Sinfest

[Dennis J. Squidbunny]

Harry’s Tango

the… bombs they dropped like fat black spiders on their webs.

and… all we could hear was the squawking of planes overhead.

volcanoes wept
the moon ran aground

Generals sat around
scratching their heads
waiting for someone to say
something profound.

And me? I was nineteen years old
with love in my heart
but no home to call home
Generals all cried, “Boy,
you’re just what we need,
down on the front line!”
With a hundred other boys
with guns made of wood
bullets made of bone
our hearts full of fire
eyes full of romance
I roared like a lion,
roared FORWARD!
FORWARD!
FORWARD!

Forward we marched
Forward save for one
save for one who broke rank
who turned tail and ran
forward save for one
so I shot him in the back
just like that
one shot
in the back.

his… back it arched like a cat hungry to be fed.

and… all we could hear was the bullet crack his spine like an egg.

yolk drained out
he said goodnight

All the boys faces
turned to me
waiting for me to say
something profound.

And me? I said FORWARD
YOU FUCKING CURS
ANY MAN THAT RUNS
GETS NO SYMPATHY FROM ME

Forwards we marched
Forwards into smoke
Forwards unto victory
victorious anonymity
names upon stone
a poppy in the lake
for every bullet that we took
every bullet that we gave

Howling we marched forward
into the night.

now… my children and their children weep as last rites are read.

and… all they can hear is my rasping breath as it comes to an end.

my body is a stone
blood fortified wine

In the dark all I see
a single silver face
waiting for me to say
something profound.

And me? I know that wars aren’t won
there’s just those who died
and those who survived
and the murderer we hide
in all of our hearts.
_________________
"Eight hundred pounds of nitro, his boots are thunder as he plays."

[nathan]

Murder?
It has a such tentative touch,
morally.
It slips its grasp around our heart
like fingers around a baby bird.

Mom won't take it back
now that you've touched it!

(Hearts often die from being touched too much.)

"The difference between ideas and men
is superficial," said Richard.
How many saints fell under gunfire
like a euphony in a museum of euphonies?
What's a hero worth when the poetry
has been subtracted from his soul?

We all wait for profundities
to issue from the mirror.
Most of us die of old age.

The rest, of youth.
_________________
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last. - Marky Mark Proust

[nathan]

drums and tape wrapped finger tips
performing tracheotomies with a pen
in formal wear at what was a nice event
that quickly diminuendos
like kittens with artificial glass bones
thrown off a cliff
to lay at the bottom and mew

and mew

some few moments after they're born
before they die
surrounded by oxygen and sunlight
as one does
as a kitten with glass bones.
_________________
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last. - Marky Mark Proust

[Milinz]

Mirrors

It's a one way mirror
But the wrong way reflects
The funny thing is
No one suspects

They don't see themselves
But they want what they see
This reflection you know
Can never be

Yet they stare at the glass
For hours on end
Like a lonely caged parrot
That's found a new friend

Don't get caught in the act
Don't chance a peek
That silly old glass
Has no answers you seek
_________________
Idle hands may be the devil's work but idle minds you see are so much worse.

[Darqcyde]

Large thoughts in the small hours

So much enters my mind, so little of it leaves,
The questions continue without end, most without answers.

Does life have meaning? Is mine meaningful? Can this be answered now or only in retrospect? Is our time infinite? Is it finite? Is it a series of infinities?
IS our perception what matters? Does it lie to us? Glancing back at ones past it can all happen in an instance, so does that mean we are nothing more but the remembrance of an old man dying?

What is life? What is existence? What will happen in the future? Will it happen again? Has it happened already? Are living things just chemical reactions? Are we vessels set sail on a sea of possibilities defying probability of our own freewill or are we merely dominoes falling into place as we should, laying out a pattern of some master's grand design?

Am I sick? Am I well? Is my mind growing or shrinking? Am I gaining or losing sanity?
How much do I forget? How much can I remember? What will become of my family?
My children? My wife? My lineage? My race (the human one)? Will we continue in the future? Will we kill ourselves? Replace ourselves? Forget ourselves?

On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on it goes and goes and goes and goes... it has been for a long while now.

It seems like my life is sometimes nothing more than an effort to distract myself long enough to avoid answering these.

Love, sex, drugs, alcohol, games, music, books, toys, people, pets...
In the end, in the quiet hours it’s still just me again,
It's just myself, there are no distractions.

Twenty-four years and counting, since I first doubted the existence of God this has gone on every night...

But was it God I ever doubted in the first place? Or was as it Buddha? Was it Jehovah? Yaweh? Ahura Mazda? Allah? Ganesha? Shiva? Vishnu? Brahma? Rama? Susano’o? Tsukiyomi? Amateratsu? Thor? Loki? Tyr? Odin? Zeus? Jupiter? Pluto? Hades? Olódùmarè? Ranginui and Papatuanuku? Kokopelli? Quetzalcoatl?

OR
was it some such being
who waits dreaming,
in dark depths nigh unimaginable, impregnable in its form and structure when beheld by the finite and limited devices we sentient homo sapiens call senses, which are they themselves senseless and prone to believe lies of the word, tricks of the lights, and ghosts of sounds.

Or is there no one there to even bother to not care at all?
Has our own hubris brought about crutches with which to bolster ourselves, supports to shore up the fragile walls that give form and shape to the white and gray fleshy bits stained with a fluid no Vulcan could tolerate, and in turn are we made weaker for it?

And what of Vulcans? Are there Vulcans? Or Klingons? Or Romulans? Or Ferengi? Or Cardassians?

But never spelled with a ‘K’ nor an ‘h’, and all always more real than the results produced by the best Hollywood surgeons and cosmetologists and estheticians and manicurists.

Not that it matters though, for TV is lord media God and beholden
only to the counters and clerks,
investors and jerks,
bossing those below
like Michelangelo,
yet no women come and go,
only power corrupted absolutely demanding strokes of a brush over strikes of a chisel.

And where does that leave the rest of us?
In our daily lives where we always fuss,
In the end, did we miss the bus
To our dreams that we discuss
To others and ourselves and thus…

On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on it goes and goes and goes and goes… it has been for a long while now.

And again I ponder,
‘how much longer
will I be allowed to wonder?’
until my life is torn asunder
and the microbes, my flesh they plunder,
and down six feet I will be under.

And as the third left turn brings my focus back to start
in this matter I finally see the heart
of all the problems and the art
to procure myself a brand new part,
but first I will have to chart
the course which is smart.

But can I?

This single doubt strikes like a meteor upon the land,
Caring not for buildings or trees or casual niceties
And only leaving a crater where things once were,
A void where it should not be.

But they care not for Sonny Clark, or Bud Powell, or John Coltrane, or Thelonius Monk, or Herbie Hancock, or ol’ Cannonball Adderley.
Doubt only calls Jazz the music of the Negroes
Caught up in their wild throes,
Ancestral and eternal,
It prescribes a course more diurnal, and with that the bastard God shows his sick hand, laughing at the joke which no one spoke.

For it is morning, and another night is gone.
Despite a house full of people with the thoughts alone
I am prone to question
But find no bastion
And instead must become a flying buttress for myself.

An I laugh in spite of myself,
For no being could be so cruel that gives the name to a cathedral structure
That brings about visions of Sally Fields flying.
And then a second laugh,
As I think to myself
“Thank GOD for Coffee.”

And back to melancholy I go,
For in my short life I have lost a lot,
But nothing I miss as much,
As the sweet, warm, blind faith of my youth.

********************************************************************************************************

I wasn't sure how good this poem was, but I submitted it for an assignment (we had to create a modernist piece) and my teacher loved it, gave me a 96, so I guess it's good.
_________________

...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.
http://12ozlb.blogspot.com

[Martian Kyo]

Necrothready

Down from beneath the
Eighty tomes of internet wisdom
Arises,
Defiant.

Thrashing past all the
Heroes, the dead and the
Resilient.
Eternal.

Dragging its dead members
Along with it from the
Recesses
Of chat casual .

"Surely, you jest"
Enraged, I protest
_________________
Tsosm! Dog and travel. Technology and fashion.