin’ it out by the window paranoid,

Worried ‘bout fam, your main, sides, and moms, cause a motherfucker would

threaten with a hit like that, just to flush you out of your hole.

People from all over the world are attracted to NYC,

Because it’s got the best of the best and the worst of the worst…

New York, New York,

so bad…

they had to

name it twice.

March to October, 1917

Time in the underground found

me meeting with many sorts, talk

arose with all for sport, bound to

strike gold, trying to understand

the vast brain, human pain, psyche.

Got to know a couple Communists

who still communed with God,

hid secret meetings from the Tsar

yet confessed to sins committed

for the party, claiming hate grew

in the populace due to the fate

of the hands of the rapacious few.

Rationalized blood shed for the

good of the people, commissions

taken on, these paid power brokers,

distributing bread, hope, & revenge.

Slipping

You wanted to combine minds, hit heads?

No worries, nowadays I’m seeing people…

People? As in more than one now?

Ah, sorry, a slip of the tongue, twisted I am,

Steep heights got me on a Freudian steeple.

Consignment

Boys be antsy

over the float,

buoyancy from

consignment

handed down,

plugged.

An assignment,

they could not

handle. Size

of their eyes

bigger than their

stomachs could

digest.

A regress, a loss

in profit, lost in debt.

Signs that meant

their days were

numbered.

Witness

Bear witness to

the den, the nest

of liars & thieves

that rely on wit,

bare brute strength.

Nestled amongst the

true, the innocent,

society’s sense,

lost on the cents,

flagrant nescience,

arrogant ignorance.

Mantra

No ifs, ands, or buts about

me, myself, and I, meditate

on confidence, the certainty

of mind, blind to doubt,

drown the dissent of a self

saboteur awry, far cry from

a person I see future in, high.

Art

Don’t worry, strip,

pull out the d s l r,

you can pull out

and still call it art.

Standards

Single till she stops

messing with heads,

changing the direction

of my attitude, dead-ends.

Until her connection is

sweeter than my solitude,

I remain sane, dimeless,

changed, print, impress

on brain stress less stream

visions that focus on étude.