Ghosts in the Ether

 

The only reference point you have right now
is the state that things are in

A pool drains down
to a point where brown water
leaves vegetation lines
on bleached concrete

I heard it described
that this hand was dealt cold-fisted
from the bottom of the deck

Some had overplayed it
although they may have just been ghosts
in the ether

Saturday morning cartoons
are context to others’ understanding
of the smoke that marks
this fire

Spiral vision is a landscape
sketched in a path
from the cornea
to the frontal lobe

It turns in on the user
driving its knife through the heart
of the matter

Sketched outlines of white light
simply illuminating blank black space
magnified and brought forth
into an immediate void

or ocean waves awash
in dreams lining the tides
of your stomach

MM 6.2024

The First Few Minutes of Into The Wild

 

Raised letters on steel plates
bolted tiny corners
bottoms of railroad cars
tracks like stitches laid
across snowy wilted wilderness

their division never rejoins
imprints wedged on land
like stitches reunite
frayed tendons
or severed skin

more like body modification
on this day so drastic
a stark contrast
to white-out sky
or prickly bristles
hinting in the snow

raised letters across metal
signs blood dripping
making fresh indentions in the snow
tracking whereabouts
marking fresh prey
slipping from one vessel
to further destinations

excavating an endpoint
division eschewed
division driving outcome
despite itself
its final resting place
arrived at honestly
through flawed means
alone

MM 1.3.2024

Apocalypse, Ongoing

string of asterisks

  uninterrupted
splayed in shadowed bold text
 italicized
 
pressed for eternity
  the key
flows across space
 into format
 
next line
  adds emphasis
prologue paralysis
 stark contrast
 
characters don’t adjoin
  but you know
a lifted finger
 brings an end
 
punctuation
  draft continuum
documentation
 of a line
 
enclosing circle
  existence
retrofits
 cruel cycle
 
MM 12/2024

Reoccurring Characters

 

Every night

the black canvas projects

  the ceiling

 illuminates curtains

drawn shadows

  operating covert

 figures in the back

 of my eyelids

 

Magnification

  an orb atop her

 shoulders, with bolts

of purple neon

 current,

 

 bolts

   and beaded eyes

 broadcasting doubt

decreeing inquiry

  surveying

 surrounding me

 

 Voluminous imprints

reoccurring acts

  flourish

 incremental

then exponential

  then crawling

 then seeping through

gray-scaled plasma

   splayed through corners

 felt beyond just

   peripheral vision

 

 The weary structure

  of bones, its face,

 eyes recede as

sunken soil

  hollowed out

 in another time

 

characters are there

  choreographed

 imagined

  feet not moving

 words not meaning

   signals in silence

 slipping away

 referencing loss

the lack of closure

 

MM 11.2024 

Suicide Pact

 

Mutually assured
destruction
cowed in hollowed
ground,

tread and trodden and bled
justified in spirals
spun untoward

Spatial suffocation song
formed in bleeding ears
dried-stain-dirt
finely crusted, over-wrought
its stench wafts like smoke
in the sun

What the end looks like now
is then unformed and raw
rank typicity
from bowels of vacuum gas
to howls of the stricken

spared conjecture
in far corners
leveled cross-quartered
insignia

Refracted light
dim yellow bulbs
fractured and street-lethal
jagged dead ends
driven divergent
given to thee

MM 11.2023

Sprinkler Systems

 

It is with sadness

unease of passage

to report confirmation

slipstream of a sketchbook

death of,, depth of

by the millions

cardboard cutouts

sideways glance

through slotted ovals

magic marker tears

smearing away

wiping blunted gray

fingertips obscure

their facial features

 

Its fracture redounds

graded sun-cast light

off-kilter shadows

echoes not quite vivid

as life imprints

yet more imbedded

more real than shifting

scapes of dreams

 

Line enraptures

a moment’s queue

awe of beauty

plaza marquee

spun down frame

black metallic spider

larger than circling otherwise

web glowing

the summer dusk

waiting ensconced

above a melee of

waiting cars

transcending cities

 

Moved to remark

words lifted and erased

breathless sound

gasping inward heaves

the spider waved down

breezily motioned

like leaves or a snowflake

crushed beneath his feat

leather shoes

kind of orange

maybe brown

a passing moment

mortal amusement

keeping good company

ceremonial rites

of planned obsolescence

 

MM 8.2023

Post-Positive Addition To Your Culture

 

Vintage Watching Eye from The Graphics Fairy

There was this incredible amount of

residual weight and space carving

as a chisel and a light tap hammer

might while looking up brightly voided

out in the ceiling a blank canvas

in which to carve out a new churning slate

 

Dreams set in and then hours burn

until their wake and imprint locks and strains

its tension inertia upon extremities at rest

 

The façade of movement in repetition

patterns strewn in piles of stained logic

planned and plotted, pointed in one direction

and another from the bed to the sink

to the drain, then moved again to cover

signs of distress

 

Its lift, inverse weightlessness

burrowed parasite feeding on the guts and brains

freely dispersed to attendees

immersed in shunting feigned consensus

in absentia

 

MM 5.2023