CONFESSION ZERO

Deadly shootings at US army base Ugly images on a cracking barricade- duty and honor, murder and rage woven together like distressed beasts on their way to some future slaughter. Fort Hood suspect alive, in custody All else is done and of no use. Something moved the barrel nearer, the commandment of executioners, killers of terror molded into a human face. Massacre Leaves 12 Dead At Fort Hood The train didn’t slow down enough to stop, it rammed straight through the station like fear was running late for target practice. There’ll be plenty of time for that after the dust settles. Suspect Was ‘Mortified’ About Deployment to War Consumption was nearing its march, it sensed the bones in the arid desert, the frailty of spirits deep in its bowels- O the bitter breath of cowardice seeps from us all in this! Gunman kills 12 at Fort Hood Army base, suspect alive Then stretch his limbs taut with your foul machine, pull his stomach out and pour water into his heart. Forthwith! We’ve...

We know that grief isn't empty. We know it is sated with the things that we wish weren't part of our flesh, this moving vessel that floats so close to us, so near this, our living, that, as it passes, we unload our apprehended breath and dance… until it comes `round again. When my friend told me of her daughter’s passing, I was sick for days, and I imagined, if this news pushed through me like infection, what gait it must have granted those that loved her, the eternal flood of sorrow in this still twisting unreachable, the ferociousness of unrequited anger… The boat will come round again. But the shoreline will be bare of sweet Sondi, save for the light glancing off the water. We know that grief isn’t empty. We know it spills over into our lives with vigorous abandon leaving untold pain. It has teeth and arms and legs and lips and hands, and it waits upon no one, yet we wait upon its course like a winter storm, laughter and joy, unbridled as it falls. ...

Snowcap vanishing from Mount Kilimanjaro The climber met her beloved, the African crown. She noticed his sagging face and howled her water. 'Twin Towers' warship in New York It is the fall we most remember, the dead and the living toppling as one. Bomb blast in Pakistan's Rawalpindi kills 35 Horrible explosions, more and more, the weight of our anger falling like icy talons upon our worship. Clinton Denies Easing Pressure on Israel We hear this with the attention of a murderous scream at the World Series, and we hear what we see, but not what we hear and we grasp the sport from the full on roar of two sides, one victor. Contaminated Beef Recalled After Deaths Not that the dead will remember our disgust or contemplate before ingesting or recall any of it with urgency. The GOP has created a monster The Party of Frankenstein created doubt- I suppose disbelief itself could be seen as monstrous… © 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

Scene: Present day. We are greeted with a blank stage, save for a spotlight upon a beautiful green blanket (a comforter, perhaps) lying center, softly lit throughout the play. Just before houselights fade the symphony begins to joyfully play as backdrop for the eartH of Creation that begins its dance all around us. Houselights fade with the orchestra and the darkness begins to envelope the shadows as we here the stamp of feet begin to march toward our spirits until the stamping becomes fearful and as soon as it does, poof, it's replaced instantly with joyous strings reminding us that where we are is heavenly. ACT I PRELUDE: (A tree appears behind the green blanket, a massive weeping willow tree that is wafting gently in the ever-present wind blowing throughout the theater. (Hold on to your hats, or better yet, don't wear one.) After some time of this, the tranquility of wind and the tree changes to one caught in a fierce storm. The wind in the audience remains gentl...

This, The Light Was Harsh , is the first poem in the month-long series of daily poems, Violent Verses , posted for the month of October 2009. (I reversed the dates so the reading order is better, dates are thus... backwards.) 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’...

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. © 2009 by mark prime

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. © 2008 mrp/thepoetryman...