"Apologies to the Room"

Apologies to the room.
I don’t aspire to gloom,
But my teeth are cracking
To dust, and I’m hacking
Choking trying to breathe.
Off to home to seethe
I’d go, but can’t leave.
Unable to relieve
The pressure coming down
Twisting a jester to frown.
The purple dress
She wore is a mess
Torn, and red stained.
My eyes drained
Seeing how she laid
The feast the crows made.
If she lived she’d be blind,
And I wouldn’t mind
Nor the Chelsea grin,
Or burn riddled skin.
I… came in for a minute.
Vodka ought to do it.
Let the ink spread a black out key
To get the disc she
started playing for me
Get a stumbling needle slipping
With luck skipping
On the off chance
To a track after these circumstance;
But instead of a fresh song
The steel finds it isn’t strong.
Laughing trivial buddy banter
Warps up a bitter ash tongue ranter
Telling any with ears
The devil won’t be drowned
In an ocean of tears;
That a lovely queen crowned
Is smoke in the breeze,
Vanishing with mercurialis ease.
How the days drag like sandpaper.
Each soft touch a shredder, shaper
Unaware their kindness kills.
Less and less every day
Despite the pyramid of pills
Prescribed to sway
From blizzards and scissors
Freezing despite the heat,
While passions accrete
A need to scissor open
And get at what’s broken;
From feeling like melted wax –
Deformed, or a matter of parallax?
A candle used and set aside.
No desire for a misshapen hide
To light
A romantic night.
I know we’re all here
To drain beer,
Play pool, and jukebox,
But my desire locks
On spreading a storm cloud.
Yet, promise not to be loud.
Alas,
Whisper to a glass
Since no one wants to know,
“She was always aglow.”

#
​
"Censoring"

Finally, excuses prove useless.
Now the shapeless
Play can play.
Exit the cage.
Take the stage.
Green
Not feeling fine.
Green
In the limelight shine.
The audience in anxious anguish
To vanquish
An hour or two
Absorbing the view.
Quiet!  Now the curtain rises.
Actors slay giants of all sizes.
Warts and all clear
In the performance mirror.
Inspiring unsought connection
Poisonous inflection
From a silver tongue
Flicking darts.  Stung
The crowd allergic
Stirred to panic
By the portrait put forth.
The people henceforth
Can’t leave the same
So damn and blame
The ink
For reflecting
The way they think
Infecting
A wound
Grown round
Until what is born,
A bird called Forlorn. 
Known to perch
Like a devil in church,
And whisper over shoulder,
“Why be alone and molder?
Give the people what they want.
Show what they need seems a taunt.
There’s nothing entertaining in a preacher.
Of sex strive for a bawdy titty feature.
Simple fact for the second act
In any allusion to God some see attack.
And when there’s nothing offensive
No lesson to learn
The public is permissive
Willing to burn
Mountains of cash for killing their time
Without ever committing the crime
Of turning on a light
In the midst of night.”
So, wanting honey and money,
Turn the lock, bury the key,
And fashion roses minus every thorn
For one prick sounds Gabriel’s horn
Heralding the end
Of means to transcend.
The dull blade whittling away
Day to day.
Silence, except on the rifle range
Executing the strange
That made the unwilling witness
This…

“We’re all bad, but we’re not all bad.” 

The old man dusted sawdust off his hands.  Stepping away from the spinning lathe he examined the bat.  Some might argue it looked perfect, but the old man knew better.  Only those foolish enough to believe in perfection believe in perfect things.  But the bat would do, “There’s a good skull thumper.”

The old man shuffled over to a coffee mug.  Printed across the porcelain the cup stated, “Sawdust is Man Glitter.”  The old man took a long sip, grunted satisfaction, and setting the mug down reached for another piece of wood. 

After he shaped another bat he then busied himself hammering nails through them.  Long pointy steel like baby dragon’s teeth, custom made by a backyard blacksmith – it only took three or four to make the club a savage skin splitter, but the old man put in enough to make the bat look lethal at a glance.  When he finished spiking the skull cracker he took a seat in a handmade rocking chair.

The old man hummed a tune.  The melody seemed familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it.  It felt like a song from childhood, yet seemed to have been something he made up on the spot.  Reaching for a nearby cooler he pulled out a cold bottle of Mexican beer.  His leathery brown hands twisted the cap off, despite the bottle not being a twist off. 

He said, “Won’t be long now.”

Sure enough not more than two sips in, a loud pounding soon sounded at the garage door.  Sighing, the old man pulled a remote out of his apron pocket.  Clicking it opened the garage door revealing a group of gutterpunks from the Diablos.  Faces tattooed with 666, wrapped in leather and ratty jeans, hair greased into wild oily arrangements, mostly spiked like sea urchins; the old man saw them and wondered, “How much money they waste trying to look scary?”

One of the gutterpunks stepped forward.  Through the array of facial piercings the old man recognized a snot nosed kid from down the block.

“How you doing Marcos?” the old man asked.

“I’m good.  And they call me Murder now.” 

“That based on a fact?”

“You got our shit ready?” Marcos Murder asked. 

The old man rose to his feet.  He shuffled over to a pile.  Picking up a spiked bat he swung it hard with one hand into a nearby punching bag.

Leaving the bat stuck in the bag the old man gestured at the pile, “It’s all yours.”

He went back to the rocking chair, while the Diablos collected their weapons.  For a minute the boys – none seemed older than nineteen – took swings at one another, playfully trying to savage each other.  Marcos Murder tossed a wad of rolled up twenties at the old man. 

“It’s all there.”

The old man counted it.

“I said it’s all there.”

The old man kept on counting until he could say, “It’s all here.”

 Marcos Murder sneered, “That’s what I fucking said.”

“And then I made sure.”  The old man sipped his beer.  He reached into his apron and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.  He quit smoking for his daughter Carmen.  He took it up again to see her sooner. 

The Diablos carried off the weapons.  The old man clicked the remote, closing the garage door.  For a while he sat in darkness.  Then a fresh round of banging started.  He opened the door.  On the other side stood another group of teens all wearing black and green hats, bandannas, shirts, etc. 

Their leader, another kid the old man recognized, named Sydney bobbed his head at the old man, “What’s up?  You got the goods for the Ashville Cobras?”

The old man sighed again, hiding it in a grunt as he got out of the chair.  He shuffled over to a tarp on the other side of the garage.  The Ashville Cobras followed him in.  The old man pulled the tarp off another pile of wood and steel weapons:  farm implements and sports gear all made lethal. 

“Enjoy,” the old man said.  He stepped aside as the Cobras collected their purchase.  Unlike the Diablos the Cobras simply gathered the war gear.  Sydney counted the money out for the old man, handed it over, and left. 

As the door closed the old man glanced at a framed photo on his workbench.  It showed him in a workshop holding up a teacher of the year plaque.  The picture proved there used to be a time he smiled. 

That night, through his bedroom window, he heard the children killing each other in the park.  He could imagine the bloody mess they’d leave behind.  Tomorrow Father Atilano Magallanes Jara would stop by.  They’d have their seemingly endless discussion.  The community loved that the old man convinced the gangs not to use guns.  How he did no one knew, and neither the old man nor the gangs would say; but what he turned them to somehow felt viler.   The priest called it “vying for the crown of the cruelest.”  Sometimes the gangs didn’t even fight to kill, they fought to wound and disfigure.  The Diablos followed a man known as the Czar of Scars, and the Ashville Cobras celebrated members known as Cripplers.  Meanwhile, the warring night filled with haunting cries of agony. 

​The old man ignored the priest because he knew better.  Tonight the little boys made war, leaving behind puddles of blood, but no stray bullets would fly off into the night killing little girls walking by windows.  The old man took pride in that, blew a kiss to his daughter’s photo, and went to sleep.