Pat Raia is a veteran journalist who covers crime, politics and animal welfare. 
She is also a lifelong poet.

We betray
each other
a thousand
ways
each day
with
jealousy
and
inequity
and
uninvited judgments
so
we do
what
we have
to do
to justify
our wrongs
in the eyes
of
our fathers
for the sake
of
our sons.

​

I wanted
roots
so
I invented
them
from 
other people's
stories
I wanted
wings
so
I made 
them
from paper 
scraps
and
string
I conjugated
a million verbs
to tell
my own
life story
and
I witnessed
things
that 
frighten you
especially
when you
sleep
Now
you want
to be
me
and 
it makes
me laugh - 
I don't 
think
you've saved
enough
broken string
for that 
​

I have been

the angel

of death

and

a warrior

for life

I have stood

on the edge

of nightfall

and kept

my balance

there

I've believed

in the dreams

of thousands

who had

no dreams

of their own

now

the journey

of my lifetime

has brought

me home
​
at last

We are
all connected
to the
generagions past
like
droplets from
a wellspring
like
particles
of light
we know
the things
our ancients
knew
in minute detail
which we
must spend
our own lifetimes
trying to
remember
​

Daily morning in my life
I get ready with new rise
My heart saying to my sole
Now get ready for new fight
View new dream
Start your search
For someone unseen
May be dream goes alive
She will make appear in life
Feel new zeal awake the sole
Touch fresh breathe
Look her dream
This is not love of one side
Love is inspiration of god
God is making you ready
She is a true imagination
Live near to my heart

​A dream says I want to grow
A bird says I want to fly
Both are wanted to spread wings
And want to touch highest height
Heart and deep thought
Want to sing a song
While happiness touch inside
Melody spread all-round me
And view of a new sunrise
Everything feels pleasant
Everything feels so nice
Whole world welcome my view
What now I need from my life
When I am hearing voice of real love
My every dream goes accomplished
And my life enjoying sunrise
 
 

​When growing day
Open his eyes
And greedy sun
Want her view
And look into her house window
With the great hope
To spend whole day with her
While sun rays penetrate her window
Slowly she opens her eyes
To meet with the world
To meet with growing rise
And started to take bath in golden rays
And spread fragrance of her
In flowering flower
In flowing waves
Her magical beauty
Create magical dream
And a massage for every lover
Enjoy every moment of life
And be always alive
 

KR Pendergrass is a career paramedic, devoted wife, homeschool mom, and part-time member of the justice league. Also the author of the short novel Incompatible With Life, and multiple short stories. Trying to establish a freelance writing career in addition to all that is tough, but if it's easy, it's not worth doing!

​Scars and miles and years and ghosts have made me who I am
 
Fierce as an alpha wolf when called, still gentle as a lamb
 
I've washed too much blood away to be innocent again
 
But it still tears me up inside to see another's pain
 
Fear and tears have left their mark on who I have become
 
I can no longer see the way back where I came from
 
It's a calling and a love and a burden and a load
 
To have a name for the crosses on the side of the road
 
All the time and sleepless nights spent out in the field
 
Sometimes I have to be a sword when I long to be a shield
 
Still I will stand true to the battle I've been called
 
And I'll hold my ground til in the battle I will fall

​The abundance of space and beauty and time
The structure of life fades into our minds
You know it's your world when you know this is real
There's nothing to hide and nothing to steal
To ride through the desert - a narrow road thrill
A place void of jetlag silent and still
Viewing a painting - focused on theme
Not seeing the background - lost in a dream
Like glittering glass that goes unseen
'cause it's not quite as pretty as tourmaline
But the glass has it's beauty like the old Mother Road
A dream that comes true not bought and not sold
Like the fantastic fury of silent red rocks
Where the wind says don't sleep
And the sun sets don't quit
Condors and roadrunners are part of this trip
Tenderfoot eyes perceive it as stark
Warriors know their spirits have felt
Each mile in their minds and under their belts
Silently begging to continue the trip
With no destination on Route 66.

​Skipping a flat stone on a still water lake
creating tiny circles that soon disappear
the stone silently sinks
and I am silent too and sinking
the tiny circles I have createdd
will disappear with me

A life that touches others
becomes passed on like a game of tag
"you're it"

Savor the moment of being it
breath in life and whatever movements
of this symphony can be played

My tremored hand reaches
to touch you - you're it
is all I want to say.

​A father is never the same
when the children become adults.
I imagine myself in a greenhouse
writing a poem at 3:00 am
assembling the parts
like a swing set.
The instruction sheet lost in the wind.
The flowers obstructed.
Now I hear drums
like the drums at 6:30 am on Patriots Day
before the parade.
Minutemen on horseback
re-enact a revolutionary spirit.
A time from my childhood
that I never shared,
it is falling from me
like a leaf shed from a tree.

​Angel Edwards first book of poetry "Tales In The Dreams Garden" was published by Silver Bow Publishing on July 29 2018.
Her second book of poetry "Lust Unfiltered By Love " was  acquisitioned by Silver Bow Publishing in October 2018 and will be published in November 2018
More of Our Canada featured Angel's story "Cat Queen " in the November issue
Angel is forming a rock band to continue to record and perform her original music with high hopes of international success 


http://www.reverbnation.com/angeledwards

Pregnant Girls Smoking
Orphaned wales floating
A bag filled with freshly sprayed silver paint was glued to your passed out face
And now years later – after the linen tux – and shiny trucks – you rewrote history – without the spray
The kids today – the black lives matter – the anti-Trump chatter - it’s all rubbing you the wrong way
You’re now bathed in the blood
Certain of the path – a shiny new past – those needle point - stitched tales – shredded and tossed and now look at you - you’re cloaked in all those sweat filled hours – a childhood marked and sealed by hard work and no complaining – forget the fact you married well – you did it all, and all you tell, is something vague with little depth in your explaining
Behind you – those millennial kids you had with your second wife roll their eyes – at Thanksgiving they try to be polite and hide all the things that they despise
Pass the gravy – and deep inside will Jesus save me? 
You’re nearing the gate – you’re in the queue – closer to the edge – remember your pills and forget those long ago forgotten thrills – that wasn’t you that guy I knew  
Who are we really - when we run from our past so fast we’re reeling
It’s the part of us - that was not so smart of us - and yet it was so cool -to not care - because death was not everywhere and so far away it wasn’t there
Now it’s wise to exercise and those who don’t or won’t or can’t turn to fat and you mustn’t shame that 
Everyone gets a prize - it’s so clean and nice and sterilized
And the earth we ruined with all our smoke and acid and chemicals is getting pissed
But profits – you believe in the bottom line – count every dime - that third quarter can’t be missed
You won’t see him hug a tree – he’s photographing, with his phone,everything he owns - he’s so vigilant to document all of it – but the picture he sends, to outer space, is of a face, before time had had its way – a face I remember- and one I knew - when we used to play with silver paint in paper bags and sometimes glue ​

Since retiring from a career in pharmaceutical research and management, Beatrice Abrams, Ph.D., has exercised the more creative side of her brain. An active creative writing group and poetry writing seminar member, she writes poems as a means of exploring the world and is completing a memoir-based novel on a Jewish family’s experience in Vichy France during World War II. Beatrice participates in volunteer efforts in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, [where she resides,] and sits on the executive board of Jewish Family Service of Somerset, Hunterdon, and Warren Counties and the board of the Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raritan Valley Community College. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Potion.

​I was there as history moved across the stage, in the audience squirming in my seat.
Scenes advanced into acts, actors read their lines, and directors waved in ever escalating change.
 
Sather Gate shuddered and Sproul Hall quailed as smoldering hordes of students gathered in Berkeley to protest the lives they had known. I watched, I listened, I worked.
 
Maniacal marksmen assassinated hope, crafting a cult of bellicosity. I watched, I listened, I cried.
 
I heard a quiet voice declare a salacious strike, shoring up our dominos. Sitting at the game table I watched as chips tumbled, bombs fell, monks burned and children cried. Morality battled in streets, on busses, at lunch counters, as humans sacrificed and humanity tried to evolve. I watched, I burned, I balloted.
 
What was I in this chain of history? I was no clasp, holding the links together but a link itself, holding tightly to myself, entwined with others, lying against a heaving breast - a small piece, not standing apart.
 
These were times of change, discovery and renewal. Opportunity blossomed for those who could wade through odorous swamps, and I was nearby breathing in the fragrances of the times.
 
I purified proteins and developed drugs. I peered through opaque windows into the soft and elegant offices of the elite. I etched my way deeply into those restricted spheres, never breaking through the glass. I worked, I fought, I learned, I taught.
 
Now I sit buffeted by the present, balanced precariously on the pedestal of my past. My being isn’t measured in the world at large, but within the tiny neighborhood of my lifetime. It isn’t found speeding across multilayered interchanges. My being advances modestly on solitary bridges that connect intersecting paths to support and reinforce undulating lives that rush by.
 
I am a speck in the edifice of existence —my shape coming into focus only in that corner of the life I share with others, building an identity brick by brick, building the world person by person.
 

​I am a tired refugee
living in a shantytown.
The gangs would never let me be –
frightful fear was all around –
and so I knew I had to flee
before my life came crashing down.
 
The gangs would never let me be - 
frightful fear was all around –
I sought escape and to be free –
to catch a dream that long had flown –
and so I knew I had to flee
before my life came crashing down.
 
I sought escape and to be free –
to catch a dream that long had flown –
To carve a new identity
And build a life I solely own.
And so I knew I had to flee
before my life came crashing down.
 
To carve a new identity –
to build a life I solely own…
I am a tired refugee
Living in a shantytown…
I had no choice but pack and flee…
And still my life came crashing down.
 
 

They say it’s peace personified:
stillness swaddling a new baby.
They say it’s creation renewed: 
muted colors painting the horizon with hope.
 
But how should I know these things?
I am finding contentment in the dreams
playing blissfully in my sleep.
 
 

​Here I sit in a worn and frumpy housedress
starring at a junkyard of intentions,
waiting for somebody with a backhoe
to clear a simple path.
 
As I rock in my inertia,
stagnant dreams blur the horizon.
Prismatic ideas flit by,
but my net, full of holes, traps only the wind.
 
Lured by languishing illusions,
I clutch a wobbly rail and trudge toward the sun.
At each gnarled tree I stop,
burrowing in a burl of someone else’s creativity.
 
Somewhere a piquant path meanders.
Somehow I will trek that trail.
But for now I contemplate tomorrow 
from a place farther than before.
 
 

​Now I waltz in the light of the dark waning moon -
Once I dance and I whirled in the day.
But lengthening shadows ebbed all too soon -
Now I waltz in the light of the dark waning moon.
The days that I spent in the light were a boon,
I had time for my dreams and some play.
Now I waltz in the light of the dark waning moon -
Once I danced and I whirled in the day.

​My eyes are brown and yours are green,
I look at you and wonder what you’ve seen.
Have you seen horrors, crime or strife?
Or have you been lucky to lead a charmed life?
 
I don’t mind if you’ve more than I do,
I see that you’re pure through and through
A strong mind with talent to share,
So I don’t quite understand what’s going on out there.
 
What really sets us apart as a species?
Strength of character, true as can be
We look for response in likes, shares and views
For we as a whole have lost sight of our muse
 
Are we so shallow as to look for validation here?
We search for pride, for someone to revere.
We are the ones to blame, in whole or in part
Abandoning dreams before they even start.
 
Left in a shelf, dusty and cast away
Trying to control what we have no sway
You are not beholden to numbers or ovations
Rather more so your hopes and ambitions.
 
Grab hold of the dream
In milk, what rises is the cream.
Disregard the nasty things somepeople say
And let your faith show you the way
 
Green eyes, I warn you
There is no shortage for lack of virtue
The way forward is hard, demanding
Prepare yourself for rocky landings.
 
These lessons I’ve learnt, difficult and hard-won
My feathers are singed from flying too close to the sun
I’ve fallen back down to earth, and afraid still
That I’ve lost what I loved most: my will.
 
So look out your window, boy
And see the ships ahoy?
Don’t reconcile yourself to this fate
Never say, “Oh, it’s too late.”
 
Long ago, I had a thirst in my soul
I see it reflected in you, two halves of a whole
The spark, the gleam, the thrill
Let it take you where it will.
 
Look at me, beaten and worn through
You’ve got your whole life laid out in front of you.
Never look back, trust in your heart
And this is what will set you apart.
 
So go, green eyes, leave this behind!
You only need your heart and mind.
Know that the sky is your limit,
And I’ll be with you, if only in spirit.
 
 

​I want to know you as you are, to the deepest recesses of your soul. You don’t have to mold yourself a certain way to please me. Love is a process, and we’ll learn together. I want to know your quirks, and hear your whispered ‘goodnight’ in the peace of a darkened room. Hear a symphony with me, and hear the stories told across the distances.
 
I want to ruffle your hair during a conversation, wink with a shared secret when we pass by each other. I want to peck you on the cheek with your friends watching, and glance back to see you with your hand on your cheek, holding my kiss with stars in your eyes.
 
I don’t need to see the flashiest shops and the latest movies. I want the thought, the sentiment. Bring me to a quiet picnic spot by a rushing waterfall, give me a flower to tuck behind my ear. Smile when I sing on a whim, and dance along spontaneously with me. When we jump off a cliff, I want to feel your hand in mine, fingers intertwined.
 
 
 

​My wish came true, my dreams were heard,
If kisses were snowflakes, I’d send you a blizzard.
What else would I give, to hold you close?
A hundred blossoms, each a red rose.
 
My life was grey, bleak and dreary,
If notes were smiles, I’d play you a symphony.
What else, you ask, for the touch of your hand?
A hundred seashells, shining upon the sand.
 
My coffers are small, my pockets shallow,
Our nights lit with the soft glow of tallow
I’ll give you laughter and loads of bright cheer,
But none of these things, that’s for sure.
 
No dresses of silk or gloves of cashmere,
Nor frequent visits to lands beyond here.
I’ll play till the strings break on my violin,
But you’ll always hear the music within.
 
There will be no lies or infidelity,
Or any sort of equal hypocrisy.
No greed, arrogance or bad temper,
To cause you any grief or whimper.
 
But enough of that, I pray you see where this brings
My final gift, a last offering
A lifetime of days, gazing across the sea,
A lifetime of days, if you’ll have me.
 
 

Lou Marin was born and raised in the western hills of Maine, then spent 20 plus years wandering the country and world in the United States Air Force. He is a photographer, published poet and short story writer who now also pens faith based devotionals. He lives in Rumford, Maine. His five poetry anthologies, published by Publish America and entitled,  Awash With Words, Old Waves, New Beaches, Whisper of Waves, and Sea To Shining Sea, Version 1 and 2, are available in print and online.
 
mbsphotog@yahoo.com
 
https://twitter.com/mbsphotog
 
https://www.facebook.com/New-Spirit-Writings-and-Poetry-1037822689667106
 

​Arizona, hot afternoon,
tearing apart the Interstate,
Time to take a break
from miles of shimmering desert highway.
Six hours at high speed
makes the eyes tired.
Not a McDonald's to be seen
in the last 200 miles.
 
Emily and I
stop at Hopi Kiva Cafe
outside Phoenix.
The only white faces
smart enough to dare the local menu
were met with friendliness
and eagerness to accept
tourist dollars.
 
Climb out of the car stretching,
back and neck popping,
squinting and sun baking,
we wander into
air conditioned gloom.
Mmmm, spicy pepper
cooking smells.
 
Kid menu and whatever
the pretty native girl
with the round smiling face
recommended sounded good
as we quickly dined.
 
 
 
 
Dad can we go into the gift shop?
Activity books and more car fun stuff,
Dream Catcher, a bit of turquoise,
coloring books and crayons
dug into my wallet.
I attempted a smile,
as I give money to
the decidedly non-native
grouchy, slouchy teen
with the "Here to Help"
pin on her apron.
 
Emily climbs on top of
an outdoor dining table
for a picture in front of
poorly done reproductions of
Hopi demigods,
before we strap back in
and turn up air conditioning.
 
Arizona, late afternoon.
we were tearing back up an Interstate on-ramp.
We broke east into 400 miles
of shimmering desert highway.
Six more hours at high speed
kept smiles on our faces.
Emily and I recounted dinner
and shopping,
before admitting to being tired.

​I am sure my mama had shoes,
but I don't remember her
ever wearing them when
I was a young child.
I do remember her dancing
and telling us about things
like the Charleston
and her and daddy
doing the Rumba together.
 
Those days are
like a dream to me,
her bare feet shuffling
and stepping across
the old worn kitchen linoleum,
as the old record player
scratched out Big Band 1940's.
Sometimes she would bend
and do the twist.
 
These thoughts bring a tear.
Only me and mama know why.
I feel selfish and lazy
knowing she went without
so I could have
shoes for school.
I turn up my stereo loud
and dance barefoot.
I hope she knows I am thankful.
 

​Miss Eva's pipe tobacco smoke is thick in the air.
The tea kettle whistles from the small kitchen.
"Listen boy, here comes the six-fifteen.
It always whistles at the crossing in Hartford."
"Clackity-clack, clickety-clack"
comes the heat in the radiator
of her retirement apartment.
We sit and dream of days past.
 
Miss Eva lived by the railroad tracks
for sixty years before her family
moved her to Florida with other retirees,
to slowly decay in a tenement thirty stories high.
A tear slowly traverses the wrinkled face.
"Things were better when I was a girl.
I had family and friends who came to visit."
 
I wonder what she did before I was forced
into weekly visits as part of my probation.
I wonder if she danced with the shadows
she tells me keep beckoning her
onto the narrow window ledge and to freedom.
"Come closer" they say.
"We will free you from pain, old age, and loneliness."
 
Miss Eva's pipe tobacco smoke is thick in the air.
The tea kettle whistles from the small kitchen
"Listen boy, here comes the six fifteen.
It always whistles at the crossing in Hartford."
"Clickity-clack, clackity-clack," comes the heat
in the radiator of her retirement apartment.
We sit and dream of days past.

​It was Father's Day, I wasn't sure what to do.
I just wanted to spend the day with you.
We went to Pinkerton's pet store to shop for fish,
being with you is better than throw away kish,
and your hugs and kisses are the best gift too.
 
A few puppies and a stop to hold a lizard or two,
a look at the fancy tetras colored baby blue.
We finally picked out a few that were your wish.
It was Father's Day.
 
We started home, bidding the pet store adieu,
you helped me to make dinner, canned chicken stew.
Nothing could make the good feelings vanish,
and no bad thoughts could my smile banish.
A kiss and a hug when evening was through.
It was Father's Day.
 
 

​I have been to Moron, Spain,
where the bull is still king,
To Vegas where gambling is my bane,
played cards, and listened to Elvis sing.
I'd trade them all for a walk in the country
and a quiet nap under an old oak tree.
 
I have been to southern cities:
New Orleans Mardi Gras crowds,
streets vibrant, floats and pretties;
Hard to see the sky with smog clouds.
I'd rather celebrate silence in the country
and have a quiet nap under an old oak tree.
 
I went to Los Angeles on a winter day.
A quick drive past Hollywood and glamour;
nothing there to make me want to stay.
I was scared of all the bustle and clamor.
I'd trade all the glitz for the country
and a quiet nap under an old oak tree.
 
When my sister made Omaha her home,
I spent two weeks kind of poking around, but it
was no place for a country boy to roam.
I had no liking for continuous sound.
I went to renew my soul in the country
and took a quiet nap under an old oak tree.

​We are swallowed by pills, they
That churn blood in our tongues
A laughing over the sounds of disembodiment sinks
A laughing over the sounds of sobs
 
This mechanical behemoth has clotted iron its entrails
veins now coughing cement
A laughing over the sounds of immortal war we cry
A laughing in our freak skin daughter shame me
A black tear drips slowly from my unscrewed eyelid
And I pluck it with my broken fingers,
To place in back inside.
 
A laughing that should not be here.
A laughing.
 
There is blood in my pocket it’s in-pooled now
I cannot remember how it got there
The skies fester in the black of crow bodies
The obliques are feted like dirty beds made of scar tissue
Stitches, as the roots of dead trees
Continued to rip into the graves of men
I did not ask for my eyes to be shattered they swore
no thank you
But they were.
My tear ducts are now in knots dry: my cracking face
And the mechanical pounding of my heart
Offers no requiem.
 
Nuclear shelters shovel the bodies in hungry their mouths
Consuming them with cracked lips
Shall we?  Hide from the sunlight just one night longer
To wait for the passing of our last loved one?
 
I climb out of the catacomb of stone and skin and hair and bone
A laughing somewhere persists.
But I know no one could truly be happy
And the laughing, the laughing
is one of pain.
Goodbye Queen Mary.  Goodbye Saint Christopher.
I say, and tongue down three more pills.
Goodbye.
 
My wrists are injectionated and clots run through my veins.
My tongue has turned black laugh my freak skin writhes
And I surmise.
 
It was from the tar my heart stole from my lung
From the carcinogens my eyes stole from my blood
I can no longer live.
Not with their laughings.
Their laughing is that of mourning and death and sin and hate
Yes! Oh, claim us, suffering terrestrial gods
We are no use to ourselves.
I check my watch, and there is blood.
 
These crows.  On every tree silhouette cackling over the obliques and granite surround me in peckish bleak
I walk to a house planted at the top of the cemetery mountain.  And it is empty with life.
Who lived here
had lived
 
among past lives screeching in embalmment.
Still, the laughtering echoes somewhere run knots through me
It sounds golly with hate, leeched of its purity.
The laughing continues, distorted like the squawks of the ravens.
Of humans perched on dead trees, surrounded in cemetery.
It’s cruel, now, I understand pray hope think conclude
They are laughing at me, and my hope for life.
At the blood in my stomach that keeps me full.
The laughing persists.  The laughing crawls and dances
 
With its fermented sweet scent of week old poppie skin
It seeps into my skin, slowly, I am going insane.
Not again.  Not again, will I pray my life to Satan and God
To be consumed in dissonance.
Goodbye Faust, Goodbye mother.
 
Goodbye to that crescent planet that hangs on a noose
And nurtures their incessant laughter of hate.
The laughing.  It continues.  It is taken by the wind,
And washed down to a rotting shore, where
 
Machines live, and humans are programmed the clock splinters
The Television speaks tongues, conjuring dead specters
of once beauty
 
That little box of light is a cage it plays in my skull
And it has trapped a thousand goddesses
In eternity.  The laughtering stops.
And whispers my name.
 
“Come, child of forsaken love,
Come, and laugh with us.
At the death of prophets and gods
Junkies and mothers.
Come.  Care no longer,
And laugh at the beauty
Of the plague called life
Come, and cry no more.
 
Come, and laugh with us,
At our own deaths and infections,”
 
The laughtering grows louder,
And my tongue is part of it coveting the flesh of my kill
Goodbye, my Queens and Saints.
Goodbye black tears, and cringe ridden lips
For I laugh now.
Only laugh, and feel no pain.
 
No truth, no humanity, no holiness.
And no more tears.
Goodbye.
 
And our tears dry.  But not before our bodies rot.
We break open with blistering sobs
And now we know
The maggots were always beneath giggling with splendor
They were always beneath.
 
Squirming there, as if under the withdrawal
Of a needle
Or a needle.
 
Living, they ask for air.
And with tar, I gave them some
For life I can create and sustain
Is precious, no matter how vile.
Somewhere a computer weeps
 
They eat cavities in my neural jelly
And writhe like busted nightcrawlers in the electric bed
When thrown against the asphalt.
And the computer weeps.
 
As a balloon deflates slowly in
The Nicaraguan sun, my stomach is full of drugs.
 
Somewhere a computer weeps
As ovaries fry on wet cement
And no one cares.
 
A great machine is coming,
Its metal skin is bleeding inky newborn blood.
With a violent dying
It bleeds for you.
 
Our wooden spears and ships
Animal skin houses consecrated
War paint of ash and blood
We march towards the machine.
 
It’s ragged iron teeth desecrate.
Bone and flesh are sucked in.
A clawing death pervades the air
And it smells sweet like rotten
Tooth canals.
 
The soured bodies sink inward
Their collapsing chests breath with
The squirm of maggots and bacteria
And the Machine still is hungry forever thirsty for flesh pulp.
 
It eats tongues and eyes,
Ripping them from
The heads they were planted in.
And the blind mutes preach war again.
 
The Metal Machine curls up into a larval
Cocoon of rancid steel viscera.
Metamorphosis is coming
They must run.  Now,
They must run.
The cocoon breaks open with the splitting
Grinding bosom of industrial lungs
 

​ 
The wings marked with golden eyes
Forever dead, creep into every
Body like a leeching vacuum twisted spithing,
Of steel and blood and rot.
 
Running on broken wrists
They climb from the industrial flood
Pleading with The Almighty
But the Metal Monster rips their prayers from them
And Consumes them, and then them themselves as well. 
Growing
Breathing lizard eyes and raven wings
Their crying makes it laugh I plead to nobody in manic fear
With Rainbows of insect flesh dripping
From its churning ulcered stomach.
And they know, now
As the machine wraps its teeth around
their necks,
 
They had always been dead.
 
He woke up in a burning dawn
The sky was in the electric chair
Frying neurons fizzled, frying neurons popped
The cervix of Hell pushed out clouds
Of squid fetuses crying and laughing drips of sardonia.
We thought
Crying and laughing
We thought that life was a suicidal joke
Eat and pray were the people
That cursed upwards and prayed downwards
That bled black rainbows.
 
That seizure impulse to dream
Was denied.
 
So now they lie awake,
Closing their eyes just to see darkness
And pain.
 
Twisted bodies writhe with happiness
Twisted bodies laugh with pain
Twisted bodies orgasm together
But know,
They are completely alone.
 
The dead black eyes of the monster
They watch eternal
Over the sky, they consume
Consume our peace, oh fatal Gods of lore
We say sarcastically, with teeth of rusted
Blackened tooth canals of sick
But the god consumes anyway.
Run.
 
Our bodies flash with LSD cold sweats and delusion,
As we enter the trip.
It was all blood and pain, with dystopic hysteria quilted as one,
We said.
 
As the celestial gods raped by metal machines
Cried for their purity, taken by wise men.
Our bones rattle in the firefly jars
Sleep is soon.
 
Dreams are what they dream for.
Sleep is what they pray for,
But the dead eyed monster pries open our eyes
With shame and guilt and pain.
 
There are, in my dream, angels
In the electric chair, smiling
There are, as well, gas chambers
With little plastic, rainbow
Children’s playground sets.
Black and white Jewish children
slide down
The five-foot slide, without joy.
Frowning as if with the banality of adulthood
 
Not of execution.
And I dream of the loneliest sea I’ve ever seen.
 
 
 
I sip burnt coffee,
inert to love, where is my television.
I sit.  I masturbate to sickening
pornographic love. 
The cigarette snuffs.
 
In the lukewarm gas station coffee. 
I laugh.  My name is Edward
but everybody calls me The Freak. 
Why’d I do it?  Why’d I do it?
The kids gather their desks at
the opposite
side of the room. 
 
I drool blood. 
The teacher is talking
But all I can hear is
the drone of voices.  Freak.  Faggot. 
Sick. 
 
I’m drunk from the medication. 
I take my medication. 
I’m happy. 
I take my medication. 
I’m sane. 
I take my mediation. 
I’m normal.  A kid breaks the violence.
     “Eats rat cum!” with a silent shrill screech.
 
I don’t respond.  I sit. 
My eyes turn black
and pop out of my skull like rip zits. 
I want a needle to hit my vein
and then bloom into a magenta orchid mangled
with its visceral lips.  Laughing boy. 
 
Sick boy.  Faggot boy. Laughing boy. 
Sick boy.  Faggot boy. Laughing boy. 
Sick boy.  Faggot boy. Laughing boy. 
 
Marijuana.  Adderall.  Alcohol. 
Synthetic chemicals. 
Hallucinations I sit. 
I want the television
to flicker and
die like God or a junky
 
brain cell.  I want the sky
to collapse like a punctured
lung. 
Freak child I sit. 
 
What are they laughing at.  Sick boy. 
Laughing boy.  Crying boy. 
I saw a motorcycle accident in
The Dominican Republic. 
The man’s splattered brains sizzled
 
like bacon on the burning black asphalt, 
A pool of blood stretched from gutter to gutter.
I felt
 
Nothing.
 
Siddhartha kisses
my third eye with rusty razor blades
for lips.  I was standing
in my bathroom
with an uncoiled copper colored coat hanger. 
I could feel it kick
and squirm. 
 
There were maggots’ underneath
my skin once.  Suicide. 
It was all right. 
I saw a paralyzed squirrel
drag its soon to be dead body
across my lawn. 
 
I felt sick,
but I was the one who crippled it. 
I injected burnt coffee straight
into my vein with
a used hypodermic needle.
 
Our buildings will fall. 
Freak child my skin. 
Our religions will devour their own
flesh. 
 
Our skin child, lost. 
He breathes through broken
lungs, just like I used to. 
Our depraved numb hearts cry. 
 
 
 

I am sitting on a dead black locust
Tree now.  My fingers have shriveled
To bone, and my filthy body is gilded
In inky black quills.
 
The cemetery sits below me,
Though that is not where the dead bodies lay.
They, near the end, had taken to piling their loved
Ones in the pyres of the genocide
That had come.  That would always come.  That always came.
 
In the dead sky of but radioactive glow,
The flesh ash form storm clouds,
And rain a chalky grey over the stitched up
Skull of the land.  It is the cold of winter
But without snow.  Only the dull grey of bored death
Fills me.
 
All of the bodies had been toppled by the knees
By the grinding claws of the Great Machine.
Now, only the twisted skeletal structures
Of ghettoized buildings, billboards, trees,
 
And granite obliques stand.
They seem lonely, to me, and the other crows.
They told me, that that is why
they perch on dead trees.  And billboards.
And tombstones, and houses in decay.
I had known I had always known that.
 
I had said goodbye
to my fathers and lovers and heroes and hated
and now they have said goodbye
to this broken land,
to the skies of burning bodies
to the necrotic flesh of soured water.
While I still remain.
 
No longer crying.
No longer in pain.
No longer surrounded.
And no longer alone.
 
Sitting on the branch of this invasive
Tree, this black locust tree.
This tree which spreads from land to land
Killing off native species, reproducing
And choking out everything else
Only to be gnarled and die.
This tree which has taken over the hills
And forests and yards and cemeteries.
 
Just like That Great Machine.
Just like that Great Genocide
Just like their deaths
Just like our lives
As silhouettes of ravens
Perched in plagues
Upon every poorhouse, every granite headpiece,
Every billboard,
And every dead tree.
 
 
Calling out to the surrounded and alone
With our laughter.  Of cruelty.
Golly with hate,
Leeched of its purity.
 
Calling out to those in pain
To join us in our murder,
Perched over the graveyard,
And laugh.
  

​ 
He will destroy beautifully
And he is coming.
The Great Machine,
The Cognition in the Machine.
With his stomach of burning sulfur
 
The Suicide of Crows are plagued
On every tree, and granite stone
Of this cemetery hill.
 
Remember their laughing?
I do, because it is mine as well.
And it is still, despite.
 
Despite the heaped remains of bodies
With their idols and Gods
Swimming in this metal gut of this burning hate.
Despite the skies glowing radioactive
In place of the long decaying sun.
 
But I laugh, and feel no pain.
I have said my goodbyes to my Faust’s and Mothers
Goodbye to my saints and Queens and Angels
and therapists.
 
But still I sit in this body
As it churns its blood to sweet syrup.
The fleshy twirly-gig tumbles to the stage
And now she realizes she is surrounded by twisted creatures
and completely alone.
This is something I have yet to realize,
But have known for so many years.
 
I sit in my body, and laugh.
The Great Machine is near.
I can hear the gears contorting in its head,
And it is the sound of muted laughter at the
Sight of a crippled retards.
 
That is me.
The retarded cripple surrounded and alone
Laughing with no pain, as the
Great Machine rips bloody patches from
The patchwork of the earth,
And bloody patches from beneath
The patchwork of their beds.
 
They shouldn’t have slept, I think.
They should have been as guards.
As children of light and day
Holy daughters.  Holy sons.  The God Children.
 
And now they are dead,
And I laugh, because now,
I am just alone.