The Wall (Dedicated to the West Memphis Three: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley Jr.)

The town constructed a wall
to block reason from their minds.
They believed themselves righteous,
safe from evil behind bricks of fear
and ignorance, because everyone
inside the wall knew that

Evil is the black t-shirts teenagers wear
and the metal music they listen to.
It’s Stephen King books, Wicca,
and those three juveniles
who didn’t quite measure up
to their one-size-fits-all mentality.
Particularly evil was a young man
who defiantly sought a truth they
all feared might infect them with
the inconvenience of free thought.

Wasn’t the murder of three little boys
an omen? On the big screen,
(Which, of course, is reality),
Damien walked among them,
Satan’s son, or near enough if you
kept your eyes tightly closed.
And the police knew that he butchered
those little boys, so why waste
time on the trivialities of fact or evidence?
After all, they had faith on their side,

faith in shoddy police work and bias,
the mortar and trowel of injustice.
Logic fights to creep through
the countless cracks in the foundation
of a wall, which penned up ‘the freaks’
as effectively as it sheltered a killer
whom they never bothered to find.

Big Skin

Drunk with lust and a need
to quench the thirst
welled up from recesses
of the night’s rhythm,
you didn’t consider
a woman with amoral desires;
too foolish to recognize pity,
you felt it necessary to expunge
the guilt of your sexuality.

I entertained no notion of strings
puppeteering a method to an end.
While there’s benevolence in roving hands,
without your need for delusion
I wasted no time
on empathy, schemes or love.

Then the moment:
our bodies wiped clean
of sweat and avarice;
the mask peeled away
from a little boy in big skin
waiting for an invitation
that would never come.

The Portal

Acquiescent, she sits back
on her heels awaiting
deliverance through
the portal of primal lust.

An embryo matured
at the gift of pain,
she is his agent of change.

swish-strike-sting
swish-strike-sting
swish-strike-sting

He etches angel wings
on the canvas of her flesh;
living art -- his animal
becoming more beautiful
with each lash.

swish-strike-sting
swish-strike-sting
swish-strike-sting

Omnipotent in the pride
of creation, the honor
entrusted,
he transmogrifies her
by nature’s dark kiss.

מ וו ף ף

Yes, madam, I am finished. My star has fallen. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce
- Benito Mussolini



Fortune often smiles on the
wicked, as it did on Napoleon,
Hitler and Mussolini for a time:
Megalomaniacs whose charisma
attracts and insanity perverts.

Equally, you mock with each
perfidious breath the sacrifice
of people brutalized by evil.
They gather at your feet,
sensitive and gullible,
who fell into your grasp.
You’ve skewered the hooks
into finer beings than you will ever be;
strung the lines and coerced
the marionettes in an elaborate farce.

Waterloo awaits, the bunker burns,
and when your rescuer comes
not even a gunshot will spare you
the retribution of the noose.

We Have Made The World Small

Stories told to our children
about the days before remotes,
microwaves and computers
are recounted to grandchildren
whose disbelief shadows faces
so incapable of awe or wonder,
they are radiant with pity.

If pity is to be our commodity
let us trade it for hope,
that while we were busy
abbreviating the world,
admiring its sophistication
and becoming isolated,
we recall that life exists
outside of our front door.

We surf the net, play tennis on wii
and overlook humanity
with a blink of each occluded eye.
Rather than uniting mankind,
sharing our music and art,
we have forsaken lyre and drum
to finger a deadlier HAARP.
We are maestros of destructive
instruments more resonant
than indifference.

Caramel Sin

The evening was a whirlwind -
we were all frenzied and taut,
bodies shaking and grinding
with none of those wasted moments
of precious and too little time.
Tomorrow would come, but tonight
my longing for you became a desire
to hold you close and press my lips
to your rich black-diamond skin.
I slipped my tongue into your wet
essence, delving into the dark
depths of your liquid delights.
My pulse quickened as your fluids
rushed over my palate
like a Jamaican waterfall
of melted creamy caramel sin.
I swallowed the first crescendo of
satisfaction and reached for you
again and again and again,
until my need was sated
and I switched to decaf.