Climbing CentipedeA Poem by R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe) A collection of poems, or one big poem. Feel free to read some of them or all of them, but for the best experience, as they are all deeply related, I suggest reading them all, or at least, in order.
Centipede
Schizophrenic weathered emissaries renovate the heavens’ gate Reverends of severed Everest Penitentiaries weathering florescent testament In the obsidian blizzard (like a) swill of lily guillotines Serenity’s obscenity fills extremities metalling in all corners of the room Malting altocumulus of junipers lose their bulbous columns of breathing leaves Lonely crows in golden foliage toil in oil portraits corporeal Along the roads of champagne grenades Abel, Cain, candied by animosity crisscrossing And runaway freight trains of the gray mayhem of remembering evergreens Rusting lustre in the rustling percussion Of an echoed chamber beneath a spiral staircase In my revolving heart Getting loaded, taking shots, and playing with magazines, triggering cataclysm We watch and stalk the crossroads of apocalypse From their overhanging rooftops of ramshackle scrap Golden primordials glow in the afternoon sun Origami menageries cauterize the little lilac astronauts in rapture’s baptism Moonwalking docks of nocturne in the phosphorus octopus clockwork Watching the aquamarine of thoughtlessness from God’s sarcophagus They were lost in their chalky gospel of concocted metropolis Blossoming Cocytus from docile dreams A centipede of identity Planted in the stampeding mantlepiece What is an ant to a man? Countless limbs Does not make you a God We morph into one creature Our many features preaching Face bleaching urethras of umbilical priscillas Skin tags of hanging fantasies of gangrene dandelions Sanguine amputees canopy like wind chimes climax lactescent effigies Fixating in simple mimicry of limping symphonies Teeth of metal and wood like gears in the mechanism of a jaw {Cutting the chord from the man} {Overlapping astral apple tree chapels for Lovecraftian astronauts lost in phosphorus} {Daffodils wrap their passionate contraptions around the scaffolding rhapsody of lapis lazuli} {Cast in Rorschach tapestries of glass afterimage swimming mimicking stygian Veridian} {Unravelling gravelly metallic galaxies in the cowering bowels of Valkyries} Sowing and reaping (beacons, the sweeping ferns of decadent land) {In single file} The smile of a kaleidoscope The paintbrush of a tongue Rainbows like chapped lips of eclipse Hiding unkissed abyss from the riptide cisterns Kindled by the cold breath of billions Our empty eye sockets Our pavilion, the gills and frilling ventricles Trills of ventriloquism We hear the rhythm So we move We don’t need new women New men New fools We don’t need new arms New legs Only the torso remains The heart an egg hatching into a fetal moon (of glass) Until it too Stills (Here we are)
Climb
Intertwined rhinestone of vinyl irises Squandering origami choreography of convulsing constellations It was not in the cards for me Life is getting out of hand Yet I stand strong Shackled ecclesiasticals of Rorschach Damascus Elastic basilisks of rapturous eclipse In the basketcase abyss masquerading maelstroms Crocheted from spaded halos Rails of Beowulf like vast astral canals Like carnivalesque hexagrams perplexing presbyterian Alstroemeria Cabals of frolicking florescent incandescent necklaces These ramshackle turbines and cogs (Rammed into the societal machine) Transmogrified wrapped in daffodils of fog I want to drown in life Until the waves wash over me and my dry humour And watercolour once again flows like a river In my drained veined vessels chiming in vinyl pines Leaving a paper trail of valleys like alleyways I may not get to heaven, but I’m on my way there Partway there Watch me climb Music of altocumulus pitter-pattering a smashed guitar Cavernous plateaus of afterglow stowaway Into vermillion basilicas of architectural mechanisms Like a threshold outstretching sepulchre beckoning wretched requiem The more we win the more we lose ourselves Possibly to the madness of some meagre success, clinging to it No longer alone and able to dream of yourself fully To bear the flesh of the mirror You lose who you look like to look like the crowd, with every blemish To talk, act and walk with them Driven over the edge of insanity just to be stained sane You do not have a choice but to show your true colours to the blind The black and white As if every person were words of letters same The colour of ink-blotting out the afternoon sun Only loneliness can breed a good writer The loneliness of being at the bottom It sharpens you (The heaviness of time a paperweight getting harder and harder to lift) You constantly aim for the top, and in failing In the constant sharpening of such a life You may involve yourself in cuts and bruises You may bleed brushstrokes of depression in the depths in the abyss of a canvas But when your words are finally able to cut And you no longer hang from others’ strings There is a small sense of freedom within the cage Disentangling the blander lavender anvil of labyrinths into a lengthening hallway Smashed and hammered like a crushed beer bottle Cellars of cerebellum that umbrella cello mandalas Reverberating tourniquets of crocheted bays and everglades of clay hurricanes Your body (is) more art piece than man Smile lines written in prose (sketched, etched) across your patchwork face (The art becomes man, the man art) (Diluted once, becoming concentrated, pure [as moonshine]) (Upon the breast my manifesto, a phosphorus apocalypse) Unravelling balaclavas Scalpels of the balconies of stars In the surgery of midnight Cutting out the word from the man Severing the pulse from the rhythm of the lines flat on tables A page lost somewhere in between Living out endless sentences to your God Your voice his handwriting His(,) ignorantly infinite mingling shingles of ringworm calligraphy Tongues of tundra under wildflowers that paint the eastern hills azure Like symphonies of idiosyncrasies Crinkle in the wrinkles of his lilac eye Unburdened by the murmurs of eternity’s winding horizons paradisiacal Of dilapidated shrines to the rhinestones’ glow Scapegoats climb the mountains to reach the halos like a chained crow In a blizzard of scimitars dismal as the shiv of river Touching each ridge and every crevice, feathers of the reminiscent Howling gallows of fowls bowing to hallelujah Maneuvering their lucid pupils of grey across the endless unknown paltry horizon Folding golden origami tsunamis Of bottomless poinsettias with heaven’s leather nebulous residue Cemeteries of derelict marionettes, crosshairs, and their palpitating reverberations Carving gardens etched with repetition Deathlessness and western winds that shimmer chrysalis Of distant wishes for Eden Planting a kiss on the face of the earth Offering up my flowery language to the weeds Together with the night sky Our onyx eyes, searchlights, feel for fault lines Between them, Mistaking wrong from write Learning to start blaming ourselves, Again, we cry, onyx shrines to the lilac iris winding The colour bleeds to bone I am still painting faces in my ink Nothing grows there, anymore, but Harvested memories in the ashes of rapture Dream in terpsichorean speleothems Join the legions of daydreamers Continue to force your way into the albums of cloudy Valhalla I see them ragged and torn Never to stain the fabric of history with their dead voices Their empty poems Caught fluttering in the gutters of gangrene Elysium Their rhythm Their lines of believers Cross the borders of the empty page And wind like stairways beyond the paper And into the skies Like centipedes with no wings Endless feet Trotting upon the word of God Reaching for the moon’s reflection in their hungry eyes not yet shattered Finding nothing but glass
Mountain
The crawlspace below the stairway to heaven Harmony incarnate under harbours of auburn sky Nirvana's of unravelling pianos javelin Of inanimate caverns In the battered labyrinth of stratosphere Carving arteries from the stone Vibing in the silence of our crying out wireframes Beneath the skins of windowpanes Rhythm riffing-with-the-wrath of gasping caskets gastric acid Damascus With a symphony’s intricacies of minuteless bliss Like the sulphuric phoenix of a helix Blasphemous blackberries of basking cactus Blackened ashes Rorschach gelatinous acid trips In prisms of astrophysicists Like atoms of cataclysms labyrinth through avenue Babbling pianos rioting manically paradisiacal Cannibals of pandemonium dabbling in the resurrected Nephilim of decibels Winding baptized wyverns geyser-like champagne waves In grey crusade in stark naked acres That matrix aether shapelessly unbreaking In the wake of forsaken faces misshapen Gaping elation the gap between rapture’s acupuncture homunculus Steampunk umbra sunbathe in the after blaze Conclaves of enclaves of wavering azaleas unscathed by the grazing flame {Singed by eagle-eyed maestros} {An Everest of hallucinogenic webbings of heaven’s cemetery penitentiary} Unshaven in the pavement of a flailing maelstrom Conifers of nickel Icarus shapeshifting eclipse the rift of abyss Of mithril omnipotent hieroglyphics Crippling the sifting polycrystalline infinite fingerprints Graphite lightning knifes cyclones grow among the mossy cobblestones of osmosis Groping hopelessness close to one's heart Cat of woollen suns arching its back in the crotched guitar strings of morning Shrieking onomatopoeia speleothems through the spiralling choir of lilac xylophones The clouds amalgamate polymerizing Gaia’s finite horizons The moon grins with the schism of equilibrium Its headstones of heaven’s parthenogenesis hallucinogenic remembering dead reverends That beckon their florescent wretched beaded necklaces In the cotton fields of neon mirages Pollinating revolving menageries of unravelling sabotage Cliff racing glaciers of pathos wraithlike spiking the sunrise with Kahlua Kaleidoscopes croak of deciduous visionaries like marionettes of the breathless depths That crept through sepulchres of requiems for Bethlehem Stretching through resurrection effigies of pestilence Ephemeral mementos, centuries of wrenching cemeteries Echo strep throat mechanical animals bound in the annul hands of flannel canvas Amorphous porcelain of keratin chimeras Crestfallen halogens from hollow follicles of neon creatures Like empyreal murals of spherical quarries of aurora borealis The ilk of sylph milquetoast wisp whispering lithium chrysalis Anchors of cancerous answering sacrosanct chrysanthemum Like canyons of antlers of bantering amaranth branching out velvet They buried me beneath the mountain Until my roots spread to the rooftops and over the mouths of the earth Bound in chains I steal names from the abyss and become forgotten men I grow from the scarecrow’s pheromones like baritones of roaming chromosomes Tomes of dystonia closing in on the curtains of a tourniquet I follow the devil onto an empty page And the heaven’s critic my performance There is always further to climb No matter how high I reach The stands remain above my head In their rows of seats My words are the foundation of their stature I was born for this Born to bring the bottomless darkness to light On top of this world Or brought down to the bottom of the slope I (don’t care if I have/have the time) to climb a hundred mountains more Every step is a journey There is always further to climb There is no phoenix But my legs push on Gears in an engine built from broken men embodying the same dream Muffled screaming growling guttural I feel the beat of a drum Scrap metal and scarred skin smelt smiling like a stray flower Among these scarred dogs off their leash That lost their owners to time, freedom, or God We howl to an unborn moon As shards of glass long to be diamonds Or ground to dust
Dust
Stiff fluidity, liquid still Deconstructing lustrous brushstrokes that stoke the fire of the heart Mistrals of eucalyptus sift through viscious lithium Death draws nearer than you know Pastel cardiovascular palpitating lackadaisical in dilapidated happiness Painted pictures of wickermen trickle through shattered glass Portraits of distorted orphanages, morgues of the expurgatorial Making their way through the crowd of discombobulated words Lost like runaway trains derailed Consumption of our own fears stomached vomiting reality Fluidly lucrative lucidity vividly mimicking infinitely Metallic stalactites unraveling battalions Of malleable towers flowering talons of Excalibur Algae crusted creek rinsed dry from the lick of rivers in mother’s tongue Rusted fountains of faded dreams gallop through metal gates Scream water in delirium Hangmen dangle from balconies like alchemy Like vital signs from woke neon gods Blooming irises That blink in and out of existence Having an eye for visionaries and blind men Like a waxing and waning florescent moon An out-branching lamppost of dead ghosts incorporeal A lactescent incandescent web of decrepit crescents Sepulchral echoes the spiralling silo Of one note bending and crescendoing slender (incendiary) hallucinogenic hemorrhages Through the empty streets of shadow dragging dawn Ballooning (altocumulus bending tendons) Into endless (crescendo’d) nebulas of tenebrous poltergeists Who wield the scythe of midlife crisis And put their dead weight of full bodies on crossed staves Upon their camelbacks drawing straws and painting portraits Coursing in porcelain voice of dusk Dusting everything Feathering Armageddon Sinfonietta threading into renaissance gospel of colossus phosphorus Clockwork Cocytus under the fibres of barbed-wired highrises Shining with sunlight’s blight Ticking away into twilight Galloping through the metallurgy of hot iron suns Melting, oozing, through the cracks in heaven’s doorframe The glow of orange ghettos like flower petals dishevelled by the wind Cast shadows on the walls That cast their own like dice upon fate Over the greybeards of dusted mote in afternoon bright The willowed gizzard of pavilions shrivelled chiselling amaryllis Like wax figures melting into riverbeds of men Ink dissipating into the arrogant spit of crying mountains That once Were nothing but dust Hinging Like linen prisms of rhythmic mistral fistfuls of grain and bread Watched upon by the dumb and heavy stones Following the narrow winding road back Into simple intimacy And remembrance Of what was formed from nothing Before time closed its eyes, started counting With each flick of a metronome, and Played hide and seek with existence Under the mosaic of frolicking philharmonic constellations Rivers running with endless comets and fallen stars Snakes chasing their tails into eternity’s mouth Singing from the most beautiful of valves of ritornelle Fingers that tap at pianos into oblivion From the root of every questioning tree Watching shape unfold itself Into madness, dust, sound, silence, nothing The origami of a flatline of moons Made of paper-thin glass refracting imagined creation Spindling humans, unmapped contraptions of crepuscular being Embodying shape Force unmoving Bound by the written passage of time Ageing into obscurity Dyeing the fabric of history without colour Pages upon pages Worn into dust
Stillness
Liquid viscous apparitions Christened in syphilis omniscience Stretch strept in repetition Go the distance into whispering epiphany A line of sentences Makes its way snaking over the page In rivers of inkblot letters From tongue-tied suicide notes Slipknots hung up telephones from power lines Sewing and reopening cornucopia Folding accordions of corridors Forged from war-torn worlds The mortar of metamorphosis Hurling insults like thunder and lightning Upon the dark staircase spiralling under the earth Cherubin slither their fingers Through the rim of empty glasses Mortals of chlorophyll flourish and blossom like possums Grasping at the taxis Wrapping their afterimages around their cloaked shroud memories Worn fabric Trenches of endless dead Heaven’s where scarcely a person lives Everyone is down in the dirt Someone is calling my name from the cemeteries Someone is following me to a dead-end Someone is forgetting what it means to be alive I no longer smile The lines on my face are my (best) poems I am my best art People read my facial expressions Like an open book And like the wrinkled spine of a paperback My eyes are stapled shut Someone watches as I write over the scars in ink Someone is writing my story Someone smiles without any meaning hidden behind their teeth And neither are selling They line the prairies in their spit And so I bury my emotional baggage Time capsules As I cannot join them yet And so, I give them the gazillion tears that won’t sell Because they’re worth nothing now And so The world turns over in its sleep Forgets them, along with their delicate wilting dreams Like flowers planted by their dilapidated graves Like waves of grey Under the walls of the city That forgot them Holding in their arms Baskets full of sunflowers, azaleas, honeysuckles, and poppies The scraps of coloured yesterday From a faded world The moon is laughing At the shattered glass The signs of life, signs from God, signs of directions, on a billboard Mazes of Mediterranian maelstroms That lead nowhere As The Killers said “Smile like you mean it” As I can, and they can, and we can, no longer
Dreams in the Lost and Found
{Among oscillating crossroads} {Mosques lost in the frothing phosphorus} [We lost track of the record machine] [The trail of music] [Dropping plates and shattered dreams of glass, pipes, and moons on sidewalks] [Star-crossed lovers of fallen stars] (Tripping, trampling memory in muddy water under our dirty feet) (Until we no longer hear its beautiful melody) (Crying, sweating, blossoming, from wallpaper under our skin) (Like that of a house abandoned by love) I wish I could tell my younger unbloomed self The beauty and the power of childhood dreamland Before I dreamed so vastly That my dream became my nightmare But no It is all gone, Empty of a single shadow shingling the darkness So smile In my silence Smile For me And do not give in To age, and death, and colourless despair There is a tomorrow Even if it's not yesterday And someone is calling my name from the backyard Even if I no longer want to hear them As they Are not real anymore Only echoes of vascular decibels Screaming for the mercy of God Why do you torture me so? Why (do you) taunt me? With so much meaning meaninglessly out of grasp Nothing but the white page And the black night And the same streets that I walked Are worn bare Of life Or anything beautiful At all But I Still Remember Bits Of It Gone With The Rust Of My Skeleton Trailing Away Into Wind Time Shadow Death Effervescent And Beautiful And Dead Again And Again After All What Is Left Of It But I My Body The Seed Of Tomorrow Or The Last Tear Of Yesterday And Yet (Somehow) I Remember It All
The Musical End of All Things
A climbing centipede Made of glass, bone, moon, dust, stillness, and dream Mangled together of and by everything Under the heavenly sun Reading books with blank stairs Flights of bleached blocked sentences Climbing into the heavens above the page It tosses, twists, and turns in its endless sleep Watching over the great pastures of eternal Eden With its great teachings And schools of many pupils that blink neon signs in their tear ducts And plant irises within its splendour Blind to the readings of God Seeing eye to eye with the passage of blind visionaries Making out the form of nothingness Fumbling around in empty fields of grain and cornstalks Or muffled by pit black rooms without windows or doors Craving Grasping at the air As if it were any more than meaningless Caring about the fleeting infinite Gazing upon the setting sun Passing by in the arcing snake of automobiles on tied rope chained roads As if it were any more than everything Raving incoherently of every understanding misunderstood The static of their next meal Of their hollow wandering spirits Stoned to death by the brightness of day Everything will go on without me And with my knees bent, I prayed And my arms pretzeled in mantra-like hummingbirds bumbling on tendrils of trees Branching out to the zeppelins of ballooning clouds That ballad and clamour around my infinite empty My great insignificantly plain beauty My life full, a brimming glass of beer, of death, of graves Mass burials of tears Of seeds Planted where Our last words were whispering to the wind The last forest under grey clouded Canada The brushing of leaves and bushes by the flowing rough draft of foliage I heard it ring like a dropped coin In the silence Tossed out like a freeloader In the glimmering seconds that pass Flipping tails and heads Until they followed each other into the depths of that forested night Watched as the silver gleams Under the sweat and grime of fingers that touched them Watched as the bluebirds spindled in the air For all but a few seconds Before they too knew (of) the cage Waiting outside freedom For the last flap of their burlap wings Watch as I type away My fluttering fingers that fly through flailing letters You could say That the nuisance of each word has meaning The nuance of every sentence is colliding, calling into them, a story I say we are smothering ourselves in emotion There is nothing but everything That is nothing There is everything And that does not matter And so another drink is poured Another moon rises into a stygian sky We continue to fall into contingency We continue to care For nothing, and everything that nothing is Everything And so Nothing but the yawning abyss Cares for dawn The world will continue to burn I will continue to cry The homeless butterflies will continue to die The unwinnable battles will continue to rage The bombs will continue to drop like pianos You will continue to look away Continue to breathe Continue to live Until eventually Existence will forget you And no one will care Left behind As the world continues its trek Past your insignificant beauty It is past your present Past your empty Full of your kind It will not listen to your meaning You think you’re special? Unique? You think you’re better than someone as below you as I? That it will answer you any differently than it did me? It will continue to crawl through minutes Through the crawlspaces Under heaven’s stairway Under the heavenly sun Mangled together of and by everything Made of glass, bone, moon, dust, stillness, and dream A climbing centipede Scratching away at the baseboards of time Our last words were whispering to the wind Carried away into the night It never stopped to listen It kept walking Through its rust-covered Autumn path And left me to the forest Left me to my static To my meaning To my attic My understanding, a grain of sand In an endless shoreline of rushing waves Left me To the end of all things To the angry crowd To God and his angry subjects To the earth To my white noise solitude It never stopped to listen, the cage, the centipede, the abyss Whatever it is It doesn’t listen It doesn’t watch It doesn’t feel Do not expect your existence to be meaningful It likely never will be The band will continue to play Life will continue to writhe The fires will continue to burn As long as I am here It never stops to listen to itself (sing), but At the very least, I Come to hear the music
What’s Left
Mantras gondola symphonic Saffron andromeda bombardier stardust Waltzing altars blanch With the malting sulphur sculpture of altocumulus Blooming and ballooning clueless Sweeping beacons of heathens Terpsichorean seamstresses breathe in delirium Streaming mapping tapestries cacophony canopy humanity dangling Within the murky serpentine weavings Seasons of creamy Elysium No I am not a/the monster Chewed up and spit out by the factory, by the machine That birthed me from (the conveyor belt of eons,) the assembly line of life A product of my own demise (I live by the barcode) (Written on the back of my hand in the calligraphy of tattoos) (Lost to the tongues that mouthed their brilliance) (Like the hills painted by the sunset baking forests with fireflies, smoke and clouds) I sell my body with the soul purpose {Walking miles in different shoes like footprints in sands forgotten} Of walking away from my dreams lucid Which slide by as carelessly as a smile in a limousine I no longer wear And my mouth no longer screams My eyes no longer water (My body no longer fears the setting of its sun) As there is nothing but the featureless page of my face Holding back the tears of ink That bleed from the crevices of my papercuts (The caves of my pores underneath the waterfalls of sweat and blood) (The braille of those who lost touch with reality yet felt nothing) (Reading my movement) (Watching bodies crawl numb) (Who swim in fiction to find something real) (Their fingers running down my paperback spine) (Feeling, fumbling their way through each wrinkled crease) Torn from the mosaic of my everything
Grey Colour
Shadows cling to my legs at night And rest their heads on my shoulders in the grey morning Like my own children Quieter than my empty bedroom Where I count the countless shades of grey on the walls Or sheepishly paint them across the face of the moon My parents don’t see the tranquillity of my lovelessness Of crude solitude Of my blue-stained ego The way it rings through the unbearable empty Empty bliss leaking from my floating neon body Strangled hangman muffled and asphyxiated by my pillows Crushing nothingness into the shape of a guitar Shoestrings that twang in anguish In my guitar heart In the shadow of God In the grey-faced moon Younger than the seconds that creep past like cockroaches (Longer nights like) centipedes Made of glass, bone, moon, dust, stillness, and dream Making mountains out of molehills Climbing over the bodies Hiding away in strawberry fields Bound in chains to the clouds that cluster rusted rustling custard in violet skylines Runaways of wind And rain Like rays of light swim skimming oblivion Singing to the symphonies on ice Quieter than my empty basement Grinning to the cold and crimson skies above my soundlessness anchor My amaranthine sanctuary A riverbed of dead songs that live on somewhere gold As the clouds roll by on their carousel of wildflowers Laced in moonshine I know it all, but I am no monster Am I? Only what’s left of the mud in the heat of the summer sun Or of green grass in the cold of winter Or of the weeds after a heavy rain Or of man after the purity of God For I care for nothing And nothing cares for me In the wake of bleached colour bleak In the sick monochrome pandemonium Of dandelions painting meadows in dreaded bedlam The whiles of spiralling vinyl asylum Grey canyons span rambling pianos Labyrinths of hands bangled by amethyst Autumn’s mahogany choreography Nook and cranny, (tossing and turning), waxing and waning halos of Beowulf’s stale maelstrom (Stalactites and stalagmites like) Grey hairs of paradise Greying over the desperate abyss Rolling in and on by the waves of suede In the rearview heirloom of wilting silken quilts in bloom Grey Like my mother’s cold eyes Ageing into obscurity Clipped wings of blackbirds that never learn to fly again Where the cold grey light dyes everything The sidewalk lilac And iris black rapture handcrafted Basking in afterimages (Slipping through the cracks) (My figure snakes through fractured tapestries of mirror) (The mosaic of my image pixelated visceral rippling Icarus) (Embalming insomnia in Shinigami’s calming polymerization) (Braille azaleas that that swivel under the lily pavilions of dishevelled elegies) (Melting into) psychedelic melodies of cavernous avenues Hallway andromedas bathed in hazy suede halos, jade sables of grey fables Caught in the traffic of Ragnarök Prismless, quiet as the moon Perhaps the whole world is murdered grey Like I A mistake I pity them For they are not monsters (,either) (Are they?) Just my fellow creatures Neither good nor evil Neither wrong nor right Neither loved nor hated Just a mix of black and white The two ends of a horseshoe Come together They are learning how to walk Where people only crawl Learning to listen When there is only static Learning to love When there is only hate Learning of colour When there is only grey Learning of difference Where, in their madness They are all the same And yet they preach That they are right That they are better That they are not just grey As the world that birthed them That they are not just Monsters And we That we are not the same
Nothing (Lost Body)
Memento mori So easy it is to hate someone without a face And easier still when you already know what to look for As the (terracotta colosseums,) dodecahedrons (like mahogany mausoleums) speleothem (As a sea of words black slowly churns in the deep abyss below lamplight) As fleecy creased clouds amalgamate of paper mâché (As a vast meadow of humming umbrage twangs the strings of wildflowers) (As the boughs of rocking ships ricochet) (Through forests and oceans crocheted of frayed yarn, strings, and pianos) {As the envious sun sets in an empty sky with no love for itself, anything, or anyone} {As the specks of dust listen to the wailing raving} {In the bowels of Valhalla’s gravelly palisade of jaded angels} {As the tomes of soma chromosomes scrawl their ancient messages} {Across ebony and ivory faces; in double helixes, scrolls like photo reels} {As the key to music is locked behind closed doors} As the prides of lions cross (and stalk) the endless fields (and plains) As the children weep (for spilt milk) As the bombs drop (like seashells upon the shells of men) As the hungry retch (from their slim empty stomachs) <It is so sickeningly beautiful> <So perfectly ugly> <The hands of the clock point out the obvious> <Time passes> <Which is to say love passes> < (Which is to say) Life passes, leaving us to continue onwards in our trek through the storm> <Until we can’t take anymore> <Until it passes> <Until we pass with it> <Meeting the overwhelming overlapping flow of an endless current of tears> <Embracing Mother Nature tearing at the seams of elysian ravines> {I say} (There is no easy answer to all your difficult questions) <We are a continuous series of compounding sin> <Joined together by those who died sinners before us> <It is light itself that draws us into the darkness> -The shadows are drawn in by every silver lining and ray of light- <It is unyielding beauty that creates the greatest ugliness> -It is the greatest perfection that leads to every flaw- -And in that flaw is excellence, trust me- -<Because I built my broken busted body back up >- -<With nothing but the strength of my every flaw flowing through my wind-torn veins>- <The still image of success is born from the depths of failure> <It is (the grandeur of) peace that causes (the impudence of) war> <Shadows of the men birthed by us> -We simply are- -I simply am- <We were> <Flickering candles with wax flowing through our in hearts and veins> <The wicker is short> <The road is long, (it lengthens straight, snaking into tomorrow)> <We take what we can (what we want)> <(Leaving nothing)> <I say> <I was born in the nothing> <Lapping up whatever piece of meaning I could cling to> <From a river of lucid thoughts> <Whatever supple neck I could get my hands on> <There was no hate> <Only wanting> <Despite the constant battle that I despised in me> <Despite the roar of voices building in the mould of my freshly minted mind > <Despite blooming ludicrous illusions illuminated by yet free from hatred> <Despite the inevitable continuation of nothing in my nothing filled life> <Despite breaking away from the frame of my skeleton and this dismal grey-black earth> <In its conclusion> <I felt nothing> < And I cared for nothing> <For I was nothing> <Without a(n honest) smile to give to you> <Which is to say> We believe in nothing And we are nothing For we come from nothing And we go to nothing We know nothing And are taught by nothing For we care(d) for nothing And/so <now> Nothing <else> cares for us <(That is all we are>) <(Only what is left of carrion paradise>) <(A morsel of love)> <(For endless mountains of hate)> <(Nothing but my truth)> <(Nothing but cruel)> <(Nothing)> <(But reality)> <(Kissing the forehead of an elderly God)> <(Soon to pass)> <(And we know that)> <(Who can no longer change us for our better)> <(And we know that)> <(Yet still we try to bend the destinies forged to bind us)> <(And somehow be better)> <(Than nothing)> <(Specks and flecks of sparks, embers in the midnight bonfire of life)> <(Scattered to the wind)> <(Icarus)> <(Prometheus)> <(Centipede)> <(Elongated arms that hold the universe together)> <(God is in the palms of our hands as we pray in a cigarette smoke fog)> <(The clouds of another mushroom)> <(Psychedelic evangelicals with mouths welded shut)> <(Like huts in the shrubbiest gutters of guttural shuttles of rubbish and ramshackle capitalism)> <(The rut under the wheels that continue to turn eternities)> <(Burning into dust)> <(Becoming)> <(Nothing)> <(Burgundy)>
Memento Mori
-This is as the night passes- -This is as the day drawls- -This is as the dawn breaks- -This is as the sun sets/falls- -Frayed edges of bedlam’s renaissance blanched by the hands of humanity- -Pages on the fringe of oblivions of civilizations- -Created from aether and hatred painted in homo sapiens- -Wastelands of sands and amber and what is left of those who spiral into madness- -The choir’s dialects of maleficent hecatomb flowering in the bowels of Valhalla- -Lives caught in the roping throat of hangman time- -Pendulums remembering embers of the hallucinogenic bending dismemberment- -Vicarious chariots bearing marionettes of the serendipitous eclipse from a slit wrist- -Blessings of intestinal testimony- -Blackberry cemeteries- -Suspended in endlessness- -Centuries like penitentiaries- -The gift of repetition’s witness- -Memento mori- -Know that I reaped the sweetest berries of this forest- -Each plot of earth and tree- -Raw and bare- -<In the bending of the breeze>- -Tearing my heart inside out to give to you like a wildflower- Plucking it from its roots, in a harp’s melody of loose threads and strings -<My prized possession is a point in time driven into my skull by the hands of a clock>- -<In the attic of my mind shuffling through the bookshelves of rhymes I never mouthed>- -<Ahead of my era>- -<Until like it, the pain dulled>- -<I lost my sharp wit>- -<And all that was left was blunt force trauma>- -<I dreamed you were waiting for me there>- -<You weren’t>- -<I’m stranded on the edge of my own mind>- -<My honed craft grinding myself into dust>- -<I cut class to sit with you by the abandoned train tracks and cry>- -<Hungry for a slice of yesterday>- -<History is cut from a different cloth>- -<And I wear my heart on my sleeve, stitched into the fabric>- -<I’m going nowhere>- -<(And) nothing can stop me>- -This is the way the world ends- -And (I find) I do not care-
Field of Dreams
Zigzagging fragments of dragging stagnant imagination I can taste it My own body in my mouth This is why I eat To taste, cleanse the pallet, to recover Painted in tongues Instead of sitting in my own death (and filth) Just to die alone I’m a relic of the not too long ago Oh my forgotten soul Daydream drowning in day-water Where the sun don’t kiss the moonshine from God’s brow Until the horizontal tide of white circles of light Reflect on their actions and mirror stillness Under the knife of bright lights (in the cities and towns) And midnight wives To the lengthening shadow That leave stretch marks on the walls Birthing the beasts wearing wreaths sheared sheep under the leash of bleak sheets ether Where every newborn hour skins itself like an onion Leaving the meat and bones to marinate in the dark Until we ravel ourselves out of the mortal coil Layers upon layers That eventually peel into a full moon again And we are all wholly half-hearted As we peel back into place (the packaging of) reality like a chainlink fence And try to recreate stagnant dreams from this barbed wire vinyl That only birth more onions As existence is layered upon layers Until we peel back (the) fiction from (the) concrete (The) Incorporeal from (the) palpable Existing with all the missing pieces If we ravel the strings Theory of music of roped twine knotted into the willow of a guitar Will we treasure each missing piece of a broken puzzle? The fabric of music, dance, history, time, life Are worn double helixes frayed by the breeze I wear myself to sleep sometimes While I still have dreams Cloaked in flower petals, these roses Which I wretched free from every tooth that ever smiled And planted each elongated root in a garden of men As their cold words bite to the bone Cracked window panes where kaleidoscopes of tapestries mosaic into structure Composition The flow of a universal milky way And all I have Are broken daydreams That never sleep Unhinged from the joints of a doorframe ripped from my cellar of a heart Halls of choreography mantras palpitate in the follicles of polymerization Walking through corridors as they worm their way through hell and heaven Angels that smoke will-o-wisps in high spirits Until they’re over the moonshine Perched in the balconies hidden in the clouds Watchers that do not love the cold damp cities I know As they rain down their bombs of justice on Like heralds to every Adam that split the apple with Eve Where each elongated rib opens from the cage Another step on the staircase of bones (rattling up the latter’s rungs to the bladder) in the attic And heaven Is just a daydream And Eden Is just a memory And honestly I forgot what it means to love a long time ago But I still peel back the skin Imagining My ripe not rotten flesh dangling on the meat hook of a tree branch Pretending Until my flesh is as red as that apple Are we really human at all? Or are we just apple cores Dancing in Septembers’ rot under hangman maple trees Forevermore Stretching out our brittle bones among the saplings in the dirt My world is sewn together by the roots of the knotted tree’s knuckles Five fingers that punch vigorously in anticipation of battle Pugilist’s fists to the sky They take in the crisp air Pluck the telephone lines And grasp at the clouds in wonder with their pleading leaves Asking for mercy from God’s searing one-eyed glow rusting red in the sundown Knowing they will pass much like the day and night And I look through the eye of the needle Blinking in and out of existence Drowning in the city lights A neon sign from heaven’s entrails (A magenta centipede of endless entropy) Like the grail’s halo There is nothing but this dull pain of the ridge over the ocean On the edge of the earth And I just reap the harvest like any good scarecrow Like any good scythe But I do not hate the cornstalks I simply need to eat (I do not care for the system <that rejected me>) (But the gears of this machine <called society> must continue to turn) (I do not love the dirt, <as I work it now>) (But) I did not break my back For nothing
© 2021 R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)Author's Note
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R.J Calzonetti (SinisterPotatoe)Burlington, Halton, CanadaAboutMost of my poems can be differing lengths depending on the time you want to spend reading them. You can avoid reading anything brackets, or read it all. If you want an in-between, you can read only th.. more..Writing |
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