i’ve got no time for silent shouts

they take too long to vibrate my bones,
and i’m not sure that Time even exists —
maybe in the sense that i exist,
but not in any REAL sense

mystical snapping fingers
keep slapping me up against the NOW
and it hurts in the incandescent filament of my soul —
the part that precariously wiggles,
under constant threat of sizzling out–

and — in doing so — would leave me a dull boy

In days before hell swallowed,

I’d sit on a bench reading news,

and watching how lead ducks followed

while marching down in ones and twos.

They went into shallow water —

floating time bombs, drifting slowly,

wishing they hadn’t sons or daughters

to die among creatures lowly.

“The end is nigh! The END is nigh!”

called a junky from yonder shore.

He was twisted and floating high,

and had too much of being more.

But now my window sits broken.

The land is flattened as my mind.

Moving lips tell not what’s spoken

from a vantage point wedged behind…

There’s famine in the heartland —
lungs full of the blowing sands.

People huddle near the fire,
waiting on the news, sans wire.

But the news won’t get better
by the time you get the letter
it’ll long since quit being news —
it’ll be lyrics for the Blues.

This isn’t a gentle tidal temptation.
It has the power to pull eyes and minds —
the mighty diesel pulling from the station,
the force to strip the fruits from rinds.

That savage gravity can’t be rebuffed;
it won’t let itself by staked, strapped, or cuffed.

This horde had huddled down in the alley.
Past hordes had hid to overlook valleys,
but bucolic hordes are a beast long past.
The valleys, farms, and fields are too vast.

Like roaches hide in walls, they need tight spaces.
Unidentifiable by faces —
they’re only known en masse, not à la carte.
They’ve many chests, but just one beating heart.

I’ve heard it said, they eat both girls and boys,
and that they spit out bits of clothes and toys.
But that may be a horde-hating rumor,
like that they grow together into one tumor.

dark room, dark floor —

fell through a trapdoor,

falling, falling

screaming, & calling

no one near to hear

&

no floor to fall to,

but wall-to-wall with fear

’cause of cyphers, who

— oh so rudely jeer

while singing,

“The end is near,

but your end is nearer,

so hold the past dear,

but the present dearer —

because that’s all…”

Those old, stone boulders —

rough, cold, and lonely.

Topped with temples older

than the one and only —

that cave carved in a hill,

chiseled in ancient rock

by feat of iron will —

precise as key-in-lock.

How long will it last

for pilgrims to walk

into the distant past,

’til it erodes like chalk?