Thursday, October 13, 2016

blood poems for an October 13 evening

Small girlchild, rags and dust – follow
her morning of traverse, this tiny world allowed.
Each tent flap reveals fester of wounds deep
and shallow, ravage disease.
Senses, thought, subsumed to beat of breath
outside rational context.
Stuck in the dirt, her worth a hole where
she bottoms out, tributary blood expelled.
 
 
 
Government happens
Power differentials are natural
Makes sense to attend to these matters
consciously,
rationally.
Hot heads, coarse tongues, flail of arm,
crush of foot, outthrust chest, rancorous
demands
lively show and tell;
Yes, such forceful yell might get bells
ringing, choirs singing, merry pageantry.
After roaring Sun’s descended, crowds
disbanded to bars and beds
to dream lusty victories or private
histories, nobody charged to watch
for this twinkling of time.
Without law, there is no crime.
Without rules, no crown ascends
by common call – but only by
all against all
in squall of terrors,
contests of survival, games
scored in blood.
 
 
 
Muses dance,
explore motion.
Segue to and fro
two steps back; a flurry forward.
Satin cats, tails a’fling
pirouette, scurry choreography.
No tomorrow.  No scheduled glee for
public appearances.
Time’s a’clanging, impatient clamors
for unknown seasons.
Rainstorm howls,
cleanses,
sends tidings, murky repentance and
beard for tears.
Savage rain tip-tapping
rhythms and blues.
Barrels for dipping, for ritual
washing, for tribal hydration, replenishment.
Agriculture,
hunger, health, hygiene.  Sordid rain,
ashen water, terror, pain, diluted
blood.
Storm warnings advise caution.
Cover yer windows and blinds.
Hide in cellars and pray.
Find salvation in fearsome company.
Oh, Hell – give in!  Cave into slippery ground;
swallow and be swallowed.
The rains came, carried fortune to further shores
and supplicants. 
Long into unspoken tomorrows.
 
 
 
Dread – crusty needles eject embalming poison
Stiff, rusted shut, ooze tarnished prison door.
Electrified to molten waste.
Lost wastrel, chased into rough wood.
How could good ever tough through?
Seethe tooth and fang.
Anger will tighten screws, coils.
No mercy to win when cardinal sin is innocence.
Don’t chatter of cruelty,
turn red in shame.
Remember the wise one winked “No blame.”
while wheeling outside reach of stage.
There are no great secrets,
barbed network of lies.
There is this blood bludgeon
of power wielded by minions and slaves
with too little to win.
If a moonlit beach at midnight called siren songs,
embracing melody, calming waves --
if urgent desire brokered change.
 
 
 
Cypher
 
 
O’ evil Man
It is not your gods who make you so.
They laugh at their celestial balls,
silly little mood slaves
primed to vomit sour wine,
feast after bloody binge.
Who is the moral gatekeeper,
the celebrated purveyor of righteousness?
Who the masked scoundrel,
cross-dressed wolves and lambs
in demonic jig?
A lively game to wile away some
vague eternity.
Our children obscured in armament.
So many souls to devour.
 
 
 
 
Tonight’s Impression
Dig, deep into unlikely crevices.
Unsightly blemishes
covered in mud, old crusted blood,
more suffering than shame.
If none know my name,
can they curse me?
Always rehearsing for
untended curtains, productionless
plays.
 
 
 
 
 
Gospel
 
Sally, won't you go
downtown
Pick up some teabag party
clowns
We'll teach 'em tricks of trade
from streets walled in by
degradation
Ain't this nation grand
for glad hands raised in celebration
of shames we dare not name.
 
Hallelujah  Hallelucinations
Hallowed ground baptized
in blood
Saved from the cleansing Flood
by sticking to our kind
however we're defining us today
If we were meant to live
a different way
wouldn't He have told us?
 
 
 
(Hollow) Theme Party
 
Bleeding across the page
Not pretty
Naked self-pity
a turn off
better passed by
Rather, let us speak of
solitude, the advantages
of wealth
kept to oneself
No beasts lessen my load
No supplicants beg to share
Luxuriously wrapped in my lair
laughing and dancing on gold
acutely aware of thin cold urchins
out on a distant plain
They are no kin to me;
out there for atmosphere
I am Deity within this domain
blood you see splattered
on this page
fell from other veins
some poor unfortunate
released from pain
How pretty!  Let's party!
A gala affair, enraptured
alone in my lair
 
 
 
Our Gang
 
 
Outrage
Depression facing outward
Taking power to give it away.
This entrained impulse
See them crackling, jangling
puppets at puppy play,
bite, bark, entangle,
grab and tussle,
growl, muscle in for the kill.
Bloodlust arousal.
Natural as puke, as death,
violation as violent orgy
violation as ecstatic
initiation to the brotherhood.
Life elevated to dreams, goals,
careful weighing of coin and hours,
dependable plans, actions that honor can favor,
love, duty, allegiance to the rules of sanity
and kind regard
have no purpose here.
Men of blood and battle fluid
need no fine speeches, no valor --
only food and receptacles
for their waste.

Saturday, October 1, 2016

blood poems 2006

blood poems 2006

Expand Messages
  • Laurie Corzett
    Dec 30, 2006
    In a Moment
     
    Who am I to become
    when my stories are obliterated?
    When I awaken
    naked and unarmed
    upon a shadowed
    rocky trail?
    It's not that I want swaddling cotton fantasies.
    I want the armor
    consistent with my role,
    both the lessons in the real and
    the comforting warm arms of happy home.
     
    It's more than I can bear.
    I crack wide open.
    The scenery means nothing,
    I hide inside my wound.
    There's nothing left to bind the bleeding.
    I am open to the world
    yet intently blind.
    I sit upon a hillside counting
    rainclouds
    waiting for the lightening to strike.
     
    (c) Feb. 5, 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     
    Decorating

    Pretty little images
    But I don't reach the core
    of sadness
    of breaking shattered glass
    of bitter calloused weeping
    of dregs gone down the drain
    clogging arteries,
    eating memories,
    etching out rotten stench
    interring my intestinal walls.
    I would love to bleed for you.
    Watch the shattered glass
    graffiti my windpipe,
    excellent sprays of red
    eye-popping splendour.
    I would never want
    to deny you the thrill.
    My craggy dry old heart
    laughs in anticipation.
    Fresh wounds
    always look so fine.

    (c) Feb. 17, 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     
    Nostalgia
     
    Once Life and I have divorced
    After the estate has been divided
    (I playing noble disdain
    have thrown it all to her)
    I shall find a villa upon a hill
    To paint my masterpiece
    Discarded bodily fluids
    Upon the walls.
     
    Murals carefully sprayed upon
    Bohemian brownstones
    Sauntering down the city street
    Aglow
    Lighting oily puddles,
    Intellectual cafes,
    Art houses,
    Freak show casas,
    Anointing the effervescent night
    Playing to the jaded,
    The amputeed,
    Outcast drifters.
     
    There is a sweetly drifting tune
    Meandering like wisteria
    Is it a dirge?
    A sassy New Orleans carriage ride?
    Is it the beating of my heart
    Spraying a trail of bleeding homage?
    It is a wedding march,
    Played slowly, out of time,
    Beat by beat, more slowly
    Rewinding.
     
    (c) Feb. 25, 2006
     
     
    Battle Fatigue
     
    Honoring righteous anger.
    Not mean little sprites,
    Chironic knights protecting me.
    Cradling me so sweetly.
    "Oh, no, dear, never forgive, never forget."
    Torture is no way to say you're sorry.

    Love whispered to me
    in dreamlike memory
    told me tales
    told me lies.
    I told myself those stories
    whispering in the night
    bereft of sleep.
    I told myself of soft surrender.
    Of gentle caressing days
    dappled in sunlight,
    lusty heat-soaked revelry
    sharing secrets
    so poignant, so intense.
    The anger
    burns me through
    each synapse,
    each myelin sheathe
    blood, guts, lungs, heart.
    Viral penetration, consuming
    strength, vitality, duration.
    I am languid and torn.
    From time to time I rally
    to fight my own tears,
    my own mind,
    my own field of battle.

    No one comes forth for me
    to offer my surrender.
    Battle weary,
    I can no longer breathe.
    The anger breathes for me.
    Gently wrapping me in
    blankets,
    singing me a battle song
    urging me to take respite
    as it soothingly scrapes off
    the scabs
    refreshing my wounds.

    (c) March 10, 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     
    Penance
     
    For all the painful people
    wondering why god has forsaken
    hanging sorrows from a silent
    winter tree
    entreating penance.
    Still your blood does not flow
    pure.
    Never cleans the wounds.
    Festering.  Poisoning.
    How can there be clarity?
    Peace
    is only equated with
    silence.
    I can not reach you
    through your pain
    through my pain
    through the loud, piercing
    blows, the cacophony
    of cause and effect,
    ruined fields
    seeded with glass.
    Beautiful prismic spires grow here.
    Someday awed children will play,
    sing, tell tall tales in their splendor.
    All we can see
    is razorsharp teeth so tender
    to bleeding flesh.
     
    (c) March 18, 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     
     
    Sister Scorpio
     
    Black as hate; white and bloodless
    shrieking Fury
    punishing Saint.
    Your patient, erratic torture
    has left me broken,
    bleeding torrents of pain
    unable to move
    forward,
    unable to sleep
    or engage in
    polite discourse.

    Yet you were never satisfied.
    It was not me you wished to sacrifice.
    I was merely inconvenient,
    or too convenient.
    Dressed in a goatsuit,
    queued up to be driven to slaughter,
    how could I expect compassion,
    fellow feeling?
    But it was the Executioner's blade
    I expected,
    not frenzied repetition of
    back stabbings, epithets,
    steel-wielding rage.
     
    We could have been sisters,
    giggling secrets in the schoolyard,
    smoking pcp in the girls' room,
    shooting up the classroom,
    dying in each other's arms.

    (c) March 26, 2006 Laurie Corzett

     
     
     
    Transformation
     
    Transformation is not about butterflies
    flitting about, capturing our awe.
    It is the heart of pain
    you cannot feel for me.
    Searing cauterization,
    what would be condemned
    as unethical treatment
    of secret wounds
    bound up in tattered consciousness.
    Bit by bit, then all at once
    losing the thread,
    spacing out the conversation
    not quite catching the gist of
    why I am here and now.
    Did it ever make sense?
    How could I believe my lies?
    That papier-mache world
    I gave my soul
    sucked dry
    in enduring service
    was never true.
    I would cry
    but that would be too easy.
    The pain would dribble down;
    fascinated by the rainbow glisten
    I would count my misfortunes
    watch them spin
    pennies falling into a rose-glass jar.
    Filled with resolve,
    I would go back out into the fray,
    fight another day, and another
    until by decimating degrees
    I might fall defeated, dead and gone.
    But death is only an act
    of transformation.
    The whole play depends upon
    the spinning out of the tale.
    First you love, then you lose,
    then you do hard labor
    stoking the fires of Hell,
    breaking the rocks of Eternity,
    cleaning the rotting sewers
    of collective untreated waste.
    Stench, pain, nausea
    beyond bearability
    wrenches, renders, discorporates
    transforms.
    Not like changing
    into a bright, enchanting costume.
    Changing utterly
    because no other choice
    exists.

    (c) March 30, 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     
    heart breaks and bleeds
    scarlet ribbons
    dripping into vital organs
    coagulating breath, thought, awareness
    there is no promised land of peace
    no safe harbour free of misery
    no bed of fluffy clouds
    foretelling happy dreams
    pain radiates
    a dark sun
    blotting out any possibility
    of light-hearted healing
    while leaving a clear stain
    bloody trails
    pooling into dead ends.
     
    (c) April 21, 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     
    Soldier's Veins
     
    "You have a soldier's veins."  The doctor chuckled as he explained the very good biological reason for my deeply recessed blood vessels, which always caused such a problem when medical professionals tried to take my vital fluid.  Apparently I was made to fight medieval wars.  The hard to reach veins, the slow metabolism keeping down the need for feeding, the ability to block out pain, hunger, thirst, discomfort of any kind, by focusing on the goal and getting there by any means necessary, good traits for those who must endure such hardships for a greater good, or simply to survive in battle.
     
    However, here I am, a 21st century city apartment dweller, fighting mostly in the arenas of traffic and office politics.  The old flight/fight adrenalin rush that wants me out there in the fray has to instead be pretty constantly quelled if I am to successfully fit in to modern civilization.  So, the fight naturally comes to be against myself.
     
    I am pretty well protected against the razor blade.  My overzealous gag reflex keeps out the obvious poisons.  I have found a way, though, through incremental poisoning of my soul with a fairly constant drip of despair.  Slowly, insidiously, it eats away at what had meant to be protected, dissolving those veins from within so that I may succumb to internal bleeding.
     
    (c) May 28, 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     
     
    A Cure for Cancer
     
    Consider the single cell microorganism
    Motilely absorbing sustenance, senseless
    caught up
    in the acrobatics of immortality
    growing, dividing, growing, dividing
    accumulating ancestry
    without reflection.
    Life imitating life
    accumulating complexity, diversity,
    cells opening out from infinite regression
    demanding expanding territory,
    redefinition, delineation, demarcation.
    Cultivation of domestication implies
    devastation of the wild weed.
    Pruning the power of the divine monarch
    Poisoning the wellspring to discourage
    unfettered proliferation of perceived antagonists.
    If life is the disease,
    surely death is the cure.
     
    (c) June 9, 2006 Laurie Corzett/libramoon
     
     
    Dharmic Drama
     
    8 billion souls
    intermingling, interacting
    playing out roles
    through life ever-lasting
    each moving through dangers
    never dying 'til the end
    of their scripted scene
    then by any artful means
    dictated by dharmic drama
     
    in the endless essence
    in a crystal snowglobe
    glowing with stardust
    growing in pristine clarity
    allowing brief glimpses of serenity
    before again shaken into a confusion
    of fantasy snow confounding
    the grace of vision unbounding
    back you go, into the thickening crowd
    into material purgatory
    into malice and dread buzzing
    swooning to the stench
    of burning flesh
    was that me?
    flashing in and out of reality
    ghostly voices in and out of dream
    repeating:
     
    respect the fire that keeps you warm
    enjoy the calm
    enjoy the storm
     
    I enjoy the frenzy
    caught up in ecstatic dancing
    beating, faster, faster
    than my heart can be broken
    eternally bleeding internally
    onto the scripted page.
     
    (c) July 2006 Laurie Corzett
     
     

     
     
     
    hungry zeitgeist, part 1
     
    slivers, splinters, falling meaning
    catch it, send it spinning out into the stars
    bleeding rags catching fine red droplets
    shredded hands, hopes, hearts, dripping meaning
    I can't hold on, hold out, hold a good thought,
    dripping through agonized neurons,
    shattered mirrors
    unable to provide sustenance
    hold suction,
    bind the wound.
    embrace me
    hold so tight and tenderly
    as blood drips through your fingers
    touching my raw eroding senses
    with gentle rain, dripping,
    obscuring the view.
    I would curl up into destiny,
    locking my lacerations
    in dreams of false skins,
    tightening, holding fast to the edges.
    I would fall immortally into space,
    dripping inward.
    I would lock my dreams in pasteboard boxes,
    too tight for mortal breath.
    the words whirl around, whirl around, whirl
    like scattered bits of paper tears.
    I would hide in the deepest hold and
    keep to life slowly seeping through.
    but the hunger calls.
    it growls and jumps in fits to battle.

    (c) October 20, 2006 Laurie Corzett/libramoon
     
     
     
    Again, I Demand, "Merry Christmas"


    Merry Mass of Christ
    riven upon the four-fold way
    cut into deity and man
    on the crossroads
    at the witching hour.
    Sing praise of all things holy
    Make us see and feel the pain
    the horror of wrenching heart
    from soul.  Of blithely obliging
    demonic Angel Fate
    that each generation may descend
    into fiery pits of degradation
    reaching, reaching
    into and out of the story, the path.
    If Christ is love,
    if love is what we worship, eyes closed
    in holy communion,
    what keeps us riven
    on the crossroads?
    What keeps us from reaching out
    to bind each other's wounds?

    (c) December 10, 2006 Laurie Corzett/libramoon
     
     
     
     
    Pandora's Box
     
    Encapsulating
    bubbling up the molecules
    into fairy stories of creaky old goblins
    sorrowful witches, ancient deities
    with too much to prove,
    coalesced and coated with
    bitter medicine.
    Caught in an instant,
    latent pain layered in ages
    bubbling up corrosive through
    epithelial walls.
    They are calling me, again.
    I pretend not to hear, not to feel,
    not to want to believe.
    They call with raucous derision:
    "Dear Hope," they spittle,
    "a flying thing, a winged chariot
    pulled by clever orphaned doves."
    Thirst pulls me to my poisoned well.
    I dare not drink.  It will never kill me,
    but torture, weak and broken
    I will never be whole enough to
    move forward, to find sweeter remedies.
    Jagged mirrors encapsulate my heart.
    Viscous blood held captive loses oxygen.
    Blue and cold wintry depths
    I am held, hidden, a free-falling metal box
    cruel icy stinging denying the gift
    of sleep.
     
    (c) December 29, 2006 Laurie Corzett/libramoon
     
     
    Burnt Offering

    Killing me by degrees
    Each hour the executioner
    tears another piece from
    my life fabric.
    She aches for my heart
    tasting the sweetness
    of raw blood and pain.
    I have done the unforgivable.
    I have demanded my soul
    Uncleansed
    Unanointed for prayer.
    Hell is the mirror distorted
    refraction raising the temperature
    sucking oxygen into flame.

    (c) December 23, 2006 Laurie Corzett