Give it Back to Them

AP Image, Public Domain

Give it back to them---

Their country maimed and reclaimed,

sterilized in iodine, fortressed,

stripped clean of nascent perceptive reason

Fodder stoked for the risk averse,

clamoring for safe keeping, and securely

clutching chemically derived commodities…             (in lieu of…)

Give it back to them---

Primal and uncured,

basking in lust for fearmongering

hysteria-colored lens, encroachment of the other

Rights versus privilege, in mutual exclusivity,

in birth and bleeding,

in worship of the suckling pig…

Give it back to them---

Anesthetized psyches return,

in a revised dream deranged into order,

its religion an indivisible mass

of narrowly defined inversion

from ingrained and learned principles

into delineated acceptable outcomes…

Give it back to them---

Leaching in the well, indefensible

trails of plastic diluted and divided,

infinitely halved, invasive digestion,

washed along, or emitting stacks

The parties return to shell games,

in concerted concentration

MM 2/17

Common Margin

Kneeling, born and bred, at the foot of an edge

Prostrated, upbraided, tilting over in ritual free fall

Deconstruction broadcast in speeches and songs,

from magnets’ opposing poles

Withering supply, flippant recourse,

there were days when the summation worked,

and future paths outstripped

the stunning cruelty from which they were laid

But the sun chafed the plastic smog,

an amorphous view guided its path,

the margins’ present retrograde was splayed

in shaken sand beneath its glass

Churning from the inside, the sight

of those who’ve lain in near constant

rippling tension, in fraying exhibition,

exploited, their plight across brazen wire

Meanwhile, in common margins alight,

mercurial shifts spontaneously contrived

gears aground, a combustible dawn breaks,

then collapses against itself

Questions aren’t unasked nor dignified,

they’re painted on the cave walls

in their stark painful context, frozen

in exhibition of their endorsement

MM  2/17

Threadbare in Repose

My sister, you wrote to me

from your laid bare dying bed

Dotting eyes and crossing tees,

just trying to reconcile me

And what sweet words could I transcribe

to ease this passing bind,

or tie it all together,

to justify

the difference between our minds?

Ironing a crease,

driving great distances to never forget,

to not make words on a screen the last

moments of being reconciled

If words were passed along

in years fixing foundations in caste,

each person’s a niche in an imperfect union

My sister, older and wiser,

administrator of black-white protectionism,

your questions that day, they cut

across and burned a hole in my screen,

planted resentment and guilt

to swallow in your memory

A seat in silence for many years,

strapped to the point of convex,

molded my mind, mending time

in unraveling the explanation you were seeking

The justification of divergent paths,

of politics, philosophy, chains of events,

still unraveling so many years on,

after passing

So many worlds apart from that place,

sans the shade of reconciliation,

sans stain of justification and shame

MM 2/17

The Cut Reclaimed

Beneath sheer scale,

in random currents lie,

they cut reclaimed through sifting silt,

wilting layers recall in years,

galoshing about in clumsy amnesia,

conjoined in cold symbiotic mimes,

assessed frames of lost time

Aligned and alive,

blessed in faint redress,

commutual disaffection

Smoke signals drowning in deafening dusk

to initial a journey ‘twixt disparate constructs

Seedling years bloom decomposition,

harbor of salts congealed

a harvest, a budding combust

Wafting through a continuum of revision,

pick up the receiver,

speak clean, and engage the surface

Yet this is not to reconcile

your perpetual disconnection

Where the moment lives

Dilution by volume, mileage, and missives,

unwritten in earnest,

ensconced in the surface condition

Slid across the desk and folded,

filed in graves,

lying with the many

MM 2/17

Shadows on the Other Side

Whispering avoidance in detuned song,

lyrical – well-versed gestation, hissing in meaning,

tuned in and wrapped outward

Seek to enclose the orb within a sphere

                        The fog bank –

Godspeed, my friend. Around mangled curvatures,

unfolding passes and shaken rag ridges,

into scope of elevation, vicariously

Context of a hidden moment

projected into violet spring hues

through gnarled embankments

Staggering… Shining…

Spurring scene warms, bittersweet,

choking on the pill and its packaging

Sights signify, signs comply,

scenery paints a path of escape,

enclosed in certainty of passage,

informing eyes and conscience,

with shadows on the other side

Overheard and overseen,

the tiniest brushstroke on canvas so vast, its vexing

finality of living motion and rippled earth-toned pattern,

careening toward dusk – interminable fade,

downcast and damned toward

all future spatial interludes

Some rung, awaiting,

in muddled remembrance of the void

Percentages in cycles, positions eroded

in prayer, forever lost,

fodder to preying interlopers –

                        erasure

The near hypnotic highway rhythm

transmits vision, transcribes refuge…

Snapshots, committed memory and speculation,

landscape reminder of future highest use,

remains and relics

Hysteria passing lanes and jammed signals,

transmission crossed, reception trained

Static bred through mourning’s season,

breaching cracked from veering sight,

from the year of our lord,

the distribution

In fear, security, voiding reprehension,

black stare encased in corner of the eye,

shepherded and fed,

belied

Disturbance threads a vantage point,

Metastasized, submerged in craters

Wrecked exposure draining,

cyst of deliverance

MM 2/17

One Line Form

Image- Brain of gauss, 1884-1885- Public Domain

Specked one-line forms

Convection, gotten all twisted,

melded through – modulate synopsis

soldered into long, lone ire

Needling cum misdirection,

sutured and setback, into position

Composted – conflated,

the posture of fertility

…..

Tapping a nerve – a vein

Here is where the grain shakes out,

a tiny felted box of razors

Strapping in shade,

or raising the specter 

of time sucked up a straw

Wrists bound in chloroform solutions,

easing, no, lowering

into memoriam,

a passage of said time

…..

Certainty in certain concepts

Eyes retrained, overlaid,

patchwork layers timed out, unbinding

flesh-dripping tapestries,

resewn and unmistaken

(Glances away in wincing sight

Eyes return within form,

within instinct – harried)

…..

Drowning in must

Slurred vision – slithering contact,

culling cobbled planks

together for sound and sturdiness

MM 2/17

Moderate Dysplasia

Public Domain image

Mining terse indifference,
I tread carefully yet willing to wade into 
a waist-deep sty or milieu, unencumbered
by varicose circulation or circular logic
...
Every lingering dry-throated horror jumps,
pumping breaks, with squealing screaming tires

Tired of placating constricted pigs binging,

damned from behind the wheel
...
Scrolling trolls malinger - a shiny window displays
encrusted neon green light-cast nocturnal shine
Polished off loud, disfigured lust
leering down - crossed star-ridden eyes
...
Their answers lie crawling, sprung beneath some willful
laser-guided firebrand, fired blind,
straight through freshly singed cornea,
embedded in the heading of a caption
...
Captioning a void, formerly a vision,
razing a freshly planted line of sight

Pilings and debris, a stench so pungent, so pure,
emblazoned on a paneled crest - calls upon the concept

…

Slow and sore, form of numbness - unbound

Arrested containment - drug in suspension,

modulation slipping into the bloodstream, rising aghast

Read               reach               resolve               react

...

MM 2/17

The Unredeemed

Public Domain image

Unredeemed

Hiding in the margins,

an amalgam of severed wire crossed up,

crossed out,

wrapped impacted in ill repute,

its ritual advance

Scurried about,

just corralling from one vice

through a snaking cover mounted

onto dripping hand collectives,

bleeding and thirsty, passing

the currency of cowards

Unredeemed

from on high and in vantage,

insipid advance of the interminable

depth of a dirge,

surfacing from atop a regal stone,

undressing of the wound

to maggots underneath

the violence and ruptured disturbance

Myriad starts, symmetrical spirals,

shockingly unearthed

from messaging and interference

Harbingers in currents

Unredeemed

Unwashed and untoward in the downward cast

of voice instilled and destemmed,

of burgeoning and bludgeoning

the blunted end of a rancorous stake

uncrossed and controverted

Moving points across,

gasping and blue in mounting swells,

pensive, appendage to rank and concept

Sprawled about and calling out,

the apotheosis of degeneration

Of common fodder

MM 1/17

The Burial (Please Find Enclosed)

Photo courtesy of memorialecosystems.com

When I dearly depart from this vain earth –

just wrap my body in a burlap sack,

take me to the crook of the woods,

release to the subsoil to which I belong

In preparation for this crucial mass –

float some words piped ‘cross the brown room,

pontificated for a clearer haze,

from minor chords with frenetic pace

If a priest is sent to read last rites –

confer with them a book of spite,

with god-formed brows and distorted limbs,

frozen ghosts with a sweltering eye

Solicit some cold black witticisms,

cackling cracked-smiled sly rejoinders,

flowing clean – anew from a spirit birth,

raised out of reach in proclamations

Close with prayer and questionnaires,

processions shown aground in shadowed vignettes,

passage of the sack, one hand to another,

dampening in its hallowed retreat

MM 1/17

Blood Mediation in Transit

Funny how distance, literally the expanse of space,

            rewrites

Across thick tufts of forested pine –

over rolling clover hills – down roiling rivers –

piercing the crop circles –

into the scaling weathered crags

Signs of settlement, revising staid provisions

Forlorn entrenchment,

sewn within the seeds of static form forgiveness,

envisioned through hues well-played and pleasing

Quiet deference into

the libelous architecture of this moment

Gestures incremental, still as they are in sync

Telegraphed,

written as instruction, red ink on crusting skin

crinkled and retreating, across a range of secular motion

Eyes opened, into an emergent dissent, despondent,

‘cross oft-severed planes

Yet the distance, pulling as a rope from atop the well,

arrested,

reeling in begotten ages, or clinched conviction

Clichéd, ill-spoken half-truths, arrangements of discomfort,

gleaned from an array of like-moments,

scattered about the calendar

A knowing glance, submission or acknowledgement

Life in arrears,

Repaid through the subtext of ransom or engagement,

reminded by the simple pilgrimage across

the vagaries of one lying in wait, the weight

hunkering down with a darkening presence

MM 1/17