My brother
A man that I helped shape

He puts the needle in
The veins where he poured his love and envy
Swelling with forced euphoria
His defiance killing a person that I was robbed from knowing
God stands watch
The silent sentinel
Winding along the path of time
We can no longer tell what formed the hatred

So he puts the needle in and we can’t tell if it was even hatred to begin
       with
Everything twisted upon itself mirroring humanity’s history
Our collective diseased tree

So he puts the needle in
A Slow death
Delayed rebirth
A person, a stranger that I never knew

The clouds formed a crown
encircling minds unaware of its majesty.
I can only wonder at its splendid serenity.
Another mile and it’s just
another unexpressed thought.

The salt seeps in the tumbleweed’s tendrils
Solitary gaps between breaths leads it astray
The light comes and goes along its path
Lost its roots long ago
The wind toys with its destiny now
Simple and free but it desires more
In its death we only glance at its journey
But we know not where it was born
Where it has been and where it will finally rest
Perhaps one day
When life slips away so easily for some
It will be remembered

So it is as pieces gliding across a chess board
The Queen surrenders to pawns
Those she toys with and kills alike
While her King silently plots her fall
When she is weak he will set the pace
And he will remember
Salt melting and crystallizing on
Dry
Withered
Branches
Perhaps he will wonder
When the wind toys with dark hair
That he can not forget
Perhaps he will regret
Perhaps then he will tumble
Free

I let it happen
I am a wraith
flitting through the empty rooms of my life

The face that peeks at me in passing mirrors
I do not dwell on it
Sometimes I recognize her
The woman looking back at me
But she is not who I remember she is supposed to be

There is a well of dull light within the reflection’s eyes
It echoes the deep anger, hate, resentment, and humiliation
that are a coiled ball of darkness within me
Sometimes that is the only way I recognize myself
I have always said that my eyes were my best feature

But there is the old determination and defiance behind it all
It is what drives my daily staring contests with myself
It is what drives me to understand her – the woman in the mirror
reconcile with her
the free spirit still slumbering inside me

It is the irony of my obssession
How we met so long ago in memory’s slow ebb
I can barely remember your voice
Over the overwhelming chorus of the dead
Those who joined us together
Seranding to us from their grooved cage
Transplated, digitalized, transformed
We meet on that same bastardized platform
You and I
Singing together to the songs of the dead
Is it irony that I now hear your voice
But I still can’t distinguish it from the rest
Hidden behind the fog of time and regret
Our songs burn and the irony becomes a mockery
Of You and I
Oceans of bonedust and cynicism separate us
Isn’t it ironic that I am rendered immobile
By you
My first enthusiastic cheerleader
My first pen pal
My first true enduring friend
Isn’t it ironic?
Pleas for genuine love
oh how it bled its way to so much hate
But it was enough to catch you in my web
Isn’t it ironic how the discovery of my deciet
How it did not distance you
The irony of my inverted obssession
How it protected and wounded me after your death

The turn signal blinks hypnotically as she waits patiently in a shitty cheap company vehicle that they dumped on her at headquarters. It’s sound much like a metronome that slowly fades into the background of her thoughts. Tik-tok tik-tok tik-tok “Maggie deserves more than that cheap 99 cent bullshit!” The man is yelling that phrase animately along more vulgar and descriptive complaints at her in her mind’s eye. She sighs as the light finally turns green and, as the vehicle’s nose reaches the intersection, barely breaking into the oncoming flow of traffic, she hesitates for a few seconds. A loud crash rings in her ears and the impact swings the vehicle in a violent half circle into a street lamp on the right. But, that moment of hesitation passes and the crash that seemed so real fades into the recesses of her mind as she forces her hands to move to complete the turn after triple checking traffic from all sides. Maybe the next turn will be better. Well, hopefully anyway.

“The day is done,” he thought staring out his kitchen window. The soft glow of the street lamp illuminated the snow banks along his sidewalk and he smiled. There was a small shuffle of anxious feet behind a few boxes left by the garbage can, intended to be recycled, for months now. He turned around to spot Maggie, a hodgepodge of mismatched colors for fur, poke her head out at him from inside one of the boxes. Motioning her to come to him with his left hand after sitting down at the kitchen table only made things worse for the poor cat. While trying to respond to his demand, her paw caught on the flap of another box that was nearby and she stumbled clumsily forward. The man broke into a grin and started to laugh uproariously as she stumbled some more along her journey. Maggie never had good balance, this he knew, and he always found her antics to be amusing, but tonight it brought him pure joy. So, he stood up and walked the rest of the way to her wishing that the feeling would last. Sooner, rather than later, he would have to return to the world out there underneath the street lamp and beyond it where chaos reigned. A world that he barely understood anymore. But, for now, he decided to enjoy his small taste of paradise. He knelt down scratching Maggie affectionately behind the ears with a small smile ghosting across his pursed lips.

Maybe. Perhaps. If. That is her world and some would swear that she revels in it. Uncertainty. No guarantees. It makes it hard to stay. Makes it hard to get disappointed. Hard to claim and be claimed. At the first indication of an escape route, she will take it and claim it was the higher moral ground. Claim a sacrifice that was never hers to make. But it’s OK. It’s always OK just so long as she can disappear on her own terms. Her letter of farewell fondly planned out for another more final goodbye held tightly to her breast. And, so, she travels. Whether it be in the physical world or within the countless worlds her mind creates, she is content.

Where you hesitated, he forged forward. Blind and uncertain. Not a penny or possession to her name. Where you feared your own skill, he stumbled into it with no experience at all. She grew and came to be known for her craft worldwide. Where you blindly believed in fate and soul mates, he built his own path brick by brick. Her skin is marred, but she dies with very little regrets. Where a part of you dies, he thrives and I have come to stay.

He marched with her down the boulevard which ran parallel to MLK. Two different worlds separated by less than a mile of concrete and sewage. She preferred the boulevard, but he secretly missed the world on the other side. Maybe he’ll go back once she loses interest in him for good and it’s about damn time too. The smile that broke across his face at that thought did not go unnoticed by her and her smug laugh that followed made his hopes soar. Tonight was definitely the night to be him on that old boulevard.

They prodded and exhausted all methods of diagnostics. All that was found was her fear underneath the bravado once she had to make due on her promises and flowery declarations of war. Their disappointment was heavy. It weighed down their bodies and drooped their faces. Eyes that once held hope lost their luster becoming dull and disinterested. Onward, forever onward, they continue their search for another to die on their cross.

I've seen the forgotten end, and becoming,
of the new world,

Whereas these nights, become the epitome of a
  shadowed destiny
Marked by agony, trailed by deceit, and redeemed
  through destruction,
As visions guide my way to the man-made Hell
  I forged within my cell
Thy carnage will ensue, the wrath I was 
  accursed to, and given to by subterfuge,
this blood-written oath I vow to you, by the
  black vines of malice that tear within my soul,

Breathe within my carcass life so I may take again,

By extinction, eradicating the festering pustule of
  wounds
by descension, I spiral down into the coals 
  of death
by possession, I reek of corroding steel
by obsession, I drench below your entrails

He holds his hands open, palms facing upward, arms stretched wide to either side of him at waist level. The prayers slip from his his thoughts, to his lips, but never reaches his vocal chords. With eyes gazing reverently upward at the stars that did shine, his body begins to tremble lightly starting from the tips of his fingers to the thinning grey hair on his head. A man walks by, athletic and well groomed, stopping abruptly as if just noticing the older man standing there in the middle of the vast nearly empty parking lot. “Hey, got a cigarette I can bum off ya?”, the young man asks with uncertainty lacing his voice. The older man pauses in his silent incantation which has become a daily ritual for him as natural and frequent as eating for him over the years. The only indication of acknowledgment, and annoyance, at the interruption manifested itself as a slight twitch of his right eye. This is the first time since his awakening that anyone had dared approach him while in this state. Most people are too scared to even walk withing spitting distance of him and that fact has never chanced no matter his location. Be it a city or town in the middle of nowhere, the people there have always paid a deference usually reserved for strict authority figures. “As they should,” he mused to himself. A slight quirk of his lips at the corners of his mouth blossomed then in his own personal version of a smile. “Huh?” came the confused response from the young man standing far too close for comfort. The old man had been too engrossed in his thoughts to notice this fact. He also came to realize that he had spoken out loud without intending to. Lowering his head to stare into the young man’s eyes, muttering, “peccavi,” while doing so. Yes, he thought bitterly. Work is prayer after all and my overconfidence has overridden my caution. The Lord is testing me. Very well. The Saints did not journey unscathed.

The young man had spent the past few minutes observing the emotions play across the devotee’s face. The ones that he could discern was making him uneasy. He knew all too well the face of a fanatic and his disquiet grew stronger as the elderly man lowered his head to make eye contact. The young man, a driver just stopping through town, frowned and began to turn away. Some things just aren’t worth it, he thought.

It was at that moment when the devotee’s right hand shot out to grab the driver’s left arm in a firm grip. The driver’s surprise was short lived, but it was long enough for him to be caught by a swift blow to the temple with an industrial sized tire iron. The devotee, in a fit of rage bordering on madness, continued to pummel the driver in the head despite the deadly efficiency of the initial blow. Panting, the elderly man ambled away into the breaking twilight sun, silently questioning the length of time it took him to perform his penance. It was a large parking lot and he had plenty of time to ponder things before the public trickled in. “A Saint, indeed,” he chuckled to himself at length.

Men who wear their souls
around their necks
marvel at its beauty
its simple truth

isn’t it nice to always see people
as they were when they left

look behind you
look besides you
the angles points above you
the demon points under you
“where is he?” they groan

Groans of pleasure that binds hearts forever
“forever and for always,” songs from the graves of children

Stop looking at me with so many questions
Stop making me answer them
Hide behind the sun
Smile for me with empty eyes
Shelter the information we shared
But don’t turn them into secrets
My words aren’t sacred

There are words that are left behind in transit

Darkness has a weight to it. It envelopes everything like a heavy wool coat hanging off an old woman’s frail anorexic shoulders. She gropes her way in it, trying to find the sleeves so that she can at least have some pretense of stability. The coat smells of washed out smoke from its previous owners and their lives. There are blood stains barely visible on the silk inling that she does not pick up with her dimmed eyesight. She picks at the food stains that litter the coat in precarious spots in-between tugs at the hems and an attempt here or there to zip the monstrosity up. The cold seeps in and all she can do is give in to it. No time to…