The Alchemist

Given the gift

What squanders will be made

With the gold and silver

Transformed by alchemist's hand

From sweat and blood

Salt and water and sugars

Put on potatoes

In your tea

In your coffee

Sitting at a table

In some cafe

As blood diamonds coat

The woman's neck

At the table to the right.

Private Opera

Is it right

To question the singing of a bird

The sweet looping melodies

That ears might have heard

In the bright morning sun

With leaves dripped dew

The bird sings in tree tops

A concert just for you

But the little one doesn't know you're watching

It thinks it is alone

You're still enjoying the music

Just there, on your own

To announce your presence

To break out in applause

Cheering for this opera

Is akin to opening your claws

With bird frightened

In the tops of that tree

It will fly away

That's how it is for me.

This Never-Ending Cycle

Midst the Charles Dickens streets of this town

Sleep the myriad bums and bruisers vomited from

Factories, homes, and lives like pollution from smoke stacks

Cliche news papers and cardboard boxes are the only embrace

These poor crumples of humanity will ever feel.

They don't even turn their shit-streaked faces

To the heavens as acid rain pours

From black, lightning-streaked clouds

Is akin to the bursting of puss-filled nodules

On the diseased bodies of plague victims

Why, I ask, would the dregs of society turn their

Cataracted eyes to the heavens when all

That meets them is the face of Hell?

The deluge of passers by carry on their face

No eyes to see nor ears to hear

Just a mouth

A tongue

And a nose

Spitting, screaming, smelling of feces

All linked in a cycle of never-ending trodding

Upon the toes, hands, and heads of the rags

On the side of the road

Hurrying through rain,

Excrement is the bane of the eyeless and deaf

Stepping in such toxic, bacterial cesspools would mean

Certain damnation from the mouths of the blind-deaf

The soggy and shredding newspaper cries out

"Save me! Please, take me away from this place!"

No one to see or hear

No one with eyes or ears

Because rags do not become riches

Riches dwindle and die

Steeped in the foulest refuse of the men under the heaven-hell

Burning in acid rain, suffocating on black smoke

Being tossed into meat grinders to feed the masses of the Dickens town

These are the escapes

Through the nondescript door to what?

Another industrial nightmare?

Bah, the homeless will drown

Face first

In their own urine and the blind-deaf will rape everything

For what it's worth

Because eyes no longer grace the face of beings

Unfit for such a gift

Or such a responsibility

To actually see is too much for the minds of

Weak demons with selfish strides and crushing heels

What is the power that sets apart

The destitute in their corners,

Crying nothing out of blank faces,

Covered in decay and disease

From the arrogance that skates by above

Glancing at their faces, it's hard to tell

If creatures without eyes

Will ever cry.

A Factory Created By a Six Year Old Mind

In the black factory

There are machines

Constantly turning and grinding

Gnashing their teeth in

The near darkness

They churn out,

Through an infinite spider

Webbing of mechanisms

Black

Black as night

It is pure evil

Emanating from shiny

Fabric-like darkness

And the mere sight

Sets hairs on end

The deafening silence of the dread looms

Steals all hearing

Oppressing listeners,

Wearing them down until

All that remains is darkness

The center of the factory

In the middle of this

Impossible maze of

Light reflecting black

Is me

High above an abyssal floor

That may not exist

In the very clouds of darkness

Hovers a throne of cords

Suspended in the air

Cords of metal rubbing flesh raw

Trapping me in an ever-worsening

Claustrophobia

Movement impossible

Total paralysis

I fuel this place

Hate

Fueled by hate

Fueled by hate

Yes

It is thin needle scraping

Rough gray rock

Piercing flesh

Again and again

And again

Agony is nothing

But it becomes everything

Fibers churning

Infinite

And nonexistent

Light streams

The white of malevolence

From a glassed dugout

Far away

Encasing a man

White reflection of evil

Is all I see

Bouncing off black

Always darkness

Always

Who is he

The man in the booth

Shadowed

My controller

Made from the fabric of this place

Fueled by the product

Formed from hate

The never-ending manufacture

Perpetuating the factory

With its boundless walls

Tumbling

I'm tumbling

Yes, always falling in place

With cacophonous silence surrounding

Bursting ear drums

Suspended above it

Inevitably making it

Always thinking it into existence

This is mine,

My factory.

I've got a duct taped

Mouth

Full of sharp words

From a razor tongue

They cut up my mouth

Wallow in the taste of copper

And color of lust

There's a chair

I'm in it

Duct tape again

Trapped

Wandering hands

They scrabble like the spider

Crawling up my leg

My body calls

Nothing to listen

Wood and plaster

No touch but myself

And somewhere deep,

The sound of tomorrow

A seashore

A future

But I'll never make it

Until the spider bites

'Til the blood drains

And I can wander home.

Forever the Same

Come to me through Day and Night

With welcome arms and fists to fight

Playing harp, the banners hung

Praise to glory, songs are sung

In halls of marble, gold, and glass

We watch the clouds as they pass

Remember zeppelins bound for war

An age of honor years before

As blue of sky welcomes our gaze

Thoughts slink forward to coming days

When blood will spill

And blades will kill

But glory will live on

When the king sits upon

A throne

Cast from bone

The gray of clouds encases the sky

Disease and famine, hate and lie

They become the weapons of an age

One line on a textbook page

Clasped in iron of more than words

The skies are flocked by pestilent birds

The halls of glass stand no more

No glory, no honor as ages before

Only black and burned

White marble turned

To hopeless obsidian, the color of night

An appearance of light, a welcome sight

And landscape stretching on forever

The fates decide we're not so clever

No, we are bound to the man on the throne

The monster that sat and with time grown

Into something we did not die for

Gone is the man honored, adored

In his place rests evil

Bundles of grain crawl with weevil

And as the harp screams its last note

As we take our leave to load the boat

I gaze at marble, glass, and gold

I follow my orders, done as told

But to fight for something, a future like that...

Thoughts aside, I put on my hat

Pick up the gun at my side

Step into line, fall into stride

To war, to war

Glory and more

"Skulls for a throne"

My thoughts drone

But I will not rise above my fate

I decide, marching out the gate

Battle and bullets, the future holds

Stern, brave faces cast from molds

The clouds drift in the bright blue sky

As the armies march, ready to die

In This Coffee Shop

Standing at the edge of that cliff in a coffee shop

I stare at myself and I have a thought

About what I had for lunch that day

And I can't seem to remember

No, I can't seem to picture that trivial morsel

But I'm still standing, foot stretched over the edge

As the people look on, ignoring my daring

Engrossed in themselves with nothing worth sharing

And I am

I'm looking down, down, down

Through the floor

In the distance I see a door

It seems so far at the end of gravity's pull

Making out its surface, it seems impossibly dark

Like the shadow of a giant

My moment is reliant

On the others not noticing what it is I've found

Simply speaking, it is of no interest to them

With their blank faces and yearning to sin

I drop my cup, filled with coffee

It falls

Down, down to the ground

Somewhere lost in the shadow of infinity

My cup shatters

People stare at me like it matters

My face goes red

Red, red as blood

So I step

I step over the edge

Attempting to escape

Rather than standing there in wait

And I fall

I fall down, down to the ground

Where the shadows echo

And their isn't a sound.