haiku
by rcribay
minute ripples
in the sidewalk’s puddles
from this week-long drizzle.
I’m back,
I’m back
from that place
disgustingly green
where hope drizzles reluctantly from the sky
“Will I see the tall city towers once more?
To all that is and ever existing,
Let me gently lay my head on the winter’s bosom
Let me breathe in the urban fumes,
I swear I’ll not dance la bostella again,”
those were my thoughts and wishes while still captive
in the most horrid and colorful place on earth, where beauty
and ugliness mesh too well that only a faint pain remained
after finding a saint half-smiling in hell.
do
it
now (or later if you will)
kan’t make
up your mind?
sally.
Nolite esse, Anime virorum malorum
et feminarum malarum.
Milites DEI volabit
et proelia vulnerabunt malos
telis potentibus.
Mare ignis hostes DEI convocabit
et mors pro miseros erit…
Spirit of Evil Men and of
Evil Women, do not be!
The soldiers of God will fly,
and battles will wound evil
with powerful weapons!
The Sea of Fire will summon the enemies of God
and death will be before the wretched…
Nolite esse, Anime virorum malorum
et feminarum malarum.
Milites DEI volabit
et proelia vulnerabunt malos
telis potentibus.
Mare ignis hostes DEI convocabit
et mors pro miseros erit…
high on achievement
and digging a hole
knowing the bottom cannot
be as warm and soothing
as your arms but somehow
hoping to dig through
to a nice patch of sod
on which i’ll lay and wait
for the sun to shine perfectly
down straight from above
to warm me as i develop
hives from the otherwise
pristine landscape
in the six square foot
wide hole i’ve dug in the
time we’ve spent together
while i was trying to make
a name for myself
or some moron named roger
bass, tone, tone, bass, slap
bass, tone, tone, bass, slap
i’ve got the answer
it’s in these red palms
finding the rhythm
on this taut goat skin
bass, tone, tone, bass, slap
bass, tone, tone, bass, slap
i’ve got the answer
it’s in the night air
keeping the downbeat
in this room upstairs
bass, tone, tone, bass, slap
bass, tone, tone, bass, slap
i’ve got the answer
it can’t be spoken
but if you listen
i think you’ll get it
tone, tone, tone slap, slap bass, bass
o great big pains of
grinding growling left knee caps
aching legs and lower backs
annoying friends and angry chaps
french fries fat foods
soaking in a pool of oil
down with my hopes and dreams
boom boom.
raw power of lust
crushes your delicate dreams
+
a shadow of need to flood
into death’s arms is not void
for you are a hindrance
+
the bare breast of the ill goddess
aches when sweet cyanide milk is produced
truly smooth as love, a lie
+
for love is a waxing moon
essential to cool your water
beneath my storm of quenching fire
but life is with ups and downs
every season has its tide
+
our blazing sun soars above the sloth sky
as a rose dies wishing for life after the painful summer
+
knife bitter urges by pounds of boiling blood
blood sprayed from a man, woman, boy, girl
oh what a tangled web we weave
when first we practice to deceive
hiding love beneath the leaves
so night will steal all that we see
forgiveness fails set as a seed
and grows a crooked unbalanced tree
which birth’d an apple gave to eve
then consumed by shame and greed
the choir boys and choir girls
yellow with their hair in curls
refuse to fully recognize the plot
with their shit like molasses
and their heads in their asses
they all wait to see jesus get shot
through centuries of neglect
they most surely forget
oh jesus, oh jesus who wept
AND IT MAKES YOU WONDER SOMETIMES
if Brutus or Judas made it to heaven
if a man who knelt and pray to jesus
is saved after holding up a 7/11
none can debate in this horrible age
that both light and dark are brethren
so where do you go when your hearts not
a home it’s a cage filled with rage
and venom?
that all real conflict is internal
that you and i are not to question
it’s i and i that is the focus
eyes and ears they can be tricked
but you can never hide from yourself
and save marriage or siamese twindom
you are alone in your head with only
yourself for the rest of your life
and there is absolutely no debate that
if you look in the mirror you can
attain that there is two of you
we have two of everything
except our heart, alluding to the soul
which you can only believe exists
you can never see
god is like logic and logic is like
a cat chasing it’s tail
words are fanciful and fun
and belong to everyone
but actions are guns
you need only fire them once
and things then are done
not your place on the sun
or the pace of your run
can undo what’s become
and when based in deceit
with ill will in your teeth
no matter what you speak
you’ve planted that seed
death will then creep
the apple she eats
this ignorance runs deep
these ignorant sheep.
bowl of red
boiling spice
to dip our delicacies
boil, entice
our senses with
cow throat
cow heart
pig intestines
– ’my friends,’ i ask, ‘do you not realize what was squeezed through this?’
pig stomach
(among other things)
6pm I ate you down
4am you woke me up
climbing back into bed with
an arse afire
if i had a
longer
attention
span
and could
stand my
characters
beyond
two pages
or
maintained
interest in
the plot
beyond
the exposition
or could
write
more than three
words per line
i’d be a
novelist
and you’d read
my novels
keep them
at eye level
on your shelves
quote lines to
seem erudite
recommend them
to friends
too bad
the distance
between
IF and your
shelves
has already
defeated me.
in the thorn valley where
the trees are made of needles
and the rivers are made of
fire i saw a man walk once
without breaking his stride
humming a tune something about
the blues
the
blues
got him through the valley
and i thought to myself that
i would one day endeavour
through said valley and maybe
sing a tune but i figured
i’d have to put it off ’till
i found a suitable song
to sing
thenforce i whencefourth
unto forto hitherto
until
you stop and say you do
once they decided to extend the day time
due to poor productivity during the night
he knew it was time to get out, time to
pull the plastic metal machine out from
his neck. not knowing what to call it,
or how exactly he was going to live
without plugging into the dock every
night before his stasis period was
beyond him. but as the tension
was building in the others who at
first held signs and
threw fire at the robots holding them
down he now saw taking jobs. the spirit
had ended, the game was over, they had
lost and it was apparent.
so he’d head out of his house and
never stop until he saw what
he could best guess was the color green.
an hour glass to slow the moments
as history before our eyes unfolds
one more scoop of sand here to
slow things up and one more
pile of crap here to swallow down
chew your grainy feces filled bite
get used to the grain, the taste, the fight
before night comes one more pile
goes down. up to your knees wearing
the presidential crown
Red and yellow, orange and green
the leaves blend together in the harmony
of coming death and future life
warning of the impending frost
hinting at the fore-told thaw
if i were a true
anarchist i’d make
some hideous connection
to comment on
our culture causing you
to recoil in disgust at
the systems you’ve
bought into
but
i’ve come
to the conclusion
i’d rather call it quits
and give up coffee, democracy,
and comments about either
altogether.
words are the bridges
we walk on to give
birth to the future
and put a steaming
knife in the past.
The new beginning of tomorrow
will also be an ending
in which I’ll no longer have a reason
towatchcnninthemorning
whilstmunchingoncereal
tolistentonpronthedrive
whilstavoidingawreck
towatchnbcnightlynews
whilsteatingmysupper
and while I’ll miss the chatter,
filling my life with incessant white noise,
I might welcome the peace
and the opportunity to wallow
in civil apathy once more.
sun gave way to mist
to missing your midst
wind up and made me cold
pictures of bitter tea, rice wine
gloves gripping my hands
unnecessarily warming digits
hopes lost to crashing dreams
but not without celebration
the crust gathering on my thoughts
thick like the ground peas dried
on your otherwise pristine forehead
moving hand to face so as to miss your
mouth
with your hand knit green and yellow
booties we’ll make this the best winter
ever
without end.
give me an extra
hour two cups of
coffee and stand back
i transform into
a domestic superhero
vanquishing tasks
that have been
delayed for weeks
i slept in
mowed the lawn
cleaned the house
washed both cars
bought groceries
and it’s only 3:30pm
give me one more
hour and the world
would be mine
(or at least there’d
be a clean toilet).
u strted 2 play pretnd
i look’d twards alkohal
we can pretnd i kept it downn
things on firre spun our fann
im not much fer pretend
no fun 2 b serrious all the time
can’t quite drive wit hifsting lines
until the wind stops blowing
and for fear of losing the hair
off the top of the back of my
legs to the mere force of the
breeze
i should lay off the beans
