Rituals I Can't Live By

Waiting in the shadows of the Republic,  they pounce on innocence wearing masks  of sinister anonymity, no kin to Flora, no friend of Fauna,  born cold, static, and plastic, they stumble over their own billy clubs like Side Show Keystone Cops. They took a crowbar to Discourse, murdered Due Process in a back alley. Who Dreampt these demons up?  They're not a trick of a Merlin's hand, nor a bad trip in the machinery. The only name left  in the cracked dictionary to call them  is Enemy.

They called on the Psychic, they got their wish. They found the body in a drainage ditch. Missing a leg, a finger or two, the seasoned detective became unglued. Heart was half eaten, so was the spleen, intestines were unraveled all over the scene. Staring from the bushes as cold as a stone Albert Fish munched on a collar bone. Chorus: As Albert sat at the bar, his wife called on the phone. "Will you be home for dinner?" He said, "No, no, no." He lived in the suburbs, he cut his lawn, nobody suspected what was going on. He worked in a factory that made widgets. In a bowling bag he kept all the digits, one from every person that he killed. He counted them like a pharmacist  counts his pills. One, two, three - he counted them all Two or three, he nailed them to a wall. Chorus  Loved by the others in his town like John Wayne Gacy,  he dressed like a clown. He invited some over for games and fun, then retreated inside for his favorite shotgun. Blind folds on, he stood th...

  Days have turned to drab Monkey still on my back Bitter grin, teeth so sharp Demon, stay in the dark   Chorus: Ooh-la-la, what a sensation. You turned my brain into a Mulligan Stew You turned my brain into a Mulligan Stew   The devil's in me and you It's enough to turn a boy blue. Reeling and rockin’ with dark intentions, baby, you'll pay your dues   Chorus   Bridge: Mulligan, Mulligan, Mulligan Hoo-Hoo-Hoo Mulligan, Mulligan, Mulligan Does Horton still hear the Who?   Licking their shiny boots Choking on their greasy rules. Guilty kings drink blood and sound even before they're crowned   Chorus

  What would you do if you were Sylvia Plath, would you cry, or would you laugh? Maybe you'd just sit near the railroad tracks, dirty clouds slipping past   Keep up your front, I heard her say, after Midnight, the password will change. Like the faces of lovers who came along In your arms tonight, tomorrow they're gone (Chorus) Well, my heart is broken but my doors are open. If you're not careful, I might let you in   (Bridge) Welcome to the land of  shadows hidden in a valley of love. When reason ceases to have meaning, heart-break's gonna fit you like a glove   I'm floating away in my depression balloon I don't know where I'm going, but I'll be there soon. Perhaps, I'll swim through the canals of Mars, hang my clothes to dry on the tip of a star   Your children are waiting for you to croon, dancing like tarpon by the light of the Moon. When they meet you, mother, you'll have your head in the oven. Something to tell your cousins at the family bar...

El tiempo se detuvo en la colina mientras miraba el mar. Sobre los acantilados, el graznido de las gaviotas me despertó un sentimiento. Coro: Anhelo, anhelo una caricia que me rescate del abismo. Anhelo, anhelo una caricia. Me ahogo en mi propio mar. Muchos se van, pocos regresan. Así es la naturaleza de la bestia. Iré donde otros temen ir. Aquí no me queda nada. Coro   Solo Las nubes vinieron como pájaros de la lluvia y luego colgaron sus ceños fruncidos sobre la playa. Creí ver la cabeza de una sirena. Era una foca mirándome fijamente. Coro ################################################################################   Time stood still on the hill as I gazed out to sea. On the cliffs, the cries of gulls stirred a feeling in me.   Chorus: I lust, I lust for a touch to rescue me from the abyss. I lust, I lust for a touch. I'm drowning in my own sea.   Many go out, few return. Such is the nature of the beast. I will go where others fear to...

The punch bowl shimmered with a moonlit brew,  Goldfish swam backwards, my thoughts turned to blue.  Bobby Robot bartender, with all circuits ablaze,  Mixed up absinthe and starlight into a Kosmic Haze.   Chorus:  In the back of that bar room I was so mesmerized by you Keeper of Twilight Sadness Lady of Midnight Blue The air was fogged with incense and whispers of old,  Misfortune cards got scattered, futures remain untold.  A feathered serpent coiled on a pedestal of jade  It danced to a singsong in the shadows it made.   (Chorus) (Bridge): In the flash of a spotlight I thought you were looking in my eyes When I thought it was real You made me feel… feel…   (Solo)   We traded stolen glances in a whirlpool of light.  Logic ran for the exits, day turned into night.  The river of Xibalba carried us slowly away To a place where wild orchids wear faces of grace. (Chorus)

They heard yelling late in the afternoon, then silence. No lights lit her apartment that night. Now, it's December, yellow oozes through clouds soiled gray. Skeletal Maples remember June Twenty-fifth, Battle of The Greasy Grass when Yellow Hair and his command fell into Tatanka Yotanka's Dream. A victory, hollow, anniversary of an end the day she slipped  away. Some thought The Ghost Dance would bring the buffalo back. She thought Jack and pills would dull the chaos in her haunted head. Some spirits don't leave. They still march arm in arm with Manifest Destiny, making us regret who we were and who we will never be. Propaganda concocted by parents or a government that cuts your braids, and fits you with Carlisle's tight, white collar  just to remind you of who wins. That is the truth, and if you don't believe it, you will dance at the end of a bayonet, then be buried under the mists  of History. I texted her that day. Thought all was well. Oh, Hell. Life belongs to ...

Under a snow-heavy Sitka, an old hunter rests on his side. Bleeding, his flank works like a bellows, up and down. Past the tree line, his mouth expels misty roses. They rise, then evaporate near Orion's bow, over the valley he hunted three days ago. He waited for days in the shadows, to launch a strike, Biting the  caribou throat, locked on, they whirled in a wild quickstep till it all went still. Now, he whimpers like a pup learning the game. In his dreams, gore splashes snow, the pack in the midst of blood, howling. Their singing bound the hills together—kept all in place.  That was two years ago. He listens and waits as he's waited each night, the connection loosening like a  slippery knot, he falls into the dream below the piling snow. Listening, listening, listening.

Love was a bird, elegant as a Stork, flying through the Milky Way on shiny, silver wings. Never satisfied with what was, she searched for magic moments to ruffle her feathers in all the right ways. But it was tiresome work and after so many orbits, Love grew weary, and longed for home and Peace. Peace was a Tortoise shuffling, in no hurry, across a dusty scrub-land desert. He enjoyed the sights, contented in mind, body, and heart. His breathing was easy, and his vision was like a hawk's. He saw, both, inside of himself, and out, across the desert, beyond the setting sun. Inside Peace, there was a murky world where dark and light co-existed. It was a cavernous place where he poled a raft down a misty river in a waking dream. When he awoke, there was Love, her back pressed against his shell and body. He felt her tremble. His Tortoise paw morphed into a human arm and hand. He pulled her closer, feeling a trickle of warm liquid meandering down his arm. "Why can't I teach you t...

  The air is guilty of humidity, and I have not loved enough, I say in my best Chet Baker almost blue impersonation. Do I make such melody or am I just a wheezing-buzzing, Koo-coo Kazoo? If anything,  I'm a beach blanket stiff in the sun, not rewinding much, flipping through memory books, longing for a time when life was revealing and friends, not this Social-Medium, were Real. True Socialists of emotions, trusted curators of Psyche. ‘All for one, one for all,’  we laughed,  retreating to the car while you stood out in the wind smiling like a freezing Archimedes after the Feat.  You discovered your "Eureka!" We  settled  for sputtering  heat    and   watered-down coffee

And they said: A farce. A painted toy soldier.  Unreal. The beak like a Vegas billboard, a parrot’s geometry against the foaming tide.     "Et tu?" he whispers from the cliff.     "Who art thou to judge this form?" A wanderer from Ithaca, lost his way in Troy, drifted on an Arctic wind to the ice-floes, he wears a coat of exile.     Do not mistake the Buster Keaton grin.     The mind is la forza, the Iron Bird.  Above: the dark lords, Skuas, dive like Stukas. Below: bus sized squid turn tides bloody. He brings back the paycheck: Capelin, Herring, Sprat. Handfuls of silver coins pay the bills. Wings beat like stunted oars, a mini-seaplane rising up basalt walls, raising the daily bread  for the brood. No lamentation. No complaint. The little ones sleep beneath stone, and he, in his silent watch, dreams of those  old green fields sloping down to the tranquility of waves lapping melodic shores     

  Come to me when the descending sun throbs like a beating heart among the trees. Is it a tease finite like driving by a stand of jasmine in July? You are the honey I taste at sunset, in the mind's eye, intertwined, we are a montage of arms, lips, legs, groans, moans, kisses, perfumed by pungent cinnamon recollections  I remember long after the earth glides into night on quiet          black                 wings    

I wrote it   in long bliss but lost it quick. I prayed for its return, hoping to see through avian eyes wise a vision also sung in caw-caw cadence above my fray. There it goes, now I know, sweet chariot stanza which I did not copy to silicon will carry me  away no more