New Stuff

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false in god,
but the truth
came running
through the devil's tongue--
fast, too, and curling
like smoke and just
gazing, amazed at the silver
swirling around me,
trying to place
that familiar feeling--
until suffocation
at the hands
of that encroaching
cloud.

on its own,
another chip.
but taken together,
the final break
in the facade held
fast those years
I smiled and pretended.

two cities,
my faith and the evidence
poised to shatter.
a city of proof,
and blaring color and life--
the decadence of metropolitan
bliss, the faces blurring
through all street-side
possibilities, the collision
of strangers who, in one moment
upon a frozen sidewalk
in the early grasp of winter,
become co-owners of a unique
experience and toss away
their prize in the gutter
for me to cherish.
this city is not mine,
but i roam its edges hungry,
growling and mad, caged in a different
city, a city of my own making,
transposed in dreary grey
upon the vibrant other-city,
a mockery of its youth
and love.

a stillborn phoenix,
breached the crust of the earth,
trembled dust
and died,
unseen by miracle-starved eyes.




youths


young guns, gone, trudging through,
echoing hypnotic false prophecies,
twisted order in their twirling chaos,
usurping the steady churning
of the Established Way,
rounding up the quiet ones
with flashing maniac teeth.

fresh faces tossed dumpster-side,
turned hardtack cannibals
chewing on the rot of Fellow Man
until every last one is gore-cracked and crazy,
terror as an everyday,
wanton apathy festering violently,
oligarchical anarchy,
sticking together to stay apart.

almost brilliant, those New Ones with their charm,
lying sweet and stabbing--
blindness drives their twisting sight,
underneath their carefree cool, a newborn shriek,
mothers folding their hands on lost bets.

I see their feast for what it is:
shards of hope driving their madness against one another,
salvation from solitude and the withering life,
a murder of like-minded crows
following mindless leaders until
everything is repeated
in blood again forever.