As Night Settles Into Darkness Once More

Five one-hundredth

Shrack, sh……….rack!

A white flash covets the evenings ebon gown

One one-hundredth, Two one-hundredth, Three one-hundredth

SCKERASH>…BOOM!

The stainless steel counters mirror the eyes of a 15-year-old kid—ignorant yet to the way of the world—just happy to have a job—to be up late at night, working, while his classmates are either sound asleep, or just finishing their nightly cram sessions—all in the name of honor roll eligibility…to please?

SKKRack…Skkracch…Skkrach…Blam!

Soap pail in tow, sudsy rag applied to drab yellow walls, eliminating the spackled V-shaped pattern away from view

A cold stutter bellows from within

Flash. Flash. Flash. Flash

All quiet! And the silence persists… …Leaves one wondering

Should the aftermath be explored now or in the morning?

The Invasion

Love lost lacking.  Brutal contributions from the master of the filthy undercurrent—swords, bombs, bayonets, flexing madmen and bloodcurdling sounds of dysfunctional regret—

WTF—Belly-side under, still sore from the stumble up the porch—rippled are the emanations my blood made as it sashayed across the puddles in the front hall, knew I should’ve used the insurance money to pay for repairs, but you know, sometimes, just need what you need…WTF, (take a peek out the window)

Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left,

Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right,

Bright lights, not the inner city I’m used to…not anything like anything at all—well, it’s like something, just don’t know what that is, and really, haven’t seen this much commotion since the riots back in ’98, and that was all about some bad call in a game, but Marching feet moving in rhythm and cadence, seriously what the hell, who’s birthday is it anyway, (what is the occasion?)

Sounds above, sirens rise and fall, the streets all cluttered, (better stay indoors), so much metal, so much steel, (be damned if I’m going out there, I’m the kind of guy someone does something to, just to prove a point, nope, staying put)

Loudspeaker off and on, don’t recognize the voice, can’t make out the words, (better keep the drapes shut and the lights on dim. No! Make that OFF)

Cat knows about as much as I do.  It doesn’t seem as scared as I feel though…(have to keep composure, have to keep things together), phones all dead, television works but nothing seems to make any sense, invasion, unknown assailants, unknown, unknown, unknown, static…. television about as good off as it is on, perhaps under the present circumstances, better even (guess I’ll just wait this out, let the heroes do their thing, and I’ll live up to expectations just fine in here) 

Time, time, turning without a witness to bear…yet ceaselessly parading forth…

(Good thing this house is a piece of crap, they’ll probably think it’s condemned, hopefully that’s the case anyhow, as I really don’t feel like doing anything I’m not used to, this isn’t what I’m built for, this isn’t my mission anyhow, so I’ll just try to sleep this off, but doubt the sandman will come on this particular night?)

I know it’s not going to go away.  I’ve seen a lot of bullshit in my small sample set, but, this isn’t like anything I can think of, no comparisons at all, nothing even close, and anything that doesn’t end up with me dead is a good outcome, right? 

Luckily I have a lot of cereal and plenty of powdered milk, that should last a week or two and that much foresight, in itself, is beyond anything I’m used to)

Arbitrarily regimented and statistically irrelevant…in a case like this, is all anyone can honestly hope for…

P.S.  If the draft is sending chills throughout the floor, then, by all means…

Shut the God damned door…

Fragment From A Masquerade

Red ribbons clutter the scene,

From lanai to balcony

Yet still,

I can see,

Even though,

I choose not to believe

Kabuki flags defile dreams of old,

Through the seams they politely latch onto,

All things lost and never seen

Yet…

     A dream so cold,

     Needs only an ounce of fuel

     To direct the oars of a future worth possessing 

The Fraudulent Hero and The Relationship Between Happenstance and Happiness

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Prepackaged pocket wraiths

Born to haunt this evening….

Discarded unto disconcerting haunts,

Ratcheting a confession from some

Fraudulent honk…

Feeling disdain before purgation’s urge

And you then realize

You’re aware of your positioning point

Where here you rest, amongst the aisle

Of modulated remedies and vanities benign

A vocation is born when a villain is formed/one to rise against/one to clash bone to sword/all for journey’s sake/all for jaunts you feel impended to “must-make”/a valediction to, unwrapping our intrinsic resting state

Drams of forgiveness

Awaiting the hero’s

Return, who only ever

Flourishes when departing

Vision’s clear

He’s a heroic chap, one who takes nothing and gives

Much more back, but you see, he’s got a death wish,

So don’t give him more credit than he’s due, for he

Does it for his own desires, caring not for how his ends

Mesh with your wish for a savior.

And while he certainly cherishes hope, he buys no stock

In what it represents, for he’s smelled the scent far too many

Times to realize it was a figment of congestion there that he’d find. So if your mind sees him as this grand executioner of all that’s bad, so be it, so be it may, be the only prayer he’ll allow this day…. but in such an era of unyielding duress, you’ll take what you can, and that he’ll give, willingly, as he needs it too.

The shadow can be used for evil, yes it most devilishly can.  However, what is so often omitted from the lore one reads their children, strangely enough before they try to sleep at night is that the shadows renew at the dearth of day, yet rely upon the light, entirely.  So, when utilized for one’s might, it makes no difference if the user is wearing black or white, for the shadow cares not about wrong or right, he simply is what he is and how he gets what he wants, is of no burden or consequence paid.  It is true that a shade can never be your friend, but certainly it can be your arm of vengeance if so chosen to be.  And the hero, the hero’s hero, will so succinctly use it just the same, as any other object to cause fright, any item there to play, anything that will help him chase away the demons and the fear, giving back the prominence to a era desperate for the light…so what if it’s the near-absence of, that allows the day to triumph over night…

8 Stages of Regret

I.  Cabinetry

An immobilizing strength plumbed within

Temples left, scarred and alone

Preservation devised a means to push, an

Imbalanced shelter for a defenseless front

Partitioned walls once deemed out of place

Have since become the only blueprints ever drawn

Interred within these assimilated cells, cage doors

Conceal the lost-not-found

And it’s only through the sheer chance of occasion; the hinges may swell and sing their voiceless tilts, shedding skin through the suffocated creaks entombed

II. Thesauri

So violent in the vagueness

In which consent first came undone

So vague in the violence

In which definitions first formed to tongue

The stillness of the songs etch, impressed upon

a hollowed heart—procuring a beauty—persisting

through the unconscious’ paining path of plight

Contusions stir to surface, clogging lines of flow,

Where curiosity catches a fevered glimpse and forever forward is impelled to know, what lies buried, beneath the indulgent purity of snow

III. Breaketh The Dam

Your voice says one thing

     But the eyes dictate contrasting truths

Your words are crafted toward recovery

     Yet innuendo simply spells out an angst swelled deep

Your tone quivers in subservience, yet impotence is a flurry never shown

                       Your outlines cast impressive angles, only to

Eclipse each thought betrayed inside

                                                           Your reassurances are calculated in their candor, yet errors appear as one’s amassing loss

                                    And if such loss rests sightless to the day, the night shall forever forage upon the schematics of those repressions cloistered deep

                           And eventually the levees shall break inside, flooding forth all things unknowing, elucidating every painful stamp left unsorted yet stacked in place

IV. Frozen Posture

Tension bristles the embryonic morn, prickling the cote with metallic shards of veil in scorn, collapsible dignity unfeigns before you here, chastising all memories as broken periods of circumstance—as having been built be demonic scribes and bards fictitiously flirting with the pangs within, damage, repeal, stain and scar

Curtailing truncation’s brutal lop,

A memory, fragmenting forth,

Beckoning penance for sins that

Devoured innocence

You seek forgiveness, yet the soul is untainted, never sullied was this will you own,

                  But fault lines need reparations, cracks random once, breed lengths aligned intent to swallow whole

                                                                        And you cannot forget what was never known,

 Remaining focused, solely upon the broken scabs, remnants that both betrayed and glued, joining together flesh and soul,

         Understanding there’s more here than even you could have known…

V.  What If

What if’s begin to flourish….and wonder you shall, persisting quizzically in such preponderances, refreshing, what image would appear anew

 The shine of the mirror’s gaze reminds what once was and how but that person now, is known, to have been but an effigy, a cursed twin, some Angel once took pity in

VI. Denial in a Time of Advancing Schema

It truly is remarkable, how far you’ve come since misfortune’s kiss shown through the prism’s glass

                                                      You forge forward without delay, yet one must wonder when the stalling shall impede, this admirable advance through such tumults and misplaced apostrophe

                                                                                          You admonish those with good intents, to cease their pity, for its not their love you’re searching for

                                    You chastise the resolute, for not even you yourself entirely remember every nuance of the painful truth

                                                                                            Your resolution is astounding, and yet such pride may be, just the food from which stagnation feeds

                                    There shall come a point where address this all you must, for if not now then when

                                                      You claim all is well, yet ignore we can’t as ire’s rise their flames at those that care; where arrhythmia distorts truth’s gait, emanating unrest in each the shattered pieces that remain left as whole

VII. Betrayals, Buried in the Garden of Time

There are so many things that can and will be said. There are secrets buried that never shall be revealed.  A pain like this is one that will gnaw and feast.  It is not something that can be tossed aside. Pretending that only by paying credence will you draw out it’s worst offense, is nothing but regrettable to the watchful eye.  And still, one can hardly blame one to become engulfed in such a betraying return to one’s true self…in fact, I can think of nothing else…the one you thought you knew is no longer living, instead they are replaced by some vulnerable wretch plagued by the remembered pasts ruins realigned.

And I, the one who has loved you all along, feel I have played my part in this betraying song.  Out of love I allowed the education of others to sway my inactions.  I left you as they remade you from your very ashes; I let you grow as some alternate version of who you are, yet, I did this out of love alone. 

But if I would’ve known that wall would break and that dam would crack, I’d have eased you along, slowly matriculating you back into a world that no longer is the safest place.

Yet it should be known, you are not the only one to suffer.  Certainly our pain is not comparable to what you must feel, but nonetheless it is so very much real.

I, for one, and I will only speak of the pain I known now.  I will not discuss the hurt that lived when you remained in that state of ignorance, no, I will not detail that time, for it is gone, it’s forever gone away. 

The here and now, is far worse than ever could I have imagined it to be.  For, when you arose from your slumber, you could not, and have trouble still, looking at me as you’ve always done.  There is, you claim, a resemblance between your villain and the image I portray.  I’ve changed my size, shape, hair and face, but somehow, that betrayer you see in me.

VIII. A Coda, A code

And what, you, follower of this regrettable tale, may ask, what happened to this villainous man, the one responsible for disrupting this woman’s peace and calm?

                                    This, is something I dared not dwell upon, but the question is begged, and therefore, I must appease…I feel guilty

For I knew she must face her attacker, they say it’s a step toward resolving that within…but

                                    I heard he was leaving. Only I knew it was he that committed such actions…For, if I never dallied as I had, I would’ve been where you’d expected me that day, and if I had been, none of this damage would’ve happened as it has.   Many have claimed that if I were a mere moment later than I was, she wouldn’t have survived. 

They mean well, yet I, as you do now, know better.  But I did espy, this demon.  I saw exactly who he was.  At first I knew not his name, but it was not difficult to uncover.  This, was all information I withheld, a secret only I held close.

So, such a day was forced upon me.  A decision had to be made.  It was a decision that could’ve gone in several ways.  I could have reported this man to the police, but he would have been released, this, I shall not delve further into, but this, I do know.  I could’ve tracked his future, keeping tabs for such a day as is now, where she could confront him for his crimes, and offer whatever justice she deemed fine.  But I could not bear watching him escape.  I couldn’t sleep knowing what luxuries his wealth could provide him elsewhere, while the one I loved is but a shell, a clone of who she once was.  This was not justice, no, not just at all. 

So I chose the path that such situations often come down to.  I cornered him and he knew.  He offered me the world, if close my eyes I would, allowing him to leave, to go away for good.  But this was much too kind.  And I did what I felt I had to do.  But to detail what took place those 72 hours, would be too graphic and cruel.  And so, I alone took away my love’s chance at confrontation…and this, while the revenge was sweet, it was not the feeling I felt it should’ve been, and now I cringe telling you about how I have behaved.

Now, it is I, and I alone, who seeks and prays, for an irrational sense of forgiveness to somehow cease the beat of such a painful malady.  But in truth, it is only you, I wish to see me as once you had.