Night Magic

The ceiling fan cools sweat on my forehead

And I open scars just a little to bleed these words.

My pulse beats a slow tempo in my ears in this midnight heat

I mix old pain and night magic like blue notes from an ancient saxophone

The walls creak back to me a susurration of evening shades

Hurt and triumph, sorrow and solace

I sweat this cancer from my pores

The product of my calloused hands-my calloused heart

So tonight I weave these words, I sing this melancholy melody

To the chorus of the night birds

Down Season

It's down season. Vagabond leaves linger on the trees waiting for the merciless wind

The grass is brown and listless like an unknown soldier fallen...

The earth is barren hard unforgiving locking up it's secrets tight, tight

In the secret landscape of my heart it's down season too

Feelings not so precise as sadness do not well up

so much as float like bloated corpses in the shallows of my emotions

It's down season the dead leaves whisper. Come away with us...away...

My pen once sharp is rusty and dull making only imprecise scratchings.

And sometimes(only sometimes) I fain would lie in Morpheus' arms

and embrace the cold depths like a lover

Down season is and it remains an unwanted guest or at worst an unspoken truth

I know(I think I know) that it cannot stay, that spring will come-it must

For now, in this down season I wait

and hope

Of Light and Questioning

Canto I: I

I tasted sweetness but instead kissed bitterness on the lips

I exchanged uniqueness for sameness

and

Brokenness for seeming wholeness bright and red

but rotten to the core

You gave me beauty for ashes of a smoldering fire

that should have flickered out long ago

Abundance for a city of dead men's thoughts and

dead men's bones

Gifted me with riches in exchange for rusted spikes

Nails that I drove

Drown me in your infinite ocean

Stain me brilliant with your scarlet waves

Crush me and grind my bones to incense

And I will sing of you in the morning

Selah

Canto II: Head Injury Girl

I am the child of accident and circumstance

Created out of formless chaos

Broken, I become a new thing

I grasp for love, I want, I hunger

Behind these eyes, these blackened eyes

I am unknown, unknowable, unknowing

Drown me in your infinite ocean

Wash me in crimson fountains

And raise me up again unto dawnlight

Selah

Canto III: Lucien

Child of Light where art thou?

Come to me in blackest night

Heal my bleeding limbs pierced by stained glass shards

Lucien O Lucien whence comest thou?

I burn with wanting, with waiting

Drown me in oceans of light

Cauterize my wounds with brilliant luminescence

Wash me in pools of Eos

And I will sing of you at break of day

Selah

Canto the Last: Tuco Amongst the Tombs

I've found no answers in Religion

Only poltergeists of lesser things

That haunt the ghostly nights

Only questions in Tradition

Little phantoms that dog my heels

As I run through this graveyard

In search of gold but finding only dust

I lay dying in this city of vain imagination (The Lord is my Shepherd)

Parched in this nighttime country of mirages (I shall not)

Pernicious idols of my own creation leer at me from shadows (I)

Come to me O Adonai and bind my wounds with healing oils

Speak peace to me and quench my thirst from everlasting streams

Then I shall become again a child and bear thy yoke with gladness

Selah