blood makes a bitter cage

Winter's chill creeps in,
frosting your mask with diamonds -
I thought you were a hero,
sent to guard my soul.

The oaths we made
were iron in my eyes,
and I shed my blood
to make them true.
but
You waved goodbye
and in your hands
our oaths washed away -
running like a river
my heart could not dam.

In barren silence
I see my iron light -
Your oath is only the mist,
and blood makes a bitter cage.

40 Pieces: my life in abstracts

All poems and prose already published in this blog thus far are part of my artbook, "40 Pieces." For now, the book is only available through me. I'm making each physical book by hand.

[Poems in this blog that appear after this post, chronologically, will be in the next book.]

~

About 40 Pieces

Many of these were written in the midst of my deployment with the US Army. I was in Baghdad, Iraq, from August 2007 through August 2008. As the Army saw it, my job was to talk to our detainees, and to attempt to gain some useful information for the “war.” As I saw it, my job was to talk to our detainees, and attempt to figure out what the hell was going on. These 40 pieces are the ways I made sense of things for myself. Some were written in the aftermath, both the long descent to ‘rock bottom’ and the eventual rise to where I am now. For the clinicians in the world: consider this a window into Depression. 

driving home

the long highway stretches out before me

a lonely song from a make-shift radio, the only voice in my head

if I close my eyes, would it all just go away?

would there be time for fear or pain, if I didn't know what was coming?

the quiet solitude of oblivion

so welcoming 

thoughts

Don't leave me alone with my thoughts.
They hurt me.

[I'll go wherever you will go.]
Just don't leave me alone.
The darkness creeps in,
     shadowing my edges as you pull away,
     overtaking me when you turn.
I'm not strong enough.

I know it's wrong.
I know my thoughts shouldn't hurt.
I fight them, always.
Sometimes I win. Sometimes I'm just so tired.

Sometimes the best feeling is blank.
Nothingness is better than being carved like
     Picasso's sculpture;
the blade of memories knows exactly where to slice,
     again and again.

I'm not lost.
I know what's happening here.
Some days I can corner it, cage it in a little box
      in the bottom of my mind.
Some days I'm too dizzy and
     I can't find the key.

I need a little help.
Just hold me up.
Don't leave me alone.

Memorial Day

- you lost it all
to save us from ourselves -

- an offering
taken from your flesh -

- your light went dark
but I remember you -

- you, the Fallen,
who gave it all
to save us from our fates.


to the Fallen





(2012)

one heart

I am your Archer - 
I am your Bones -
I will guide you true,
I will steel you stance.

I am your arrow - 
I am your vision -
I will see your heart,
I will help you dance.

in the diary of bones

In the diary of bones
let the words fall where they may,
they linger for dissection,
caught there, where they can't decay.

By the Archer's point,
the timid words, examined,
are strung out and fire-cast,
iron from ashes and a gilded corpse.