Epic. In progress.

This is the apocalypse that I am hoping for. The one that's contained within our glorious intent. The one where the wolves become the governors, and the towns and cities become the dens. Where the apes gnash the statues of old soldiers to sharpen their teeth, battlefield promotions. Where the bleeding of our hearts is kept as donations for the sick, and the doctors become witches and madmen. With unobtainable resolutions raining from the sky and preordained solutions offering sympathy from the temples, the priests all become wizards and victims.

This is the apocalypse I'm hoping for, eschaton and immanence meeting in the middle, engines roaring in the shapes of the flock and the herd. Where everyone is hunters, and everyone is prey. The elections are held in the tops of the trees, the candidate is snake, the opponent is shaman, the ballot is cast in venom and in charms. Crowning a monarch to stand silent and weep.

This is the apocalypse I am hoping for. The one where bronze makes you a king and steel makes you a god. When the blood of the earth is the last of the gasoline. When the motorcade follows the migrations so they can stay fat, and the remnants of cocktail gowns and parking lots are scattered by the winds. Where if you survive the plague you are still fed to the dog, and the bells only ring when the storms force it out of them.

In my apocalypse Father Bear will come roaring out of the blizzard, leading the charge of war against Mother Mountain and the stones of Memory and Fire. Branches will be collected to bring end to the war and as always new songs are born. Songs of the road's sacred meanings, and of how the oak's face withered in the unforgiving winter dawn.

This is the apocalypse I am hoping for, stories are told around old fires hidden behind rocks and rubble. Whispered stories of the men eating each other as the hyenas nip at their heels. Told by a shaman of the lost languages, he who weaves of word what was once woven with wire. No trophy to distinguish him, just the calm gaze of the sand in his stare.

This is the apocalypse I am hoping for. The tribes are formed out of the lost and the weary, the exiles have gone on to become the wizards of the empty. The rats and the roaches make up the new congregations, garbage prophets and plague seers. It is all given to them as offering, all that was and is, the world a new gallows for which to hang themselves on. The new men emerge, built of stick and feather, furs and flint. Too afraid to create new fire, they fight the cold with tinder and claw, leather and rope.

In the apocalypse I am hoping for the stars have died and been reborn as new constellations. The rotation of the earth is measured in long strides, and time moves without any observance, and it promotes bliss amongst the tattered masses.

The Forge

The slumbering giant within these eight stone walls. Iron headed and divine. He speaks in crow riddles and decides the fate of the small men of bronze. Deciphering the questions contained within the throne and the scepter, the crown and the meat house. Ancient writings, the ravings of the eons, crushing, debilitating. The slumbering giant within these eight stone walls. He dreams of the Mother. Of how the small men of bronze would dance for her. Building the fires with the weakest amongst them. Waking only to drink of the water within these eight stone walls. Immediately resuming fitful iron headed slumber. The slumbering giant within these eight stone walls. He spent his youth at the forge within these eight stone walls. Wide awake and bearing the weight of his Iron head. Forging the thrones and the scepters, the crowns and the cleavers. Humming the songs that made the bronze men dance. The forge's fires were stoked by the weakest amongst them. The slumbering giant within these eight stone walls. One day he will wake for water and not return to his respite. He will hear the songs of the bronze men, and feel the warmth build in his forge. The Mother will tell him his time has returned, she'll send it in eons, in crowns, and in meat. He will begin the humming that inspires some bronze men to dance around others that burn. He dreams of the Mother constructing a door.

Blouse

Over the hill comes the sound of a joyous war.
Counter attacks of exuberance and cheer.
Rattling against itself, the sky echoes the sentiment.
Delicate and driven are these bombs of celebration.
The generals hold the torches as guides and spotlights
Armed to the teeth with great booming laughter.

Over the hill comes the sound of joyous war
I sit with you and wish for the war to come home.
The mob has arranged for a fantastic party.
The masses are wailing for hilarious success
Celebration will come to the chaff
and the chattel
And the cups will be drained as the fire consumes.

Rabid Babyskins

She uses silence to teach me how to wait.
This scarred and rutted ground, a well worn path.
I use airports to teach myself how to stay still
These overpacked bags that teem with warm thoughts.
Hate waiting for our time for so many different reasons
Our time is all times, it exists inside us.
So much past to take the moving walkways away from.
So much more future to just leave at the gate.
She says such beautiful things, even when she is saying nothing.
She thinks in such beautiful ways, and tries to hide it with words.
I find myself learning, even though it's against my nature
And I've been drinking and smoking my way through the streets.

Let the Governor know what I think of his pardon.
He can use it for fuel, or for food, or for barter
I'm content in the freedom of knowing I'm 'imprisoned'
That neither his labels nor theirs' can imprint my heart.
I am content with the silence, the learning, the waiting
It's not a prison, it's the song in my heart
She speaks in a way that belies the forgotten.
In secrets and innuendos, and I am digging my tunnels
Occasionally she's a stranger, and some times she's just the same.
The tallest tower behind the walls , yet still it's just a label.
One man's prison is another man's art.

It's not just a kiss with you, it's a secret you whisper into my mouth that I won't figure out till later. A sweet something that grows out of nothing. If you elevate a savage you create a savage with the lingering feeling of your lips on his. No soma need ever apply, no soma needed.

Well, here we are again
Just a ghost in the blankets
I can hear your voice ringing doorbells
Everything just repeats, and repeats, and repeats.
The voiceless voice.

It's not just a kiss with you, it's a secret you whisper into my mouth that I won't figure out till later. A sweet something that grows out of nothing. If you elevate a savage you create a savage with the lingering feeling of your lips on his. No soma need ever apply, no soma needed.

Is this the apocalypse dawn?
Have I gone mad?
Have I been...corrupted by too many episodes of mad men doing mad things for the sake of that one damsel in "distress" who may or may not even be watching?
Despise the shakespear that wrote love songs to his dead friend's bony head
But embrace with RAPTURE the shakespear that wrote love songs to tyrants and faeries.
Are the angels going to descend?
Or Have I been lucky enough to be a white boy schooled, just barely enough, in jazz to know that thy great apocalypse is sounded with trills and scat, not pomp and circumstance?
Is this all the product of libation or salvation?
See what I did there?
We sacrifice emotion and tiny jumping bits of our hearts for art...
....just when it starts getting good...

Hidden hands, crack the codes of the growing mountains, they howl right back into the face of the storm. Fire in the dirt, ashes in the harvests, the herds have left the fields for the city, the herds have left the fields to smolder and smoke.

Hidden hands plunged deep into the salt of the oceans, brought down from the face of the sky. Cornerstones cast in the forge, hammer pounded, hammer born. Rhythms in the iron, iron in the hammer born.

Hidden hands that sculpt the images that flash behind enchanted eyes, answering the calls, horns that crash against the blackened cliffs. To be the one that stands at the end, to be the one that ends. Crystallized in this moment, to be the one that ends

I've spent one day as a king
Two days as a knave
Three days in the tower
Four days to the grave.

The peasants all gathered to watch my 10 day tumble
They stood dead still and silent
Their opinions plain on their faces.
They didn't eat or drink or sleep in their unending judgments.

I've spent one day as a healer
two days in the plague
Three days with the shovel
Four days filling graves

The ground trembled from the boots of the soldiers
They stood in lines to keep you safe
Shields and guns and bombs at the ready
I wish they were not facing me.

Await Anchor

(basic rhyme scheme, but I like it)

Ever so gently dealt a dead man's hand
Ever so suddenly jumped ship and swam
Chilled to the bone, the wind as my cradle
Rocked to sleep swaddled in filth and in hazel
Waves cresting over empty head left abandoned
My games, my ship, my condemned warmth heavy-handed
Stories told like prayers, as salted as the fishes
Plague doctor's assistants with cancer in their wishes
Quarantine the entire fleet, the rats are all just rabies and teeth
They are the patients of failure, with no patience for failures
Tie away, boys, tie the iron bones to the anchors
The navigator mistook the poison for rum
And now our course is onward to sickness and sun
Carried so gently by death's cool hand
That old iron gray ocean rusted by land
And when that bow breaks, and the iron comes crashing
The rats start feeding the sailors their rations

Let something that is distant keep itself warm with the thoughts of the things close. Mountains fired in the mantle of houses made far and brittle by streets and tress and neighborhoods. Let convergence reign, hesitant touches in the midst of day, blazing sun and sheen of sweat mixing in the writhing of neighborhood's last battles. Cookie cutter ramparts, the crime watch is building engines of siege and peril. Eyes in the sky, eyes in the hedge rows, eyes in the picnics, eyes in the games. We got the permits necessary to hide from the cameras and share ourselves with each other in defiance of the observant. Breathing in the anonymity of grand tracts of skin, explorations lead by tongues and hands.

Let something that is distant keep itself warm with the thoughts of the things close. Mountains fired in the mantle of houses made far and brittle by streets and tress and neighborhoods. Let convergence reign, hesitant touches in the midst of day, blazing sun and sheen of sweat mixing in the writhing of neighborhood's last battles. Cookie cutter ramparts, the crime watch is building engines of siege and peril. Eyes in the sky, eyes in the hedge rows, eyes in the picnics, eyes in the games. We got the permits necessary to hide from the cameras and share ourselves with each other in defiance of the observant. Breathing in the anonymity of grand tracts of skin, explorations lead by tongues and hands.

Horns don't make sense anymore. I am the stuck. The only ghosts that speak to me are made of glow and blank letter faces. It's become the anniversary of my hobbling, the day I forgot how to walk. Introductions have become formalities, it's all going to end one sided. And every time I turn to say something to someone it ends in a complete circle. You said those things to me once. And the laughter carried to the stars. Now it's lost. All just lost.

Entrenched. Knife sharp. Mask tight. No man's land a scant 8 inches of Berber battleground. Facing empires of baggage and flames. Waiting for the horn to call, so I can take my freshly bleached flag, add my tail to the space between my legs and hash out a new peace accord. Seconds pass like hours. The crushing silence of only accents and revolutions per minute. The key is in my hand. A funny little thing that looks like it couldn't unlock a thing.