Walk or Perish
18 November 2k18
“The Day the Flesh shapes and the Flesh the Day shapes.” — Frank Herbert
Greetings, Dear Reader,
on 16 November I once again celebrated Life after Brain Surgery.
Twelve years: Feels like a lifetime crammed inside a hot-minute.
I adapted to being broken. Then something changed. It always does, nu?
I moved to an Oasis in Spenard; whilst through the blessing of CBD,
the seizures that plagued me for years were finally reined in. Sort of…
Blessings Uncounted.
So…I kicked that Wheelchair to the curb. And haven’t been in it since last Spring.
Eleven years is a long damn time to go on Wheels. I am still shaky, still sketchy.
But I have learned that with each step I grow Stronger…and Stranger.
Secondhand Scarecrow
I must go on walking.
Choices are for those
who have such luxuries.
We shall not speak of them. No, not here:
One step. Crutch-step. Two step.
Crutch-step
Back step.
S t a gg e r
-step.
Aluminum sticks splayed, guarding
against capricious Gravity, Her cruel insouciance.
Pain is no paltry obstacle
It is a taskmaster: the Instructor of Survivors.
Pain is a goad.
i.
Walk then. Walk
lest I become rooted where I stand.
Ah! But the temptation …it is terrible.
To embrace the Winter of permanent Wheels, at last.
To become twisted—bone, tendon, gristle
into a secondhand scarecrow.
That boneskin-stickman
misshapen oak-man
of my unremitting dreams:
gnarled branches I would grow
to crook into puzzle shadows upon snow
to croon with ravens roosting
as Williwaw winds keen raw
frost-finger limbs I would form
to drum rattle-a-tattle rhythms
aside raise the dead
sky swept flurries
Guttural—my song to ice crystals
bitterly encrusting twig, bough, and burl
alike during fathomless auroral nights
grown like brutish spurs of bone
on the sockets of worn, arthritic joints
will echo the baying of outcast wolves. Caught
therein, under the spell of loneliness and moonlight
ii.
A taproot I would send down to Queen Persephone
on Her throne in darkness built;
there to beg an Indulgence
for a small measure of Spring
come lavish, come too soon.
The weight of sunrise
on hoarfrost—
burgeoning nacreous, lushly white
when land and sky appear as one
shall incite sleeping sap to flow
amongst fellow trees. Transformed
into rime-laden soaring sunsparkler cathedrals.
Standing sentinel in clouds of our own breath.
Ever so, greenleaf sweet
or
grueling snow
I must go on walking.
DC McKenzie
16 November 2k18
::End Transmission::
Red Feathers
14 November 2k18
Greetings, Dear Reader. ‘Tis an entry full of frayed ends, of uneven odds.
Low cards again. Guess I just call ’em as I see ’em…
What could I possibly say this time? Should I speak of my father?
Well, seems I already have. But I left out one of his critical lessons: The Gambler’s Fallacy
Much has been said of it, and you’re welcome to draw your own conclusions.
But, while watching a herd of sheep all running one stupid way,
Pops said to me of the Fallacy, “Never fall for it, kid.”
He pointed at one old goat doing his own thing,
“See. Mind your own cards. You must learn to trust Instinct.”
Oi! Go ahead, flip a Fair Coin,
a full score of times—and you tell me, nu?
Did’ya fall for it?
Against Lady Luck, did’ya Count Coup?
Red Feathers
Screaming
Lung Gasoline
Heroin
Cocaine
Violation
Heroin
Alcohol
Empty Sex
Rage
Tyranny
Gabapentin
Oxycontin
Seroquel
Screaming
Fentanyl
Grief
Depakote
Vicodin
Hate
:such is the tale of my Coup Stick.
One wing dipped in blood.
i.
Hard to explain
Why?
what has not killed me served only to teach
my yet fragile soul how to survive.
I can’t put it down to Junkiedom, USA;
for of the score, Ah! So many…we were
blood enemies at first sight.
ii.
Now, my father was a consummate Gambler.
An archetype of the Old School.
A man for whom defunct notions like: honor, trust, respect
meant that line so thin twixt
Life Death
And taught me in his own methods: the Way of the Gambler
He said, “Never welsh. Rake the table—
take what you will and pay for it.”
It took all of my cards : nearly a lifetime
to understand that a jackpot can reap a heavy loss
that so often winning is turned on its gilded head
that what is lost is never a loss. If you learn the lesson.
iii.
Count Coup upon your foes come away bloodied
and you learn Living is the gamble: even odds
Pops said, “Draw low cards and you play ’em
Play ’em like they’re royal.”
I have learned believe me…
when
Counting Coup against a Devil
it is best
to dance
on a river.
DC McKenzie
::End Transmission::
What happens before Coffee…
10 November 2k18
Greetings, Dear Reader. It has been kinda heavy ’round here lately, eh?
What with all the Painful Poetry…
Blitzes. Voting. Retreats. Returns.
Hard to keep track of all the Ethical ins & outs…lotta connect-the-dots pandering goin’ on; backroom good ‘ol boy circle-yorking;
all while shrewdly calculating, on the fly, just exactly who is still hangin’ on the POTUS junk?
Who is stabbing whom in the back? Who left the knife stuck there?
Who’s on First?
I hear Marble Hill politicos are gnawing on the skulls of the fallen and defeated this day.
Welcome, Cohorts, to the Ramshackle Day Parade! (Thanx, Joe)
Meanwhile, we’re all straining—stuck sittin’ & spinnin’ on the U.S.A. Inc. Moral merry-go-round v9.2;
judging from the forlorn squeal the thing is making, it needs some WD40…seriously.
During this time of year it can be damn hard to find a good laugh;
‘course bad laughs go for less than a dimebag, and are just as endemic.
The streets are littered with ’em, snuggled right up next to abandoned American Dreams, ubiquitous plastic flutter-bags,
old kicks sneering down from every wire, Faith disenfranchised,
and dumpster fires fueled with legislation of obfuscation,
plus pallet loads of overstocked, mangy, Presidential toupees.
And then there’s all this blog mucking about:
Comforting the Disturbed
Disturbing the Comfortable
The Empathy Hustle. Ah, merde! It can be that way, sometimes.
So it goes.
Today I thought we’d tap the brakes. Oi! Not that hard…easy. Easy!
Why spin out, unless you really wanna run amok, too?
B’sides, around here I’m 24/7, y’all. I’m just not always doin’ business, dig?
Yet, a Poet simply cannot live on words and smoke alone.
No…no, as well there must be Coffee
What happens before Coffee
I told a diffident cup
to get fucked this morning.
It fell on the floor.
I was seeking to set fire
in my black, lil heart.
So…I just loomed there in those long, long minutes
vehemently cussing out its timid, inanimate spirit.
I know ya think I’m a fruitcake, baby.
Hey, that’s just how I roll.
Guess you’d better know now—
In those minutes before Coffee
don’t dare hand me a match
’cause I’ll spark the big fuse
every every every time. Natch.
In those minutes
loping-shoulders-loose,
I stalk amidst twilight
in the Savannah of Kitchen
looking for trouble—surveying thus:
Lions kneel before a State of the Art, blood-rusty King.
Jackals, daunted, hide their wicked eyes.
Hyenas shut their cackling yaps in surprise.
Vultures, envious, take their young under wing.
Such a wild-eyed beast I am forsaken. In those minutes:
do not glance at Trumpery at dread news, whilst Coffee brews
for every time I do: sirens howl. Fire engines growl
something will go snap will crackle, will go PoP!
something will be throttled will be scalped raw
something will run for dear life will flee. Running red lights
something will get bruised something will lose
I give No Quarter
to my prey—
not to Hate, not to Seizures, nor to Pain
before sacred Coffee eases
my shattered-cup brain.
DC McKenzie
::End Transmission::
How Not to Kill yourSelf: gambit no.13
6 November 2k18
“Suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.” ~Anne Sexton
“You want it Darker. We kill the flame.” ~Leonard Cohen
Greetings, Dear Reader. There is nothing easy about this post. The last one was simple.
Rage always is; ’tis Empathy that requires work. Venting is easy. Living is difficult.
And while I freely admit to some cathartic venting in my last post, nevertheless—it needed to be said: Screamed.
However, I have recently learned that a Human I care deeply for made that Choice.
There is such profound suffering in this Life that some flounder beneath towering waves.
Please remember, swimming so far from land, that You. Are. Never. Alone.
L’amour soit avec toi, mon ami.
I have been asked, enough times to lace cracks in my heart,
“How do you survive!? How? With all of this…how is it that you survive?”
I could never answer.
I never knew how. Still don’t…not really.
It is just what I do.
I think that I am not special, in this regard.
There is no adversity I have endured
that you too cannot survive.
You must remind your battered Self
—It is not over…I am not Done.
Flare Gun
i.
Heels to haunch
in the mental whiteout
of a breakdown blizzard.
I cradle a flare gun
unsure whether to fire.
For every blind S.O.S.
carries a heavy measure
of uncertainty:
It is said that freezing to death
bleeding out
is like going to sleep.
It is not.
There is more icicle
than dreamsicle
in the reality of such a slumber.
Passing this skin-searing
metal chunk of grip
trigger
barrel
from cold hand to clumsy hand:
despite any resolve to soar away
there is no freedom
in a transition to fleshberg.
—rather they will find a broken bird
lying on pitiless tundra.
ii.
Williwaw winds
Depression
are ruthless when wrathful;
cruelty matched only
by sheer indifference.
A whore-frost gargoyle, Winter
Suicide
broods insistently,
skulking on your back.
Ah, the treacherous
lies
it whispers
will undo
all that you
know of you.
Wishing to die, you wane;
a winter scarecrow of fallow field,
shriveled remnant of the Self—
facing emptiness, you perilously
resort to stuffing in fistfuls
of moldering bracken, sour grass
wrenched by the roots
out of abject fear.
Being a Scarecrow,
the Ravens will help you
disastrously discover
what you are made of.
Yanked apart at the seams
by rending talons, by bitter beak
to find what is good in you.
iii.
Raising the flare gun’s weight
up to an opaque vault of sky,
vexed by snow-borne wind into a fury:
fingers ice-gnawed into claws
I fumble in the maelstrom
—slip but for a moment
and pull the trigger.
About Suicide.
Just between us
||who tread that bone-strewn path
as only the Suicidal can.
Among the ten thousand
useless ways to die
there is always a choice
to die well.
Especially when
you do not see it coming.
DC McKenzie
::End Transmission::
The Excoriation of Donald J. Trump
4 November 2k18
“Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose.
Any minute now I’m expecting all Hell to break loose…” ~ Bob Dylan
What can I say, Dear Reader? The man has brought it upon himself.
I can stand no more of this utter, fascist Trumpery.
Please understand, I know there are those who will be vexed by this post:
whether you can believe it or no, I do have empathy. Yet, I also have a mandate:
Respect Existence or Expect Resistance
Trump and his ilk have gleefully sown the wind.
Now comes the Gale.
The Excoriation of Donald J. Trump
Here is the way of my Curse for you, Donald:
Doom of the craven
and the swindler be upon you—
who makes feast on the blight of poverty
who gorges on the blood of earth, rock, and sea.
You shall have all you blindly desire,
but naught of what you truly need.
You shall find no water in the desert
nor shelter from the burning sun of Judgment.
You have delivered the Earth
into the hands of despoilers.
You shall find no rest therein.
Your carcass shall be rejected.
Even your ashes shall be as salt
upon the ground, and none shall suffer to tread there.
Your black shade shall find no admittance to the Garden
but shall submit tenfold
to the woe and misery your works have wrought.
With left hand you bear the Scepter of Tyranny
while within your withered right
are clenched the thirty pieces of silver for which
you bartered your Soul.
Vultures gather at your feet
and verily they shall name you
Lord of Carrion.
A crown of bone and gore shall be
fashioned for you, and upon it branded
the Sigil of Gluttony.
Tyrant of Twitter, I dub thee.
Highwayman of the Hill, Maestro of Misogyny
Yes, yes…and moreover,
I name thee: Despot of Demagoguery
Brigand of the Beltway and Rustler of the Republic.
Cur, you hustle cowardly
with insolent thugs and greedy pimps.
Scourge of Empathy,
the fire of your abominate words
has lit a conflagration of fear
through the heart of a divided Land.
Never shall the blood of these Innocents
be washed from your brow.
DC McKenzie
::End Transmission::
ME TOO: Poem for a Monster
1 November 2k18
“That is not how to Love me.” ~ Fever Ray [Karin Dreijer]
Me Too.
By now that statement is enough to inform you that I have been sexually assaulted, harassed, violated…You know this from those two words due to the immense courage of women from every walk of life. Women, nay Humans, who have stood and added their voices to the clarion chorus of Survivors. Humans who are calling for an end to the grotesque culture of abuse and rape in our society.
Though it matters not, my gender is male (mostly). I am the 1 in 20.
Male Survivors, I beg you, join your Sisters. Raise your voices against the Monsters.
We accept atrocities.
They have become so ingrained, so prevalent, that as a society we add it to the statistics of annual horrors in apparent apathy.
Statistics that are tracked and charted: they grab, they grope, they nestle next to the unspeakable as if we cannot change.
Yet, we can.
WE can change this sick paradigm.
We can drag it into the light. We can watch it burn.
Individuals know how to change. Often, we just collectively don’t know how to stoke an ember into a conflagration.
Me Too is a collective social outcry.
It is the thunder that incites lightning.
I pray it cracks the world.
★
Feast for a Monster
Oh, how you must feast.
Gorging on a memory banquet—
my child hands on your flesh: unwilling.
Suck marrow from husks of vile memory
the way you sucked your lips then:
all venom and petulance.
Torpid. Sprawled on a ratty couch.
Warning me, “Don’t you dare throw up.”
—just as I see you in nightmares:
Massive and fearful
the way only a child
could remember.
Lick hoarded reminiscence
from your fingers,
Monster.
Let it drip down your elbows:
wring, throttle, squeeze
those final drops
out of the places
you ripped open
inside of me.
Scars grow upon scars.
Such wounds never heal clean.
You shall never know that
healing
has served to make me formidable.
Yet, you own nothing of my survival.
For that emerged from within,
where your maggot fingers
could not dig deep to reach.
Whilst you grow evermore frail
I banish you to the Past.
A predator become vulnerable:
choke now on your last sustenance
of corpse-liquor remembrance.
Monster,
how will you possibly
crave anything wholesome again
when you have supped at such a table?
★
DC McKenzie
::End Transmission::
The Dandelion Heresy
9 June 2k18
Greetings Dear Reader, I’m experimenting with a new platform style.
Dig it.
Happy Summer!
~ ★ ~
DC McKenzie
:: End Transmission ::
On Samhain
31 October 2k9
~A poem for Samhain~
Once upon a time… A time before Hallmark Halloween and Hershey Bars; before trick or treat. There was a time when many cultures, particularly the Gaelic peoples, celebrated Harvest, and honored the dead on this night.
It was believed that the barrier between this world and the Sidhe became thin, allowing for all sorts of trespassing both from and into our realm of the living. Being the final harvest, it was also a time of hard choices to survive the coming winter.
In many hidden faiths, this day and night are balanced against the Spring festival of Beltane on the Wheel of the Year; Samhain is considered to be a time for celebrating the lives of those we love who have passed from this life.
Surviving down through the centuries, sculpted to serve each new belief system in its own way, this night nevertheless retains a powerful hold on our imaginations. For this one night out of each year we stop and pay tribute to the Unknown.
Considering how much we do not know, this should be a large tribute indeed.
On this night let us acknowledge the bitter Darkness that we might cherish the fertile Light.
Ouroboros
The Cycle of Life
~*~
that cannibal poem
—credo quia absurdum
few of us truly believe
we will draw the short straw
and be killed for food.
or that behind sterile walls
hidden away from prying eyes
spiders are silently plotting our demise;
and even now creatures loosed from the zoo
might be amassing to stage their coup.
there may come a fine summer day
when this fuming parking lot
is a fair field of honey hay;
when sharks swim upriver
hunting in swimming holes
for an easy dinner.
and packs of piranha prowl poolside patios,
while here at this barren bus stop
there will be a grizzly bear buffet.
some things are so absurd
they must be believed:
that in this youniverse
there is room for a me.
the trick, it seems, is to know
—when to run
instead of standing around gawking
—when to dance
instead of sitting there talking
it does you no good to live in dread
of things that are slithering beneath your bed.
when morning comes and finds you still alive
just shake off that tired, old bogeyman jive.
now, it’s easier to will a comet
down into your loving arms
than it is to outgrow being a fool.
yet, in the end, it is far better
living round within square rules.
some consider it misfortunate and macabre
a sign of narcissistic hypochondria
to entertain the rather gruesome idea
that there might be a tumor
lurking somewhere inside us
a wild growth
we will never see
waiting to undo us.
yet, life is finer when you snuggle up
to the Reaper; the meat’s so much sweeter
when you make a friend of Death
so, here I stand, atop a heap
of defeated worries and bony woes
waving a stone club over my head
howling at the heavens to awaken the dead.
for it is easier to believe i could do the eating
then be eaten.
the future, you see, is certain,
minute by minute,
the only question
is whether or not we are in it.
DC McKenzie
—end transmission—
Dawn Runs Amok 