HellCats & Halos, and Poetry Fragments

DIRECTIONS:  The first few pages are mainly remnants of surviving dialogue and thought trains from a nearly 3/4 complete and now almost entirely lost book penned years ago, entitled HellCats & Halos.

      Triple asterisks on either side of a title mark the beginning of a new section, as in the list below.  The pages that follow include, though not in this particular order:

***  -- Reductio Absurdum, a collection of pieces I did for a Haiku Heaven Challenge I was frankly pestered into writing by a friend and fellow poet, after yet another attempted intervention related to my addiction to appalling over use of adjectives, issues with incredible, nigh-impossibly long-windedness, and unfortunate habit of (mis)using commas, semicolons and tenuously connective phrases to create monstrously lengthy, tanker trucks of text, straining both the attention span and sanity of readers, whilst performing death defying feats on a perilous tightrope walk high above the realm of the dreaded run-on sentence, with no net in sight, just that ooone comma too many, one slippery misstep between me and utter literary disaster! 
(We'll take the above, a ton of mostly unnecessary, self-indulgent twaddle arranged in, you guessed it, a single, likely impossible by rule of grammar *and* law of physics, sentence as a case in point.)  ***


***  -- an assortment of poems that, while finished pieces in themselves, (as finished as my work ever is, with my tendency to endlessly tweak and tinker with the tiniest of details) feel, to me, more like snapshots- of memory, of emotion, a moment in time- captured, yes, but in quick sketches, without the same effect of a fully complete painting. That said, the fact that I saved them at all means that even I, my most vicious critic, found *something* in them that captured the facet of my soul from whence they came.  ...or I just thought some of the phrases were snappy.  Who knows?  ***

***  -- And, of course, my Poem Fragment Repository, compiled of bits and pieces of poetry that never made it into full works, or never felt properly finished to me, but pulled at me enough to merit being saved.  ***       



***  HellCats & Halos  ***

"I confess, sometimes I've wondered if it wouldn't be easier to believe it.  To let myself deceive myself, as it were.  It must be sweet to really believe that there's some purpose to everything that happens, don't you think?  But no, I can't stand the idea of hiding behind a lie.  And doesn't that mean it's nothing but pride?  They always used to tell me, Girl, beware of making decisions in pride or you will repent in sorrow..."
( Girl, Pt 1 of H&H )

            "Do any of us ever really forgive ourselves for things?  Or do we just add each guilt to the last, to the ever-darkening pile of atrocities to plague us during our three o'clock in the mornings; when reality is bleak and brittle and Time is a monstrous sentient being pressing against the cracks of sanity, purposefully crushing everything we hold on to, to get us through our days?  You tell me to forget as though it's a voluntary choice, as if it were ever up to me at all.  I tell you now, it's not.  Memory is capricious, Ki, and ninety percent of what goes on inside people's heads is none of their fucking business."
( Girl,  Pt 1 )

"Don't you know by now that trust is the fastest way to break your own heart?"
( Girl, Pt 2 )

            "Nonsense," she scoffed, slumping back in her seat.  "The past is never the past at all, you know that as well as I.  It waits, betimes it sleeps, but never dies.  Until the day we make our own journey to the end of the path, some part of us will ever and always be trapped in that room, screaming, bleeding and begging to die.  No, there's no hope for it, my friend.  Memory is but an immortal parasite of the soul, a pitiless phoenix rising from the ashes of our pain to immolate hope and happiness wherever it dares to spawn.  You'll never convince me otherwise." 
            There was a long silence, broken only by the faint whirring of the machine still working uninterrupted in the corner.  Finally Kieran cleared his throat and murmured, "I'll write that up as a 'No thank you,' then, shall I?" 
            "That's what I've always loved about you, Ki," she replied, her tone dry enough for him to reflect that the unwary might well end up envious of the bleached and crumbling remnants of bone still engaged in slow bake outside the front door.  "You're just so damned perceptive."
( Girl & Kieran, pt 2 )

    Physically she was delicate, feminine.  Her features, taken at, if you'll forgive the phrase, face value, could've been made out of porcelain.  But no one, from first glance, ever thought of her that way.  Her slightly mismatched eyes were cold and unreadable.  Far from a window to the soul, something about them seemed opaque, though they weren't; as though there were a stone wall just behind her gaze to keep people out.  Her features were expressive, she gave the impression of being able to show what she was thinking with just the slight movement of an eyebrow or quirk of her lips, but as someone who made the mistake of looking closer once remarked, it was like the expressions just played across the surface of her face like reflections off of a mask, none of them went more than skin deep.
    Kieran wondered sometimes if it were really to keep people out so much as to keep in the coiled fury he sensed in her sometimes, never expressed.  Because the thing was, when you spent so much time looking into her strange eyes, you learned to see more, farther.  He didn't see the blank, frosty this-far-and-no-farther stare in the blue and green, not anymore.  But other times he wondered if it weren't just another mask, another layer of protection that didn't really mean anything at all, another fakeout from the onion girl.  A "customer" who'd been frozen by her glare for the first time had been more straightforward, calling her the nightmare version of a Dresden doll.  The Boar had laughed with the man at the time, that way he had of making people think their words were the funniest he'd ever heard, but she'd gone into the Quiet Room for a week after that one.
    He'd assumed at first that she was the way she was because of where they were, a natural enough assumption, perhaps, but one he now believed to be false.  Their hell was a million miles away now, and nothing inside her seemed to have changed.  He opened his mouth to say as much, but thought better of it.  He knew exactly what her response would be.  He could hear it now, spoken in her usual clipped but always slightly impatient accent.  "Should it have?  You think you've left your innocence behind, don't you?  But you're still hauling around your naiveté.  No.  We carry our hell inside us, always.  Sometimes hell is memory; memory is the past, neverending."
( Kieran, part 2 of H&H )

            He thought about a lot of things, as he stood there in the snow and watched it burn. Broken glass strewn over a red carpet, and a miasma of decaying roses. The color of blood at night. Saints, and how you could always tell them in old art by the halo of light surrounding them. And he thought about her. Had she made it out, yet? Was she free? He knew what she'd say to that. We're none of us, ever, free. He remembered the look in her eyes that last horrible night and thought for the first time, maybe she was right.
            Right about him, about the world, about life. Maybe none of it was worth suffering through. Maybe there was no point to any of it. It wasn't a cosmic accident, or a massive joke with no punch line. It just was, and it was suddenly intolerable for him to contemplate. How could she stand it, believing what she did? How did she make it through, minute by minute, knowing that living didn't mean anything at all?
            "You know how, when you're a kid, you believe you're special, you don't really think about it, it's something you just know? You're not like anyone else, you're immortal, and the world revolves around you. Then you get older, and (most people) lose that, they learn, there's a whole world full of people who think the same. Well, this is like that, Ki. There's millions of people out there who believe that life has a purpose, that we all exist for a reason. They may even think they know what the reason is, but if they don't it doesn't worry them any. It doesn't change that deep down belief. I just... grew up, that's all, and realized that it's no more true than that childish egotism. And, really, no less self-centered."
            God, she made it sound so simple, so easy to accept. And where was she, now that she'd shattered his world, and left him unable to deceive himself with the comfortable lies she scorned? Gone, gone like everyone else he'd ever loved. Before he'd even been able to say the words. Before he'd really realized...
            Something deep in the blaze snapped and fell, sending a crash of sparks up into the cold night air. He shook his head as if trying to derail this train of unsettling thought. It was done. He could go on now, leave this place of blood and tears and live. If he could remember what that entailed. But his feet didn't move. He stood, staring into the flaming wreck of the place where he'd known his never ending agony and only happiness, and wondered what time it was in Dundalk.
( Kieran, conclusion )





***  Poem Fragment Repository  ***


Frag. #15 -- [ Clone: You Are Not Unique ]
hello there, lover
its been a long time
but I seem to remember you
were wearing a different face
the last time I saw you.
I'd recognize you anywhere, though...
that smirk in your eyes is unmistakable,
can't hide the ego rising in your smile
just one thing I don't understand:
if I'm nothing, then why are you so
pleased with yourself for possessing me?



Frag. #17 -- [ emptiness ]
staring at the ceiling
trying in vain to sleep
while painfully conscious of
the empty space beside me in
my bed like the awareness of
a long-since amputated limb
but these phantom pains stem
from my torn, battered
bruised, but somehow still
hopeful, heart.



Frag. #20 -- [ Note to Self ]
Tell me, Darling
did you honestly think I was that gullible?
You tell me these lies
every night when we're in bed.
I listen, I don't argue.
But every day that we continue
to live this way, proves you wrong.
You tell me we're normal,
as good as anyone else.
All I ever see in your eyes
these days is helpless confusion.
I grow to despise the sight of you
in the mirror.
I wish you'd just go away.



Frag. #26 -- [ Snoopy ]
Tired
of being your
ego's safety net, son
but I can kill
that fantasy with
five little words:
'I don't love you anymore'.



Frag. #29 -- [ Parasite ]
A need, a disease
Lying awake
It feeds on every last thread
Of all that I have left of me



Frag. #47 -- [ Evil Inertia ]
I can't fix the world for you
Until you tell me why
Yours has gone up in flames
I've got a picture here of Hell
With my sinner’s name on it



Frag. #49 -- [ Midnight Carousel ]
...to die for, but now
I'm living for nothing but;
everything I could ever want,
right here at my front door,
but... what's going on in the back, love?
oh, what-- tell me, who's crawling out the back? Love? ...love..?



Frag #54 -- [ AmericanMade ]
Nothing succeeds like excess and greed;
buy me another Porsche, I think I'm starting to feel something.
Make a scene,
keep it up, baby,
you know what I need.
Cocaine and propane,
my two favorite soul-stains;
wind me up and watch me move,
just another Stepford clone with nothing to live for,
and everything to prove.





***  Sketches  ***


[Never Enough; a Fool's Incessant Trust]
You're not alone in your head now,
I'd bet a million bucks,
and I've got a lump in my throat
that's been choking me for months.
Tell me something, sweetheart,
when did it start to go south?
When did my lips begin to taste like ashes on your mouth?
The last of my weary spirit dies as I realize
I've become the poster child for everything that I despise.



[Everything I Need]
Sadistic, twisted,
flickering
traces of
self-hatred /
don't blink or you'll miss it.
Holding it down with both hands /
getting my legs under me so maybe I can stand
again. I see hope / but it's once again false.
There's no getting past those walls /
and I just don't think she wants much of my / all
I can be is me
and all I can see
is lies and deceit.





WALKING DEAD,  (Owed to the)

...when the days turn to summer
the nights get so long
and sleep is my enemy
running from memories
masked as dreams

looking back to a past
that doesn't discriminate
in its destructive and somber rites
sacrificial lamb to
wounds that never healed

i love him and he's more than enough
so why do my thoughts
in all their distracting inevitability
constantly turn to
that which is dead and gone

i watched you bury it myself
and lit a candle for all my hopes
as you murdered them
and left us both... behind.








[Phoenix or Failure?]

Twenty-five years since I first felt the flames.
Always burning, but never receiving the resolution of consumption.
Twenty-five to life, but I never could decide
if it was a sentence or a testament, cowardice or strength.
I'm different things on different days,
hour to hour,
I change my skin, rearrange my brain.
But every shift still carries the same pain,
I'm still waiting to be saved,
figuring out my next play.
Twenty-five to life, still trying to figure out the rules of the game.
Out of sync, forever strange,
surrounded by blissful ignorance, innocence unstained.






Starstruck (in progress)

Not all stars shine in the night
Indifferent light, winking from a cold and distant height.
These formed of sun, glinting off of tears
I see welling in the rearview mirror,
Burning the heart of me to desperate ashes
As you sit in the driver's seat, holding the matches.






[ Broken Mirrors ]
the air in here today, it feels oh-so-familiar
your frozen (in)decisions; irresponsible condition
my yesterday's reflected in your eyes
a fatal collision; her heart and your fear
fleeing past the point of forgiveness,
you're just another broken mirror.






[ Racoon City Refugee ]🔑
Woke up again, just before noon
With supernovas burning in my eyes
And your ghost still in the room.
That time you asked if I ever slept,
I couldn't properly express;
It's not the sleep that I dread and flee.
It's the quiet agony upon waking;
When the entity that is We,
With a flicker of an eyelid and
the end of a dream-
With a vanishing worse than melodrama and death-
We simply cease to Be.




[ A Blur Beneath the Tide Line:  Wash "Me" Away ]
Sometimes, this is what I fear you see,
When you look and tell yourself you love all that is me.
A flash, a blur, an image incomplete;
Something that, if viewed too near, just falls to pieces
under the magnification of expectation-- debris
On the ground between your feet.




[ Jekyll & Hyde:
Around & Around We Go ]
Here we go again,
You've got me all tied up,
Already-terminal sense of hope: dried up,
While you lie-lie-lied yourself all the way up
To the clouds in my now always-stormy sky,
Forever DenyDenyDeny your crimes
Leaving me lost, broken, dead to the world--
Why??
Tell me I'm good enough, just to watch my
Last chance at love and happiness die.
Stamp out my last lingering vestige of self worth,
And so disingenuously "wonder" why I cry,
But remain deaf to my pleas
To rescue or release you and me...
Put simply:
I want off this traitor's ride,
Out of a cheating contract I never signed.
Let me go, or bring us back to life,
Jekyll and Hyde.








[ Song of Ophelia -- continual work in progress ]
~* the paradoxical despair of unspoken words
a poet's dreams, a lunatic's tears,
deceptive, addictive and wonderful, despondent and absurd
a life sentence, both blessing and curse,
I am one born forever hearing
the piercingly seductive siren Song of Ophelia *~




[ Phoenix In Progress:  (Butterflies Need Not Apply) ]
Watching HD flashbacks behind my eyelids
Running film of all the different skins I've sat in
& shed, the same soul always struggling within
All the different people that I've been
Beating wings against glass, thick with thirteen hundred pains
Memories three or four lifetimes since
Conflagrated, half a blink from fine to flames
Burned, consumed, down to the ground- no rescue- then I rise up again
Forever headed home with no hint to where or when
No direction, no clues, no map reference
Hence, I abide, to everything I have lost, cling
And albeit scarred wing to wing, laceration, mutilation; all soul-deep, even down to the scratches
Never reaching a finale, not a failure, but a phoenix
Who will never be content with ashes.

Watching HD flashbacks, behind my eyelids...





[ Lethe:  (Amnesia Is Bliss) ] (REBIRTH edit)
You persist in perceiving this in all the wrong ways
This in itself, was never actually the disease
If overdosing on trauma can be considered malaise
Then it was keeping the closest to defeating the monstrous repeats of every tragedy
Locked up sound, deep underground, begging that this time the graves go unfound
And as you come back around,
Pick me up and put me down,
Just leave me bleeding on the icy ground-
I'll dress my wounds with used shrouds
and stolen hotel towels.
With even just the echoes of blows and shredding of clothes, capable of killing
Everything one can try to be, every step above insanity, every ray of sunlight found
Even the willingness, chilling ability to chance a glance at the chaos within-
Can it be that the perceived disease was really psychological release..?




[ Confusion's Psalm:  Finding Doves In Demons ]
Pray for wings, pray it flies
Take another hope and let it loose
Memories of hope denied, falling lost from empty skies
Wondering; has addictive loss's self abuse left trying just a convenient excuse
And when everything you gain
Is one more dream left to lose
Wrestling with your everyday pain
The only nightmare left to choose
Is it habit or masochism, heroics or cowardice
Do I see, or just march blindly on?
Inhabitant anachronism, buried deep within this
Singing an eternally lonely, discordant song.




[ The Beginning, (is the end is) NeverENDing (is the beginning is) 
Subtitle:  (Dis)Illusioned Hearts ]

The world is full of broken hearts,
Hell, they light up our streets like dying stars.
From crush to betrayal, lies and deceit,
In this darkness, all souls, equal, meet.
Come together to share the gory stories
Of bitter failures, instead of our glories.
Before your still-bleeding heart even starts to heal,
It's just lying in the open for another sadist to steal.
"'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all,"
Choosing pain or pain? And they wonder why you build up oh-so-many walls.
But who to believe, when the most beloved faces belong to the enemy?
So lost, so buried, in the last attempt at hope & love's debris,
That it sets you to wonder, if there's ever another glimpse of sun to be seen.
Just ever-racing thoughts of an adolescent repeatedly burned, third degree--
Chained down, catering to a parade of those who will never set them free.
So new at love, not knowing any better,
Finally learn how to say, "No more," and burn every last false love letter.
Thinking now, disillusioned, you've forever shattered heartbreak's curse,
But buckle up, my darling delusional one-- 'cause it only gets so much worse.




[Valentine]
Walking
with my steps crossing
feeling so lost I
see nothing but fog
feel nothing but Gone, and
sorry, Angel's not home tonight
I'm Out to Lunch I've
Gone Fishing for some peace of mind
in all the wrong places and
I apologize that you're not
on my list of things to do today.
I know that means you won't come around
you're just here because you heard
there was free pussy being given out
and I can't be bothered to be your desperate slut.
Not today.




[Wanting to Believe in Chocobos]🔑
I'm a dreamer and a lover
and a fighter and a screamer
and I need you to understand that
there's no in-between here.
All or nothing, just give me something,
something to believe in,
something to need again,
something to make me feel real again.
"I don't need to touch the sky /
I just need to feel that high..."
Sometimes all the right words have been written already.
Sometimes I can't seem to speak the words I need to say.
My rhymes are all tied
up in knots and I cry
curse, scream and you don't hear me.
Don't you understand, I see
everything before it happens
and I feel everything
regardless of my reaction
and it just seems no one sees all of me--
that no one even needs me to be, anymore.






***  Reductio Absurdum:  Haiku Heaven  ***


(Im)possibilities
form your face in the mirror.
You haunt me always.
--Haiku Heaven Series #4  🔑


In our night magic,
Rabbit hole adventures bound.
You own all my dreams.
--Haiku Heaven Series #7🔑


Stars glimmer for me
As songs deep within your eyes.
Celestial Morse code.
Haiku Heaven Series #8🔑


Yearning for a touch,
Warmth, I never feel awake.
The piece I'm missing.
--Haiku Heaven Series #11🔑


Caged by circumstance,
Cling in vain, I can't let go.
You hold safe my keys.
Haiku Heaven Series #12🔑


Once upon a time
Hides inside my feverish mind;
You, reluctant prince.
-- Haiku Heaven, Series #23🔑


Mornings dawn with hope,
Clocks turn noon's long hours to days.
Nights, missing your smile.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #13🔑


Talk becomes tumult;
Translations misunderstood.
Our own Tower of Babel.
-- Haiku Heaven, Series #14


I reach out for you
Across a Canyon of Time;
Fail to touch the past.
(Or "But can't touch the past?")
Haiku Heaven, Series #17🔑


Your words, startling warmth--
Gold sun spears eternal fog,
And I am undone.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #12🔑


Keep me rather, caged.
Only pain proves loyalty.
Clipped souls cannot leave.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #15


Contrary nature,
Once, following structure, rules,
Now, chasing danger.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #19


Rise above, trust love--
Such, the lovestruck poet's cry.
Wiser, the lonely.
--Haiku Heaven, Series #22




Truth Unspoken:. For Pink Panther

Pink Panther:

  I'm purple and blue. Forever Black and Blue.

From emptiness inside.
Emptiness that can only be filled by something true.

Titian Tyger: 

Truth waits to fill too-familiar voids.
Waits for someone to welcome dangerously
free, joyfully offered loyalty,
And have the courage to have faith in love
And a trust in the never-ending silver cords
Pointing the way to eternal empathy
Someone aching to care for and adore,
Absolutely understanding a long, crooked road,
And never faltering in appreciation of the beautiful strangeness at your core.
Truth would shake mountains to sand
Just to travel close enough to hold your hand
Through three o'clocks in the morning that tempt us to despair
Waiting a lifetime to hold you as you trust them with your tears,
No matter the time, place or circumstance,
Just to stroke your hair,
until you once again can box away, with all the vicious dust
And stumbling blocks, avoidance
Of taking chances,
And unnecessary fear. 
Truth will stand, waiting, misunderstood unapproved and sincere,
Dying to give away what none seem to want to take.
Truth will sacrifice itself, a ghost that yearns to breathe
Just one more toxic inhale, another, and repeat,
Kindly and surrounded by carnivores,
Truth always resembles meat
Forever draws in predators
bent on changing Truth to ashes,
Making Truth forget the feel of free
The glory of a like mind,
And just the room to BE
True to who one truly is, without fear of tongues that lash.
Rather than watching your identity
Blacken before your horrified eyes,
Being tattooed with a V for Victim,
Abandoned, Truth is in for a surprise.
Everything true within their soul rewritten
To the most ugly and thus believable fiction.
Watching last hopes melt away, in the
Face of such huge volumes of scum-depicting proof,
False will mutate from the remnants, obliterating, relegating, a realistic soul forever to the past.
After all, isn't it just such a difficult task to attempt,
Trying to believe in the Existence of such Truth..?