A Hallelujah for a Midnight War
I can feel your skin breathing in orbs kisses that feels like surgeries and the money dies off when you are greedy and we step right into a Midnight War Millions of Judases in the wilderness The sick and the crimson In torment, so petrified One breath, chokes Hallelujah In chaos the hammer smashes in the glass We are hidden behind these walls a combustion in bones and all to become vapor In this Midnight War Where the glitter turns to ashes breaking from the chairs, a howl Hallelujah The spectres and the stars Looking as one Like in a mirror of night We have been forsaken of riches They loot the diamonds from the heart And the robbery is simplistic we feel translucent watching the seas The Midnight War cripples And the waves clash together in an Everlasting Hallelujah The virgins spin down with chapped lips and breeding, hungry eyes You are numb to touch A revolver, an allergy The flaming of whips to erase your mind The pearls, they fall to the fire the path is a torrent from fibrous roots - to the vines of cherries Angelic songs Obliterates, to my auditory invisibility In grief, in pain Praying in puns Hallelujah So, Midnight passes And we are back to 1 a.m. Time for the blossoms and the honey woven into the fabrics of Earth tip toes the demons away White horses begin to gallop - wildly around the curves and suddenly your eyelids open back to the reds, blues, orange in the sunlight, surrender hear the hearses beginning to putter the gas kills off the energy Hallelujah Ripped Off My Jean Jacket As the symptomatic leaves begin to fall I watched noiseless waterfalls - drink in the deranged and lame Our bodies are blush, decorated into these parks by the stabbing strokes of a paintbrush Brush away these harsh devils Wiped away all of my tattoos My head is clammy and sweating Watch the stars penetrate the heart From the moon, I have become the decorous the ultimate gentleman - to all that is blind whip-in the inhales And shoot the arrows to the waves. If I am uncovered, if truths are found to be false I will carry myself like a casket and image myself as the lifeless wooden doll I collapse to the thundering faint, to the floor I ripped off my jean jacket the wild, the seeds plucked to be reborn Long nights listening to this same rain falling the owls are silent in their hoots the traces of our footprints - are known to be crazy we are picking the serpents from our boots. So, is this the white noise? I live in either gray or electric shock an impulse is easier to swallow but sin takes time to regurgitate. Oslo in the Heart It was 4 seasons in Oslo Where they greased the wheels for our eyes when they bleached the brides my skin has turned to purple veins, locked my mind inside a wall of chains all the Norwegian women bled like rubies over a beach of shells Candlelight on the bones inside the moon cooking the peasants in a witch's ritual. Oslo was in my heart when we wed Winter crosses full of wet lead tuning my mind to a dripping paint and rippling vapors whip in every corner. Oslo was in my heart that day we danced a fandango through the avalanches lay bare sleighs the mountains had broke for all the old anger in the stones. Oslo nights in wonderfalls heartbroken men and shallow women calling for the moneymen to come from the big U.S. city the commercial life the vacations and all the models bankruptcies in graveyards the drifting of the wind. Shenandoah Tramps You walk the streets like you are still in Tabriz You miss the Iranian Summers While fumbling full of wine you feel the prickly goosebumps from the breeze. And we begin to walk with a squint as the sun masks the city eyelids bouncing, and quivering drunk lips. You desire the kiss when the night stirs dressed in scarlet red looking for that efficacious effect We are like the stars in the sky celebrities in meteoric flash We are just lost from the waste to the lakes trying to unlock the code to flee us from the beams of Heaven's Gate We can wish on these wine bottles throw in the pennies for a little luck we can invent beauty out of the contagious Shenandoah muck. Our city is just a bullet town Our love will fall like tramps in the rain with our hands becoming umbrellas trying to protect us from the downpour awake our celestial shine with this oncoming train. And here come the dollies and all of the sheepmen who gather ours fossils and they use them for swanky chaotic sin our rose is a misery burn the shell right off this redolent city. The streetlamps are as dim as a yellow puddle with a hint of chickweeds growing around the blacktop tumors. And all we can talk about all of the music, and hum until poetry rifles through our brains. Studying the fallen art stuck to the limbs of trees On the edge of what was Calliope. When all was tame and flowery, The strong was not frail without a care Our frames were not broken, just skeletal grey And we would dine on evening air and dance to the melody of church bells the hymns were our parade. Drinking Blue Moons I was burning through the poker chips Looking eye to the cavernous eye of some demon I see all the misleading in your passions. If all your passions are the flaming dollars and all shoes want to dance for the triumphs You have a Malibu boy doll home with wives that sashay in the golden fields beautiful gardens and thrusting seeds water this, burning just a little. And we all want your suits and all the glory the perfect hair and the ungodly White teeth Maybe the jealousy lives in all of us but we know you're as fragile as a toothpick - when your way begins receding. Drinking Blue Moons when the red wine runs low You begin pacing like a war of pistols when the bombs begin flashing your photos - to the world we know you, there are truth whisperers Your flavor of the month decisions begin to disease with constant new kisses After dark in powder kegs love hearts dancing around the bones to erode them three sheets to the wind and your toy world is for sale and crumbling. Love, love, love is in the twist of a bottle-cap Love, love, love Is putting your head next to the ammunition the boattail bullets dips you in to the a round of ripples Love, love, love Your blondes in black in the background crying. All the women are there from all your hidden life messages to a Lucy, an Alexis, a Leilani, an Olivia From the bedrooms with White curtains and all that money - was never his to begin with Will he rest in peace in a graveyard of suitcase tombstones? An Autumn Scarecrow If my song for you is Autumn From the roof I shall sing to a soft chill My voice is an earthquake quivering out these little sonnets and trails of letters Coming down faster than the snow We soon stand still in the early season blizzard It will blade through all of the farmland The prairies ruined with guillotined scarecrows bleeding straw like a hydrant This is our beauty, this is our moment Will you say I love you back from this Midwestern view? And we can warm each other in praises In the hills of sleet where we shared our first kiss your hair falls over my body like the stars tonight And magnetizing our hearts together in our newly found love. Let us birth the Winter Solstice in the death of leaves I really never cared much for all the scarecrows Anyways, they were nothing but a lie To keep the dying birds on the street I know, I know I can love you At least for awhile in this arctic shift as my heart beats lazily the colder it gets Well, do we escape together? Before all the tornadoes of Spring hunt for fresh meat to begin the hunt for a new shelter Share this breath with me a little longer before I have to think of the potential hazards. All of the Miles Between Us There are many miles between ideals and many indecisions. Between the straying women Riding new wheels and feeling weightless. Do I feel artistic, or just punch wildly and swing around to a phantom touch? How can I be me? When I am constantly feeling stalked by the shadows, the voices, and past scars the new wheels begin to break and roll down the road. I see you play the actress You play with the best of them Just call you Joan Crawford, Just call you Mrs. Hepburn I can't see myself in these mirrors past the steam there you may be Is it the lipstick or the lie? Just cradle me you are my melting candle Like a mind without sympathy Hear the wails in the air, I'm constantly in a crawl for you but you felt more secure by naked irises and secure by the many miles between us. On Rippling Streets and Possibly Dying Inhale, exhale, now uncertainty awoke or maybe i'm a splattered angel to the road. In feathers like a cardinal in hot August breath Burning away to the move of a wicked gravitational spin I'm on a rippling street, dust swirling like my head covered in an old business suit, damp and frail watching abandoned Subway trains moving once again. I see a 1940's traveling preacher on the corner. One moment he's for Jesus, the next he's in it for the flames. I stare into the hypnotism of a long walk to triumph I have to face the destruction of regret and neglect myself in cigarette smoke that wrestles the air - to the gray we all see in this converging heavens From this industrial sewage drains to the tobacco fields the trees lift from the ground funneling energy from the clouds. I'm on this rippling street And I think i'm lifeless a hex to the all the beauty of colour a hissing in my shoes they begin to race by you to get to me Do they see a man, a skeleton, or invisibility? And the Wolf Shakes In a camera's view I am the tortoise When hidden away I can be the hare With whistles, dry kisses, and dangerous fixes I can suddenly be the crushed worm. I feel the hierarchy of changing the wind cracks these castles to rubble And you dream of the vicious and you dream of the gentle warmth in the shelters when the wolf shakes. Eventually, the Winter will slip through Those cracks and eternally We feel we become the peasant's meal The bears begin knocking and Goldilocks is illuminated Always hiding like the scared child When it begins thundering the war sirens. The bullets, the bombs Squeezing like the boa even when we run The parades become eerie and the howling sounds like hell Tight and abusive, the frightening smiles and nods those demons drink in the rain and leave us all thirsty with endless clouds still bleeding. Imagine the harps and flirtations of the angels only to be tricked by the chivalry of the devil I see the spit of poison reflecting up - from the bottom of a wineglass. And God can be the illustrator when you are fearful when tasting of the bread and the Holy Bible is a straitjacket to whisper you back to sanity. These wars were made for men certainly not made for love the damages have painted a death, for the wash. Now the washing away. The floods finally have come. Wiping away the hoax of the drifters in these torrents to rebuild our trenches where we can desire to live again When will that wolf leave. will the sheep ever get to play? Leonard Cohen's Ghost To dance, dance, sway, just sway with all the Gods, the ghosts, the deities that we pray to. Restless orbs hovering through my bedroom. On the walls that they call home. In their wooden eyes and popcorn ceiling shedding I feel a leaky roof's carcass form an IV drip of falling rain On the bed sheets, on my cold Manhattan muscles with all the holiness, the prophets, and the seers - that surround Drinking the electricity from my blood. In my slumbers I see the hereafter In windows bonded by straps Paralyze my brain to a schizophrenic trap Patch myself back with apologies and prayers the Soul keeps straying to and from this thin layer between me and the concrete sky In this room lives the melancholia Reflections of Orion and all my visions, Judases, and the disease - in synthesis My bones fail, and muscles endlessly ache they crack and break 'til I cease to be Being an old man dressed in yesterday's fashion. I sleep in my suit, with another suit for pillows to cushion The opium that fills me begins to possess me when it becomes night. I may be left abandoned, yet you want to steal my soul. You reach from the floor and present my death as Christmas Day. I have your stains in my DNA, And your perversions scarred in my brain I looked to you during grief and hunger And you, the angel, the woman, the saint - the kiss Gave me a drink from my flask on the worst of days I retire away from your memory. Where can I find the safety again of family? In New York the rats know you by your name. And you gamble with them in Central Park Drink your coffee with the visions of Virgin Mary the herald angels we Hark! I begin to dream away a crystallizing of waterfalls the moving mountains on my deathbed calls. My children have all left the buzzing city I have grown skinny, skinnier every day with this beard always itching. The room feels like it's a melting paste. And I sketch all the martyrs, my family, and founding fathers And I pray to a wisp of light that shatters against the lamp post. In all of its fury, I meditate through this path I confess to a mass of angels lifting away the flames from my soul. I want salvation as I see the jetlines of Leonard Cohen's ghost. Smoke Halos in Endless Winters The infatuation with you was immediate You complimented me on my shirt Your tanned skin danced with the sunlight for the Summer As I sit in admiration for you in the crackling dirt. I infected myself, haunt myself with your routine. Day after day the ring on your finger seemed to be on display. How you cried in your loneliness and longing. And I wanted to be the shadow that meditates in your soul. In coffeehouses we roamed The same crowd of people we knew I wanted to draw you closer Your heart belonged frozen to a soldier's march in a sick hue of blue. Even when he screams You sat as the trophy on his shelf. There was a line of men like me some had love in their mind, others were just bawdy Many admirers left blushing at the parties and in the silence And in the New Year's trips I was hanging on to my sanity from the tip of your lips I wish mine were. And I would cry for your nomadic footprints That I lost and battled myself to find And every time I thought you have found clarity The green pebbles from the red, Then you became a borderline aurora My body thrown in the piles of dead, just another audit for the cemetery. You would come home in tears, a distance My arms still open many months for your embrace. After months of your endless nights and dark mornings The smoke halos above an Alaskan bay. I'd hope for the energy of my heart to be revived I wanted to charm your broken one from the ashes in your shoes. I would hint annoyingly trying to drag out a smile. And you would hide behind a mask of newspaper I would write you poetry, and I bled out my blues I would ask for a dance though I didn't know how I would gladly try even if my legs were be broken. If at the end you were the ultimate prize. I would've danced my tears to a drought I would've lifted you up above the clouds And touched the wings of the angels to revive us from the Earth's shutting crust And the younger years become a dusting. And full of those hearts stuck paralyzed. The strings of years form on my forehead A husband and a father And I know you are around I still feel the fighting of those ghosts I feel you are battling them also though the nomads walk begins to slow. The footprints of Winter now have a home. The Shrinks and Street Heroin From the morgue you seem restful, finally Your blonde hair, blue eye German swirls became languished From the battles of Berlin and Cologne You walk like the death of magic. The rain dissolves in your palms and fades Fall in the puddles of your narcissism and hatred your reflection as withered as your health the death of the superego and the icy stared pupils. The needles came from everywhere and you collected them all as if they had value and all your shrinks kept pushign you closer to the brink. Your fashion became flooded like the blood in the plunger. They inject the dye and lies And you swim in a coma through the streets - of this dying city. While all the boys would watch you like a sunset You quietly regress as the opium drips from the tap. Soon you befriend the devil But you say you hugged Jesus You've brought flowers for the enemies And you dreamt up an artistic sewer. There are weird, wicked & wonderful snails That lay on the concrete in your heart And they just want you to feed them the freedom From the points of lust in needles With their many injections and ejections. So let us travel to your voyage The withdrawals and we surround you like all the pneumonia Pounds, pounds your lungs Pounds, pounds your breath baby, baby, baby the palpitations, the scarring, the stench Living life like the jagged nails on a bench. become dispensable. Not bathing in oils anymore sleeping naked on the bathroom floor Your shrink now has an unlisted number No longer the fresh breeze in your decay of all art and poetry the mortality surrendered Permanently in my doorway is your dark shadow. An Ode to Tessa While in New York The juveniles gathered around your blinds They studied your silhouette to memory Dancing like Ann-Margret around the room The candles burning around a 1985 waterbed. On New York city nights one of the college boys in the alley Looking for a clue and a view You'd walk out slightly drunk, smiling at crowds of boys with eyes that were up to no good. Riding a green bicycle to the Jackson Hole your scent of sweet cigarette smoke and perfume, leads the path to a perfect follow Maybe I will come down and have a drink While you chat about the news to some hipster folks I see you flirting with them all. Everyone laughs until we bruise my heart just jumps like a petrified fish. I have to walk by and say a hello Although, there were more handsome faces in the shadows. I hope to at least be more hypnotic than the stained spoons - in this diner. You say "I am Tessa, but I believe you already know that" I introduced myself, she said "I've always liked your artsy hat" We drank coffee 'til our stomachs bled. And I was as shy as a detached bubble. You carried the conversations, lead my hand Picking flowers out of the cracked sidewalks near Brooklyn Lead my hand, as we joined silhouettes As the other jealous hustlers sat in the rain. Lead my hand, through other diners with scent of burnt coffee. Drinking our time away we would be catty, flirty & bitchy Tessa, you really enhanced my greed and need In nights I swayed with you Nights we cried into each other's chest Nights we drugged ourselves to nightmares Nights we laughed until the extra strangers left Now, in New York here I am Long distances between the walks in all the burroughs All the pigeons, drink at cold waters the Statue of Liberty looks plagued. Since my needs are old When you lead my hand, to the bars You lead my hand, by all the Harlem diamondbacks You lead my hand, to you breathing your last breath - on the back of my neck. You lived your life for many, but to yourself you hid away all your suicides. Featured photo/art by Geoffrey Wren
(c) Neel Trivedi
