Category: Verse

The halls are ancient, older than the earth, the sun, the stars
Red horizons at the edge of the ever expanding nothing is hardly older
The odd dreams of strange things walk these halls, some slither,
Some float, some exist and yet, at the same time don’t
They are all conjoined by the never was, the could have been, the maybes

Wild, chaotic, run away probabilities coupled
And wound, bound, to the variances of impossibility

Many halls are wider than entire vistas, the walls lost in foggy distances
A few halls have stars wheeling overhead, under a far off roof bathed in night
There is a rumor of a hall containing an entire galaxy, spinning, but
Lies can exist here too, so that is nothing strange unto itself.

Water flows through the walls like life blood, writhing and alive
The constructs of the halls are optional, walls can be ceilings
Floors can be nothing, light can be missing, but dark not found
Glass exists in strange ways, reflecting only when it chooses
To not allow other horrors to pass, to watch, to observe

Dark is prevalent, dark oozes from the corners, it slinks
But it is kind, not evil, not malicious, dark wonders aloud

The halls are my home, the magic originates from here, my mother lives
Within its embrace, sequestered from the normal worlds, eschewed
My father dreams in these halls, fighting dust motes in his madness
Crazy can exist here too, and that is strange when you think about it.

You found me here, wandering in my youth, and you, shocked by my normalcy
My pants were only pants, with two legs, my shirt was tucked behind a belt
Sure, my hair was a bit wild, and I had some dirt on my hands,
But I was a normal guy wandering the Neverhalls, looking for something
You asked what, and I replied that I would know it when I saw it.

I do not say it aloud, but I feel the water seething, it knows
The oceans are challenged, and they do not wish to be controlled.

You were a lost thing, fell through a crack in your world, an absence
Death can do that, I tell you, offering you a bit of a pastrami sandwich
You nearly fainted, thinking you were dead, I assured you the opposite
After all, why would I offer a spirit a sandwich?

You ate both halves of the sandwich, and that was good, you were famished
You tell me your name is Catherine, but your friends call you Kit
Your parents died, and you collapsed into yourself at the funeral
A bench in a garden, secret, under the church gable covered in vines
You leaned against wall that was a hall and have been here for the night

I realize that you are the most beautiful person I have ever met
And the Neverhalls have amplified your uniqueness tenfold

Can you take me home, you ask, looking over your shoulder at the vorcigaunts
I assure you they are quite friendly, even though they look like …that
Birds made of corpses and old books can be offputting, but lovely otherwise
You smile haltingly, and I assure myself its temporary, death has visited her.

I offer my hand to you, here in the hall in which you fell,
A good one though, this at least had running water in the twilight
And the vorcigaunts keep things clean to keep away the predators
You are smarter than you know, hiding beneath their eyries, under shadow
The dark likes you too, I hear it whisper, it thinks you are kind

With the rapid explosive flight of my heartbeat to the roof far above,
You take my hand fleetingly, your touch as light as a deadeye moth

I lift you to your feet, free from the rocks in which you clung
And it is like the Halls is giving birth to you, welcome to the world, Kit
I smile gently, and you return the smile, stronger this time
We should probably take you to my mother, I say, she may be able to help

Will it be far, you ask, stepping lightly over rocks, letter jacket clung tight
Not far, you came much further when you fell into the halls, I laugh
My mom chose to come here, she knows the secret paths to the worlds
She knows how to find the signs, the markers, the doors, avoid guardians
That stand steadfast against the outsides, the reals, the questions answered

Everything beyond the Neverhalls is potential, cusped, wholly realized
There are many realities, and all of them are terrible in their own way

Can I trust you, you ask, tentative perhaps, hesitant for unwanted truth
I think you can, but if you don’t, that is ok too, I will give you space
You can follow me, and if you don’t feel safe, you can come back here
You know this place is safe, right? The vorciguants will protect you

The dark whispers that it will help her too, I feel it in my bones
Ok, you say proudly, loudly, and your voice rings against the rocks, let’s go
I grin stupidly at your innocent bravado, and you chuckle in turn
Truly, I mean it, you say, I think we should go, the birds may be nice
But I rather not find out the hard way, and where do the babies come from?

Born from fallen books, the ones thrown from ledges and library shelves
The knowledge within given birth to sentience, pulling life from death in turn

Instead I say that someday I would explain, but for now, let’s start walking
I walk ahead of you, and you follow, I whistle lightly, spreading my hands
Out from my sides, my arms stretched widely like a scarecrow, I call the leonids
What are you doing, you ask, your eyes questioning every decision yet

Calling some friends to light our way, like lightning bugs that you know
Here they come, I announce, and small stars pop into being around us
Their light is red and gentle, suffusing the air like the soft breath of promises
What are they, you ask breathlessly, amazed at their silent arrival
Leonids, red giant stars that decided they rather be small, I reply

How absurd, you reply, shaking your hair out, taking a few quick steps
You move up to my side, and put your arm in mine, surprisingly

They are quite lovely, you say, I notice the corner of your mouth go up
Its a quirk of your smile that I will treasure forever, the curve
It is there when you are mad, it is there when you are being sarcastic
It is quite lovely, I agree, talking about something else altogether

My mother’s house is in the Hall of the Shattered Elm, you will love it
As we walk under a twilight, red warm light showing us the way

Upon a hearth of twisted stone
Ribbons of fire entangled within
There speaks a voice indiscernible
Contained at the edges of the glow
Nestled fuzz set to licking flame

There are lies here, the dreams of yore
The dreams of your parents, grand,
Their parents, unbelievable and great,
But to the wastrels of the embers
At the crest of the pit, are our children

So enamored with their reflection
Narcissus would be envious of such
Folly to be had at the hands, laid
On the devices that promised wealth
Knowledge, vast and unrestrained

Corrupted by the wealth of those afraid
To be lined against the wall of their
Entitled, notarized consequences, sat
Shat on the children of those come after
And for what? More indeterminate wealth?
More cock? More pleasure? More rape
Of the those that cannot stand or push?
Such losses have they carried, such horrors
They have endured, only to suffer at the wheel
Of a world that does not suffer the weak

The weak always are, until they aren’t

Those beasts tolerate the hypocrisy of a mirror
Reflecting the envisage of Lovecraftian horror
Dressed in the latest Prada and Gucci
This season is so last season, already
Nevermind the bodies, they shall pile nicely

What of the disassociated of us?
What shall we say to them? Rise up
Against the systems to which you slave?
How would they feed on at the trough
Of loss and value capture among the masses

No, those flames do not burn at the glass
They reside deep within all of us, ignored
We pity those who hope, for we know
We have seen their losses, a study, a narrative
That is distilled through money, filtered

And yet, we hold out hope, that the world
Is salvageable, saved from the ignorant smart rich
And the less reliable rich smart ones that lord
Over us serfs, scrabbled in the hard packed earth
Fighting over seeds the terrible have deigned
To spread over our yellowed scrabble
Will we bounce back against these captors?
Can we find their pencil necks among the chains
Or will we throttle the babies first
And pray for absolution in the utter silence beyond?

History is poetry, it turns like a good limerick

That woman from Nantucket, whom
Gives good head with a bucket
Only to feed her kids, since the third job
Laid her off due to cost measures
The owner needed a third boat

I hoped once for a new world, without
The blood and death of revolution
But older now, to dwell on childhood dreams
Is to eat candy without the sugar
And now the wall awaits its rich blooms

Like a painter of abstraction, absurd
The billionaires will bleed gold
Line them up first, to set the highlights
Then the oldest wealth next,
They will black and red the rest

Can we survive an empire fallen, asunder
It dies by degrees, small choices and folly
The seas rise, the coasts subsume, and the poor
Fight along themselves, never blaming the oligarchs
They sit on their ivory, isolated from the peasants
They argue over the next million they shall burn
And the limerick gains speed to its conclusion
The revolution simmers beneath our fires
It waits patiently, standing guard of the corpse
Of a country ready to eat itself in its discontent

Bloodless revolution is change without impact.

My biggest fear is that I won’t be relevant any longer
I fade, like an afterimage once the flash has worn away
Remaining there, standing against the wall, forlorn
Posters are hung behind me, images to invoke thought
Thoughtful response, moments in time, reverberations
I am scared, that is the feeling that I wrestle
Pinning it is useless, as touch makes it spread
As a slime mold seeking its food in a dish of agar
It is so heavy, the fear, resting on my chest
Pinning my breath, compressing my ability to pronounce
Enunciate, and give life to my thoughts, that are aging
Perhaps I was never relevant

I thought learning that I know nothing was a milestone
But it was only the first gate that allowed entry
The alarms blared, the siren screaming profoundly
As if to announce that such things are a rite of passage
How did I know then that it was not such a thing
To realize, to grasp, to touch the face of the truth
That few reach the gate intact, or pass through
Unscathed, without mar or burn, because I am privileged
I did not know hunger, or loss, or the lack to move
Beyond my means or resources, did I ever struggle
So now that struggle knocks, and I heave my chest
And find that it is insurmountable

It is a question that hangs behind me, against the wall
Touching my shoulder gently, reverently informing
This is fear, my friend, this is edge of darkness
Depression is two doors that way, and happiness
An illusion, masterfully crafted encouragement
Propagations of a lie, a promise made of opportunities
They did not exist, no more for my role models
Than for myself, and yet, it lived, crawling forward
Zombie-like, shuffling with groans and grunts
Tapping on windows of chance and luck, smearing
A face that is my own, for I have seen it before
But now, it is graying, fallible

Am I on a precipice without awareness it lies below
Do I walk on the edge of a ledge unknowingly
Is there an actual truth to be rooted out, seen
Touched and admired, brushed free of the detritus
The remnants of forgetfulness, of something sinister
Such things plague the world, death and fear, hate
Hope is failing now, in the twilight of the empire
For the emperor has no clothes, insists they are fine
Everything is fine, fine, everything is fine
Lies are not fine, injustice is not fine
Does anyone care that the squalor is accepted now
We wallow, and that is the dream

Relevance is a funny thing from a throne
I see not what is outside my throne room
For my castle’s walls are held up by belief
Self soothing rationalization with stones of lies
That zombie of self reflection is meant to be there
It is a servant, it cannot be discarded,
That fear it will always shamble towards the shadow
To sit on the chest, and squeeze sorrow from your eyes
Lemons and limes, sour fruit that hangs strangely there
But as long as we are able to lie enough
Psychotic will to persevere, to challenge all
Is fraught with self loathing that truth lies

Such things are dangerous toys, arsenals of ideas
An RPG that carries intractable, unresolvable thought
A grenade of blame and c4 plasticity of truth
These things will blow up in our collective faces
Truth is not subjective or personal, truth it universal
A life cannot matter if at any stage it does not matter
Ultimate belief is a prison to be coddled by
Held within, not to question yourself in the echo chamber
Because being hyperaware of those that suffer more
Only shines a light of discomfort upon ourselves
So we lie, we shutter the windows, against our family
Our society, our neighborhoods, and call it freedom

Every generation that has come to the problem
Has pushed it forward by a single horst cart, only
To have it roll backwards across their ankles
Snapping and tearing, and revealing nothing changed
The people are harvested, a resource to be leveraged
And cruelty, mindless and wanton, seeps from our leaders
Infects our people, makes them sick and tired of everything
Did not the tablet decry to give us your sick, your tired,
Your huddled masses? Here they are, huddling from violence
To wear a rifle is to be a patriot, but to wear a mask a victim
The victim is the ideal of who we should be, aspiring
Not woke, but self aware, seeking the ultimate truth

Self reflection that I am a lie, built over decades
Scares me to my core, it hollows me out to show rot
These dark things are not age spots, it is failure
Relevance to the greater ideal, of what we should be
Of who we should be, of what we should strive to be
Am I capable of the ideal? Will I ever fall long instead
Of short, of poorly measured, not found wanting,
To be the best version of ourselves, screaming not in anger
But in robust, raw, turbulent joy of each other
When was the last time we sought to embrace the fearstrikers
The odd, the misfit, the opposite, the others of ourselves
Am I capable to reach across to others that I fear

Death comes for all of us, some hidden beneath our sheets
Some standing before something they are afraid of
Some beaten down for believing in the ideal before them
Some cowering, unconscious, more spaghetti than man
Spread across a room of beeping machines and stale air
We are not meant to do it alone, our spirits are wired
To connect to others, to greaters, to the sky, the stone, the sea
The crash of the ocean, the bird calls, the sound of wind
The trees breathing around us, calling to our spirits
Threads, woven and intersecting, gold and silver
To the heavens, where the gaps in our spirits are filled
Because we should be relevant to each other

I am relevant to you, as you to another, to me
Is this a secret to be shared, some vast truth unspoken
This is the truth, for untouched it remains untarnished
And the lies are what we stack upon it, futilely
Because it is fucking easier, isn’t that righteous
We cross our hearts, and say our prayers, and fucking lie
To who? To ourselves? Yes. To our children? Yes.
And for what? Some short term pleasure that removes the pain
To know that we are in this together, but individuals
Believe that we are better off, trekking the waist deep snow alone
The right thing is obvious, and it is not the individual
The lie is to ourselves without measure

We lie fallow alone

I see other versions of myself
Late at night when the dark pushes its way
Into the edges of the room, forcing their retreat
The focal length of my room changes
As the corners stretch to an impossible distance
Are these the boundaries of my consciousness
The moments, the potentialities, overlap and
Inevitable conflict arises from deep within
These other versions of me expand the space
Filling the volume with their gaseous forms
Taking over my breath and my own heartbeat
They are from other world threads that are no more
Sacrificed through choice, laid waste by action
These other parts of me are long gone
But tantalizingly close, as if it only would take
a new choice. Something else.

I remember the me in high school
An idiot by every measure, there is no shortage
Of those measures, long and short, near and far
I failed in everything in some way, but no one
Would tell me or I failed at the listening
I feel like iconic defining moments may have
Been wasted away, like a tree without sun
It is there, but it provides shade to nothing
Except its withered core, hidden deep within
My heart was never open, my empathy never came
I was a shell of the person I could have been
And I have had to fake it ever since
Do people realize that I am a robot?
Does it ever occur to them that it is a ruse?
A lie to push others away and hide my pilot
a terribly frightened child. Cowering.

The me that should have been could still be
But to push at those boundaries of concrete
Require strength I cannot muster or request
The person that is eager to form cannot
Because of the shell that now contains it
We all are constrained by the choices we make
Acted upon by forces that may be labeled
Sometimes not. They are insidiously invisible
Hunting in the dark, in the light
Through systems or culture, assumptive asinine
Dangerous creatures of wilds explored
Those other versions of myself are victims
Themselves, brutalized by necessity
Or mismanaged by circumstance to an unequal end
That now cannot be counted or measured to
a standard unfair. Unchosen.

Those other versions weep in the dark
Huddled and scared, feeling for the hope that
Should exist and be prevalent in all things
Is this the limits of my person? This?
What I am will never be more than a crude
Imitation of a human adult, misshapen and folded
Upon itself, a unknown galaxy of time
Shuddering in its own dark blanket as
Whisps of the eddies of the distant stars
Buffer each other in the long empty above
Pulled into the dark above my bed
Pushing at the corners of my room, expansive
Such moments are exquisite of themselves
A time to marvel at the majesty of everything
That could be, that should be, that layers
a finite possibility. To change.

To change the shape of me.