"Sickened by sun, with rainstorms lashing him rotten
A looted wreath crowning his tangled hair
Every moment of his youth apart from its dream was forgotten
Gone the roof overhead, but the sky was always there

Oh you, who are flung out, alike from heaven and from Hades
You murderers who've been so bitterly repaid
Why did you part from the mothers who nursed you as babies
It was peaceful and you slept and there you stayed

Still he explores and rakes the absinthe green oceans
Though his mother has given him up for lost
Grinning and cursing with a few odd tears of contrition
Always in search of that land where life seems best

Loafing through hells and flocked through paradises
Calm and grinning, with a vanishing face
At times he still dreams of a small field he recognises
With a blue sky overhead and nothing else"

The Fallen
Go on ahead, old friend,
Lie to him.
Tell him everything that'll
Never happen.

Tell the little bastard he has
Something of a future,
and let him believe it--
you know he will.

You're his world, buddy.
She was my world too,
but trust's a tricky thing--
it's slippery even--fickle;
like a worm, or a woman
or a life.

Unlucky for the two of us,
The world's not fair.
Never has been--
But you know what is?

Me.



King's Ransom
A message to the World:

Consider this,
my little friends,
a challenge--one
to which you're all invited.
You don't want to partake?
Well I'm quite afraid
I must insist
that you do.

What's the plan?
Where's a plan?
Since when did one even
need a plan at all?
Sir, and madam, I must assure you
the damages made here
aren't at all a means
to any end.

Now the world is on its head,
a sight to be sure--and
you all seem to ask the same old things.
"Where does it end?"
"What's the motive?"
And you never even pause to
wonder why you're still
asking things at all.

But let's be frank, at
least for one more moment:
What makes you think a motive's
even there?
And as for an ending,
My dears, I'm just beginning
and there's no end in sight--
not by a mile.

In a word,
You'd say it's madness,
though I must declare your folly:
As my madness isn't really
mad at all.
Call it a flight of fancy,
a whim, or quiddity--
though myself, I prefer
roguery, with all
its implications.

I'm a man without a purpose,
without care, without qualm,
and when it comes to
human life--
absolutely without scruple.
It's the only way to live these days,
in my book, at the least.

So, dear sir and madam,
It seems quite clear to moi,
That your particular way of living
is in fact,
Not living at all.

With love,
J____.

A Letter to Y____.
With all due respect,
Mr. Y____,

I must confess that it is with
a considerable degree of narcissism
on my part
that I feel a sort of
kinship to yourself.
A sort of similarity and
betrayal, among...
other things.

You talk, and
frankly,
I haven't the foggiest as to
what you mean,
not half the time, anyway.
I'll ruin you, of course
it's a habit--
and we'll both probably die...
though if you insist:

With love, J___.

My inverted Lolita,
You alone are able to,
with no more than a single word
from your sharp tongue,
shatter my heart like fine china.

You blondish, sarcastic nymph,
with your philosophy and your politics
and all your warnings
simultaneously giving me a choice in the matter,
yet knowing I haven’t really got one.

You look at me with that casual smile of yours
and your questioning eyebrow,
and a bemused, "Hullo darling."
and what can I do in the face of that?
What else other than to proffer my own
shaky smile and a nervously murmured,
"Hmm, dearest?"

We’re both odd birds,
you and I.
You, the teasing, clever nymph,
with all your words and gestures,
and me, dry and unfeeling, a sphinx,
what with my silences and my rhetoric.
One speaks in riddles, and
the other in innuendos--
one might argue that they’re the same thing,
but only one of us is the monster,
and I hate to tell you, m’dear,
but nymphs aren’t killers.

Somewhere between your quirky beauty
and my blatant inhumanity,
there is a sort of uneasy balance
where the riverside of of your frolicking nymph-hood
meets with the desert cliffs of my sphinxish deviousness.
A truce, my inverted Lolita,
between a pair of myths
far too old for their ages.

The Poet
I have been, still am
waging a war on myself.
and it's been so long
Since the damn thing started that
I'm not sure where it began.

Fighting tooth and nail,
and quill and witticism
And for far too long,
I've fought the shapes and bodies
That creep o'er my walls
pale and thin and seductive
I can't count the times,
and yet, I've resisted them,
held them back with just a pen.

Until they were forced
back into the Egyptian
night, where they could wait,
Only to come back again,
this time stronger than before.

Forcing me out from
my sole refuge: a bottle
Of bitter gin, and
a battered pack of smokes.
Drawing me into
another bout of coughing
I could do without.
This time, I think that maybe
I'll write the newest Adam.

And I suppose that
I'll make him a hungry man--
wild and greedy and
Half-mad at the very least--
a beast like any other.

And he'll chase them back,
those white bodies in the dark,
The kind that hover
about my head, like locusts--
Always hungry, but
not as much as my Adam;
Not so much as that
hateful bastard, whom I made
of the shadows in my mind.

You see, I've now learned
that fighting those bodies is,
at best, pointless, and
At worst, dangerous as hell
to the novice warrior.

For five days straight now,
I've fought without ceasing, and
I think that maybe,
just maybe, I'd like a drink.
Or maybe I'll just
pluck one of those white bodies
From the blackness of
my hidden attic ceilings
and use that to quench my thirst.

If I do that, though,
I'll probably kill Adam,
send him sprawling and
Half-dead, but I suppose he
wouldn't be the first or last
one I'd done that to.

The Artist
I sit alone here,
A sharpened quill in my hand
Sitting alone there,
Scratching words in large letters
And while I sit here,
I think I shall redefine
The nature of man:
I'll paint him red and starving,
Orange as the summer's greed,
But twice as hateful and cruel.



Cold
I hate to say it:
I'll never shake that coldness,
That dark frigidness,
I can't--won't be rid of it,
That icy sterility
That has become so much a
Part of who I am.

Ode to a Rock Dove
.
To my Lady Rock-Dove:

Smoke-grey and battered,
You taciturn young woman
With your cautious gaze.

By the same token,
You baffle me, my darling
By looking at me.

It's hard to believe
That you could see much in me,
In my mismatched eyes.

I can't understand,
You capricious creature, you,
How you could choose me.

I'll just disappoint
you.  You'll find I'm hard to love
before long, my dear.

You're wise--nature's sage:
A brooding Bodhisattva
Crooning scriptures in my ears.

I'm merely clever:
A bitter philosopher
Drowning here, in my own thoughts.

Never in my life,
Could I begin to fathom
What you see in me.

What could I give you?
My turtledove, my dear?  What
could I offer you?

Yet you love me, in
spite of my second-guessing,
my world-weariness.

Your blue eyes sparkle
With uncanny intellect
And a strange beauty.

Mine only darken,
Smoldering and cynical,
And bluntly sexless.

But for now, at least,
I'll stay here, by your side, just
As you asked of me.

With love, Gentleman Goshawk.