Writing {Poetry & Nonsense}

Does This Really Require Description?

Fun With Haiku

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I saw a call for Canadian writers to submit horror haikus the other day. Unfortunately, I am not Canadian…because it sounded like fun. I was between newscasts–I direct newscasts for our local ABC affiliate Monday through Friday–and I decided I should see just how dark and awful I could get with the haiku template.

That was how it started…but not how it would end.

There were more–many more.

Just when I thought I might be finished, I had to keep going with a couple late additions.

I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I’ve enjoyed leading you.

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A Fairytale for the New Year

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Once there was a lovely little girl who believed, with all her heart, she was a princess. As a ruddy faced toddler she imagined she must have been stolen away from her real parents and the kingdom that would have someday been her own.

Her life was a life of drudgery and unhappy toil in the stony fields belonging to those she was forced to call mother and father.

In those rough and mostly barren fields her life wasted away, year after year, and she gradually began to forget the musings and daydreams of her childhood as the responsibilities of being a woman took up more and more of her hollow life. Those responsibilities took on a most unpleasant character shortly after the death of the stranger she called mother, as the man she called father began to treat her as a woman in ways that she struggled every night to suffer through and each morning to forget.

Life continued in this fashion until one day the man she called father was lowered into the ground as well.

She forgot about her childish musings as life took its toll, until one day she lay dying, crippled and broken from years of painful labor. It was upon her bed, while breathing her final breaths, that she was forced to recall her childhood fantasies when she recognized a familiar twinkle shrouded in the glare within the eyes of her own children; themselves bitter and resentful, finding comfort in daydreams much like her own.

Errata Addendum

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March 2nd, 2011

The words come out all wrong, twisted on my tongue.

Things i need to say become distorted as they leave my lips.

Failure seems so certain when i can’t seem to find the words.

The right words, to change your mind, to make you stay.

Next to you i feel so mute and ineffective.

When you’re here i just can’t seem to do things right.

You make me shiver and i bite my tongue.

I keep telling myself that there will be another night.

I can see it in your eyes when everything i say is wrong.

I never want to fail you, but i can’t seem to get it right.

Frustration builds inside of me, knowing that I fall so short.

A better version of me might stand a chance where i do not.

Here with you i am so mute and ineffective.

I try so hard, but can’t seem to do things right.

Shivering, afraid, i bite my tongue.

Knowing that i can’t put it off for another night.

Further Errata

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I want to burn your perfect life to the ground…

and choke on ash.

I need to sweep away the shelter where you stand…

let it collapse.

Everything you thought was right is wrong…

and I think you know.

There is only one solution I can see…

just let it go.

Stop the world.

It’s been broken all along, this cannot stand.

Tear it down.

You need to let it go, just take my hand.

I want to rip the little lies from your mind…

and watch them die.

We have to strip all these illusions from your eyes…

just know it’s right.

All the things you have, I must destroy…

please save your tears.

I dream of watching your whole life falling down…

but I’m right here.

Stop the world.

It’s been broken all along, this shouldn’t stand.

Tear it down.

We need to rebuild, just take my hand.

Errata Salvaged from My Old/Unused Blog

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April 5th, 2011

I claw at the shadows cast by a me that could have been.

Desperately trying to catch up to where I know I should be now.

I see him in the mirrors when the lights are low enough.

But I can never step through that divide and into his shoes.

I’m chasing the wake left behind by a better man than me.

Will I ever catch up to where I’m supposed to be?

I see him in the reflections in your eyes sometimes.

Is it really me that you love, or is it the trace of him within?

Will there ever come a time when the two of us are the same?

I’m trying so hard, as much for you as for myself.

I don’t know if all that effort will amount to anything.

For you I keep on crawling forward.

I do everything for you.

April 6th, 2011

All my life I felt like I was waiting for something.

Like a pressure building in the back of my mind

I thought that it would be the end of the world.

I watched and waited all these years for some sort of sign.

My eyes were always searching in the wrong places.

I thought it was the end, but it was always you.

I sat here hoping to witness the world burned away.

Instead it was the end of everything I believed was true.

You brought me to my knees like no one else could.

My mind is spinning every time I look your way.

I’m broken down, confused, and scared to death.

But somehow I know that you are here to stay.

You’re the death of who I knew myself to be.

All of my illusions dissipate with you right here.

I’ve become a stranger to myself, someone new.

I am desperate to believe you, telling me to have no fear.

Salvaged Scraps of Poetry (Originally posted to MySpace)

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Lapping up the taste of your secret, hidden spring.

Drinking down each drop from you until I cannot breathe.

Suffocating zealously, addicted and enthralled.

On my knees before you, I’m compelled to crawl.

Devoted adoration at the altar of your flesh.

Immerse myself in worship, praying to be blessed.

Shower down upon me the sweet rain of your desire.

Thirsting and enrapt, my tongue whispers prayers into your pyre.

Beyond my narrowed focus, the world begins to fade.

Everything beyond your presence simply drifts away.

Melting down inside of you, my old form is consumed.

Embracing what you do to me, I feel that I’m made new.

I sacrifice my flesh to you, your hunger like my own.

Intoxicated with your lust, you turn my flesh to stone.

A statue in your honor, I praise you with each breath.

Each moment spent without you is a little piece of death.

The temperature increases..

From the fire that is shared between us.

Romance or pyromania…

Arson in mind, we kindle the blaze

Feeding the flames with passion…

And begging to be consumed.

The body’s maximum threshold exceeded…

From the fever that we are feeding.

Bleeding waves of heat into space…

While still the fire keeps on spreading.

The sheets singe beneath our fevered flesh…

Sweat boils away as steam.

The flames inside keep growing…

Igniting a conflagration around us.

The swelter of our passion sets the world aflame…

Melting it down and purging impurity.

Around us, and unnoticed…

The world burns with our desire.

Breathing hot ash of the sacrifice into our lungs…

Our lust sets burning a newborn sun.

Consume…

Subsume…

Devour…pause…resume.

Delete…

Abate…

Expel…suspend…negate.

Disorder increased, below the level of awareness.

Substrate steadily dissolving; I collapse, I regress.

No warnings, no preparation, no indication.

Structure corrupted, without chance of reparation

Paradigm breaks down, fragments without fundamental use.

Within instability, no means by which uncertainty can be reduced.

Self-propelled, the process sustains itself at my expense.

Reverse engineering accelerates, beyond reach of my defense.

Manifested nightmares offer nothing less than agony.

Unknown parameters dictate the future that is left to me.

Alternative solutions lack definition, lack sufficient probability.

Confidence limits exceeded, I have exhausted my capabilities.

Aggressive dissolution of my substance and internal structure.

Hardwired methods of regulation fail, as barriers are ruptured.

 Potential resolution declines, while connectivity meets degradation.

Imminent shut down looms ahead, as I embrace cessation.

Hidden patterns realized, through careful exploitation.

Sum evaluation process, expressing data set extrapolation.

Circuit formation design, from applied biological information.

Delineated, simplified, flesh rendered into calculation.

Former limitations accepted as static, zero sum designation.

Reduction, compression, components visualized as nothing more than variable designations.

Definition, proportion, random actions becoming predicted outcomes of our calculations.

Social structures develop into comprehensive equations for analysis.

Behavioral mathematics becoming second nature in our progress.

We have come to understand that you are elements of definite value.

Actions, choices, instincts; lose mystery as the new science comes to grasp you.

Discovered patterns broken down, for further study and correlation.

Engineered approach, designed for optimum degree of manipulation.

Organized, controlled response to stimuli, without concern for outcome or success.

Competition of independent strategy, testing theory, extraction of hypothesis.

Further study dedicated to the process, calculating for divergent aberrations.

Compensation for anomalous factors introduced into the final set equations.

 Structured application, input step derivatives for maximum dispersion rate.

Underneath the words and slogans, veiled control line triggers activate.
Open source programmed components, guidance insures terminal settings achieved.

No discrepancy in process, proven laws propel stopgap relations imprinted for machines.

Without Substance, and Void (Originally posted July of 2006 on MySpace and salvaged for posterity)

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And here I am, lost within the gap meant to hold the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, the picture left incomplete. The eyes automatically drawn to this glaring flaw in an otherwise gorgeous image. Like everything, cracks in the veneer expose a fragile and decayed substrate, flimsy enough to collapse at any moment, the whole picturesque grandeur transformed in the blink of an eye to indecipherable ruins. Perhaps there is a faint suggestion of the prior beauty, but more than likely not a trace remains to hint at what once was and should have been, the shape that was intended. How can everything be so brittle? All those lovely elements of life so dependent upon the termite riddled fabrications underpinning the faulty surface, just biding its time before imminent collapse ensues. It seems altogether too pointless, striving so hard to keep from slipping between the cracks. It can’t be any safer up above than here below, with the discarded fragments shaken free to plummet down upon my mercifully unsheltered head, waiting for that chance impact to finally arrive. I slip furtively from pillar to pillar, not actively inviting the disaster that I openly accept and hope to embrace. I witness the crumbling decay as the sky is falling. Scavenging through debris, eyes alert to any potentially useful discoveries amongst the overwhelming heaps of filth and wreckage. To sift is the dream of many, those lacking purpose grind themselves away at the rough edges of immovable objects, devoured between stationary gears, the forward momentum solely a product of a will bent towards the prize place upon the dinner table. Choice meal for a choice selection of the most tasteful and elegant of consumers. Nothing is mass-produced down here, all is hand crafted with loving care by the unloved and forgotten. Unnoticed and blissfully unaware of the ridiculous station they hold in life. All is a junkyard in progress, steadily in process of accumulation of degradation.

Metropolis (Written June of 2006 and originally posted on my soon-to-be-deleted MySpace blog)

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A blank stare greets me and quickly hurries away to be reabsorbed into the mass of huddled flesh in steady transit to…somewhere. Feeling ignored and out of place, I step back from the blistered sidewalk, its meat churned beneath the careless feet of the amorphous pedestrian, a beast not known for its quality hide nor exquisite flavor, and thus left to its own devices as it wanders through the city on its countless shifting appendages, posing no threat but to those unwary enough to remain in its path as it plods along, its vague outline distorted by strobing lights of shopping facilities all around it, there to blind and distract, urging susceptible victims into gaping maws, like some displaced deep sea fish. Minimal effort producing maximum effective consumption rate, only rarely sliding their bulky forms to more suitable locations.

Though apparently stable on the surface, there is nothing so distant from the truth. Everything transient and shifting, a tapestry woven of multivariate ambulatory forms, shaping and reshaping itself according to some seemingly random, perhaps hidden design…the organizing principle as yet undiscovered.

Haunting images flicker perpetually in my periphery, enticing me to submit myself as sacrificial victim to one ever-hungry storefront or another, the terrible, all consuming predators of this decadent wasteland. I watch as prey is swallowed whole, allowed to devour the creatures’ magnificent innards, only to be spit back out again, feeling contented and fulfilled with recent events while oblivious to just how its own substance had been eaten away by the subtle inner-workings of the vicious predator within which it was provided succor while being suckered.

Too sly to fall victim myself, I slip in and out of these endless streams of sustenance flowing into and out of the ornamentally gilded yet threatening jaws surrounding me on all sides.

Not knowing where I’m headed, I wander aimlessly through churning waves of bottom feeders, noticing that I have become yet another appendage of the great amorphous pedestrian only after I’ve been swept away along its endless shuffling mass in its endless search for…whatever.