Music Playing Always

Music always plays
Someone's keys raises
Notes so light like
Shrill sighs slight
Sound chains linked in
My hearing thin, stringed
Instruments wail, hail
The mind's failing veil
Of my sanity, verily
Of my vanity entirely
I am strong
Though small
Only one
It edges me on
Until I listen
Until I sing with
The rich mistress
In the red dress
It is enough
That I am
Only one
With the music playing always in my ears

Rock right, right
Left light strikes
Booms, bumps, thumps
Raps, dum di dum
The swaying addicting
The addicted lifting
Up my spirit, flying, it
Makes it worth it
If I listen, just listen
Allow it in, in my slim
Chance of living
Surviving
My mind rapped in
The peace
It releases
My grief
I can feel
I feel
I become
One with me
With the music playing always in my ears

Jump

It is far away

But it is my destination

I brace myself for it

The collision
My expectation

What will be is unknown

But I must leap

However far it is

I must reach

for the ground.

It is windy out

I am looking down

My hair is ravaged 

By the breath of the sky

Its sigh lifts my heart

My will lifts my feet

I am going now, going down

My aim is the ground.

It is like they said

It is heavy

I can’t help it

The depression

The descent

The rapid decline

I see it now

The ground

upon me

It is here

It is over

I am

Going under

Bracing for impact

Bracing for collision

Awaiting rock bottom

Sure destruction

What always would be
What suddenly shall

Here it is…

Nothing now

Nothing

Nothing

Where is it

Where is the crash, the smash, the blood, the guts

The heart, the soul, the dreams covered in dust

I never landed

I simply took off

Unable to feel my own flight

My own rise

Clouded

No ground, no landing

I took off and then

Flew forever

To places I’ve never been

I can never be

It’s just imagined

just contrived

I did fall
after all

I don't feel
I am gone

No flesh rises

This is not me at all

I can hear people crying

Wailing aloud

I look down

There it is now

The rose-coloured ground

Blue Green Red White Yellow Black

Blue sea above his head

Green spread beneath his back. He waits.

Read for the umpteenth time his copy of hamlet

White pages greying beneath his dirted

Yellow fingers, nails

Blackening at the corners.

Blue from holding his breath waiting for her. She never comes to

Greet him. He would be here all day

Reading. Just reading.

While she let’s him

Yet how would he leave her, could he blame her. His

Back turned to the earth, lingers.

Boy she’s never coming now

Getting up, changing the horizon from a square to a line

Reaching his hands to the sky, looking around, sighing

Time to go back, go home. She’s not coming.

Yanks her chain from his neck

Back into his pocket. Hamlet in his pocket. He goes home.

Slow For Me

Come

Let’s sit and chat

A bounce and roll

Draw close, let’s have a little talk

Get to know each other better

Hi, I am

And you are

Come

To the rhythm that they gave us

A conversation for strangers

How we say “what’s up” in dancehall

Hold my hips

Swing and dip

Stop with the music

That’s saying, “I’m good”

Oooh

I like what you just did there

It’s all about timing

Breathe in

Slow win’

Breathe out

Round

Round

Round

Round

You’re making things hard for yourself

Bumping, bumping

To the booming of the music

Shaking, shaking

It’s making you lose it

Grab it

Groping

We’re still in public

I think the selector

Is talking about us

Come let’s sit

I didn’t catch your name

Breathing, breathing

Out in the cold air

Away from our audience

It was fun, no really

But my friends are waiting

Next time stranger

I’ll come by

Just to see you

Somebody

-Ave Maria-

We keep hoping that someone will come and take us away from this awful place.

It’s been twelve years by my calculations, since we died.

We think we are in purgatory, though we know we can not be. We have thought maybe we are in hell. Then again, we have never done anything to go to hell. We have always been so good. We did schoolwork and house chores and we always listened to mommy, just as Father had said. It hurts to think like that, to think about Father. We used to enjoy mass. We knew when we did good deeds, good would await us. Now, what is good? Haven’t we done all the good things we were supposed to do? We must not think like that. In purgatory you can not think like that. What if we are already in hell?

-gratia plena-

It hurts. There is a cool heat that pierces the skin. It feels as if it has gone all the way through. Sometimes it feels as if there is no skin. It makes me cry, but I cannot feel the tears. I feel it until I can feel nothing anymore. Then I dream. When I awake it always returns, the pain. I cannot get away from it. I cannot even see it. I am just here in pain, crying without a sound, without a tear, crying in my emptiness. Should someone not help me? Father, please help me? Is there no way away from here? Just when I can take no more, again, I get to dream. I love to dream. It is so much better there.

I can’t see faces, but these people, they seem so familiar. There is a woman. She is so graceful, she is tall and fearless, and a man short and cowardly but sweet and kind. There are two very young ones, full of life and mischief and a much older boy, who seems to be always worried about something. I see them in my dreams. I dream often. I lead a normal life with them. With them, I play the part of a beautiful young woman. If only I had continued to live, that woman may have been real, real, really me. Instead I said that thing, that very, very bad thing. I knew mommy would have hated that I had said it. I said it anyway. I could not take it anymore. They would not leave me alone.

-Dominus tecum-

We are in that room again. We are beginning to wonder why these men come. Sometimes there is a priest. Other times there is a wokka man. We know that’s what he is. He comes in here dressed in black with his head all tied and he takes that book and he chants. Then he sprinkles things and he chants some more. Sometimes he brings others. We hate him. He makes us feel so much pain. Not pain like in the emptiness, where there is despair and barenness. This pain is full. It builds up inside us and we can make the screams now. They are ear-shattering. We love those screams. Ha. We can sense the fear of all those in the room. That stupid wokka man! He is not afraid. We hate him. We want to kill him but they restrain us. We would rip his stupid fucking head off! He gets to us.

The priest is nicer. He reads me poetry. I like to hear the poetry.

AVE MARIA, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

It makes them laugh. Oh dear. I had not wanted to talk about them. They. They. They are here too, always with me, torturing me. They say mean, awful things about the priest. Oh how I hate to hear them. It’s not true. He is such a nice man. I cannot see his face but if I could I know it would be a sweet gentle face. They say he likes to do terrible things, terrible things that I cannot talk about, when he is alone and when no one can see him. They have shown me. Oh dear. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, J- Oh dear. Why are they laughing so loudly? They are laughing so loudly. I can feel them doing it. Now quieter, and quieter, but they are still laughing. I hate it when I have nightmares. Where are the beautiful woman and her family?

-Sancta Maria-

I think it was because I said that awful thing. It is the last thing I can remember. I said that awful thing and then I died. Now I am in purgatory. The pain does not get easier to bear. I feel as though my skin is searing off. I cannot feel my skin. I cannot find the source of my pain. Sometimes, I feel as though little animals are crawling through my flesh and eating away at me. Ah, I have figured it out. I am in the ground of course. That explains the darkness and the cold and the animals. Oh dear. Was I buried alive? Am I alive? Oh yes, it was because I said the awful thing, all of this, because I said that thing.

They had been bothering me for some time before that, before I said that awful thing. They kept coming to me while I tried to sleep, while I was alone. I felt them on my bed, at my door. It was such a relief to have finally died. It was such a relief when I let them in, when they let me say that awful thing. Maybe I should not have said it. O, I know for a fact that I should never have said it.

-Mater Dei-

He is back that fucking man. Oh fucking die, already! Stop talking to us, you miserable fuck! We screamed it. It did not help. He dances and he chants and he addresses us. How dare he address us? Who does he think he is? We will not let him talk to us like this. We must stop him. We must stop this fucking wokka man. He will ruin everything. We have nothing on him. Dammit! Nothing. He will win. He will finally win, that fucking wokka man, and his friends.

 -ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae-

The light is bright in the small stuffy room. The sound of crickets seeps in from outside, a light welcome wind blows in through a window missing some panes. There are familiar, friendly faces, my parents and my siblings. There are also many people who I do not know. They greet me. They have so much advice for me. They all want to meet me, to speak to me. They are all touching me, pats on the back, handshakes. I am civil with them. They act odd. My hair is as wet as my dress. I may have been perspiring or swimming. Ha. I do not know which one, but the long white dress I am wearing is completely drenched. My feet are bare. I feel tall. Have I always been this tall? I see my reflection. It feels as if it is the first time I am seeing it. That is ridiculous. Isn’t it? My face is strong, it is beautiful, I think. Is it conceited to say that? Ha, I am so silly. A young man walks to me. He holds my hand and kisses my cheek. He asks how I am. My voice says I am free. Free? I feel so free. I cannot imagine from what.

-Amen-

6 BB Haikus from the Anti-Social Jerk

6 bb haikus
from the antisocial jerk
grant me thou, reprieve

the phone is silent
a ping says reese wants to chat
i don't like reese much

the phone makes that noise
out of fifty contacts please
be someone i like

g3nisis says hi
g3nisis says are you good
that name is stupid

so many people
all sharing their silly thoughts
as bad as facebook

i thought i liked him

he responds, he responds not

delete button bitch

i know you read it
the r won't lie, note to self
buy a nokia

Yes those are seven
Now 8, 2 poems are about
the haikus themselves