Categories
Jazz Music poetry Short Stories Uncategorized Urban Legends writing

scourge

you don’t get it
do you

well let me explain it to you
slowly
in my best
non-regional diction

so you no longer feel the need
to darken my door

the narrow purview you cling to
spawned by your self-absorption
is my favorite of your
many insidious faults

you are nothing
more to me
than the cat-of-nine-tails
with which
i
flagellate
myself

there is nothing
a good lashing
won’t cure

during the black plague
the discipline was used
as a means
of preventing oneself
from becoming infected

the devout believed
the plague
was a punishment
from god

and that punishing oneself
would prevent the need
for god to infect you

faulty logic indeed
but it’s damned funny
the lengths a human will go to
to hold onto hope

as a lack of hope
is death

i do it
to remind myself
to never accept abuse as love

as
your only exceptional quality
is that
you are the greatest sickness
i have ever seen

black as midnight
black as pitch
blacker than the heart
of the darkest witch

you
are the place
where love dies

Categories
Uncategorized

old scratch

a green eyed demon
whose left eye would twitch
before he lied or smiled
once took a photograph of me
held in place by him
standing on the andy warhol bridge
in pittsburgh

all who have seen it
claim that i appear in the image
as a perfect
stained glass visage
of the madonna

(child held within)

my flowing dark hair
blue grey blouse
the way my head is
tucked into the beast’s shoulder
my face calm
a peaceful yielding to the thing
an act of complete faith

above a confluence of river beds

soon thereafter
i noticed
milk soured
and flowers died near him

i was saved by
divine providence

i’ve collected knives
and rosary beads
ever since