Blood #Poems for an #October Evening (day one)

I sip of the rolling world
drunken rhythms
burning my throat like acrid
firestorms.
Bleeding into my eyes
bits of paper, random electrons,
news of the world.
.
.
Lovers Meeting
.
Carry her with love
Always, in your deepest places
She is a woman upon the Earth
in an land of briar and weeds
It is so easy to fall
to fail to thrive
set upon by slavering beasts
and prophets
You know she yearns to serve
so well
that none could find fault
Yet every agonizing step
like angry knives
cutting from below
hobbles her further, deeper
leaving less to give
Bloody prints mark her
dusty trail
Thirsting for the cooling warmth
of love
Carry her into your
sacred caverns
secreted wellsprings
journey’s end
.
.
I too have stories
unbelievable as fiction
creeping through dream imagery
holding dripping red candles
broken bits of mirror
tiny rips in red, red fabric
bleeding
I cannot breathe this story
I cannot hold a heartbeat
or a cogent thought
or pulse to a level
bearable
Beaten into rubble
crazed in simple sunlit
afternoon as if a moon
were racing in
stolen arteries
We all have known this story
.
.
Dammed
.
I am thinking of a brick wall,
hiding dangerous imagery.
Walls upon walls.
High, low, immoderately
profuse,
bearing illusory murals,
scorched out graffiti
wicked symbols
unclean, unpurified.
Trauma reverberates
messes with circuitry
irreverent irreconcilable
discrepancies
in cellular reproduction,
glitches and stammers
in data processing.
A wall. I am building,
brick by painful brick
cemented with blood and pus,
tall, thick, obscuring
day and night
laughter and warm embrace
secret words of consolation
hidden in humor and homilies.
The walls stand
ready for bombardment
awaiting a destiny of chaotic rubble
when reverberation reaches
critical mass.
.
.
I hold a ball of fire
in my palm
behind my eyes
consuming me
engulfed in flaming pain
crackling frame-dissolving
into ember
into sparks
igniting hair and lashes
Yet out of ash
always renewed
ready to burn again
I can’t sleep for the light
find respite from agony
I am consumed
atom by atom
then realigned to play again
at disintegration
Towers fall carrying
their servant’s blood
and sinew stripped from angry life,
terror, torture.
Imagine burning stars
fire sprites twisting, evolving,
given form and awareness
low-wage jobs, small talk;
they woo and reproduce,
fall into regulated line.
Over millennia memories lose shape;
days lose their charm, become mundane.
Consumption means something different
from disease or connection.
Embers rearrange, form scary bits
of insight, inspiration,
pinpoint bright,
urgently burning.
.
.
Sorrow, numbing ice, inconsolate
pain too profound to acknowledge.
Vultures circle, maggots feast.
Blood-sucking parasites
imbibe sacrificial delight,
leering, sneering, snarling, slavering.
Your servants so eager for your favor
fatten themselves for slaughter.
.
.
Bitter Dregs
.
You don’t get it.
You don’t want to.
It would be too much to bear
if you let yourself.
Briefly unconscious, awakened to
hard concrete ground surrounded
by heels and toes, amazing
they don’t crush me, but no,
like lockstep they walk around
though occasionally a(n unmeaning?)
shove — I’m not a someone,
just a minor obstacle
unnoted in their day.
No worries.
Not like shoved down under
hard muscle and bone
stinking of beer and rage
or waking from brief unconsciousness
to broken pain, bleeding
tears, torn, bruised, a
colorful toy
made for pleasure.
Then there are the voices, echoes
Harpies and Sirens, Furies
and sad old women, fingers
shaking in disapprobation.
The voices tell me I am beautiful,
in the way that ugly things are.
So bad, so pitiful, it gives me
status among the neverweres,
struggling shadows, whispering
curses demurely lest anyone
notice and throw them further
down.
Never easy, confessing to degradation.
The sin adheres. No one wants to know.
.
.
Empire
Standing askew as the inexorable boot commands
squeezing out gems, polished and pure.
Paid in bread and circuses.
Bathed in raw entitlement
dreaming of ravaging, raping at will
drinking bright blood doped with
ecstatic thrill
casting lot that promised reward
be assured.
Cold, this world.
Shadow sans Sun.
Listless lapping at sparkling carbonation.
Sinking below matter and form
into terror stories;
taking warmth from smoldering coals.
As tomorrow continues today
your dissolving heart
dispersing pearls of wisdom.