Staring at the rain,

wishing I was the drop falling.

It‘s the free in falling that I miss.

Suddenly,

I'm feeling light as a feather.

I fall back into the world of wonder.

Clouds all around me,

I open my arms to welcome the rain.

Am I being washed?

Cleansed like a shower of Divine.

How could this moment be mine?

Blessed like a wave helping a baby turtle to the ocean.

Now I’m literally free falling.

What a burden release, don’t you think?

S. L. Cline

Like a petal you fell,

drooped like a stem.

You’ve lost your water and light,

lows have drained your gem.

Support is needed,

your bubble can’t glow.

A flashlight of the sun needs to rain upon you,

a light you can not borrow.

Along came a gardner new to his tools,

pulled your weeds and made you new.

Your pollen attracts the insects,

then travels with other grooves.

Now the shadows have come to pick you from the bunch.

The hands feel familiar,

now you have a hunch.

In a glass full of water,

your thirsty but begin to drown.

Now your petals are lying down.

In the dark you go,

to a different destination.

The feeling is too thick,

suffocating while letting go.

Alas those insects arrive,

little by little away you fly.

Before you could open your dreary eyes,

in beds of beds you multiplied.

Now you are many seeds,

helping those who are blind.

S. L. Cline

How this courtly rose stands,

Blushed belle of the ball

Through the seasonal war

That pockmarks squamous scabs

And cuts bloodless holes

Into the lusty bloomed spread

Of her clipped seraphim wings.

How the diamond seed of her heart

Is beautifully curious,

And a miracle of proud glories.

How she is bathed

By the bittersweet baptism

Of lashing dagger rain,

Yet her dusk pink spiral dress

Refuses to strip

The occult floral layers

To worship and grovel

Upon gravestone gravel

Or powder burn dirt.

How her unyielding kiss

Of defiant repose

Charmed the magnetic mercury

And knives of grey skies,

And I forget my own sadness

Just to let her peace breathe.

Vast

Empty

when it’s full

of hollow people

auditory dissonance

Hear what we want

Selective

Echoes bounce

Off wooden floors

solid as any foundation

Built on sand

On the podium

innaccuracies

polished floors

false shine

The soulless

sycophants make

ill wishes

Karmic answers

thoughtless words

rhetorical responses

filled with doubt

Chamber of echoes

peripheral souls

stirring

irrationally within

the auditorium

Don’t panic

Don’t crumble into a foggy lagoon of tears

Don’t shiver under firecracker skies

With its tiger roar sonic boom

Or be dashed inside

From night’s crooked smile

And vacant moon

You’ve got nerve, my friend

You’ve got gutsy punch

And electric storm fury

That barrels through

The razored maze

And

The needling briars

Of brutes and bastards

Who want to tank your ship

Through the greedy storehouse

Of their petty mutinies,

So hold on to the wheel

And the invisible calm

Knowing that the absurdity of life

Is all the better

For you being in it,

And may your transparent heart of glass

Blind the dogged scoundrel

And flood the malice eyed adders

Hungry to bruise your heel,

For the self loathing beasts

At war with themselves

Despise a ravine of purity

And may their towers of rabble rousing Babel

Plant themselves face first

Into the Godsmacked realities

Of black and blue earth,

But don’t write your epitaph

Or realign your course,

You’ve only touched the simple depths

Of a universe of worth

Alive in the kindness of your eyes

And in the beautified candor of your words,

So keep sweating blood

If you must

But saints preserved

Keep pushing on,

Wave your die hard flag of no return

Because I think you absolutely matter

To God

To us

To art

To the world

To the neighbouring prisms

That reflect the stellar outline

Of a diamond pearl

That shines

That is you

So onwards you prizefighter

And steady

To ready

To deaden

The calloused nerve

That pinched you

In its boxing cage,

But break down the gates

And let the world

Hear the resurrected songs

Of your valour

And make it

A revolution

Of love,

Saturn’s return

That dries up the frenzied

Scalds of hate,

Now onwards

Now on!

Why God why,

Does the reaper’s tragic dalliance

With a world on blood red alert,

Sing out her pale horse psalms

Of

Bullets

Guns

And seething rain

Of bombs?

Our flags of peace

Wave most unseen,

And our hymns of love

Unheard.

A man picks up his phone,

And it feels like something new...

It's as heavy as a boulder,

Right behind him is the view

Of his fair city,

Wet from rain treatment...

As Phil turns 'round his phone

He's assured that it's indeed the one

That has been assigned by sight...

So it's Phil now at the window,

Gawking...

He is

Eking out the night...

...Beside him is a half a pint

That burns his throat when

Quickly drunk...

Downstairs upon his

Workbench waits

An envelope that's not been torn...

It's the voters registration letter...

All his family in that jagged tree

Has assured him that if he decides

On a candidate who is deeming to be

As a shining star for our countries vest

Then he's deigned to furnish

For the ballot box...

As you must lay down with a

Snappy thrust

What you think is right

In a Swing State's patch...

This feeling of pure

Circumstance

Is a stirring jolt

Of a lightening thrill,

And it makes hairs dance

On the back of necks

When they slide the pick...

Where the tickle sits...

O, If I were a Leninist

All dressed in black...

The ways I ache,

And the lack of luck

Would just make my list,

And the coliseum

Where those runners run

Would add more to thought;

Never feel store bought

Where the crowds would come

When their underwhelmed...

For a quick bloodshed,

Or a bath and jack

Where we yank the fat

'til it's less then loose

From the Mother Goose...

This man picks up his phone,

And it feels like something's

Older...

It's as heavy as a breaking sweat,

Right behind him is

The closed out set,

Still wet from rain

As Phil whips in shock...

He's self assured that she's been

Full gawking...

Now he's

Eking out the night for spite...

A silent pistol shot is bled...

He can stare upon her ice white Walls...

Her tits of parables and ferns in Pleasant

Plaza window wells...

...Beside him is a half a pint

That burns his throat when

Quickly drunk...

Downstairs upon his

Workbench waits

An envelope that's not been cut...

7/13/24

Bunny Villaire

Edit #2

Through the dimmed lens of days,

My drowsy mind

Targets both place and time,

Winter, 1993.

It was nostalgic tragedy

Wed to the ceremonial solstice

When dark tidings smoldered the frayed wick,

And I was a salted snail,

Hooded up to the nines,

Remembering through

A chokehold of gunshot sobs

How lazy snowflakes

Used to eat up the lamppost compasses,

Flitting helical lesions

A stirred haze

Shaded blank,

Leprosy white,

Atlas shouldering

A slow motion avalanche,

Bleached in February firewater.

The shuddering saturnine chills

Deadlocked us

Into bone scalding oblivion,

Sunless miseries

And 5 P.M. curfews

For another eight weeks,

As winter fell like a plague

Of starchy white sheets.

I used to make my tarpit boots

Slide in a fumbling scuffle

With the mirror sheen sheets

Of winter glass,

Crying out

Third degree frosted burns

As I cracked

The arctic back.

Winter dazzled,

Even the apple peeled star lanterns

That rattled night’s surly cage

Took longing notice

As the shivering moon

Envied the satellite child,

Born of God’s

Sculptured flesh,

A callow captive

To the ephemeral spell

Of a frozen age.

God, I was so lonely then

And so empty there,

Soldiering a barely silent

Crunch snow shuffle

Through the duplicate rows

Of cheerless houses,

Stopping only

To flash sunken eyes

And a mournful parting glance,

Towards that impenetrable home

That lodged love.

How I wished it were mine.

We rot

For want of contact,

Though the quantum thrust

Has altered the ever changing metric,

Where speech and touch

Are obsolete duties,

And the dividing lines

Are outlined in high resolution revolt,

The exiled stragglers

Defenceless

Behind their blunted weapons

Of pen and chalk.

We falter

For hunt of cheap kicks

As reckless urgency

Crowns hologram kings and queens

And makes saints of televised talking heads,

The sterile fluorescence

A doomsday halo,

Tranquilising the now

And marking the end.

We seek

And find

Apathy’s immured house of cards,

As the shape of dreams,

Is amorphous sentiment

And thrown to the lions

Who rage at the languid heel.

We seek

Ourselves,

And suffer its vain pursuit,

Through a turncoat sea of arms

And neon barriers

To truth.

Hell is our inverted heaven

And heaven is our subverted hell,

But blinded minds and hearts

Can only stare

Yet never tell.

Phaethon’s empire eats itself to ruin.

Vinyl faith

Sunken weary worn groove,

Midnight lacquer

A scratched nail on black moon

Its cyclops eye

Revolving stereophonic hymns

Though pressed plastic soul.

But the swelling strains

Collide into mushroom clouds

Of aria static

And the echoing fallout

Skips like a trembling saint.

I am found

By the detective

Of sound.

The warbled melodies

And stuttering crash

Are a 45 RPM

All trumpeting doom,

Gifting the silent void

With velvet tongued ruin.

Youth’s swallowed dawn

Turns ripe beyond blue,

Yet the burden of time

Still whistles our tune.

But wherever I go

May your songbirds sing too.