Creation’s Cry

Oh how I wish you could feel what I feel,
let this soft breeze that hustles through the leaves on the trees prove to you He is real,
let the raindrops that splash ripples to life convince you of the majesty of my God.

There are times when my prayers only seem to go as high as the ceiling,
fruitless as an unwatered tree,
when His voice is barely above a whisper and waiting is excruciating,
until thundering beckoning booms the sun sublime from its slumber,
and even the rocks that crunch beneath my feet on my morning run are bellowing praise,
in chorus with the tongues and teeth of animals,
the stems, thorns, and sticks of plants,
the liquid lush rush of oceans,
a song borne upon wings that zings its way through the very blood in your veins.

The marrow of your bones vibrates, symphonic, desperately attempting to rattle you from complacence,
a roar undercurrent to all humanity,
yes it all sings with praises and glory,
even as life itself writhes in ironic agony,
a harmonic scar of separation sliced deep into its flesh,
yet still with this mortal wound you can hear the air echo with its dying breath,
God is our Lord.

Clenched teeth as my prayers fist-pump their way through the ceiling hands raised with the very heart of Creation,
beating.

Deconstructions Are Not Characters and Grim is Not Realistic: The Self-Hating Fanboyism of Zack Snyder’s Batman V. Superman

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is a horrible, cynical, didactic, hateful, disconnected, and grandiose mess, a glorified high school philosophy paper that deconstructs its titular heroes with heavy finger-wagging.  It reduces the dark knight and the man of steel to grumbling simplistic caricatures, shamelessly apes frames from classic graphic novels, blatantly shuns connective tissue between scenes, and laughs at the idea of coherent character motivation. It’s a lecture vomited in the ugliest colors that not only misunderstands what makes these characters so iconic, but more importantly, what makes them characters.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: faithfulness to the source material. This movie draws much of inspiration from one of the most seminal graphic novels of all time: The Dark Knight Returns. We could get into an endless debate about how much the movie honors this masterwork by talking about scene framing, character deconstruction, and questions of morality, but I submit to you that none of this matters.

Bouquet

There wasn’t much to say when I went to visit my brother today,
sat on the lawn and pondered the circle of life about which Elton John sang,
yin stardust bunnies yang,
opposites reinforcing one another’s dignity in necessity copulative,
a self-replicating cycle returning us to the scattered molecules from whence we came,
life is only beautiful because it’s short, so short it’s negative,
beneath the ground in which I plunged the flowers I brought for my brother,
where his corpse warps at the speed of blind maggots that masticate him into Nirvana,
oh wait that’s right they can’t because he was cremated into chunky cat litter pebbled with teeth that no longer chatter like the rest of us left alive,
gibberish sound bars rising and falling on this great equalizer,
a bunch of cowardly masturbatory lies for children and charlatans.

Timber Whispers

The boy went into the forest,
feet crick-crackling pine needles and sticks
as the trees swallowed him whole.
Leaves brushed up against his skin,
the chattering of insects littering the air.
No moonlight could break the canopy,
save for shafts haphazardly scattering illumination like beacons.

It smelled like moss and ladybug blood,
earth and stone,
as the boy did not look back.

I can remember he was frightened,
as arms and hands
caught on rosebush thorns and sharp tree fingers,
bleeding oil in the black,
losing red in the beacons,
minuscule scars on the boy from afar on a lark in the dark of the woods.

His trek took him through the pitch,
guided by moonbeam magic,
goosebumped flesh at unexpected breezes that carried the whispers of the bark
to furry ears that twitched and violin cricket legs that itched.
He knew there was that meadow in the middle,
a snapshot of fruit and fragrant flowers,
so he pushed on
as raven racket,
hawk heckles,
hummingbird squeaks
warned him in a tongue too foreign.

I can remember the growl
as that meadow before me
held eyes with teeth I had never seen before.
They glinted and stabbed,
and the silence of the forest

welcomed my blood to its embrace. 

Gallery of Echoes

A year ago almost to the day,
I gave her my heart on one knee,
and now my thumb taps that memory away,
from its home inside this rotting gallery,
which carries with it countless burdens I must release,
broken promises washed over filthy feet,
infidelity my token sin that wrecked her more than I could ever see,
splashes of images trickling in between my toes,
her fingers mingled with the soap sweat dirt and tears,
wipe it clean wipe it gone,
this shattered glass I step on every time I scroll through my phone,
every swipe a reminder of being once again alone,
a pause before each to soak in the found and lost,
a band-aid ripped off at a strangely dear cost,
to uproot what was buried beneath layers of parties and sleepless nights,
six months of numbing specifically to avoid any threat to this darkness from the light,
tapping out early from this fight,
a song so wrong I only cared that it didn’t feel right,
unleashing upon these feet a blight that might cripple my flight with a bite less painful than this agonizing sight,
please hurry with that washcloth and rub raw these sores incompletely healed,
oozing sex and drugs and more,
as I thump this thumb down slam shut forever these innumerable doors.

Sprinkles

The original version of this poem, written almost four years ago, can be found here:
Fragments and Wishes
Next week I’ll be attending a slam poetry contest in Spokane, so I felt compelled to pull this bad boy out of mothballs, because for awhile now it has lost its luster for me. Its meandering quality is unfocused and self-indulgent. Its once exhilarating mountains and thundering valleys are now impenetrable and self-important. It’s poorly structured, nonsensical, self-pitying, and so very, very, very LONG. Where once the words rang with such passion, now with distance I can’t hear anything but the voice of a whiny, misguided boy. And yet, there’s something here. This was my first poem. It will always have a special place in my heart because it unearthed my passion for words in a way nothing else ever had. So I’ve decided to cut the fat. Make it shine. Let it grow up a little bit, because the original poem took me 9 minutes to read, and that’s too long if I want to be able to consistently share. So here it is, tightened up, focused, maybe a bit more honest without all that rose-colored fog in the way, and, quite honestly, I think better.

The Lies that Corpses Tell You

Stuck standing stupidly clutching the sword with which I felled my addiction,
I listen to his caterwauling wailing ear-piercing cruelties.
Like a prophet he points out all my inevitable failures,
this vision of vomit speckles my spectacularly spit-spattered spectacles,
saliva that colors in my sin,
and I can see he’s right.

My knees buckle, my heart falters as I let slip my sword to reverberate its clang sharper than any two edged…
…whatever…
…and these words like so many steaming piles flail at the looming shadow,
whose two yellow eyes blink motionlessly,
whose black claws itch to drip me empty
of any weapon but my scream,
which in hopeful hustle starts out strong and brave and too loud to ignore,
my uvula’s ululations the ultimate condemnation that gleefully hacks off the shadow’s body parts,
and dances in his blood.

The predictability of such prances wrenches jubilation instantaneously from my grasp and my fist-teeth clenches at the stupidity of underestimating my enemy,
for it is no mere metaphor
that turned my body into a whore auctioned off to the highest bidder pun intended,
no, no, no, this shadow trickles with the magnitude of reality,
a corpse borne from before,
risen, offended at burial premature,
to bite my head off,
chew my words into mush,
slurp me up its straw,
to tumble head-over-heels up this tunnel caked with white powdery gore,
swirl down this funnel,
I a humbled prideful sooner dead-than-sober bore.

This shadow and I carved new neural pathways bright and red,
neurons whip-crack-snapping electrical impulses,
as two fingers press up against my neck to check between the seconds for too many pulses,
dead,
lonely in his grave,
he beckons me,
oh how his howl gargle-glower-roars for more of what I gave,
but he lies lifeless,
and I stand saved.

Anew Again

The first day of sobriety sweeps me up in its embrace to shove my face in the supposed gullible idiocy that this time will be any different,
and I wave this third, fourth, fifth, who cares, final goodbye to confidence bolstered by intoxicating toxins manipulating my self-awareness.
When I look back at the heartbreak that birthed this blowhard,
I balk-barf at the smattering of smothering feels,
buried beneath this bile, thoughts which now bubble to the surface to be contemplated.
Five or six or seven months ago,
oh how funny that I couldn’t even tell you the date of the apocalypse,
blacked out blubbering bulimic blockhead,
binges to barfings as I bawl fall crawl unhinged scarfing up numbing agents,
to kill this sorrow I know can’t be killed,
on borrowed time I put off the inevitable avalanche,
for the first time deliberately frying the nerves I so foolishly allowed to regrow,
I broke the rest of me
to match the heart of me.
And it was such a twisted tangled joy to bend over backwards into the bitterness,
but I have come so far I couldn’t tell you what was legitimate,
except that those windows through which light would once in awhile shine,
are growing bigger,
and the ocean beyond is one in which I want to drown,
embraced by its depth,
washed of this wishy-washy whatever,
no longer will I self-medicate to mediate the disagreements between my holy self and this apostate,
there’ll be one me…
…but who is he?

Avengers: Age of Ultron (9/10)

In a fastidiously chaotic movie, one of four new characters mutters, as if to himself, “Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites.” This question of order vs. chaos, war vs. peace, good vs. evil, is standard comic book fare, but what makes Age of Ultron so deft and satisfying is the way it ties up all sorts of threads from previous movies to create a nearly seamless whole – chaos and order, personified in one movie.

The Bejeweled Gem

When you first opened your eyes,
you knew that all stones were precious,
until the jeweler gave you that first ornament,
and since then your soul has been drawn to their sparkly spectacle,
and their glamor has become a necessary adornment,
for which you clamor,
incessantly,
into the ether of eternity,
the jeweler’s lips drip delectable planets-wide infinity,
his words grab your gaze,
seeming to annul any other ways,
to lighten that which currently weighs down your vertebrae.