Even Pinocchio Knew His Maker

The puppets mock the puppeteers

not noticing their strings

They dance and hop and raise their voice to sing...

All they know are peers

of wood and wire

of paint and polish

of termite hollowed ash

of ventriloqu’d voices

and mimicked choices

that with their pride does clash.

“We are the kings

We hold the strings!”

They obediently say

not knowing who in the air

above holds fatal sway.

Don’t you see the enemy?

He wishes you to dance

your time away until you say

it was nothing but mere chance.

Don’t you see the enemy?

He wishes you to hide

him behind a myth or blind

tradition that you deride.

And what if sin and evil

are more than dated words?

What if they hold meaning

more than the absurd

notion of a god that acts like a child—

notion of a god that is anything but mild—

For what does this race earn

if not cruel death

by turning on itself and ignoring the rest?

We rape and burn and pillage

We steal and break and kill

A child takes a village

But one father has no will

We sow our own destruction

And arm our future foes

We revel in corruption

To what end? No one knows

And all us so-called-people

Who think ourselves so good

With hubris higher than a steeple

At the wayside we all stood

The spectators are guilty

The watchers did the crime

The reclining ones have blood-stained hands

We all live in the grime

Not one of us is sinless

We all hold equal share

We can make ourselves all kinless

Or admit there’s burdens to bear

When we see that we’re all brothers

And sisters straight from birth

We’ll be halfway to discovering

Our purpose here on earth.

Over the Void (With Apologies to The Pixies)

The clock keeps on tick, tick, ticking and I think about thinking.

I juxtaposition my thoughts against my actions: One makes a glorious mountain and the other a dark desolate valley; One ablaze in sunglow the other fuming in dark ruminations. And I ask that aging question: Where is it? Way out in the water, I see it drowning.

Is it water? It’s so hard to tell when there’s no light. Perhaps it’s alcohol or gasoline. It certainly smells. The vapors drape their heavy tendrils around my nostrils like fish-hooked chains. Oh the cutting stench! A smell of dried vomit and stale excrement wafting from listless hours and indolent acts.

Act I: The clock keeps on tick, tick, ticking. I can’t think about the thinking when the clock keeps tick, ticking. Or thumpy, thump, thumping like a burdened train over the tracks. The tracks are disappearing over that swampy miasma. All aboard the time train! Next stop: fate.

Hey look down there! Beneath the strained struts and warped beams. There, in that bubbling potion, it’s my mind. Ah! But if it’s there then where am I? Am I not there with it in that poisonous froth? But if I know it’s there am I not here and it with me? Or does it remain, loosely connected by tenuous nerves across the void of air and darkness and time, still in that thickly pitch. Does my notice of it bring it back or is it just a self-awareness that there I am, in the moonlit waves of unknown horror, drowning. And time keeps on tick, tick, ticking and thumpy, thump, thumping over the void. And I think about thinking and thoughts and actions and mountains and valleys. Can one be there while the other is where?

Where is my mind? Way out in the water, I see it drowning while time keeps on ticking I’m thinking of thinking. That sunglow memory must have been self-delusion. You never can tell down here. When will this thinking of thinking move to thinking of acting and on to acting on thinking and then to thinking on acts. Or will I just stay in Act I while the clock keeps on tick, tick, ticks—like a buried head in my skin boring in for blood and who knows what else. Think about this while looking through a scratched and smog slimed train window:

Time, like a tick, bores.

Sunfall

The birds have flown to Florida

And we begin our quick ferment

The days are falling faster dead

The cresting light is nearly spent

The failing sun long rests his head

So looking westward we still wait

Not trusting he will rise again

We’re in the waxing night of fate

The veil of darkness hides our plans

But thinly from nocturnal eyes

In pitch we’re strewed forgetting light

In love with bright but rotting lies

And when the winter meets its height

We frozen in a death unseen

Horizon’s edge of glowing sun

Will bleed out warmth on the obscene

And there will burn on all and one

A blaze to light the dark afar

But most with eyes fast shut will fear

The dawn so bright it leaves a scar

And sad it is in all this sphere

There will be just a remnant few

Who overjoyed will stand at spring;

Most will long for winter new

So they will crawl far from the ring

Of sun that burns their frostbite faint

Preferring just the dark of space;

They hide enamored with their taint

Yet those who stood in warmth of grace

Will find they’ve grown new leaves and roots

And not lament the night’s demise

When tasting winter’s ripened fruits

(The birds flew down to Florida

But will to reborn trees restore

Ferment is foiled in the rise

Of spring that comes forevermore.)

She of the Rainbow

I dreamed of her in shades of grey

Mixed jet and pearl and slate and cream

Upon my canvass her to stay

My rainbow shade; my eye’s fair gleam

I dreamed of her in black and white

Mixed paint to stain false memory

And thought I painted all that’s bright

Not seeing my poor mimicry

I dreamed she was all framed but free

In lands not green and blue alive

Imprisoned there alone was she

In my dark head I thought she’d thrive

I dreamed in sunsets of her grace

In reds and yellows that did fade

And did not catch upon her face

That gift of glory there was laid

I dreamed in palettes overbright

But never finding the right tone

Violet, orange, pink weren’t right

They all became a monochrome

I painted dreams and nightmares too

To try and find her somewhere there

To mirror that one and only who

That did my bleary eyes ensnare

But when she walked across my way

And broke the image in my view

I saw that all my shades of grey

Were not the rainbow’s truest hues

She lived more vivid than my dream

And glittered far against my clouds

And all I brushed to me did seem

Deluding ashen shadowed shrouds

Reality is where I’ll go

To see and draw just what I know

I will not try to bring down low

The hues above in the rainbow

Welcome to Zombieland

This is not your typical matinee horror in a dark and moldy theatre

You’re not running from red-eyed, blood-vomiting corpses

You’re not carrying a double-barreled shotgun

Blasting the disfigured heads off of the people you once knew

You are not the lone survivor

Standing helpless but triumphant on a highway

Blemished with the husks of cars and the stains of what once were people

Welcome to Zombieland

Row number 6 seat 6

Rotting like one of the gangrenous boil-covered zombies

Oh, but you don’t look like them

Your caked-on makeup or your bath of cologne

Your skanky Guess clothes or preppy Hollister

Covers the fecal mass of festering tissue within

Welcome to Zombieland

Forced to do the bare minimum in your 9 to 5

Zoning out in the class you didn’t pay for

Returning like a drone the job you hate

And talking robotically to the people you loathe

Coming home dragging feet to the door

To the family and friends you take for granted

Pull up a chair 

And stare until your eyes are gritty from forgetting to blink

Welcome to Zombieland

Sit 

And watch like a drooling catatonic 

The dim aura of blue from screens fills the lightless rooms

Computers and TVs

Theatres and cell phones

ATM’s and iPods

Screens, Screens, Screens, Screens

They seem to shelter but their flimsy protection is bound to break

Allowing the moths and rust and thieves to break in and steal

Look deep into the gilded mirror!

Bloodshot eyes and sallow heliophobic skin

Lurching legs aimlessly carried by appetites

Babbling and moaning in an unintelligible dialect

Blatantly unaware of the crumbling world around

Lounging oblivious in apathetically strewn filth

And sometimes in reasonless fits of passion

We gather in groups and perform unspeakable acts of violence on each other

Welcome to Zombieland

Are they so pretty?

The gleam upon the resplendent façades

Strikes the surface of the waters

And then is cast back

Upon their gargantuan sides

Like a childish game of keep-away

Those solemn obelisks look down condescendingly

On two bedroom homes

And squat industries at their feet

They shine in the sun like Kings frozen in their splendor

Children saunter among their roots

Like ants among the redwoods

The city noise is dull and subdued

As it sighs under the summer sun

The homeless seek the shelter of pillared shade

While the affluent seek air-conditioned cabs

Two classes

One climbing up the monstrous spires

By stepping on the faces of the others

Then the silence is cut

A gong smashed at the feet of the steel and glass idols

The children run

And the buildings begin to fall like dominos

While the perfidious illusion is broken