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Bowls of nothing every morning,
Bowls of nothing every night –
To eat anything but air
Is to forget the human plight:
That no matter what you put in you
You’re worth no more than shite –
Born as nothing into mourning
That you’ll die as nil by night!

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Look at all them bouncin’ bout –
Jingle Jingle janglejing!
A bunch o silly-lookin’ dolls
Strangled up in knotted strings.
They love those strings of theirs, them dolls,
And try to hold the nylon dear;
But don’t they know it’s all just thread
That hoists them high by heavy rears?

Jangle-krinkle, tinklewink –
They try to kiss the skinning threads
That jerk them, shirk them, yank their heads,
And still with them they’d make their beds
Because it’s wood throughout their heads.
What a pointless, thoughtless lot
That lets their strings jerk where they ought –
But if they sense, they’d certainly not,
Were they aware the Puppeteer’s plot.

The Puppeteer, he ain’t a man
But a autonomy o’ beliefs
Latched to puppets by their strings
(And them to him by griefs)
Made of wounded misconceptions
And thoughts they hope are real –
They jumble up the other puppets
And choke them out with zeal.
The Marionettes keep on a-yankin’
The Puppeteer around,
Though they’ve become so entangled
Up can’t be told from down.

Jingly-tingly jinglejang –
They ring for audience.
But lookee here! Silly we!
The strings have made the dolls immobile;
Their heads hold the only dance.

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I run my bony fingers
Sensitively across the sharkskin serrated surface of
A Brick Wall:
Rough and red
The blood of sweat
Slipping down its cemented hodgepodge
Between the grooves –
Filling the cracks –
Sticky
Warm
The cold of artificial stone
Falsely coated in a
Living crimson that renders it
Human
To the untrained heart.

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Abrupt beginning, abrupt end
I come from light, to darkness, to light again.
All the same, play the game;
Hold back love, hold back spite,
Try to make it through each night,
Each curtain call, each pawn fall –
Every piece must give their all.
The King and Queen each take their space
And thus begins the endless race.

Until the game concludes
Only eagerness exudes.

The board is set, the pieces play
All the same, every day.
The bishop slides to snag a knight,
But that knight’s spite puts up a fight.
Hell is raised, God is praised,
Lesser pieces shocked and dazed.
Their vision scarred, yet no holds barred;
Strategy a mess, moves amiss,
Vitality fades with fatal hiss.

Until the game concludes
Only ignorance exudes.

The King, he slides to take a pawn
But in a mere five moves his Queen is gone.
Duty skewed, anger renewed,
His Highness knows not what to do.
Knight’s L hop, Bishop’s diagonal slide,
Each move the King he takes in stride
‘Till every piece will disappear
And he be left behind in fear.
Begin again.

Until the game concludes
Only weariness exudes.

Blankness, darkness, emptiness,
The game reset, pieces returned,
And just what has the mighty King learned?
Quite a bit, to say the least.
But what to gain?
Sorrow upon sorrow, pain upon pain.
A King, superior in every way,
Grows tired of playing the same old game.
When did it start?
He does not know
It was far too long a life ago.

Until the game concludes…

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There is no through road here
You heard no through road here
Through the road it stops half-through
When the road ran short it grew
And all through roads it ran through
Left there no through road true
‘Til the last through road
In this roadless borough
Ran through and true ’til through
And there was no through road, true?
At least not through for you.

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I notice more because I experience less,
So I call out mankind’s destructive need
To know happiness in sweet excess!

When he or she must soothe abscess
And be freed from some corporeal chain
I notice more because I experience less.

And yet they fall to short-lived obsess
Because what lasts takes too long for man
To know happiness in sweet excess.

Therefore they play and complain all day
Of the pointless pain of living, yet too scared to end it
(I notice more because I experience less).

But I am content with what comes my way
And work with purpose, but no expectation
To know happiness in sweet excess.

It is God’s will and purpose that makes the man,
Not aimless wandering and wasted hands –
I notice more because I experience less
To know happiness in sweet excess.

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Come here, my kitties,
My pretty kitties,
And let an old man’s cracked hands
Run through your soft fur.
On mornings such as this, at 4 AM,
I’d be on a ship, a cargo ship,
Bound for Norway, the Americas, et cetera,
To scatter the spoils of England
To spoil the whole world over
From the Port of our fair Dover.
But I was young then.

Then I was stationed on a crabbing craft
And my back,
Bleached by sun and surf –
Colder than you might realize
Until it whips you to work with salty reins –
Creaked and groaned like the craft’s hull
To a hunched point.
And on that boat
As I heaved in the net
Entangled with seaweed and our paycheck
Labor wore me down.

I wanted a family
But all I got was crabs –
Day in and day out,
Crabs, crabs, crabs…
I could hardly stand it.
Everyday I lamented
Wondering what my future held
Until one night
An epiphany!
As a storm beat us about
And nearly tore the ship to splinters
Under Poseidon’s foot,
I realized the future wasn’t my concern.

God, who works through all time,
Can see to that –
But me?
I can only do the present,
So I ought to focus on the present.
And, in the present of that storm,
I vowed then and there
That crabbing was not for me,
And quit the sea forever.

That was yesterday, my kitties,
You precious, stray, bitty kitties,
When I finally realized my folly
A little bit too late.
Why didn’t you try to warn me
Before my life was spent away?
Why didn’t I try preparing
What was for what I wish it were?
My future seemed so clear to me
But my life was too foggy
Since they was guesses
At what lay ahead
In uncharted, misted waters.

Foggy, misted, just like this morning now –
A kind of morning I never payed attention to
In anticipation for warmer sunrises.
I’ll trust God with those, but for now
The only one who knows me
Are these waters.
I must leave you now, frail kitties,
From our sopping stairs –
Don’t try to stop me
As I walk down the embankment
And wade back into that cold, salty mist
I dreamt my whole life of escaping.
And as the water laps against my toes,
My knees, my stomach, my shoulders,
Into my mouth,
Just watch me, my kitties,
Just watch me from the shore,
And mark how I’m no deeper
Than I ever was before.

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I’m sorry dear, I can’t recall
your name, or where we’ve met before –
But I’m sure – if you remind me –
Yes, I won’t forget again.
By the way, you said you wished
to go somewhere before –
do something as well –
but what it was, I think
that you had something to say?
The last time we met?
The last
When was that?
But you prob’ly don’t remember.
Heck, I’m hardly sure of it myself,
But I’m sure at least
No, I’m not
Or am I?
I’m sorry dear, I can’t recall
your name, or where we’ve met before –
Oh, you’re angry, are you?
I can’t help that
I’ll most likely forget it –
Try making a better impression,
My brain will have an easier time.

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I know you wish for it
But can you handle it?
The connection between
Yourself and others.
Do you not understand
You are already in control?
Their perception and yours
Are influenced by will.

Do you make an effort
To understand others?
You try your utmost
But lose your way.
Do you make an effort
To help others understand?
You try your utmost
But your perceptions differ still.

What is the ultimate reality
Of such opposing views?
Strife, hatred, sorrow, envy,
Worry, many types of pain.
Is the impossible hope
For peace worth this?
Only God can say surely
But there is little we can do.

Do you see, in every heart,
That man-shaped vacuum?
Yes, I do, and I long to fill it
No matter its cost to procure.
Don’t you think it would be best
If all were of one consciousness?
No, for then we would be lost
Within the shoreless sea of ourselves.

Then, in the waters of wholeness,
Shall one choose singularity?
They would have the option
If they perceive it as such.
Then will they fulfill
That gaping man-shaped vacuum?
Perhaps in a joint condition
Of individual unity.

Then happiness is found
In unachievable balance?
Not so, for filling that hole
Does not make man complete.
Then how are we to perceive
If not through ourselves and others?
Realistically, for there is yet
Another vacuum pulling us.

Then true happiness cannot
Be found in man’s embrace?
True earthly happiness can
If the love indeed be true.
Then true happiness cannot
Be found in God’s embrace?
True Heavenly joy is unveiled
With Death in glorious Rebirth.
Then true happiness cannot
Be found in my own embrace?
Only should you fail to heed
The longing of your pleading heart.

Then what is the reason for
My utter misery and hatred?
The reason is that you seek
Whatever is obtainable.
Is it only natural for man t
To want for his pleasure?
That which is to gain must be
Given to those who deserve it.
So, is happiness obtainable
In this unfair, connected land?
You should not ask me, for
A single view is not reliable.

Do I possibly have hope for
Happiness among others here?
If you keep your mind on Earth,
Then you shall never know
The free contentment
Of Heaven.

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behold
my stepbrother’s pet
for less than six months:
Leo, the Leopard Gecko.
For a week he wandered,
sluggish,
not chasing crickets
with reptilian reckless abandon
as he once did,
hiding away in his tree trunk
which had grown too small
or was just poorly crafted to begin with
until we dragged him out
and saw some dried thing
sticking out of his scaly anus.

at first we thought it was a fecal strand
or some digested piece of hair
which we tugged at and pulled
to no avail
until I, annoyed by the lizard’s inability
to register discomfort
as it lay there, seemingly drowsy
but actually dying
when I discovered that Leo
had a gut impaction
because pet stores don’t care enough
about lizards
to tell you that sand in a terrarrium
damages their insides when swallowed
because of clumping
and that you should use dirt, wood chips, moss,
basically anything
but sand
which leaves us with Leo and his intestines
sheiveled and sandy
sticking out his scaly anus.

my stepbrother was not there,
so the new question was
how to solve the gecko problem
without him finding out?
the answer was to distract him
by buying a ball python.
meanwhile, I was sent out back
with my stepbrother’s most recent pet
who had crawled into his water dish
as if to soak his dried-out intestine
though could absorb nothing any longer.

whose fault was it
that this gecko could suffer so?
I couldn’t tell you.
I also couldn’t tell you
why it took me ten minutes to prepare –
propping Leo’s head over the dish’s edge
petting him until his eyes closed
talking softly and soothingly
washing him with a bath’s last rites –
before I placed a paper towel over him
and broke his skull with a brick
expertly aimed to kill instantly
like a guillotine designed to crush
rather than sever.
he squirmed three times
and was still,
that little lizard corpse
who once possessed the moniker “lion”
yet was felled by a buildup
of gastronomic thorns
that sent him to my executioner’s block.

as I hurled him over the fence
and into the creek
I realized I was compelled by pity
rather than by whim
to end this creature’s short existence
unlike the gecko that flew
from my third-story window;
to kill the one that knew no more than a tank
seemed of more value
or, at least, of more consequence
than stopping the gecko that dared
to climb impressive heights

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