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

These and Other Questions

Did we share the same vision,

the same gravel to crack our soles,

same light ingraining colors

that alight movement in conscience?

Is language more than a vessel,

or voices draining empty in the herd,

burdened trampled feet depleted,

reverting to adjoining paths?

We intentions bent upon infringement,

illicit gifts sent inconspicuously

planted within a child's willful wonder,

positioned as a delicate inversion?

Is pain of loss held sway,

an examination of the entire screen,

meshing process - straining nuance,

commoditized, offered in prayer and digestion?

Does the reflected prism spread wide in rays,

or crystallize its vision into distillation,

like shedding light in dark spaces between,

offering payments of past?

MM 1/17

Imprints & Post-Scripture

Arrival, here to make peace again

merging and centering the vast cells, intense

indifference, or volatile repair

Compartmentalized, obscured visage

perplexing with vast lurking beauty of sea

layers lumbering in smuggled air

Refracted sky of approach

from atop in hypnosis the jagged horizon, time capsule

draining, displaying gray artifacts

Ulterior moments, gathering

pieces, divvying out staggered remedies to dose

the indifference with treacherous contracts

Pounding a fist to feel for the palm

the hours contained in a medicine dropper

mistaken, arrayed, half-life compliance

Conditions to which an edge, backed off

staring at a wall in comatose, a deep refrain

ingrains, imprints, reposes in trance

Arrival, all is here now

backfilled, forecasting and foreboding

forbearance of the nervous shell

Reshaping dense granite, cultivating

out of a spate of nervosity

and tended notion too quick to dispel

Receiving solemn lines

disseminating, dismembering time

partake in a body of rations

Dissolving illustrative dement

fortified in a text bound and spined

in falsity and overt extraction

Prostrate in parallel

sparked in duality, road maps maligned

malicious and buried, unregistered

Festered, hysterical and spurned

in dutiful margins grounded and carved

with acid and unruly pressure

Encased antiquity

imprinted tracts, en route its brutality

well-conceived and ill-figured

Slinking faux-worship, rewritten

in servitude, bowing and burrowing

parasitic fissure

MM 1/16

Temperance

The house in the trees along creaking floor,
with foliage caked on the cool wet pavement outside
Pastoral scenes marry across graying light
Comforting seats one might just melt into

Dominion held sway through revolving doors
Booming calls echoed across stately hardwoods
Dwelling in cellar, one's pervasive wonder
Cracked urgent mews beg for inside

Lovemaking subject to morning's intrusions
Living satellites orbit, gaining reception
Forgotten remnants reclaimed, revisited
Firelight colors a warming illusion

Places, bookmarks, and highlighted context
Foundations drop anchors, the soul's respite,
sometimes obscured in a shuffling dystopia
sometime roots of a moment's re-visioning

Oh, beckoning call of communion and challenge,
newly hatched plans - misguided wagers
Miscued sunlight filters hill and stream,
shines down to bestow a forge of friendship

MM 1.17

Repurposed idealism

Picture credit- David Cox,2008 Visualizing the Sieve of Eratosthenes 

Seeking - fleeting light and beauty in small hours
Searching - small margins for the bleakest of consolations
Reaping - enlightenment that was brought out forthright
Supplanting - only with a profundity of misgiving
Vacating - all sensing of making moments whole
Gripping - adrift some claustrophobic sense of belonging
Mourning - beyond the crest of well-scripted ideals
Burying - baggage of all hope and its remains
Watching - lines of your fingers intersecting
Blurring - in the first light of semi-conscious awakening
Drifting - in cold comfort, a voyeur of subversion
Praying - an opaque projection of sense and of placement