Fever dreams

It's cold my friend these bones ache and rattle
and quake at the firey world around me.
my heart races stronger with thoughts impure
Demure people have no idea the strain.

What vicious act of mind adulteration
i've come upon virulence in body as well
I regret.

Oh porcelain throne adorn my head
Evict the culprit of this demon in my soul.
a wretch that makes all men whole again
would bid grateful welcome to me now.

This feeling in my stomach, heart and head
am I panicked? Dying? Or already dead?

The Ballad of Crazy Jane

Dear master, in kind I do reply
Save warning you unto her claws
In passing, her former bequeathed a light
That conflagration is now because-

He left her far too soon for words
And ailment sets upon her brow.
For every day she was alone
Bore two she spent upon the prowl.

To quench her vicious soul-burned heart
She'd hunt the weakest of the heard
The ones who wanted what she had
Which after him, it wasn't much.

What glory it was to look and see
Her paintings in the secluded room
Made from lovers and hatred both
Who dared to tread upon her womb.

Though hatred she bore naught for them
Lest she become a dulled edge knife
Her craft became an art for him
To bring him company in nowhere rooms.

So now in cage you'll transport her
Whose imprisonment was signature
On art that bordered brilliance
Perhaps you'll get away with your life
Or be her finest figurature.

'Tis the gift

Life is a war hard won.
You get moments of brilliance
But there's a lot which isn't fun.

Behold the lillies who neither toil nor spin
But who listens to Dylan?
"We'll never find THE answer blowing in the wind!"

And yet people complain of self fulfil-less prophesies
That they pump into their children:
Their escapist, dreaming progeny:
Who consume each chance to leave
This dream of adversarial sovreignty.

And here I sit and muse all the while
Just wishing for the dream:
10 million simple smiles.

Separation Anxiety Pour l'amour du vent

There was a time when I spoke to the wind.
It still tries to talk at me now
That long ago time when I could be everywhere
Except on solid ground.

Oh my friend we had some fun, we did
But I simply cannot be a ghost
To be like you I ran and hid
But my heart came with me and won, hence now-
Where I am the rock and your still the wind
Blow free my friend, long after I fade out.

Be a Deer, won't you?

If you were to ask me, "What do you think of human beings?"
I would say, “Imagine a cold, winter day. As you sit
at your dining room table munching on venison or veal, and staring
out the window, bemused at the deer foraging for food in the snow,
you might say or think, ‘Such sad and majestic creatures,'
and then turn your attention to an article about how red meat can kill
you as you move on from the irony of it all.”

After years of struggling to blend into his groups,
man is deer to me

Memories of the Snow

Across the pale and frost lit sheen
Aglow with orange muted life
The snowflakes speak as they lay down and cuddle
With the still and calm of 3 am night-

In a lifeless Pennsylvanian hamlet
Where a single road makes up the town
Like the nile, it feeds the warm bobble heads
As they sleep softly in their hollowed homes.

And yet outside the wind whispers triumphs
Of all it's seen and where it might go
Because all who know the wind know
It's never content with banks of snow

But here I sit with the whispering drifts
Who form embankments on the side of the road
To talk and whisper of the snowplow's brutality
As more arrive to coat the road.

Like a gathering of children when the oogy kid comes through
They may part for snow plows but they crowd again when they go
And as they do, they whisper and cuddle
And pack this winter wonder under the orange light bulb.

How brilliant the casual insomniac must be
To sit here with my cigarette in the muted din
And listen to the bluster of the snow from within
The embankments and glorious break from life

Tomorrow everything exists but it's on pause tonight.

Ghosting

Sometimes I feel I'm ghosting in this world
a vagrant memory of battles lost-
a triviality like a tea light flame
evanescing inside a beautifully adorned pot.

I shined so brightly in that moment I burned
and I was connected once to the people I knew
and now like a rainy, foggy day,
I search through the mists of purgatory.

My best friends are words on a screen
a recognizable emotion in a name:
Glenn means wisdom, Alex means fun,
Sasha means someone when there is no one-

but most of the rest, as much as I enjoy them
belong to the category of wisps in the wind.
a foot hold on a cliff of insurmountable odds
and I don't even recognize myself, "who's Rens?"

I've got no mobility and nowhere I can get to
I live on an island that I call home-
and sometimes I have a companion
and sometimes I'm alone-

but even my Tonto has connections and friends
and family and people who appreciate her-
why do I exist here, who is this ghost I fear
every time that I look in the mirror.