Tuesday, February 23, 2010

lionheart

burn your tomes, boy, you've got it made.

you've got your arm stretched to yesterday.

keeping secrets wont seal your knowledge away,

so arcane.


but you keep it so clandestine

when i'm standing on the mezzanine

and you're hurling your soliloquies at me--

i'm not listening.

i know i've no part in your work of art.

all this pretension will pass you away

to lesser age.


now is your time to gather retribution,

standing like a harlequin:

"do your worst, darling."


playing atlas for transience,

a transient, in transit,

a love-fettered romantic.

old stories are written before they're made.


wait for a memory.

a moment of clarity,

parried disparity:


make your choice now.

anthemic

i've marked the map so you could find your back.

i've crossed "t's" and dotted "i's" just to stay tact.

tactfully assert their roles;

carefully narrate their goals.

where they go we will not follow.


there is no indiction of your worth, so

iconoclast, you speak out of turn.

outclassed, in turn,

we'll watch you burn

these manifestos out of reach

and communiques the public breached.


(private lives are others' now.)

your monikers will run their ground:

corpses rot,

and buildings drown

as the blood floods the gutters of our beloved cities


"cut the head before it speaks.

we are lying to the weak.

we are lions among sheep;

slaughter unfaltered."


pariah,

one year goes by

as your desire

only feeds mine.

sergio leone

patron, i know you've had this all planned out--

we are peons on oblivion's dime.

in sight, in mind, never run too far to find

what is

beyond your path;

beyond my sky.


so you chalked it up to truth,

but i knew

that there was more work to do


beyond

the plaza signs

plasma signs that burned bright

in effigy of the memory

of all the worn-out ways they raised me on

"pursue your happiness--you'll be content"--

all i ever wanted was happenstance;

all that happened was your fate.


and so we fall behind

what is beyond your skyline


rhetoric to praise progress

only befalls those who want it.


you swear to the sun you'll believe what you're told you foolish child now youre only half away from your bed you cannot create this and you've gotten by just to stop me from thinking that it's colder now than i ever wanted and i'm feeling the carbon torn down i know my limits i know my crown costs a dragged lake i'll fall asleep and i'll awake two days later with the old amends that i could never escape like "its time to get up" if being chosen for words means i know my limits and where i can take them but i i'm a garden of archery and apples discard what i pay for discard my limits i paid for what i can breathe out we'll guard our backs if we trust too much i know my limits i know where i can reach yet i'm at my own arm's length i know my limits i know how to reach them but i fall beyond arm's length