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he runs not for the finish line
for he knows the setting sun is
only a melting chat between dark and light
between dreamy sleep and wakeful flight

his eyes tell a tale not of what he has seen
but of what lives in the space between
what can be and what cannot
and what can be sensed, but not taught

when we speak to him of earthly ways
and our conscious counting of finite days
his eyes can only partially conceal
what dreams we are about to steal

our chiseling chatter is meant to teach
but his drifting dreams are beyond our reach
and one day soon he will slowly awake
to the sorrowful sound we are forced to make
when we cunningly convince him his race must end
and that all his dreamy glory was just pretend
COP: You killed a homeless old lady in a wheel chair  
KID: I know, I was there…  

he grabbed her
stabbed her  
slashing her again and again,
downward through hot flesh to cold bone  
like she was some mattress filled with money
in her pockets were slips of paper
with hopeful, hopeless scribbles,
cigarette butts and
two dollars and seventy-six cents,
all in change,  
which he exchanged for Skoal
or maybe…Red Man  
the **** colored juice from this bounty
dripping from his grinning mouth
when the cops cuffed him  
and shoved him into their cruiser  

he confessed, over and over  
like he wanted to have one confession
for each slice of the blade  
for each wound he made
for every other silent sin he saw
an acknowledgement
of his petty part  
in the fall  
he wanted her last sight
to be of him shutting her eyes,
muting her cries
to him, luring lullabies    

the judge would not put him to death,
though he would have liked to  
even with his own hand, he mused  
for who could be so joyously jaded  
at the slaughter of another  
instead
he again asked, why?

KID: I made ME immortal in her sight
JUDGE: Your eyes will close a final time as well
and nobody will be there to tell
KID: I know
JUDGE: Do you?
Based on a true story of a 21 year old who murdered a homeless woman in a wheel chair--he took her change and bought chewing tobacco--the deranged young man said he wanted to be the last thing she saw...
we shared a camel
after my thumb stopped you
I took the first drag
before I handed it to you
you trusted my spit enough to share
and my road look enough
for me to be there,
in your new Olds Eighty-eight

you
had just come back,
from there
I was on my way,
I did not ask if that was why
your right hand had only *******
and a thumb, though you told me
of trying to close an APC hatch
and the AK-47 round that kept you
from doing magic tricks

when our smoke was half gone, we passed
the dying neon of a long dead bar
safe from its stench in your new smelling car
was then you asked
if I had “anything else to smoke”
a line from our riddled anthem,
we sang like nursery rhyme

I had what I had stuffed in my socks
since thumbs attracted cops as well
as wounded warriors in shiny new rides
I piggy lit the joint with the *** before
I crushed it in your fresh ash tray
now we were sharing our deepest breaths
and whatever else we could not forget

the **** was gone by the time
we reached the last city lights
and we, in our flying chariot,
zipped into the black desert night, it
was then your demons began to howl
maybe it was a full moon that called them out
to ride on its beams into the starry sky
where they could dance with other devils
and gods who had forsaken them, and you

I did not understand your moans, your tears
or the song you played on the eight track
that chanted about freedom which could not be bought or sold
or to whom you spoke when you wailed
you were sorry, sorry again and again,
I only knew they were ghosts
spirits kept at bay by the light of day
but there to haunt you in the dark
“Reggie, Big Mike and Cleveland”
all silent as you begged them
to forgive you for some simmering sin
I could not understand,
(not then in the desert dark,
though one day I would beseech other ghosts
to let me off the hook as well)

your cries did stop when you turned
onto a rutted desert road,
where you put the pedal to the floor
and the rocks pocked the undercarriage
like machine gun fire

you stopped,
and popped out the eight track
a half mile from highway 54
I lit another camel in the synovial silence
your tears kept streaming down your face
but you no longer called out to the ghosts, perhaps
left behind you on that black highway

I don’t know if they spoke to you
when I handed you the smoke, you did
look around, as if someone was there
before reaching over to open my door…

I did not ask why you were leaving me
with the moon and the stars and the sand,
so far from the lights and sound, or why
I could not feel my feet when
they touched the ground, the last thing
I saw was your dust filling the rumbling air
and the orange glow of the camel
flying through the blue night
**one of many late night rides I took on my thumb
I am old, though
I still cling to chains,
wires that hold this old bridge together  
but one day the bridge, and I  
will fall into the water, and
not see the sun again    
I am old, but still tight,
though I no longer shine  
chemistry’s master is time
to me an illusion, but those
who look at me are not fooled  
I am old, and when I begin to unwind,
any unknown calibrated moment,
will I make graceful grunts
or squeal
like a locomotive’s brakes
piercing eardrums of those
who did not know I was there
until I was twisted off  
I am old, and one day
in your rusting future  
I will fall into the water,
and not see the sun again
poem will not make much sense without viewing the image that inspired it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18878095@N07/9877042005/
he thought the border
was a line, between two spaces,  
two tongues
or
a no man’s land  
where imagined demons
slithered through the night  
or,
when dreaming,
a door, to another world,    
yet still a flatland

but he dreamed little  

and
when I told him
the border  
was the slit eye of a fish    
immersed in waves without words  
a place where sound
could be tasted  
and a scent seen  
as clearly as scarlet sky  
and light inhaled  
as a suckled symphony  
when I told him this
he asked what two worlds
this border defined  
as if my words
had been heard by his ears
rather than tasted
as the sweetest lies
maybe one has to have taken hallucinogenic drugs to get this mystical one
 Dec 2013 Randal Webb
AJ
Purpurowy
 Dec 2013 Randal Webb
AJ
I'm cold cold cold.
My parent's house is not the escape I was looking for.
I lock myself in here without the heat to prove a point.
What point, you ask?
Well, uhhhh, I don't know.

I dug out an old sweatshirt from 6th grade basketball.
It's still too big.
If  I stretch my arms out towards the lack of sky
My tiny, chubby, baby hands peek through.
They are very cold.
I wonder if our babies will have my hands or Javin's.

I could never be a communist.
The theoretical kind of communism, of course.
I am very territorial.
well not really… though I told
every grinning green Catholic soul
at my school I did that and more

I did smell the wine on her breath
and watch her trip into the trailer  
her gown hitting the floor  
before she closed the door  
her body as white as the fake snow  
spitting onto the set, and
as cold perhaps

I was sixteen and she was fifty one  
this was my one and only, her last,  
flick, not fling, though I would have
cut off an arm for it to have been so  
not the arm she touched  
in our one immortal scene together…  
her electric hand,  
all the blond hairs on my forearm standing at attention  
me wondering if the camera caught
their helpless vertical veer  

it mattered not, most of the scene
landed not on the screen, but
the cutting room floor, my two lines slashed to one  
my 48 seconds with her shaved to 22

I did not cry when I heard she died,
twenty months later, but my lie seemed soiled  
once she was in the ground
I confessed to Father Ryan  
he was silent when
I asked what to tell  
the fools who believed  
the dying star lay with me  
simply because she said,  
“Call me Vivien, not Ms Leigh”
Early.
I became the bottom of a shoe. Worthless, unwarranted, but there, needed.
Rubber and worn, worn away to the thinnest part, and still used.
Hands became words, and hugs became extinct, tears became invisible, the 'childhood' was erased.
Diabetes became my mother, known as rejection, and depression, her twin, known as rage.
Insulin and Fluoxetine became my equally demanding toddlers; I was feeding a family of 6 at the age of 8.
Later.
I watched my brother become a tortured child, in his sleep - the sound of his waterproof sheets would keep me awake, as i lay worried that his screams were words he could not utter at his age.
I watched my sister grow cold as she watch her house burning down around her, and crying tears at the loss of her childhood, her eyes burned at me.
As i looked in the mirror, when i cried,  i would flush the toilet just to hear what it feels like to be washed away.
Disappeared down the drain.
I shrunk 4 inches in 4 years, one inch for each bottle of poison, that said 'drink me'.
I shrunk 4 inches in another 4 years for every word that said 'eat me'.
I shrunk so that I could not grow, up.
Later still.
I became broken, hard to 'fix'.
I became lost, without a cause.
I became the rebel, odd-one-out.
Family grew fractured, broken mirrors lay on all our floors, that we skirted around, lest we should bled it all out, what had happened.
Relationships broke, one after another, after, another, after, another, after....
Faces lost feeling, words became laws, feelings became problems, love became, raw and unused.
We dissipated, dissolved, into a million pieces of broken, into the world, held together by very thin words of 'family'
Now.
I am not a child anymore.
It's time to be heard.
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