The cataclysm of the modern

For Christopher Columbus

For Christopher Columbus

He stood on his mountain and sang,

Songs of deliverance and rape and torture,

He sat down and prayed to his lord:

His gold and his silver.

He cried out to his slaves,

To lay down and give up their arms,

For they were to be cut off,

If not an ounce of rare metal was

Derived from the mines.

And he dreamed of sickness

Being the greatest soldier of all,

Taking care of the heathens—

Taking care of his swelling dignity

Tardive Dyskinesia

Tardive Dyskinesia



A new beginning, a cemented truth,

Holding the animal inside, hidden,

Lost from the bubble world outside

This nearest heaven,

Where reasons corpulence

Split the pants of the rapture,

To be lost without creatures

Jumping through barricades

In search of a forgotten time

Making rhymes in the dark,

Without the savior’s romance

To grab hold of me,

Shake me,

Pin me down,

Chemical straightjacket,

And stinging bees lament,

I fell from the sky

Long before there was the moon

High in the air,

Holding down the oceanic tides,

With the love

Sadness and forsaken humility

Of pernicious hatred

For normalcy all around,

While I stand here shaking,

Lost in tardive dyskinesia,

And filled with the bone cold

Tiredness of last week’s wine,

Colored sanguine red, happy,

Elated I felt the rocking

Of my own chair,

Higher than the prayers covetousness—

All before the horrible asp, bending

Her tail for to strike me down,

To the frozen ground below me,

And I sit here in loneliness,

And I sit here in pride,

As the sun’s wild eclipse,

Breaks through optics

Of another world—

Peering into another time,

When emotions felt real,

And the anchoring

Of time and distance were

The fashions of the day,

With her in my arms again,

Sighing with her sweet breath,

Hanging the whispers in the air,

As if an ethereal glow

Was emitted

By the horrible beauty

Of loss and redemption,

Caught up in the throes

Of the antipsychotic;

Tearing through my brain

Like lobotomist’s drill,

Pushing and pulling all dentrites

And remarkable kindling of a fire

In my heart,

Broken by the drug’s evil allure,

Proud as the chemical’s vice

Flowing through my thin veins.

The Liberating Ashtray

                        The Liberating Ashtray

Cognition's final breath

Into the night

Of a thousand dreams,

Where you would throw

All bad memories

Out the painful door of lust,

Out the window of desire,

Into the nullified streets,

And call upon the head’s final role,

In this night’s terror

Between the evaporated sheets,

Of sweat and

The smell of victory,

Trampled upon by

This coming storm,

Holding onto your terraforming hands,

You coughed in dignity,

Putting out the last of your nicotine,

Inhaling the smoke

Off love’s last heaving;

Of stimulated breathing,

Of endless days

Sitting in the shade,

From the fierce dark winds,

Blowing your hair although covered,

With a felt hat,

And you wore a smoking jacket,

Filtering out,

The dying suction

Of a thousand tiny stars,

Pulling you to them,

Away from it all,

Into the finality of life’s rich

Pageantry of death,

Wrapped in a folding suitcase

Headed for Heaven’s gate,

Stinging the bee’s grave,

Embers from the last smoke

Burn in your memory,

Like his jumping mind’s thoughts,

Here to there,

Back again,

All tied to a string of incontinence;

An affectation controlled

Through a hole in your veneer,

Wearing thin,

And cracking,

With devices of betrayal,

Hitched up

With him, holding you close,

Waiting in the wind,

Seeing you there,

Smoking jacket in hand,

Worshiping him:

His longings, his kiss,

The purple majesties beyond

His frail thoughtful head,

Fragile,

Unlike yours,

Hardened from carbon monoxide,

And dreary from the insensitivity

Of last night’s embrace,

Near the fire,

The burning fire,

Welcoming fire,

Conflagration of numbness,

Peeling off your thin skin,

Revealing lungs of silver,

Gold with iron fillings,

To melt into cancer,

In time,

In time with the saddest,

Song of reckoning,

For the beckoning of heat,

To light the final cigarette,

And blow out a gust of smoke

While the birds

Look down and laugh at you;

While the worms

Crawl out of your

Skin.

Scholastic Songs of Discovery

Scholastic Songs of Discovery



Songs that filled her with life,
Music beyond the furious strife,
To set the motions free,
To heal with the wounded knife,
So we may finally see,
The mountains through the mist,
Of histories finest forsaken myth,
That the churning of the soul is real,
To cut forth dimensions in time to kneel,
Kindling the hope of lesser riffs,
Through the lonely world of music,
You’ve cast aside like a gem,
Held tight in a ring
You’ve never given him.

And a happy new year

Reality was always a masquerade in my chided head, sometimes filled with charged affect and colors, yet the futility of grey had always been lingering in the background. My mind was filled with craters of experimental wanderings around in the chemical forests, searching for wild game to distract me from my already malleable consciousness. Every day felt different for a while, but now, nothing but the self-less autonomy of someone else’s thoughts burned through my cortex and filled the room with bending walls and animal faces on the carpet. I don’t feel like myself anymore with my mask and my desire to leave this exiled land, while all along, the chorus of the gods shine through from the heavens defending my existence.

Christina Empedocles

Conversation Fear

 A loquacious day, talking for hours

 Bends the hands forward,

 By the clock’s lonely tower;

 So we unsheathed our verbal sword,

 Following the words slowly poured,

 Into our minds, into our heart,

 Falling for nothing now,

 Cupidity’s poison dart.

Not speaking of anything,

Hands all aside,

Our mouths nearly frothing

The bantering tide,

Was all we have now,

Just fear, the less jarred,

Falling for ages,

Handed to us addled

The unctuous life paddled,

Through the searing talking pages.