Living in the Mind of the Alligator

Living in the mind

of the alligator,

I crunched down hard

on strings

that tied me down

to the underworld

as she grinned at me in my sleep,

tossing my brain,

back and forth,

oh so back and forth,

creating harmonies

from my miseries

that had a language

of their own.

My stinging head

lay somber and sober,

and an empathic stare

from a stranger

undressed me in my

well hidden despair,

understanding me more deeply

in that fading instant than

most people who pretend to know me well,

seems these solar flare moments

are occurring with gathering speed,

ticking backwards on a pinwheel.

Shrill screams

shattered windows,

glasses melted down

to their insides,

the mirror was the only ghost

who saw my tears,

heard my haunted moans

from the graveyard

while I danced the Charleston,

swung round and around

by the sly tombstones and trombones

who tried to get me drunk

so I would take them home

to fuck and leave quickly

with the guilt stained to their faces

in the middle of the dawn

who draped itself on our skin

without a whisper

or any explanation.

As the black and blue butterflies

flit to and fro

in front of my hindsight,

the only patterns

that seemed to repeat

were the reaper’s raspy tones

skipping on the phonograph,

and the steam that

enjoyed soaking and clutching

my windows

in the early yawning morning

when I took my youngest brother

to school

so he wouldn’t have

to ride the sticky seated

yellow jacket bus

with its scissor sting occupants,

bumping and smashing

into each other with hormones

and vengeance.

Though I tried to

choke down my insidious pain,

it seeped out of my aching pours

anyway,

not giving a downtrodden damn

or waiting for permission,

alchemy taking tea

with the monsters

I slept with,

watching the people

who I had been there for,

time and again,

wiping their tears away

with my bleeding hands,

they then to leave me all alone in my

retching,

howling,

sorrow,

to hitchhike back home

without even a hint of compassion

on their vacant faces,

just cold stone staring back at me.

So instead of waiting around

for you to be done with your cigarettes,

your lie stained teeth,

your liquored up false promises and

fake adorations,

I wandered away weary by myself,

talking with

the sky spirits,

singing to the tree limbs

in their waking hours,

mouthing words

to the water

flowing down

my temperamental skin,

praying with my face to the earth

in hoping reverence

that grief will leave me be,

even for just a breath,

so I can rise up

with the moonlight

in holy ecstatic pleasure

to forget who I am. 

Paint Me Devil

I felt wrecked and no land in version vision, that I could see. I could not save you, stop you, dress and impress you with fanfare or erotica. I gave the carnivale up to someone else, too much to ask and demand. Nevermind the mess ups, the past and future. Life isn’t stretching out before all of us- be glad to live at all. Staring in rooms with spirals floating,

 I listened to the hit-list spoken out in tongues of serpent mirth, old languages that most didn’t even remember. Ancient civilizations wrapped around a great sphere of knowledge, such as ours but higher in the atmosphere, the planes become in-material and so do materials. Leave behind the feature pictures and the feathers, just bellowing out of sound and sight. No fear- this is the animal to watch for, tear the eyelids out your eyes before asking you what you can learn from this, if you can learn from this. Whatever, move on.

            You got to goddamn stand up for yourself. Don’t let this manhole let you down over and over, only bloody wrangled writhing talk. No action. Monsters can stay in their fucking closets, for just a moment while you calm down and figure out the next move before dawn reels down on us again, the future was not preset. I will not wallow, sink into desperate mountains of shame and pity.

 I will write and challenge you death and suicide snipers, carvers out of some manifesto in the sky that’s got nothing to do with me. Throw down those rains and fierce sensations of the lame and dying: I will not wake up screaming. I will stand up and stay awake. Given in to the raven apprenticeship, I depart flying and forgiving.

            I stepped sideways into the alleys of the damned, fog drowning and stammers in the dark and dank. Pieces torn off like a bone to a dog. I saw you marked figures on all the doors of the entrance to the angels’ atlas. Let’s us keep up the loudless hauntings howls to the hierophant. We will be heard through sobbings and tortures of the mind that I know most but not all of the story. 

I was glossed with glitter and sandpaper, harnessed to the falcon that drives them on without the sound of our warnings. You dare not speak and realize that you are alone. This is a terrifying thing but grace came with the surrender to the otherness that we all are in each other, I suppose.

            Paint me devil, I can see it all and still bounce back inside the tent, the river running over us in the depths of the ice inferno. I was from the North, I can withstand in the bit torrent frostbite. Sucked through a coward, I find myself on the other divide of the natural world,

 ripping around through bodies and saving what I can of the innocence that was once there in you, stay bright and beautiful despite the sins ya see around you. Bastards that are the ninth gate, snag and slip through keyholes of the underworld easier than I without irreverent magic that forked my tongue too much.

            We shall ignite the hosts, this lady jesus is not going under into the stryofoam liquor dependent costs, fairs too expensive for me. Foster the care of another was digging deep but the inside brighter and the chaos swifter than the rains of Nashville, poor souls laying on the earth, watering the neighbors of deep fertile ground. Death played over my head a lot in the tides such as these.

            In the theatre of distraction, I lifted the angel to requiem- ghost in the spaces between the bricks and the alley floor. I reminiscent of the shades and beckonings of earlier years, months past for future reference helpful when the fires spark imagination and therapy. 

Restless and tired I kept to the feelings of instinct, discovery of tame and vengeful pathways to the mountain even before you started to climb up to look down on the rest of us just trying to make it fucking by, just barely. Untangle me and tie me back together, I suppose if you can- even if I am able anymore.

            further down this assembly line, I climb up to the electrical tower of dissonance and pathology. I can’t be hideous and venom it spat out to everyone around, I will shake that circus and lighting off me. Give me strength, get me a light and a swamp lanterns erect and I shall descend with you

 into the funk and drop gorgeous and gorgon-like. Medusa will laugh at the end of the day, no worries. I will not be stone in any form or other, watchtower in the night sky is lit up glitter and sunshine and moon leaves to go for a smoke and a shag.

            Mosh pit up the staircase to watch the chandelier fall, along with the guillotine and its saints surveying the disaster scene, deciding whether or not the life lost was worth bringing in help or support. Sincerity was for the faint of heart but necessary when the game came down to death and serious shit was going down. It was briefcase of identities that was burned at the beginning of the year

 and now I am no idea where I am anyone. Strangers give me hesitance for replication and divination. I divined out of you circles and speeds of light, former selves and incandescence. Fit me awake and notice that I can only be me, even if I am in disguise: trumpet ears, wings from another mother, griffin like sight and grief, chess playing was exploding my mind, tearing me to shreds. So many options and daily specials, I ended up just crying and going home, rocking back and forth in my carpet with the dirty floored dance steps and curves of my hips, round and round, twisting to dawn and daylight. 

            Wasteland and archery, I gave heathen pleasure a sense of purpose and approval. Profane me wrong about you, give in and let’s see how far we can do. make it out to step on the moon, I dare you. Open up your virtue and innocence and give me a taste. Keep with me now, steady as she wanders. 

Heretic Entertainer speaks...

Heretic entertainer,
my occupation was dirtied
by the barbershop next door with blood on his floor.
Most people see the smoke and say nothing,
the furnaces lit all night long.

Violent entertainers have joined the circus freaks,
the pythons drift to sleep,
lulled by a ceremony of rituals.

under water floating was an art formula,
I saw mathematics in my rear window,
every day of this fucking road.
God save the queen, I am getting tired.

Let us candor one last melody before the departed grave.
Rise up against the sun,
breathing and haunting our realms again,
once over and backwards,
giving into the thought of night and being here.

safety forgotten in the tumult,
we lay down for our "sins", I suppose,
if we must.

I don’t want to though and I don't see my mistakes as sins anyway,
they help me learn,
and remember to not forget, as it were.

Listen to your own heartbeat,
try and fix the history if you want to
but I would focus separate and within, on the now.
The water is getting close to the sand
and we are tuning into this perception,
this channel is changing and we are moving
and sinking with it.
Keep close and breathe it out.

Secrets and dynasties are not going to aid us forever,
We need new language and resistance
to serpentine fluids injected
into the brains of our ancestors.

I can urge you forward if you care to drink
unmarked bottles,
speak in wicked tongues as saints of the underworld.

I am an empath to the so-called demons,
listening to their haggard tales and tears,
lay soft in my lap
and I will stroke your hair
until the screaming in your head
slows to a stop.

while the bastards in the belfry
are howling out for help,
I cannot just let them suffer.
I take the inferno staircase alright,
no harm comes to us if we remember
who we really are,
light mists and angels alike,
though fallen to the crust of the earth,
we are still golden.

The underworld was coming up....

The underworld was coming up through the floorboards as I watched a PBS special on the Knights Templar and Kate Bush. Was it respect they demanded, from under the ground, or was it just a tithe, a relic to find and kill over, slaying children in the street, beating the night with blood stained wrist watches, that will be burned to the god of poverty and guilty conscious. I can’t seem to slide out into the dark to watch the crucifixion of the seventh seal, a dripping wax candle stands in the middle, chanting about the end of the world and cursing the light and the son, the prophet of the chessboard. Screams from the women who’ve lost their birthing womb, run through with a spear in the side, hung on the cross of “third world countries.” The feathers are falling, falling off my wings that force me to see myself in the mirror: I will look into the glass, shattered and fragmented, and smile with content that the world is not perfect and I can only sleep with my eyes open. Another casket walks by and sighs, listening to the rain that falls above him, as I sleep near this cold stone epitaph that keeps him chained to the earth, he is being dragged down by the inferno and sarcasm hides the pain that he feels.
- Megan Coleman