Poetry archive 1

[Elven Doritos]

Inside the rim of spectacle
underneath the rusted chairs
we traversed through emporiums
I thought I saw you there

But I don't think
that was you

[Elven Doritos]

My gypsy girl sits in her shadows
Hounds are growling at the stars
I lift a bottle and remind her
That we both drive borrowed cars

A velvet glove of mortal power
Transient in the face divine
Shoved on top of slender hands
Grappling with uneven minds

Stick my fingers in the face of
All you knew of trinity
Suck my life into the drainpipe
Of complete serenity

[Elven Doritos]

This one makes more sense with the proper formatting (which the limitations of this board prohibit), but c'est la vie:

We sit and imagine on quiet afternoons
while others bark for festivities
and wonder why the world is fading
and how disconnected the mainline
has become

I want to tell her that I love her
that rushing through the bloody streets
as soldiers march in civil unrest
and barricades are battered on the shore
as the specter of gloom and death itself
comes for Don Juan and demands that
in the Face of Eternity and All That Is
he renounce his sins,
like he,
in sin,
I would refuse

Let me tell you what I know of eternity:
the cosmos come unbundled
stars go black and decay in time
photographs curl and yellow
even gods and goddesses die
tombstones crumble
memory rusts
energy will be splayed upon the
shadows of the spectral
unmaking spirit of entropy
when everything collapses
life, as such, lies uneternal
quivering and quaking in the multitude
temporary and cycling throughout all
the wide wake of waves
collapsing in ripples
as the water draws too high
and as I splash against the canvas
of temperamental temporal claws
I become temporary
bound by time
and made unmade
potential shall lay in all direction
and the cat inside Schrödinger's box
is both alive and dead
but I am a particle
not a wave
for I have been observed

[Elven Doritos]

Shall we liberate
Or deliberate?

[Elven Doritos]

i can't see through
your frosted glass
that houses your
brew of secrets

this is
somehow
my fault

stuck-up travelers-by-trade tell of a distant land
where all the people are bright orange
and their tongues explode with treacherous
half-truths that are baking in the warm
diseased mind of the salvation army

dunno about all that, but his friends
call him shaggy[/quote]I would
like to
curl and
dangle
across
the sky
and then
the sea[/quote]

[Elven Doritos]

twelve balloons
floating to heaven
unburdened
have more meaning
than a thousand
old books

[Elven Doritos]

Don't tell me that you're looking for
the mat you leave at the door
the only sign of this,
some form of shelter

I paid for it with my own blood
as rainfall turned the ash to mud
and you stabbed me in the chest
and begged to suffer

There is no word for your life except for torture
You're just some fast enduring form of torture

You wonder why the men you know
treat you with a manner low
as you sit and curl
in their possession

Your face is frozen, lost in time
within your gaze I cannot find
the simplest trace
of some discretion

Those who listen close hear devilish laughter
Your tears are mingled in with devilish laughter

Placing blame is what you do
upon the ones who stole from you
the grave where lay
forgotten lovers

But you have laid upon the grave
serving him as though a slave
defiling holy grounds
just to recover

There is the smell of graveyards from the corner
You're just some foul-mouthed trifle in the corner

[Elven Doritos]

Strangers barking in the ear
of anger and the second year that
only speaks to those who hold
their flowers

You are the one who cannot be
reminded who is lost at sea and
learned the truth is meant for
sanitation

The people we hold to the sky
who let us know the day we die have
left us for the promise we
abandon

The angels of the luncheon room
who sweep their life with broom and pan
lift their skirts and taste the life
worth living

Tomorrow sparkles on the tongue
that latches to the ladder rung and
swings across the clouds and lifts
your mattress

[Elven Doritos]

I saw her within a sea of fakes & self-indulgent clones,
    carbon copy self-examination with their bug-eyed
   sunglasses & ropy sandals & garnished day wages
   tattered clothing & labors of Hercules pressed into
   massive print by the tyrant who spoke with slithering
   little turns of phrase, his face emblazoned on coins
   &  his health in the care of the aristocracy

I saw her dancing in the mid-afternoon as the rain came down
   crashing across my skull & chest & disembodied legs
   & the legislature demanded that we take our bags
   &  she, with her bright red raincoat & twitter
   a laugh like locomotion where she lost herself
   with no apprehension or sulking

I saw her taking the two men's eyes & cornering them naked
   white beads of numbing flesh needing seeking stripes
   basted &  wam-bam-breaking in the dead gray sky
   washing & welcoming her halo as their beacon
   night light & watchtower & arctic rambunctiousness

I saw her take Rimbaud & Whitman & Ginsberg & Verlaine
   ruffling the books in the dead wet breeze mould &
   spirits spluttering & she looked & stamped feet
   her bright blue heels taking turns kicking & glapping
   gl-gl-glap in the tasseled in-between-class-time
   she stuttered with her feet to light the way

I saw her parting seas, vast oceans & cosmos & vivacity
   her blood running in the cold damp dream air
   with she & me alone in all the swirling chaos of it
   all & she took my tongue painting & said "This is
   good, that the sky is mournful & the spirit is dead
   & you sit here writing this as your pages turn to pulp
   & your heart turns into a diamond & your mind rusts"

I saw her tapping out a melody & humming a rhythm with trash cans
   talking backwards & addressing envelopes & letting me touch
   her mind with strings of half-thought & for that was I grateful
   answer being no, not ever, nor should I expect her rationale
   her philosophy & melting candles dimming in the torrent

I saw her take the clouds & swish with them, tsk-tsking their trouble
   permeating rainbows & umbrellas with her formless wonder
   streaking along the open courtyard & traipsing along the way
   & throughout it all I wept & trembled & knew I would never
   see her again as the tides of formlessness swallowed her whole

[Elven Doritos]

Look man you knew she loved you took your heart and painted
pictures had a tapestry stitched statues erected what more could
any man need? but you fear being tied down fear goodness fear
women fear true power fear the promises of monogamy want
more more more tired of stale unself meaningless meandering
lost paradise but can't tell your asshole from all the others put
in a line and taken out back shot with voodoo doll strangling
life death black white how could you do that how could you
do that

[Elven Doritos]

There he was on the street looking like some skeletal
   mangy dog with his gavel mustache his hunger
   eyes his topographical squeamishness & canyons
   in wrinkles on the face

He kicked shoes into the hot sun breeze of the morning
   whooping clapping with his dirty fingers on the
   train last on the line honking as the Beatles
   played on an iPod with only three minutes left
   to go

Police officer chewing bagel on the day off stream of strangers
   sitting next to smells-like-fish coated dingy drawer
   half-boat wrinkled old mess like a trash can alley
   cat in mewing in the dungeons of vapid new moons
   he capped the tip of his cane with only two minutes left
   to go

Stravinsky is the sound of utter implosion madness war Thermidore
   councils revolution Directors guillotine reactionary culled
   from happy dreaming stakes where the numb shall grow
   their gardens grinning truth with one damn minute left
   to go

Spittle squirming trickling tumbling into his body lap
   hot warm gooey and the rats nibble on corpses with ash
   red black every car evaporated screams turning flesh to
   black stumps shadows watching unmaking clouds pouring
   gas flash boom bang mushroom and the half-muted
   stumbling nearly-dead not-yet-eviscerated moaning
   in the god-forsaken grey ash and there is nowhere left
   to go

[Elven Doritos]

There were things I should tell you before you accept my invite
   things that I've seen that no man should ever suffer
   places & crumbling edifice & luxury corruption
   terrible weeping sights and strange abuse
   cigarette burns on air pockets of disaster
   thrashed branches & broken limb morals
   turning madly swinging in the afternoon

I saw a generation brain-washed and dumfounded
   broken sunglasses consumer products
   fearing God but losing self-imagination
   standing on the edge brink of civilization
   forgotten buried under roses history a myth
   breathing butterflies and mapping destiny
   gorgeous drenched in the hot solar rays

I saw an old nasty man with two gray mouse ears riding carriage
   down dirty wet new-asphalt road, blown onto trail
   stimulus package builder parking permit brokerage
   stringing broken unhappy Christmas lights in July
   cloggy iron boots ravaging the morning grass
   cementing their illiteracy and slaking trepidation

I saw a young aristocrat blow his brains into heaven dharma
   unquestioning his blushed bright face & screaming
   devil's delight the untruth of trauma packets of lust
   swiveling his feet & remarking on the last steamboat
   sure took the piss out of it

I saw two children dancing quietly in the broken glass yard
   swinging with their fists at the pulpy face of warning
   taking heed pressing doorbells & basking original
   strapping their houses with ammunition skipping
   telling the tallest trees they are not on the level

I saw an ocean commanding the seamen of its bosom
   entreating their survival casting them far aside
   humpback whales giggling moaning mourning
   the damp salty morning greeting way-worn
   nobody with lovers' parting kiss

I saw the sinking mindful beam of daylight breaking
   chastising & surrendering to the green dragoon
   touching caressing needling & superimposing
   triage & travesty & shrill tongues harping

And I saw the last living monarch swell with pride
   capsizing into smirking murky mendacity
   last of a thoughtless moment in thoughtless
   history though really digital half-age is not
   so bad

[Elven Doritos]

There were twelve men kneeling,
their hands above their head,
the smell of sweat and terror
steaming off their necks
in the hissing summer air.

One leather hand, professional,
reassembled its weapon
and slid along the side
of the divine steel
of his only lover.

They were all boys, eighteen,
some had never learned to dance,
many were still virgins,
and all were in terror but
could fake composure.

What can one say?
There are no words appropriate
for those who decompose
in ditches dug by wiry slaves
on grey barbed wire days.

[Elven Doritos]

If you lean in close enough
to see the flame turn wax
to sparkling, dancing liquid

If you watch a single bead
roll and curl along its side
until resting at the base

If you feel the sway of
the flame with every
pressing inhalation

If you hear the tiny
crackle of the air
turning into smoke

If you taste the warmth
and swish it with your
tongue and bask in it

Even then
we could
be lovers

[Elven Doritos]

Her tresses sit in exile
I, in standing ovation
We both held ourselves
And pressed on in harder
Times than this.

A streak of lipstick runs
Along the edge of glasses
And she proudly smirks
And gently presses her
Fingertips into mine.

Only in this prison
Could I be free