blur

The world moves
round my eyes
between the squint
of heavy lids.

I awaken again
on this dark night
staring into the bleak
acrid haze.

Hoping of mearly
a dream to return to
somewhere between art
and pornography.

under the microscope

Read my life
the story in front of you
on paper
in letters
the transciption of the past.

Make a decision
about fate and future
based on a flacid question
and hollow inquisition.

True passion
for healing
the psychic
and the somatic
cannot be seen in just my words
and my letters.

But in the sanguine
stream slithering
from my lips
to my soul.

amnesia

In my psyche
that rotten hollow
within my soul
beyond her grasp
the torrent lies in wait.

Ask me once my dear
if you can see
the horror hidden
behind these orbs of deception.

Ask me again:
the words falling
from your lips
as digits upon the piano's keys
and I will deceive
my own beating heart.

I see them
carry in our dead,
the son's and fathers
of my generation
of war.

Yet my core shivers
at the many wounded
and dead
of mind
who will fill our offices
in need of some pharmacologic
elixir
of amnesia.

Our dead may forget
the pain and sadness,
yet our healers will
remember
all that ails and
aches in their minds
for eternity.

aphasia

A vault of space
occupied by the amorphous solid
of thought
and movement.

A single instant:
a subtle rupture
or absence
of flow.

The droop
of lips and lids;
a metamorphosis
in your space.

Locked now
with frustration
and misunderstanding
in your loquacious world.

A wasting hemisphere
of hallowed thoughts
lost now
in space.

morning rounds

Each morning
I travel the long white hall
to the corner room
where you sleep.

Each morning
I disturb your subtle moment
of peace
with my clinical barrage.

Each morning
I pray as I walk that hall
as I take that final step into your room
that a different face will greet me.

Each morning
I hope that life has returned
to your smile
and that my medicine has healed.

Yet, each morning
my heart breaks
as I gather my clinical data
at your bedside
and you sleep again until tomorrow
morning.

the pastors son

I fear each day at your bedside
that when I look into the brown of your eyes
I will only see death;
the flicker of life
will have somehow left you
beyond the control of prayer or passion.

infusion

Telling you that death is near
has been by far
the most challenging task.
I had hoped to express
how my mind
festers in this scene
amongst the glow of the sterile living.

Could I tell you that the medicine is killing you,
that the electric waves of pain
will only be magnified by the "treatment"
I have to offer(infuse).

Could you breath easier
knowing that you could drift
slowly-yet-peacefully
into the darkness
if you only let me walk away.

Life is nothing in this place:
we are merely decaying cells
of clinical interest
and medical education.

I know I am being selfish
hoping you would see the world
through my tainted lens.

Yet, it is fear
that truly drives me to this end;
praying to an unknown diety
to take you
from their hope.

For if my mind
far more than my body
were to escape
my control
I would loose the reigns
and slip into that darkness
that I dream will bring peace.

carolina nights

I wish I could hold you
and tell you all that burns
in my soul for you.

Believe me dear,
it is far more than the sensual
lust with which I constantly speak.

For as the distance grows farther
my eyes grow tired of trying
to find your figure in the humid mist.

Because they burn and tear
each time I think of you
or speak your liquid name.

care package

Seeing your handwriting today
makes me yearn for the sight
of your delicate hands.

The thin lines of your digits
reaching out to hold me;
the beauty of their shear gauntness.

Take my hands,
destroyed by the scouring force of disease
and the fetid compulsion to shred and tear
at ones own flesh.

Take them,
and make them whole again my love
and behold
the interdigitating juxtaposition.

unilateral

I lay waiting for the bombs to fall,
the screaching of gravity
pulling a projectile of death
down to its random target.

I look into the darkness for the smoldering souls,
the children screaming into the night
as life expires through cold lips.

I listen for the building to crumble beneath me,
for the smell of rubble and turmoil,
a landscape changed by hatred.

I dream of understanding the malice and anger,
between these two hallowed nations,
and the recognition of a people as a "Zionist regime."

I stare into the bleak future,
awaiting the moment when,
I will have to explain to a child's mind
from where hatred and death stem.

I imagine the vastness in their eyes
when I speak of God and religion
as the catalyst of carnage and carrion.

insomnia

My sleepless nights
are when I think of you.

Not in that horrific moment
when your flesh was stripped from your body
and you lay dying under my hands.

Insomnia comes
when I imagine you as a girl of 15
cursing my name to the heavens
for saving your broken life.

Will you pray for my demise
for helping to save your fractured body.
For enslaving you into that chair,
and forcing your existence into synthetic legs.

Will you wish upon a star
that you had died on that cold asphalt
drowning in your own blood
rather than be crippled.

My sleepless nights
are when I think of you
lying dead in my arms
crying for a normal life;
a life which I stole from you
in an altruistic moment.

We just assumed that the baby girl
thrown from her mother's speeding car
to the unforgiving ground below
would have wanted to live
no matter the sequelae.

Yet, I stare into the darkness
night after night,
asking for forgiveness
for a life I hope I did not ruin
in a medical moment.

I try to imagine
all that you can become
yet I fall back to the knowledge
of the struggles to come.

My sleepless nights
will continue
I fear
because your life has just barely begun.

unlimited

You have made the eternal decision
my brother
casting yourself upon another
to love and protect.

Please follow the lead set for you
by our elders
the generation who committed themselves fully
allowing nothing to breach the bonds of holy love.

Not war, famine, immigration, holocaust
could break their connections
for the union which binds you
let no man or women break.

Yet do not forget the man you have become
do not cast yourself
to the fate of blue collar Americana
living in personal misery at the cost of love.

Your gift of thought and inquisition
should not be cast aside
for you cannot truly love another
until you live your life in the direction of hope and fufillment.

One cup of life cannot remain full of bounty
while the others are putrid and foul
rotting away at the love
which you run to at full speed.

She can only be your north and south
if you take the time to find your seed of life
and plant it in the garden of personal fufillment
beyond the love that aches your soul and strains your bones.

She will be more than you can ever imagine
and I hope the world of happiness for you
my brother
yet heed my sliver of wisdom.

She will lose you to the abyss of pain and loathing
if you do not find your own way
if you are not fufilled in all aspects of your life,
neither will she.

You are unlimited, my brother
do not squander your hope and visions
because you will feel the deepest loss
if love leaves your heart
at the expense of the man you can become.

You are unlimited, my brother.

forgotten feet

In this supposed great nation,
a place of wealth and power
acts of disgrace and immoral treatment
occur
upon my fellow man.

In a nation where clothes make the man,
we continue to allow man and child
to fall asleep on our streets
and search for offal and scraps in our waste.

We the healers I believe,
are the unfortunate souls who keep the pain
of the homeless and helpless in our souls.

We see the sadness and agony of disease
ravishing man's body merely for the fact
that he belongs to the caste of the untouchable.

Yet, I will place my hands upon you my friend,
I will attempt to heal your pain and treat your wounds
despite the raging infection licking its lips upon your legs.

I will expire the sanguine pustulence,
from the fluctuent masses,
I will tease the maggots from your wound
and wash your feet
long tired from miles without shoes.

We will house you from the bitter cold,
save your skin from the torment of the beating sun
and feed your empty heart
and satiate your bellowing bowels.

For it is the healers in this nation of gluttony and greed
who face the unending flood of forgotten souls
and dying minds who roam
these wealthy streets.

ink

I want
your sultry tattoo
in the darkness
of my pitch black heaven.

Whisper your fantasy
deep into my soul.
The unspeakable hunger
that burns inside.

Tell me you want me
inside your dreams.
Craving my addiction of you
relapses in the night.

You are my downward spiral,
the torture of lust
and masochistic compulsion:
bound by a diamond ring.

You are a lingering taste
a finish of eternity;
my sensual palate
only desires your sweet essence.

Sit, and let me kiss those lips,
feeling the cold countertop beneath you,
my breath millimeters from suffocation;
intoxicating nectar of trust.

Steam the mirrors
and hide our carnal act
beneath the torrent of rushing water
and the gusts of blowing wind.

Take me to the edge
and never let me return.

I want your skin
inked to perfection
twisted about my soul
accepting each tantric advance.

blasphemy

Do you believe in a God?
Do you follow him/her blindly into the night?
Do you ask questions that mortals claim to answer from beyond?
Can you let your life be ruled by "a good book?"

Have you read a good book lately?
Has it changed your mind?
Driven you to alter your course and modify your path?
Would you want your book to be the only book?

The book around which all life revolves?

The recipe:
Wage war in the name of your book.
Rape and plunder in the name of your book.
Commit "unworthy" souls to "hell" and damnation in the name of your book.
Hate in the name of your book.

Hell, preach to others to live their lives in the image of your protagonist.
The main character: a carpenter.
"Act, think, feel, imagine, and live as this man and redemption will be yours!"

Prostrate yourself to the mortal men,
those who have raped,
those who have plundered,
those who have hated...in the name of your book.

Blasphemy!

The final chapter: "life, ever lasting."
The goal, the finish line of life: heaven.
A mother's teaching:
"It must be a nice place, no one has ever come back to complain."

Dead people cannot complain mother.
They decay and return to the earth
upon which they evolved.

I will expire: exhale the final breath of life and die.

I do not seek an "eternal life" among the "people of the book."
For I am merely a small chapter in a book of poems,
as the revolutions of this earthly orb turn my pages,
until this chapter ends.

I exist only in the fiction of carbon and nitrogen.
A mortal attempt to ease the pain, suffering, and disease
of the walking dead.

my limbic fantasy

Burning for you is my constant state
aching within the feral depths
desiring the carnal knowledge of your body:
I want to consume your essence.

The mind a continuous reel of erotic cinematography
a constant reminder of bliss;
yet a dismal torment in this passionate plane.

Break me of this tortuous cycle,
you have become my fetish
the leather and bondage of my mind
an unholy desire to fufill.

Lingerie and lace

black silk fingertips tracing
my hearts synchronous beats:
you are the drummer keeping time.

You pull my strings
the synaptic connections to the sensual core,
the olfactory stimulous
my limbic fantasy.

all bleeding stops

A plea to the mothers and fathers:
she is small and weak
a fragile mind encased in an immature shell
she lacks the ability to reason
she is devoid of decision making and action taking.

Thus, you are her hands and strength
you alone are breath and brain
and you alone are the protector of life.

If for even a moment you shirk from your duty,
if for a moment you digress into the days of bedlum
then you succomb to her fate.

You will stand watching strangers
pound life through her chest
bleed bright red blood into her veins
infuse artificial sustinence
and force her little body to live through more pain
at the hands of your stupidity.

An object at rest tends to stay at rest,
while an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

Thus, your child, unrestrained
hurling through life encased in a death machine
speeding toward a rapid deceleration
will tend to stay in motion.

Ejected towards solids, glass, rock, stone, plastic, and synthetic
which rip, tear, shear, impail, abrase, amputate, and mangle.

All bleeding stops eventually.

Prayer will not save you,
do not utter those words in this den of death and pain
he/she/it/they cannot hear your cries and wails within these walls
they are encased in deaths grasp through miles of lead and anger.

Your penence should be sterility,
you failed at your duty and role as protector
you had your chance
when others would die trying to even concieve.

Your punishment should be to join the other watchers,
and see the harm and destruction to which others succomb.
Pin your eye lids open
infuse you with amphetamine
for the twenty-four hour wrath which traverses these doors.

Synapse your cortex with the images
of pain
of their mangled bodies
watching every spilled drop of blood
as life and joy escape their hearts and minds.

For, all bleeding stops eventually.

traumatic amputation

The pager squeals
through the darkness.
I make my way
and prepare for another changed life.

The words over the radio:
"two year old...traumatic amputation...massive blood loss...ejection...motor vehicle."

Instantaneous fear and dread.

Check my vitals: tachycardia.

Nothing prepares my eyes
nor my memory for the horror.

Wheel her in:
seeping death
a muted cry for help.

Instructions:
1. Insert the artificial sustenance
2. Transfuse life-relieve pain-induce sedation.

We all stand
seemingly in silence,
awed by the shear destruction a hurling mass of metal
and the failure of parental responsibility can create.

She is broken,
the deepest story of travesty
an epic Shakespearean tragedy:
the sanguine plastic
encasing the lost ability
to run into a father's arms.

Scrub away the pain and prepare
the operating room
for it will take all our strength
to heal this tiny angel.

I cry out to the Devils and Gods:
give me the strength
give me the presence of mind
to mend the wounds of her catastrophe.

labor and delivery

wrapped in fluorescent lighting
swathed in the bonnet of death
closeted/hidden from the eyes and minds of the healers
unspoken anguish in room seven twelve

the panicked breaths of the impending birth
pushing through the pain
her vulva swollen and expanding with the muscular force
the feedforward mechanism expunging life.

entering consciousness through darkness
bathed in bloodshed and agony
augmented by technology and acoustic harmony
she breaths through the pain

she lies there in exhaustion
the fragrance of afterbirth wafts
she whimpers once more
as the cry of youth engulfs the room

reason for consult

I want to revolt
from the banality of humanity:
the selfish greed to dominate life
and the immature drive to wealth.

I want to tear my heart from its bony encasement
as I watch you die the slow death of misery and self loathing.
Your social failure in our American dream
is a fallacy of the delusions of right and wrong and religion.

I do not know your crimes
and frankly it is of no consequence
for the tears of lost death, the anguish of another living day
speak to me of the volumes of damage your "correction" has inflicted.

Your soul and mind belong to the system,
for we torment you with life
among the stench and filth
behind concrete walls and razor wire.

My industrial system of technology
has kept your fetid soul alive:
the mechanical ventilation
our sedative/hypnotics and anti-psychotics.

I watch your carcass chained to the gurney
wrenching and twisting to free the dying mind
from the prison of your body
drawing blood as a last resort to escape into death.