when you read this

i was never intended for these things

so how could i have been good in this

yet i stepped in when i should have stayed out

stayed out and walked away

not to find myself now

with a bow and an empty quiver

standing before you

my Saint Sebastian

each arrow a word launched in error

each arrow sank deep into your flesh

when I tried to be Cupid and Wilhelm Tell

my beautiful martyr

21.09.2016

santoka(1882-1940)

poor old drunk

running away

into liquor

long roads

poems

scattered along the way

to that final night

when death blossomed

20.09.2016

William Hope Hodgson(1877-1918)

It's April

in Ypres.

Transfixed,

he hears the song

of the

arriving shell.

17.09.2016

The landscape moulded itself around you

in your vision,

in reality

you mould yourself into the landscape

but in the end

only the landscape remains.

12.09.2016

Tom Piccirilli(1965-2015)

God Bless America!

9/11!

Greatest Nation in the History of the World!

But when it comes the time

there's a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball

in your head,

it's time for your relatives to beg money

so that you could be treated

in the Greatest Country In The World....

One Edgar, four Bram Stoker Awards

and still you were just another

miserable poor bastard

stuck in a system

where making money on extending your life,

extending your death

was the real horror,

a vampire feeding on you

for every coin you had

and for every coin your friends and fans came up with.

"Give it all to us!" the vampire

demanded, and so

a little bit of life

was bought with much cash

and your death prolonged;

money bought you a twilight existence of pain

chained to the system

like a chattel slave, a goddamn

factory animal existing to make a profit

out of your own suffering for medical companies,

insurance companies, politicians.

It was the real horror

which caught you in its clawed limbs

and never let you go.

They sacrificed you on an altar for greed.

Manifest Destiny!

USA! USA! USA!

12.10.2016

The mist that remains

Now ghost among ghosts you linger

in silence among the graves,

among the whispers of the life

from whose cocoon you emerged in death.

The flesh and the blood another memory,

beyond the rebirth

shattered fragments form themselves

into visions of doubt and dream.

You once left footprints on sandy shores,

the low tide of life went and the high tide of death came,

and in place of footprints you draw

a vision of life from beyond death.

They come to your grave,

to that stone that hides

what time has not taken

and adore it with flowers and candles.

A cold wind, a falling leaf,

you wonder if you loved those flowers,

if you looked at candles on dark evenings

and saw what you can't see now.

08.09.2016

Of Lead Pellets and Iron Oxide Particles in the Autumn

Chilly morning, old coffee warmed

in the microwave, tired as

usual, a rusty leaf thrown to the ground

from its heights. The cloud

mass without features, milky white,

the coffee tastes bad, hot liquid

traveling down the throat

I think about the millions of magnetite

particles in our brains, how

we came to this, our brains

like Kashmiri faces after protests,

scarred, changing what and

who we are, our industrial civilization

living in us in our

post-industrial existence, 

like those eyeless children of

Kashmir and their comrades in

Palestine. The outside world

is blind, now the prisoner

like a ruler of old is blinded

to make the usurper safe.

A leaf, on the ground, yellow

beside brown. My feet are

now always cold, in this

world ruled by people

with hearts as cold as those

dug from chests on morgues.

Lead and iron.

07.09.2016