Fragrance

Purple colors smell of your scent
Fragrant of the closeness of you
Close to me

Kneeling only slightly
Into you and me
As we lie together
alone

Skins of Animals

I wrap myself in the skins of animals
Enfolding me
Keeping me warm
In their Death Shrouds

Sacrificial Lambs
Worn and torn
Wearing thin
As the ages pass

Sheltered until the knife digs deep
Slicing away my skin
So someone else
Might feel my old warmth

Smile in your sleep
As you slumber underneath
My hide and seek hide
Sleeps

I'm Not Famous Yet, but Tomorrow

It feels so good to walk down the street
unimpeded by adoring fans seeking
my visage and signature.
Basking in the glow of my
imagined radiance replete
and supposedly complete.

But some day soon a viral infection
reflecting lack of self reflection
will flashback to me
with a modicum of self introspection
a sectional disconnection from
any intersectionality.

The Manipulative Poor Townsman

I'm a wise man, or so they tell me. I've seen so much evil in my life. The stories I could and often do tell are legion. I try to resist evil, I really do. My personal baggage is the wisdom those around me think they see. Stories. I tell stories. Over and over and over again. In most of them I'm the good guy. It makes sense after all. You'd do the same I'm almost certain. Tales told, or as my student friends and occasional acolytes like to say, "story time with John" is about to happen. That temptation is toxic.

He arrives at the wise man's door, pleading for mercy. And he needs it. God knows he needs it. He has a story to tell the wise man about his suffering. The things that have happened to him over his lifetime are beyond belief, yet all too terribly true. True tales, terribly told to ringing ears willing to hear.

A Lifetime of Experiences

Stories I can tell
tales of heaven and hell
None of them believable
yet all too true.

Murderers and saints
friends all

Every new semester
a new crop of
"Stories with John"
happens to the new initiates.
I learn their stories too.
And they add to mine
by being a part of my life.

Ridiculous and beautiful
every one.

Pretty Dress

I never saw you wear a pretty dress
slip slightly showing
sneakers on your feet
one shoelace still untied.

Your figure has always been
figurative
figuring you out has always been
inexhaustible.

You always knew that the jeans that you wore
with the holes were sexy as shit
destructive to my spiritual well being
for, well, you already know why
you already know why.

Pills

Prescribed to death
sentenced to an equivalency
of perspectival self blindness.

Milligrams sold by the pound
pounding down till the sounds
are drowned away.

Inexplicable explications selaciously
selling damnable explanations.

You sell heaven, but deliver hell
smelling of sulfur all too well.

Fragrant senses sensing smells tense
smell realities all too familiar.

Prescribed realities describe this diatribe.

Glittering Illiterati

Flagrant allegations insinuating
implications implicating
Failing flailing imaginations.

Falsifying notions of impending accusations
excusing evil never ending. Expectations flagrant expecting
expectations flailing about, situationally
unsure.

Certainty sailing forth
in the midst of lies.
Sailing in seas over the edge
of the existential falls.

Epistemic certainties fall
as every verity is called into question
and falsity is equated with truth
with every Trumped pronouncement.

Flagrant allegations insinuating
implications implicating
Failing flailing imaginations.

Falsifying notions of impending accusations
excusing evil never ending. Expectations flagrant expecting
expectations flailing about, situationally
unsure.

Certainty sailing forth
in the midst of lies.
Sailing in seas over the edge
of the existential falls.

Epistemic certainties fall
as every verity is called into question
and falsity is equated with truth
with every Trumped pronouncement.

Better

Sore throats sing
into infinity
Flailing into
Sucking into reality

Failing into death
Sucking into intensity

You better be better

You Better Be Better

You Better Be Better

Flicks abound
Clicks surround
Surreal notions
Fabricated
enacted.

You better be better

You better be better

You better be better

Unintended

You drip with antiquity
Shimmering darkly
Sparkling Flinging
Messages sent
Unintended.

We all just wanted to end up somewhere else.

Essays written
not quiet right
Grammar imperfect.

We all just wanted to end up somewhere else.

Clinging death, clammy so
firmly ensconced
Self denied, self affirmed,
but in ways unintended.

We all just wanted to end up somewhere else.

Anxiety is a sense which senses
entities inexplicable
Blindingly sensible.

We all just wanted to end up somewhere else.

Frequency equals speciality
Surety insures the insanity of us all
flaming into the sunsets of inexplicable
newness.

Frequency of Delights

Tiny tenacious intonations.
Inclined, flaming all about.
Exhausting all infusions.

You use me.
You lose me.
Lament me.
Lament me.

Inflamed lips
Ship lines
no international
lines
would ever sell.

You use me.
You lose me.
Lament me.
Lament me.

Fighting on every front.
Effortlessly light.
Less me and effortlessly
you.

Fame.
Inflame.
Infamy.
Uncanny incantations.
Killer intonations.

Felicia Tapestry

God's honest truth, her name was Felicia Tapestry.

Her fourth great grandfather was an impoverished thread bare curtain merchant. Since he came from a family which was known for this, the other children called him a serial drapist behind his back.

I'd rather not go into their various deaths. I suspect they also melted ants with magnifying lenses.

I'm a Calvinist. They deserved it.

But I digress...

Her name was Felicia Tapestry.

It was a hot sweaty day, a day I'd rather remember. The meat in the broken down freezer had already melted and smelt of death. The blood had leaked onto my kitchen floor and was surprisingly hard to clean up. Different bloods melt at different temperatures.

That was helpful advice going forward.

Tapestries are such beautiful weaves, interspersed with threads from every hue. Sometimes from simple cotton, sometimes from elegant silk. I prefer raw fabrics rough hewn, like Scottish clothing no one likes to wear, except to avoid freezing to death or starvation.

She was wicked cute, but in that dark serial killer way we all love. You know, like Christina Ricci like, except worse.

She wore her gown with pride, flowing across the floor, glorious in all its splendor. We each called each other fascinating. Yeah, it was THAT kinda romance.

The frame of reference of our romance framed us in ways we dare not share with others. After all, her name was Felicia Tapestry, and she was a death shroud comforting me with hugs. I immediately recognized that she had inherited the realm in her family line, filtering the flinty lilt of hints of bitter shrouds, hovering over us, against the light. Yet the darkness comforts us so. It comforts us so.

Nightmare

Muck and Mire
rarely inspire
except to remind us
of the mud we all share.

Trudging slowly
grindingly so
fighting the elements
like a dream nightmare.

Running but still
paralyzed and flinching
thinking you're inching
towards the eternal
unattainable.

Constantly grasping
but never attaining
gripping yet tight lipped
silently impotent.

Dreamlike maze
never escaping
waiting to awake
amazed
but sadly never surprised.

Approaching 20 Years

I still remember your hair
as you leaned your head
into my shoulder

The smell of your shampoo

Your hair
It was soft and silky
almost black in color

You were fragrant
with wildly beautiful
eyes
filled with darkness

Faint hints
of what lurked
behind the curtains
of those eyes
and lips

We each lived
in each other's
shadows

Fine Print

Microscopic inscriptions
listening in
to
fine print
signed
into law
by my
own blood

Signed in blood today
and every day

Sign your life away

Signed in blood today
and every day

Legalese
a language
its own
inexplainable

Fucked by lawyers
by nary a lick of
the tongue

Linguistic tricks
sticking it to
us all
by those far too
well paid
to get laid for free

After all
it's all part
of
the fine print.

Shoulder Leaned Into

Nestled is how I most think of us
leaning into each other
fascinated by each other
royally engaged entranced
playfully prancing with dignity
intact

Your perfume enflames
my sensibilites
sensing your nearness
shoulder next to your neck
my ear kissing your skin
beneath your ear I far too often
did not kiss

I Always Wanted to be a Cult Leader

Sliming my mind
twisted untied
tye died tried
curtailed mind
fractured by mines
surety assurances
Fixated on faces
assuring of certainties
inexplicable

I Buried a Chimney Swallow Today

I buried a chimney swallow today

He hung from the French lace curtains

Talons clung like finger nails

Wings sprung out, hanging low

high above my eyes.

Black and grey before my eyes

hanging, darting in death all across

our campus

Spread winged, hanging from a thread

French lace doors latched

capturing your natural talons

Interlaced, interlinked,

Captured, till death.

I prayed for you as I buried you.

The Azaleas sing your praises.

Wood chips cover you.

Tattoo'd in Invisible Ink

Scars show in all the most interesting places
Spink, dink, flinked, minks
in faux animal furs
curtailing hairs worn ages ago

Inked in ways I never really understood
Needle in the arm and leg
pegged
by assumptions
Impressed by impressions
driven deep
by Life experienced

Sometimes flexibility shows
itself to the sound of flesh
given over to the
ink master.

Tattle Tale

Many splendored dresses undressed
Expressed by dresses hemmed in by Pleiades
Gazing down from above staring in our
collective naked gaze

Ferrous metals mentally melting
into the solid waste of
who we are

Glittering into the nothingness
of existential reality
flaming out
flaming out
flaming out

Shame, no shame
flame all you want
shame
flame all you want
blame all you want
shame, no shame

Blame you all
not alone but me
alone along the lines
flicking the adulations
and adulturations
maturing, I hope