Skin in the Game

                              

sensitive skin/ skin deep/ thin skin/ the skinny

gimme some skin/ thick skin/ skin to skin

chicken skin/ skin me/ skint/

skin game

skin broken pus exploding from an infected boil

the sanctioned killings

will they release relieve US or destroy?

death cult cannibals feigning moderation

head chopping amphetamine-fed barbaric terrorist proxies

black snake dance of the cannibal giant

we dreamed you into being

who has looked into your eyes?

we are a land of orphans

eyes like windows into a place you didn’t want to go

democracy apocalypse ecstasy pie

no one remembers the ecstasy only the pie

a favorite image

Herbert Huncke cozmik junkie leaning into the smoke

inhale deep/ get naked/ city lights/ street lights

renegade boots/ double exposure/ gas light café

god light café

poetry reading tonight

dead dead dead all dead

the gone deathmongers whose only concern is moment

have no skin in the game

only nightmares

the poets are revolting

rebelling

renegade boots, cigarette ash dangling

how long how long

burn down, don’t drop

poems like smoke curl out float upward

in sinuous shapes disperse breathed in

secondhand smoke

it’s a killer

Nation

War has become background noise

the ambient soundtrack of the times

illegal consciousness

the weaponization of religion

“the soft bigotry of low expectations”

life in the ether Between

where we die and are eaten by images

a gulag of the poor the black the brown

no rich are invited

to starve in metal cages, containers of misery

building monuments
will always be seen as oppression
 as times change
monuments are for the "winners"
               assuming "losers"
a world view Triumphant
another subdued
dynasties lost
and Peoples enslaved
the Other in chains
of poverty rapine and destruction
for generations entrapped
in the dominant story

a Just society would need no monuments
its glory reflected in the faces
of a People Unbound
not rendered in Stone but in Flesh
and in Spirit
One

wakinyan, voices of Thunder

the song of the Storm

jagged Light opens us

treat every poisoned word as a promise

Resistance is in the blood

Firstborn

Selah!

unknown music of the deepest night

Stop and Listen!

imbibing poet juices / essence spilled inside

 osmote every cell

burning across the sky like a meteor

the tiny debris of my heart burns bright as any massive stone

ignition startling / sudden flame

sudden trail of light

sudden connection

with those of open eyes

in the black pre-dawn when spirits rise

and raise me from my bed in unimagined breathless dark

spilling words unleashed by the sweet friction of you inside me

One in darkness / One in light

our cries split the silence of Space and enter grandeur

of suns and moons

I sip words from your tongue

as you thrust hard between my thighs

your touch is madness dispelling madness

hair of the dog perhaps

poet’s wine

there is no debauchery like truth

the body’s memory the marriage of earth and sky

we are Revolution!

contractions of spilled seed given and received

the moment of cosmic Presence

holds the Past and Future deep within

Selah

firstborn mystery / never defined / she changes worlds

            Stop and Listen!

Spheres uncounted resonate through time and space

the sum of all our stories writ

in ever-changing whorls of stars eternal

paradox of motion / stasis

born of the impossible wed to the undeniable

fashioned in that naked loving

                        shared long past the time of sharing

an act of Will infused with celestial Light and Longing

of music internal and boundless as unheard of starfields

hidden by endless night

            Stop and Listen! 

Pass It On!

Amy

how many people watched her die and
cheered her on cause she was so Good
figured she was too good to age
cracked that bottle open before she was ripe
her spirit grown old before the rest of her
outpaced her time on this plane
took her cascading down the shrunken rivulets of Joy
the battered body careening from stone to stone
how many people watched her disintegrate
applauded
and celebrated her death-defying leap
from the heights of her voice and vision
to the jagged depths
      how many?

 

Memento Mori

the dead girl I didn’t know

time’s orphan

eyes fixed in painted stare

feet bare to walk the path of light

hands yet entangled in the stuff of a life

to steal the diamonds from the eyes

of those still trying to capture

to hold her

sweet summer child

what exactly were you thinking?

our species in peril along with all others

the biosphere changes

            doesn't cease to exist

life always returns

in one form or another

unless or until it doesn't

my prayers are for future generations

our children to the 7th generation

who will see the devolution

of societies

of polities

                        of economies

and experience the anomie

that has always been at the edge of the broken world

inhabited by poets and dreamers

temples to godhead built

from the stones and bones of the Mother

the voices of eons of souls

interred in her capacious womb

crying out for remembrance

as memory crumbles away

leviathan asphalt skin suffocates the clamor

 the demands to acknowledge the fine roots

the web of tomorrow’s juicy appetites

tangled roads of history winding

through the unplumbed depths of Now

birdsong like glass shards sparking the electric dawn

I touch the hieroglyphics of your skin with my fingertips

hills and hollows

ridges scars and rough spots

like a blind woman learning Braille

seeking the answers to whispered questions

darkness falls like an act of mercy

how far can you fall into Nothing or roll away

the stone from the cave of the heart

loneliness of a shooting star burns a trail

the maddening smile of the Void

© 2018 pamela twining