BTWIAILWY

Wishing for life These others Intercept us, sky
 But do not scan

It's over the heft and sway
Our bodies, exposed
All of the blue the blood the city the guts it's guts are spilled

And this lasting moment it fades and dies and is reborn and fades again and again
Your simple prayer is enough
Your craving
Frozen it's a large enough world

Standards of Void

Darling satellites in stasis in waiting the last ice floes coming to bear the last numbers called are called

Desperate engines pull your weight pull your hands off the light shines dark and deep it shines

Be awake-aware
tell symptoms to the processors
leave the brook calm as when you found it
These young locations sing to us
the masthead
the missive
the

Into the Out-of

Desperate Miners
How black and blighted
How centered in the last cold pockets
How did it happen

More crawlers came from the north provinces
They heard the satellite transmissions
The cells spat out the news and
they came

Fathers and brothers
Fellows and scholars
Deep searchers
Come to search

Their heavy and lumbering machines took them mile after mile
They sat and ate cold and hard biscuits as rations
They conserved their water
knowing there may not be enough of it clean enough for consumption upon arrival
They laughed together and traced lines in one another's faces to the soft red and blue lights of their instruments
They laughed

A hard shout down the shaft their brethren sat
Thinking of their lungs
and how to fill them against the crush of giving up
They finished the last of their rations hours ago
They sat and did not laugh and grimaced to think of water
fit to drink
And they had none

So they sat in the day's night
Dawn came above and did not shine below
And mothers and sons and daughters wept at the barricades

The crawlers came
but they were too tired to cheer, the onlookers
Where a glimmer came from the dust and soot
Factories and the betterment of their lives stood over them
still at work
uncaring

A plan came and the iron machines came to a point
they converged at the problem's heart and pulverized the ground
They shook the roots of the industrial town's grey giants
But no response came

"We heard them above, not knowing the way of things", the one survivor spoke as they pulled him from the ground
and mothers and sons and daughters fell to their knees or wept into one anothers clothes
Threadbare mourners collapsing into each other
A galaxy or 300 spinning into and onto themselves
But she stood there and didn't care
She saw only the one she loved
Black and blighted
Crippled enough from the damp and closed confines of earth
and spoke his name

Shipped

Dear alarms and gun-rememberers
Calvin's fountain at the center of town
Messages from the scouts of Black and Red
A toy message

Plastic believers
How you stood, packed at the show
Will you show patience or bare your teeth
Sentenced to the Outside

Headphone drugs all about the living room floor
all over
My great, great uncle was a war hero
and his strong soul drifted off
like smoke

Steal Zero

On lists we reside
Quiet and burning men watch us
The two of us, one-hundred of us. All of us.

"We know where you work and what you had for supper. We know when your wife drops the kids off for school and what drugs she uses."

Keepers of logic and latitude - our forefathers and our heroes
Our saviors and the carousel
Protect us through prayer and predict our mood swings

"We have determined that the waxing and waning of the moon has a subtle effect on many of our citizens. For a select few, it has a great and far more visible physical and psychological effect."

Trespassers and neighbors
You are warned
you are lost
you are us
you are gone

In the Beginning/The End

You are my church
I, the beast in the tall grass - watching, lost, searching
Perhaps I am a hunter-cat, or a hound
Perhaps your stars light up and shine like Heaven's offices

Night breaks, it explodes and crumples into something you can throw away
For all of the dark pasts and unkind words/deeds
We are here
I want to look into your eyes, deep and of destiny
I want to whisper "Finally", with no words

Down the road, I traveled
My feet, bare and worn to agony kept moving
Was it will or want, I cannot say
My mind, feral
My tongue hanging from my mouth
A song of exhaustion sung from deep in my empty belly

How, then, it pleased me to find familiar streets and nooks
They were hazy, but my mind and heart knew them
"I haven't been here in forever, or ever" I convinced myself
and it was true
My DNA dreamed of it, before eyes formed or hair grew
My heart longed for it, before fingers or claws or fangs came to be

I end where I am meant to
A stream of code that begins with the beginning
is corrupted and askew throughout the labor lines and intimate functions
but, as it was meant to be, ended in your arms and under your canopy of hair

Much as a child weeps for its lost pet
Perhaps a hound, or a cat
It finds its way back to them
The magnetics in its head scanning the starscape; Heaven's offices
It walks down unknown/known ways, looks up to the light's ceiling, heavy with air
It calls out a gutteral sound
and doors, hearts, eyes all open
It is called-to and comes
It smiles through hurt that is no longer hurt
looks to its Master and sings to her
"I am Your beast"