CONFESSION ZERO

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. © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

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 hunte...

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. © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

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,...

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 ...

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. © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

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. © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman