CONFESSION ZERO (The Weaver's Song)

The light was strong, violent. In his anger,
leaping out, he’d made an imprint
and puffed her soul to bleed.
She knew he would soon stop-
end his rage toward anguish and

The gaping holes
in the walls would attest
to his frenzied decorations.

His dreadful, pitching heaviness
would suddenly meet
such stiff and frightened jaws, her redness
emerging, and her cries pleading to let go.

I can’t tell you anymore,
Not without putting a hole through a wall.

I can’t tell you anymore,
for I am a man whose rage might leak
like fearsome light through a cavern at dawn.

I could read everything;
all there is to know about man
and still not know where the hell we are,
still not know why or when
we fell away into such ferocious shadows…

Perhaps I’m looking at it wrong...
Maybe it is not man that has fallen away,
maybe it’s the light that has forsaken her;
the harsh and angry radiance climbed too high
to witness,
the warmth, too great a distance to travel alone...

I traded in my pen and paper for a new keyboard
and left behind all my cadence and metaphor...
My fingers gliding along her backspace and tab
savoring; staying longer on her improper nouns
than on her damp and present tense verbs.

She yearns to feel my tap tapping fingers
and my rhythm of enter, control and escape.
She pulls me in with her forward tab and insert keys
as I move victoriously across her caps lock and F8.
O! If only the world had such a traversable face.

Of this moment what is it that you want?

Her gallant nakedness clutching at flowers and shaking herself upright again.

Her margins and chest filled with grand laughter at the things she’s most ready to do.

Her eyes reading wonderfully tall and magnificent letters dispatched from all points of her reach.

Her lips coursing a voyage over freedom with a blazing hope, shaking the limbs of all dread-filled faces.

Her émigré colors moving together; loving, holding one another in luscious, tender whispers.

To witness her thighs draped over our ready shoulders as we seek out her yielding flesh.

The winged creature with her supple neck bent down, smiling upon her just desserts.

Her rebellious shape hovering over the people’s hunger, steadying herself for eager tongues.

That she rise up now, and with her flesh, wet and yearning, touch upon those most in need.

Her long and loving hands opening up to us in freedom, lifting our sleepy faces to the sun.

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one, even at the cost of your life. __Mahatma Gandhi


To the hardened freedom on the crown of winter
where coldness flourishes, they've come again.

Bloody faced women in their nightclothes, humming
such lovely howls as they rock their children to sleep,
listening for footsteps on the porch,
torment... come… stumbling home.

Women brushing their hair as if it were love,
daubing makeup to dilute the venom
they can’t escape.

Tears, useless; even their children’s smiles
carry them to frowning.

Thoughts of shattering themselves down upon the night
of fear; bloody faced women brought to an end,
drained,
fingers gliding over the cold barrel.

Twit it!

Once upon a time...
A giant of anger stood seething.
Fine art looked into the monster’s eyes,
waiting for which moment he’d smash
his tall hands through love’s kingdom.

Looking down upon art, the giant flinched,
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?

The musician glided over the strings,
There’s more use in your hands than fists.
The dancer floated across the floor,
You’ve so much more to give than rage.
The playwright bled upon the page,
Your very breath is the soul.
The aria lifted its royal cry,
She trembles at your voice.
Vibrancy swam atop the canvas,
Unclench your fist.

The poet then stood alone before the monster
waiting for which moment he’d smash
his tall hands through love’s kingdom.
O! Let go thy rage and use, foul beast!
that her beauty might claim its faith,
and all the sinister hearts of horrid fury
might stumble upon love’s tender devotion...

The mirror now stands before us; Torn sleeves and skin,
she's come to watch the sorrow dripping down, the sap
of our veiled shame, our abysmal indifference… Disgrace,
the fickle comrade, has not discouraged her,
kept her from loving us fully though she’s been seen
weeping in the temple of mankind.

We try to imagine her echo shattering man’s tall ceiling
and the sharp storm falling down over the world,
we even imagine massaging the ache from her body
but our hands remind her of her fathers.

Bleeding out across the landscape, she covers her eyes
with our callused paws and the pale swag of decay
As we step away, stagger back from ourselves,
unable to let go, our scent upon her pain.

The mirror speaks to us and tries to hold us in,
to rescue us a small piece at a time as our rooted shame
draws back our arms to strike-
caught in this snapshot of our pre-existing condition
we look stunned, wild animals paralyzed by the light.

American Violence; A Documentary History

Today the sky wove its deep thread
of cold winds as if to rake dying grass like a doctor
suturing wounds.
Last year it was the same.

O! Teach us not to break things! Teach us to love!

Give us the tools to overcome our blindness.
Help us find the warmth; hands and breath,
instruments threading affection instead of cruelty;
temperate winds weaving blankets for happiness to lie in.

Sovereignty. Cradle. Twin Rivers. 2002. That was the then, patriot. Bursts of flesh, groan of empire, now.

This, the sun's testimony, script. A country’s story. Broken land. O! Terminate her now, dear patriot!

Sands scrape ahead of winter, brittle are her arid bones. Split. Over ripe. Dithering. Bent.

Pierce the center, the hidden heart. O! Blood and child! Now’s the time to grieve, patriot. Toss tears to wind and soil as souls drift by in wooden boxes.

The looming shadow holds her every thought
from her signature.
She remembers as a child
she seemed to be without fear
in the hollow imaginings of nightfall,
she was braver when she put
her tongue to his and they fell together.

(Love became tired and mean and loud
and put a fist inside her smile.)

She convinces herself to lie still, to not make a sound,
and she does, like a game of charades without gestures.
The shadow keeps growing, rising like the pain
of seeing a loved one suffer,
waiting on the moon to reveal the fog,
waiting on the rock to uncover the cause,
the shadow to pay a visit,
to bring fresh bread and bandages
and maybe the pieces of herself.

Nothing paints our bodies
like the grief in pain.
It floats in the ribs.
It expands
In dread
Like a red violin
With a broken string.

She scrambles away on the air,
Exhaling notes already composed by another.
It is music gone mad.
It is anguish and ecstasy
Sharing the page
With misfortune.

She has climbed as high as she can.
Happiness brushes against her,
It is her acquittal,
Transitory;
Composer of this instant,
Her masterpiece.

What it is I've found in the course of this
I will tell you. I will. I will,
But there’s little comfort in knowing.
The awful and the good get beaten down
Like a snitch in the prison yard,
Fist upon fist, kick upon kick,
Pain upon goddamned pain.

How many of the living, the wounded,
The blameless and marked,
Should I expect to be wasted?
The abuser has cruelty like illumination,
They can see within it, yet know not its heart.
The abused have fear like darkness,
They can't see within it, yet know when it's upon them.

What I’ve found in the course of this
I will tell you. I will. I will,
But, like I said, there’s little comfort in it.

The pale little girl
with the long brown curls
and small bare feet.
The pale little girl
shrunken in the corner
that keeps her hidden, that
banks the echoes sharply
and holds in her tears
lit of a violent ache.

The pale little girl
closes her eyes, remains still,
silent,
“To avoid being seen.” she sighs,
and looks to the tiny fairy
that alights upon her knee,
“You are so brave, my little one.
So very brave and beautiful.”

The pale little girl exhales,
sharing her warm breath,
knowing what’s real
between the savage air
and furious skin.
Best to stay motionless
than feel such things.

The pale little girl,
With the long brown curls
And small bare feet.
Hushed between worlds.

When I think of the families torn up,
leaving their trust at the gates of horror,
unable to find the pathway from loss,
when I think of that unbearable defeat,
that howling ache, no words can mend,
no amount of joy-filled photos puts right.

Violent fury is the scrape of the serpent and
lends no favors upon the abused. Serenity,
if not within reach for the whole world,
might nod a favor upon a small portion;
smiles letting go their fissured frame,
laughter feeling safe again.

Why isn't the landscape more scarred
after such terrible storms?
Why aren’t all the lampposts cowered in gloom,
all the windows without glass, bricks shattered,
when violent winds toss their worship like bombs
on the moon?
These questions haven’t motive, they’re human.
Bloody human, gripping at life boats. I’m curious,
curious as to why we’re floating so close, side
by side, but this; our proximity, doesn’t reach
or teach, it has yet to sketch grace upon our
ragged canvas. On the final minute of our final day
we’ll blanch at reflections of ourselves, ghosts,
save for the wide open wound of our somber account,
our soiled adoration of battles and grief wiped clean
for tomorrow, covered in the same, too sightless,
too diverted, whatever we’ve done and will do,
everything we’ve made of ourselves, of others,
the moon;
we’ll not risk taking off our masks…or learning.

We’re holding out our colors, staring into the
Sun, its beam of traumatized expressions,
Our foreseeing the breaking of a noontime
That raises its hand, summons the leak of nightfall
And runs down the face in a reddening cascade.

We are cleaved to a striking second, a screaming seed
Of dread, like a child’s face meeting with the edge of
Something angry, the gash of a white-hot cacophony.
It is a tale as old as the soil, a story of cruelty, of
The beating blue lines on our necks. O our victory,
Our triumph! We can claim our prize in one breath
And smash it to bits before the next!

Our tale is far from over; we’ve things to conquer,
Cambers of flesh to split in anger, mounds of glee
To murder with our unsteady hands, shafts of daylight
Calm to shatter like a stack of plates falling down;
The powder of color falling all around us; triumphant
Confetti for a heroes welcome.

After it all falls,
falls away,
after it all falls,
falls away,
I will greet you.
The green ground is wet again in the St. Francis Forest,
it is weeping for what’s taken place,
and the deer look sad, like old bullfrogs
sunk in the swamps puffing their throats.
I will meet you by the cabin,
by the moss-green cellar door with the rusty handle
and we will hold one another and the bullfrogs
will bellow their melancholy.

The world’s gone mad, my dear,
and no one seems to care.
We’re happiest breathing air the color of smoke
and swilling fury like a rabid dog tethered down.
But something’s changed, the gait of man,
teeth show more than before,
as if we’re grinning beneath our howls,
happiest when our foul fists crack against innocent flesh.
Something’s changed my dear, something awful.
In our quest for compassion, our search for ourselves,
we’ve come to greet the moon like beasts
and we’ve come to crave this ill-used madness
like addicts of failure, sightless hunters of ruin.

After it all falls,
falls away.
After it all falls,
falls away,
and all this hate and foul-toothed cruelty fails,
I will greet you. Meet you there
to hold hands
at the moss-green cellar door with the rusty handle.
And together we will bellow to the bullfrog’s melancholy.
And we will fall together, limbs touching wet fingers.
I will hold you close, my love, nearer than before
and I’ll be affectionate when I brush your golden hair.
Don’t be afraid!
I will greet you!
I will show you the beautiful things!
The deer will no longer look sad, the world
shall no more it’s howling, the air will smile
and no one will seem to care!

Oh how I wanted playful love today.
I wanted mommy and daddy to play with me
And brush my hair and we’d all giggle,
Not this lesion of unkind words.

As the whole host of whirling wheels
Speed down the unfeeling interstate
Like androids on their way to get oiled
Or assimilated into a new family,
I'd hoped our day would be lovely
And we’d all go on a picnic at the lake
Or daddy would win me a big pink giraffe,
Or mommy would buy us matching dresses,
So when it was quiet, she and I could
Pretend that we were happy drinking tea
From tiny little teacups.
Maybe it’d start raining
And we’d be laughing so loud
We wouldn’t even notice.

In the throb of atmosphere
a rumbling has begun in the home,
the sanctuary of family and air
for exhaling away an aching world,
it's pressing in too tightly now
without kindness or acquittal.

Echoing behind our anxious eyes,
a wobble of fear; over the sky, over the fierce hue of time,
no break, no dawn. A vicious flailing- kindness, hope
joy, laughter, sold for days, minutes, seconds more;
bartered for an nth of miserable anger.

Humankind anon will scrape its lust with
the common shroud of coldness- the children
and their laughter, their dance and their patter,
the moon and stars and intercourse,
all a whisper, one god-awful unspoken bereavement.
No more sunrises or sunsets seen through fist-split eyes.
No more joy and laughter.

Here every lawn is trimmed, groomed like a preacher’s beard.
Trees replaced by tool sheds, garden plots shrunken, dead.
Shiny green pools, television screens as life-sized as bloodshed.
Everything is lighting our path away from home,
Away from blue skies, hummingbirds, eagles, peace.
The grand soaring birds of our story, screaming and plummeting
through the rooftops of our unspoken dreams...

In the throb of our air, a rumbling.

We're hungry for a mordant rage,
Food’s too difficult to come by.
When fury finally puts its hand on us,
The world will further its slope.
The days since she first began listing
In an ocean of grief, we’ve encouraged,
Applauded a wrathful clout like apes beating
Chests, shrieking allegiance to suffering.

There are gleaming waters here. There are
Gardens and farms. And trees,
Scorched and naked, still feeding off the sun.
Hunger won’t seek nourishment there; hunger
Will find its prey bathed in light, in slant of clay
And stone, camouflaged like angry hunters
Enshrined in huts of flesh. O! Summon the rain
So things might grow instead of die!

Call out to the hunters, send forth violent man,
Bring him before the world, under the sun,
Called away from his wars and mad pillaging,
Stand him up to see his soiled use,
Force his blind eyes open to see the ruin.
His sloping death called back from the edge,
Useless furor breathing a most foul hatred.

We’re hungry for a nourished future,
Violence is too easy to acquire.
Call forth our gods, our lesser selves,
Demand that they cease this; the world’s slope.
Gather them to witness these deeds and shame
Like some shard of thought curving inward
That might again begin to nourish.

Sure, it’s cute enough for a t-shirt, but
Its words are without richness.
Men are real enough alright, they are.
Beating eggs mere practice for the brutality
in the craft of oppression, oligarchy bent
on choking the souls of the multitude.

Passive man wrestles with himself, curbs
his primal senses toward humanity.
Real is a word made from our darkness.
Men are wide-eyed singular flesh and bone.
Peaceful man is neither violent nor bent,
Civilization, his champion, his tutor, his sin.

She sits grim-faced in the living room, her bent eyes
upon the staggered lines of the cedar wood floor
where he stands half-cocked, waving his arms around
in the sticky air as if fighting off fierce ghosts.

All she sees are the dismal shadows of his flailing arms
as she grips her teddy bear tight, the smell of whiskey
hemorrhages through the air, her eyes trained
on the hardwood floor, her tiny back, stiff, waiting.

Soon it will get deathly quiet. She’ll know he is there,
she will feel his warm and liquored-breath on her hair.
She’ll close her eyes and hold her infant spirit in,
waiting on his coarse hands to embrace her skin.

Her teddy bear will let go of her hand and fall,
and he'll weep and rock her gently to his chest,
His tears will fall down upon her as his sad
hands begin to twist inside her hair.

“Sorry”, will again spill from Daddy's unhappy mouth
and she’ll wrap her trembling around his arm,
never letting go.

I hear the murmur of rain on the roof. She steadies herself
against the wall, her ears ringing a dying song.
The air smells of decay as she moves along the edge, blood
trickles out of her nose and she suddenly freezes like a scolded child.
The room moves without her, and her legs begin to quiver, drunken
with shock, locked down tight like a prison cell, they shudder.

I hear the rain falling harder now. She looks toward the door.
Could she make it? Would she go through the door, into
the nameless arms of the world, leaving her fear and home behind?
She has nowhere to go, but things do their howling in all places,
slipshod drifters in thankless alleys shriek above the darkness
and sometimes their lives come to shattering.

I hear her uneven breathing over the drumming of rainfall.
She moves closer to the door, edging toward her escape.
I know you. You’re the one that’s been banging the walls,
the one that’s been lying to everyone about your face.
You’re the one that’s rattling the walls with your despair,
screaming for it to stop, the hideous fists to end it once and for all.

It’s pouring rain. Her trembling hands touch the door knob.
The streets will be unkind to you, the alleyways make thieves
of all who stay there. The smell mocks them and the
people scoff as if they’re murderers. Maybe they are.
They would dine on your fear with their faces of steel-
She slams open the door and runs out into the world screaming.

There were splendors. The ocean navigated them nearer the plump breast of a new world. Our indigenous, greeting the sailor with smiles and immense warmness.

Peace, in this meeting of fleshes, soiled itself with chains of slavery and riches beyond the queen’s dreams. The land…and its worship… was sliced open like buffalo on a red plain.

Sky, the sky, the sky doesn’t dance anymore, not with spirit or truth. Of our scourge we eulogize the ghosts of death, of massacre, beyond the new machinery, our lives.

The Indian, the child, the meadow, the slaughter of stillness. Can’t take it back now, damnit! Can’t! It’s done! Musket, arrow, flesh, the birth of a country, drum.

Why do we stand and watch as men beat others down?
Noisy machines mark all of our lives
As our children are trained to be assassins
By witnessing this appetite for battle.

Why do we then scream so loud after the deed is done?
It only brings about more watching,
More noise to capture our slope toward death
And the itch of transporting an untold grief.

Why do we march in formations with a mournful cadence?
Our soundtrack has a most cheerful rhythm
Written on the dangling air of its lessons
Designed for everyone's viewing pleasure.

Why allow ourselves to imagine we’re anything more?
Each of us are obliged to follow along,
Give credence to the wretched course
And wait for the scene to be our own.

Begin.

Imagine the grimness of an enormous cruelty
whose mammoth jaws reach through the sky
like a mechanical beast snapping aimlessly.
The sightless, unfeeling beast, gnashing at our
dismal hesitation, shrieking its steel claws
down into the bone dry world like Hydra.
A hideousness trying to slay our children,
inflame fear, crush our hearts and spirits…
What other horror could ever near such
implausible belief?

Pause and begin again.

Imagine waking to a kindness so colossal
that its head stood above the sun like a god,
a god that we worshipped and prayed for its
blessing, built garish houses for its worship
and approval, feverishly vowing to die for it,
a god we gladly give our souls to upon bent knees,
crying for it to spare us of our immense suffering…
What other wonder could ever near such
conceivable certainty?

Pause.

We know so little about ourselves,
what triggers our detonation,
leaves our mark upon flesh
shaping turncoats of love.
We can’t stay clean of our affliction,
our very presence is vulgar and empty.
The seven virtues tremble and screech
fleeing such redness, fearing infection.

Chastity hasn’t the appetite for our hunger.
Temperance hasn't control over our deeds.
Charity discerns we’re thieves of all things.
Diligence sees our work and staggers deep.
Patience shall not our turmoil stay again.
Kindness cannot penetrate our human boil.
Humility shall never defy our foul arrogance.

The deluded champions of this trampled story
suffer from humdrum sleep and idle dreams;
they’re us and we’re innocent until approved.
What are we to do with such dismal weakness;
the contemptible collapse of obligation and honor?

O! We know so little about anything worth saving!
All the progress we’ve made is a breach of love!
If we are to begin anew, we’ll need be born again,
hatched from agony’s egg with open hearts, hands, feet
evolving toward one another. Equally... not above.

Her thighs waited for hands to find their way
Along the pleasing path. (As she watched him, she
thought, "This will make everything alright again."
The naked stranger, her husband, moved toward her.)
She held her breath, readied her legs, waiting for him.
His rough hands grabbed her ankles and pulled her ass
To the edge, his unexpected finger plunged inside her,
Welcomed by her abandoned inhalation.

She watched him intently as he pushed inside.
His eyes were closed, legs crashing hard against her
As she felt the hotness rising up inside him. His eyes
Remained closed. She touched her breasts with one hand
And thrust the other down to discover her stiff wetness.
He groaned loudly and spilled his fury deep inside of her,
Then angrily shoved her legs from off of his shoulders
And, without a word, slammed the bathroom door.

She thrust both of her hands to her startled eyes,
Wincing as the tears flowed over last nights broken skin.

Perhaps we’re not who we thought
we’d be. Maybe we’re flawed, like
weakened trusses, collapsed, memorized
by rote, like a baby falling from our arms.

All the nattering of 2012 has found a home
in us, the end of days written in our heads.
Thoughts manifested with a plunging fury.
And how many of us recognize the history

of marching fanatics and obliteration’s debris?
Violence douses itself in our memories,
like the smell of our lovers sex and the thud
of the baby’s head smacking the ground.

Like torturers, proud; water and screams,
flag and country, domestic and foreign, while
faces puffed in shame allow the tyrant’s fist.
The source of our sadness jumps the turnstile
unnoticed as fresh bruises in a neighbor’s home.

What hearts need of us
Is the silken freedom
Of another’s spare
Anger.
And within them to pulse
Our courage above the
Screeching, broken
Haze.
No ruffians
to puncture our throbbing.
No violent blood
Spilled.

The imagery’s grown so stark
the tempo its fury,
violence, its stroke,
all quickened, loud.
We’ve left the injured bound
and buried, where screams
pierce like whispers.

Gone is our awareness,
emptied like God in our prayers.
Our courage to defeat it
hangs in the air like a paper kite
set aloft as if to stay;
sandcastles and daydreams have more
sky than our spirit.

We’ve built worlds in our thoughts
only to destroy forests and oceans
filled with our uncertain faces.
All the while our fists have been busy
finding flesh to unwrap.

O! These images weep!
What noises are we painting
that haven’t already failed
to pierce heaven?

Writing about a violence that is so steady
as to become part of a daily tradition,
I can’t actually say with any certainty
that I know much of what I’m writing,

Like a fog lifting at the foot of the bed
where ghosts pace the wedding floor
and at last lie down next to the corpse
with a mind toward murdering love.

I am estranged from such things,
but only by the thinnest of threads;
all that’s needed for such detachment.
Surely it is in all of us, this devil-dog…

Men have always written of immense suffering,
But few have written about their own crime
and, if they have, it didn't change the future.
The truth slices into them in due course, I suppose.

For thousands of years an unspoken suffering,
huddled in smoky corners, bent in darkness,
struggling to stand and unfetter its chains
has tried to drive a stake between love and violence,

even you have lain down with your bones and
Tried to assemble a new man, new beast carved
from the same frame, the same ragged horror.
When her laughter haunts your dreams, again

you’ll cuddle her heart without consideration
and begin to believe in your new shell, you will
follow her laughter and bring what you think
is joy, that you'll dole out by the goddamn fistful!

She knows. She recognizes your frailty, your
infirmity to reason and this causes you to fear
her knowledge, so you must shut her up before
everyone gets wind. Complete. Feral. Vile.

It was after we placed the flowers
upon the somber wooden frame,
when the fatal deed was done

and we’d slept in our rose-colored
beds prone on the complacent floor,
that we stood for something howling,

something writhing in our minds,
across our lawns
as our children’s feet scuttled past

the IED’s of cruelty.
Dodging the flowers in bloom
and painted of life,

we waved our wary-worn hands,
weeping to lift such pain
of wounds that kept crashing,

continued pummeling our shrugs,
our ‘that’s life’,
stumbling away from detonation.

Muzzled worry and trouble,
wedged risk in our voice,
thus… we vanished.

Too late, we’ve found our voice
and stand tall and bold
to say, ‘We’ll miss you’.

I wait beneath its stance. I watch from safety,
away from the pain that riddles the air I breathe.
I walk near enough to hear, stare at its jaws.
My knowing creates a sound, an echo, like space
bending down to greet my sleep, to growl
my last wish, which splits in two
and exposes a stranger in my sight.
I wait beneath its stance. My words chained
and mangled by my thick tongue. The breath I
allow in my throat. The noise I hear is close,
close enough that I feel its movement, just above
my exposed flesh, where jaws drip with iniquity.
The moist ground writhes in its jagged shadow
where my feet once touched, where our eyes met.
A nameless spirit waits with me here,
beneath its gaping stance. I step forward now
and turn to greet it, let my fright wrestle the beast
…it is me.

How grim are the children of shadows.

Their rooms cast a faint glow over them,
And their keepers; the ghosts of sleep.
Men and women, abusers of their obligation, abscond,
With injury and wickedness jumps their lullaby,
Hush little baby don’t you cry…

This throbbing tune
Has teeth to rip,
Has fist to strike,
To bring blood where only love should be flattered.
To hold mirth and clear eyes and things of gladness
Aloft in the bright passageway of serenity.

How grim are the children of shadows.