Evolution of the Lifeless

Evolution of the Lifeless

"A predator is the culmination of its victims."

She is strips of meat
dangling between
the teeth of predators.

Her soul is
in their bloody breath
as they speak
the language of murder.

Unaware of herself,
she sleeps
in her killer's flesh
only to awake
to the scent of blood.
She is self-aware just long enough
to welcome future victims
to their new home
(a colony
of the non-violent
in the belly of the beast).

Alien in the Artwork

Alien in the Artwork

If God forgets you,
did you really exist?

The landscape painted
around my life
loses a dimension
and falls flat before me.

Perception is lost
and I fall prey
to the illusion of depth
as roads become walls
trapping me between frames.

Familiar strangers
speak in stop-action
disappearing when they turn
to talk amongst themselves
(abruptly re-appearing
when they turn again to face me).

Desperate for perspective,
I run to the edge of the canvas,
only to find my flesh
periodically rip in neat seams
as I get paper-cuts
from people in profile.

Surveying the scene,
I realize these shoal souls
with tinny voices
are not the foreigners in this land
and that I have become
the alien in the artwork
desperately seeking depth
in a shallow world.

Pretty Paper Hearts

Pretty Paper Hearts

She would wrap her heart
in pretty paper
and give it to people
she thought might like her.

But when they unwrapped
the pretty paper,
they would find nothing inside.

She later discovered
that her heart
was the paper
and the act of opening it
also ripped it to pieces.

Before too long,
she decided to keep
her paper heart to herself.
(But her tears made it soggy
and prone to ripping.)

When they found her,
she had drowned
in her apartment
clutching wet paper
filled with old news.

Jagged Dreams

Jagged Dreams

"and (they) said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne..."
--Revelations 6:16

He steals dreamcatchers
to harvest their nightmares.

He wrings them
with desperate fingers
into buckets of paint and blood.

He dips his brush
and paints
pictures of himself
on cracked mirrors,
broken bottles,
and shards of glass
that he franticly hides
underneath rocks
and used newspapers.

Each brushstroke
spreads him thinner
and further scatters
his shattered soul
in an useless attempt
to flee from god.

At a safe distance,
she trails behind him
with a wicked smile,
a broom,
and some glue
(force-fixing
the intentionally broken).

Note: Dreamcatchers are Native American amulets used to capture nightmares while sleeping.

Friends of Words I Once Penned

pricked by the thorns
of black roses,
she bleeds heroin
in mother's milk
and I suck
in her apathy
until I turn my
back on the divine
and drape myself
in the flesh
of loose women,
cheap wine
and heresy.

many years later
friends of words
i once penned,
find me
incoherent
and babbling of the
gods i have forsaken
and write an
epic of loss
(each word falling
like loose change
into the cup
of vagrant angels
too eager
to kick the
shit out of
a forgotten poet
who blasphemed
one too many times.)