Words are Rifles

Your voice is a violin,
but your words are rifles.
And when I listen for the sweet sound,
I feel the shells rip my torso.

Your eyes are water,
but your stare is a bloodpool.
I fell into the lake,
so thick I couldn't see anything under.

Your hands are the ocean
but your fists are the tidal wave.
The calmness is a lure,
and I take the bait again.

The fall takes a second,
but it feels like a hundred years.
A hundred years in your memory
Is a century in decline.

The Bloody Atlantic

Metalic railing bridge brass bedposts to
the ocean floor just above the blistered
leather trunks stacked like an altar to Neptune.
A canopy of scrap metal securely wraps itself
around bone fragments and lost evening wear,
worn and stained with a green living glow.
Sunken deeply to the coldest depths,
An act of violence and war suppresed by time and surf ;
The Underwater ghost-town.

Venn Diagrams

You Let the light pass in.
With the sun setting, on part of you--a part of me,
My body is too weak to reach the door,
To shut the light out, to send it packing onward.
I can't remember if I remember anything,
and the new fog clouds everything I know.
The shadows chase each other along woodgrain walls
as the time makes it's way to the end of the track,
The finish line.
We watch slowly, with a diligent calm.

The History of Science and Medicine

Laying on the table, Norwegian Wood is playing
from unseen speakers somewhere above me.
My neck is tight and weary as I lay on the cold table.
The great whiteness of the room blinding my eyes; I close them.
The dawn of uneasy is shining on my back.
The dim light is not so unfamiliar.

The streets beckon my undoing.

The darkness collapses on your profile,
with the streets empty like the intonations of our syllables.
We can walk these alleys until we bump into something of use,
Or can walk until we get the to the avenue.
We can walk until the sun comes up,
Or we can choose a backdoor and pray for the best.
We could walk for miles, and pray for rest.
Or we can admit defeat and just give up.
Either way, I'm sure we're fucked.
In the night air we're surely fucked.

509 B.C.

From the birth canal of the Tiber
Writhing on the ground, eyes filled with promise.
With Afterbirth and blood trailing the young one
onto Etruscan streets,
The new dawn rising over the sea, a blood red horizon.

Great Caesar's Ghost

I saw you standing there.
Your shadow covers so much ground around my feet and arms and back.
I can't look up, my eyes are too tired, my head is stiff from the same position.
My name is lost in the mass of general memory,
But yours is on the tip of my tongue.
Great Caesar's Ghost.
I have the Brutus urge,
and power is nothing a knife can't quell.