When the Mad King Relives Fairy Tales

There is no hell like serving a King,
To grace his sickening fantasy.
What a proud beast, this poisoning King.
See how he coils in his stagnancy.
He fills his head with towering halls.
Empty spaces replace his reason,
Believes a ghost, his queen, haunts the halls,
And sanity becomes high treason.

A beast and beauty trapped in their dreams,
One in love and one in confusion,
See not the potency, how such dreams
Caress with each breath an illusion.
No screen or mirror reflects beauty.
Loneliness leads to self-obsession.
The beast gives his life for some beauty,
As if his weakness were perfection.

A fairy tale from golden pages
Now rests upon the King's looping mind.
The same soul which reached for those pages
Is tangled behind foreign eyes, blind.
With pearls and jewels of violet and blue
Reminding him of beauty's embrace,
He droops down to the garden in blue
To reflect in green pools his proud face.

The roses hold themselves together,
Sturdy through tempestuous weather.
The empty fountains will be refilled,
Yet in his poisoned mind he is killed.
Seven days spent alone on a stage.
The King buries himself in dark sighs.
The audience is far from the stage,
So he sings like the swan as it dies.

Stunned in a Stairwell Near a Wheelchair Well-known

He had to sit and so

He dies by suicide

Of broken skull, heart, pride.

The sun stood tall in their minds

As they sat on a step,

Twilit in a stairwell.

Two faces swore he fell,

And wagged back and forth between

Shoulders tightly knotted.

They slowly turned to stone

As it glistened and shone,

The blood drying in twilight. 

Seeing Madness And the Sea

I awoke to myself choking me
the walls as soft as bread
and light from the street

In my step sensitivity sewn
deliberately on my descent
I drew from darkened drawer
to leaves aching at my door

I climbed into a coat
and managed down the street
peering through the window

A foggy trip I know not where
possessed me spill my memory

The ravenous voice of heaven
mumbling into lives before me
mother and child recoil
and fathers with dry hands
soaking in the soil

Crows in trees frozen wings like fruit
chosen to hold on for fear of death
to fall into the air or to suspend where
nothing remains by one's own hand

Two thin men with eyes burning in love
lead me away set sail from bed to bed
and smiled right into the aching at my door

They shook me roared and took me to
a figure tall with lips light blue
crimson nails and smokey hiss

The sky was damp pink
glowing pink long after
the last cast of light did sink
a colorful warning I slept through

One bird flew into suspense
and from below I saw him slide
driven mad straight to the sea
the wind pulled him instantly

Father Pavlovitch Karamazov

No head upon the Father of Lies,

Who, taking offense, plays the part of the martyred,

Sadly shedding dignity before his sons.

With vagrancy behind grotesque eyes

He teaches them how to pull a trigger,

End a lie, start a fire.

Nothing withheld from him but his own head,

Our Father is, by self-arrangement,

Passionately disturbed.

A kiss, then, is so unharmonious as to seal his fate,

Placed upon each boy’s neck,

Causing brothers to turn upon their own flesh,

Like ascetic bliss.

Wolf Calls

The night air stirs.

Unexposed, I meet my universe.

The trees greet me in the moonlight.

They peer and whisper with the wind.

In its madness, the wind paints everything.

In the darkness of my imagination,

What courses, what causes moments

To gleam and never die,

There's a shaded sky,

The shifting of leaves,

And a mare on the rise.

I blush and know I exist,

Aging with these colors of green and gray.

I am of discussion, alive

In the phantom romance of the woods,

But the wolf calls for me.

In this siren, death approaches and I freeze.

This world of green, without path or marking,

Is drawn by instinct, pointing everywhere.

The wolf's eyes, ever-wide

Without sun or star to guide,

Yet I am found.

Vows

Say a word for all my children
That will never be.
Explain the use of rings and fingers
If I’m not bound to thee.

Your hands are portals, North and South,
And glacial to the touch.
I’m torn to poles, my body in half,
Unable to hold as much.

Now, apart, my mind, it shivers,
Feeling twice the freeze.
Every direction points to you
And covers all degrees.

I wilt over your bed, my love,
Pray that you might see
Within my eye reflections of
How still you are in me.

Seven Ways to Love from Several Distances

Hundreds of hungry acts to

Lead me to you, my darling

Flavor of sweet desire,

Grooming my mind as I sit,

Floating me off as I stand,

Leaving me without an out –

Letters dying to meet you.

Drifting to and from comfort,

My home or stabilized thoughts,

Pressure by flight, track or waves

In caves, clouds or thunder’s roar,

Your voice, like the wind, follows,

Flows and soothes my raging tone,

Packing my life into you.

Prayerfully dwelling on

My hand dripping with blue ink,

Bleeding out past poisons and

Promising pages for you

To soak up fears in your heart,

Take this to your quiet place

And knock with faith upon faith.

Winter standing over me

In the sightless state of doubt,

I lie helplessly, face down;

Carefully and with kindness

You tweeze out of me the thorn –

Radiance in your smile

Warming my extremities.

Aging, thinning of my pride,

Leaves with every fresh shower –

A shaving of youth, to rot

By bad blood or troubled tooth;

Your touch no less hesitant

Or longing eyes less potent

With patience, abounding love.

I fall apart knowing you

Are the catcher of my eye,

The progression of my song,

The fragrance of my day dream,

The stranger in the orchard,

The rest upon my pillow,

The subject of my poem.

Dryness and darkness linger

As mist blinding the mountains,

Laying, praying, pondering

Life, afterlife and the tomb;

Night comes soon, I barely see

How you tuck me in and sigh,

Tear in your eye shed for me.