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Revolution on Canvas, Volume 1

Page 6

by Rich Balling


  Will she ever know?

  Frozen souls become melting snow,

  Riding down avenues with pictures of old beliefs.

  People forgotten but still seen,

  Killing love,

  Killing everything!

  Unholy witness to a dying dream.

  And me,

  Alone to hold the blame,

  In a desert home left to feel her shame,

  Old conversations chase her away.

  The magical (four),

  Out of (seven) he stays,

  Holds her at present,

  Not afraid to watch the young woman fade.

  Wants her in elder years,

  Wants her beyond the past,

  Wants her to be the last,

  To change with the young man!

  To bathe with the young man!

  Walking into holy lakes never seen,

  The heart has nightmares of a lovers dream.

  This one he needs may rest uneasy,

  The wounds she feels spill into this night.

  He could not sleep again in places she’s been,

  Reaching through the air to touch empty sin,

  To touch something to defend.

  Will this woman love him?

  Or will he rest uneasy in a shadow parade,

  Left to burn slow in an edited frame,

  Pleasure is a show to a past filled with pain,

  His heart cannot live as a link in her chain!

  The sorrow would push him to Hades’ shade,

  Can’t talk to the others,

  Can’t make them go away.

  So he walks with the struggle-

  Love brings a new day.

  Erin, my heart hurt last night…

  JON ORISON

  Oris

  Make Love to Good Friends

  I want to pretend,

  Shake hands with ambassadors,

  Make love to good friends,

  Trade revenge to open ends.

  Cut cards with the holy ghost,

  Eat stems off the Lotus tree,

  Toast to life till I can focus!

  A beautiful world hovers before us.

  Come touch and gel with truth,

  So free others are invisible to meeeeee,

  I walk through them to bring peace and relief.

  A lonely soldier to rally the dream,

  Cast spell with a whisper,

  Turn tricks in the hall,

  Let men touch my body,

  Let women have a ball.

  Walk tightropes smoking cigarettes,

  Grab others as they fall.

  Remind them of beauty and a short night of lust,

  Trust no one to listen.

  You are love dipped in blood,

  Drip on mouths of stone.

  Form taste on their tongues,

  Put love in their lungs,

  Unleash passion from trees,

  Dance naked in the breeze,

  When I feel you I feel peace.

  CHRIS SHEETS

  Rx Bandits

  Happy Birthday

  You followed me home as a means to an end and promised but one thing to which you could lend

  who wants to be the one that we all see? So happy, set free, bent over so cheaply on a knee widespread, the trouble lies inside, but far too deep mindsets, the voyeur released just outside of me

  who wants to be the one that we all see? Reaching the summit and setting thoughts free excursions to perversions, salt the earth like the sea loosing it all in a gripped free-for-all don’t know you but you show me every night to the fall whispering words and they don’t mean a thing it’s that look in your eye that keeps bringing me in Skin’s crawling away, and my love, so are you up, out, and over my interest now subdued purging myself in the filth of your body lending itself from the tame to the gaudy The sun will soon be up and strike us down where we lay shade the only testament to a game zealously played hung out and flayed makes the unfolding obscene taking delight in agony we lick each other clean.

  JASON CRUZ

  Strung Out

  Nylon

  She is the last verse in a thousand bitter love songs,

  Torn from paper sung into void.

  She’s the last call when I ain’t even numb yet.

  She’s a creepin’ flame up my leg,

  When all I wanted was a warm night

  Alone.

  She comes just when I need her to,

  But never knows when to Quit

  She calls herself the apocalypse to my new red hope,

  Yet she offers no misfortune

  When she shows up at my door.

  She’s everything and everywhere I look-

  in lipstick smeared suicide pumps-

  Watching in silent gaze

  At the matchstick boy

  Ablaze.

  JASON CRUZ

  Strung Out

  Persephone

  You’re the illusion of purpose.

  Blindly and rhythmically enhancing the destruction of all,

  You motivate the will and mortify the senses.

  You’re the Jesus in the eyes of a fanatic, pushing your

  madness to fruition.

  You’re the broken heart in the chest of a fool, lovesick to

  Suicidal grace.

  You hide your meaning in the eyes of the dead and laugh at

  the sane.

  You’re the trigger happy lunatic aiming at the only mirror

  you haven’t shattered yet,

  You’re my best friend.

  You’re the music that leads the blind over mountains and off

  cliffs,

  And you know no end.

  So here I wait,

  Because you know I will.

  JASON CRUZ

  Strung Out

  Ambulance Crash

  HERE I SIT,

  LOOK AT ME.

  A CASUALTY OF MY ENDLESS SUCCESSION

  OF NEEDS AND DESIRES,

  ESCAPING ONLY FOR A MOMENT TO DEVOUR

  WHATEVER LOST SOUL

  FEEDS ITS MOMENTUM INTO THIS,

  GLASS MACHINE.

  WRITE A LITTLE LOUDER

  AND THE WORLD MIGHT HEAR YOUR BULLSHIT,

  TALK A LITTLE SWEETER,

  AND THEY MIGHT CARE.

  YOU SEE IT’S AN EASY WORLD OUT THERE,

  IF YOU’RE JUST LOOKIN FOR A CAR CRASH TO

  ADMIRE

  THAT IS.

  TWISTED STEEL AND BROKEN BONE BECOME THE

  ART

  OF A DAMNED MIND,

  SO COOL YOUR EXPRESSION TO HIDE YOUR LUST

  FOR ANOTHER EYEFULL OF SOMEONE ELSE’S

  UNLUCKY

  SIDE SHOW.

  YES,

  LIFE IS JUST ONE RUN-ON SENTENCE

  AND I CAN GO ON AND ON AND ON…

  BUT I WONT

  UNLESS YOU’RE BUYIN’!

  DERRICK SHERMAN

  The Modern

  I once met a man and asked him if it were true that when you get older you become wiser. He said that the only answer was to get older. Looking back to when I was a kid, I realize that my ignorance was a virtue. I saw the world in colors and shapes. Now my nerves keep me awake at night. I think about the future and what I want to do with my life. I asked that same man if he had any advice for me. He told me to quit living and start breathing. “Look around at the life you lead. Listen to the wind and the trees. Take time to smell the ocean breeze and sleep on the beach.” He said that the beauty of this world was in its complexity and that our lives for the most part are ordinary. He told me to never stop painting, but mostly never stop creating. “You’re as free as your mind will let you be. So, what’s holding you back?” he asked, “fear or laziness??”

  ANDY HERMES

  The Junior Revolution

  Convictions come out through your eyes

  Pouring out your dark rimmed, empty glasses

  We try to sit and try not to talk

  Bo
th waiting until this moment passes

  Fishing for feelings as you drive like a ghost

  You say I’m a wreck, I feel like a car crash in quotes

  TIM ELSEY

  The Junior Revolution

  -] Self Fulfilling Prophecy [-

  We live in a world, where we search for meaning until our

  hearts stop beating

  We mostly search for ourselves

  But what we find may be deceiving

  Lost in cryptic meanings

  When we look inside our souls

  Some say we can’t help who we become

  It’s the fault of society of dad, and mom

  What you reap is what you sow

  Who you become is up to you

  We are the products of ourselves

  We are the products of self

  We are the answers for

  Questions worth asking

  We are the products of ourselves

  All in due time, all in due time for me

  All in due time, all in due time for me

  Ask yourself, what is real and what is not

  Find yourself, unable to tell the difference

  Save yourself, but not at the cost of losing others

  Save yourself, from me

  MIKE ELLIOTT

  Blue Sky Mile

  Stay in Between the Channel Markers

  Stretching out his arms,

  as if on, suspension of

  the pulpit during swells;

  he

  with heave and say integrity tried to life preserver others that

  he

  did not know intimately, yet the reality

  of those overboard, now under burdened;

  provoked

  this good Samaritan to see focally, farther

  less than the buoy.

  MIKE ELLIOTT

  Blue Sky Mile

  Using Both Hands to Count

  jenny any choir, would stand, staring down,

  swaying side to side, as if unimpressed

  by the chorus, on altar, claiming their

  song as a cause for praise

  pitch, and scream.

  hands at her side, following her cloth design,

  dressily singing on note and in key as

  effortless and unarduous as all kids

  will be while listening, yet again, to

  unheard of melodies.

  peaking above the pew line of fine, submerged

  behind blank eyes, i could see this was all

  more of a damn fantasy achieving

  vitality in the limits of pursuit

  without the boredom.

  her protest is the best one that comes to mind, for

  she no longer can find solace with hands clasped

  together, interwoven, showing the place, and yes

  it’s a steeple, but for all that’s inside, there are not

  as many people.

  MIKE ELLIOTT

  Blue Sky Mile

  Christ I Paid Too Much Money for That Trip to Europe

  this snow bends branches back

  and lays still with a gentle breeze

  on these mountain peaks

  night contends with distant candle flames

  and it lights more suns seen than the day

  in this wilderness

  a lake, almost frozen,

  paved the reflection of the sky above me,

  below me as well, with symmetry

  on the ground, shadows cast

  silhouettes in the snow

  away from the heavens

  voices air with little orbit

  and kindle, as fires,

  the strength to keep warm

  while sledding the deep dark alps,

  all the stars I’ve never seen

  but four of them, drifting, fade

  is it these visibilities

  under this winter solstice

  that caption a new moon?

  KEITH GOODWIN

  Days Away

  Call It What You Want

  I went from ok to now. Not knowing that this is not what I care about. Thinking I’m right. If I move faster I will pass out. I’m feeling lucky that my hands aren’t still tied down (to me pushing myself around). This is the worst and I still complain. It would make sense not to feel the same way for days. Mixed drinks for the girl and grey. More of a reason for me to stay. Too soon. More time for myself to lose (interest). I’m in this now and then. A bad mood that never ends (quickly).

  MATT EMBREE

  Rx Bandits

  I tear for the pauper’s quote, the invalid’s letter,

  misguided and misdirected, buried in insecurity amidst

  the piles of discarded dreams, landscapes and memories.

  He who commands the unthinkable from the depths of

  inhumanity,

  the rot and the filth and the undeniable urges stuffed in

  bowels

  and stinking, putrid and disgusting.

  Those who lust for the disaffected and pipe for the terror

  of wide-eyes and bleeded hearts. The heat proximity in their

  temples and their loins, all erect and function, squirm

  and fail.

  From moon and sun, through castanet claps overheard the

  rhythms,

  hips thrown forth like hades’ ember and molten sex.

  The come of a thousand, shrieking for the closest moment

  to death, the clearest mind-state, the almost touch of

  reflection

  daunting and powerful the feeling through guts.

  They who sew light together with whispering wands and

  antelope

  leaves, thirsting for a vacation from this reality, to turn in

  this past and sever their aortas.

  Who fling themselves naked, bored, restrained and helpless

  into

  the pits of despair so they may find a way out.

  They who shoot poison into their lungs and suck saliva from

  the mouths of the listless and beaten down. Fresh to your

  grave

  I commend thee.

  MATT EMBREE

  Rx Bandits

  It’s nice to see you all here with your uniforms on

  black on black on black

  studs on spikes on silver

  posthumously clapping for the wind, trying to chase it as it’s

  changing erratically

  mocking laughs

  winding up to throw gestures into full size mirrors

  and cry as they shatter, beautifully

  In a dream I picked up a shard and ran it across my wrist

  The blood ran down my forearm and dripped from my elbow

  they all complained

  It was making a mess they said and went on to agree that it

  was better when they all stood in a circle, backs to the world

  alright with me they said

  It’s so nice to see you here, now with your cotton confections

  and witty interjections they intersect to complete

  I am going to take off my clothes and bleed to death in the

  corner

  for I haven’t the faintest about chases anyhow.

  MATT EMBREE

  Rx Bandits

  Take all the murder with you

  for now we are saved

  But you know as well as I that I will tumble

  once and a million times again

  and I’ll walk in circles, mumbling inaudibly

  Maybe I was singing those words for you

  only to let you die

  with my arm outstretched

  like moving lines in a Japanese cartoon

  these roads forgive like the souls of the dead

  conquered by technology and blonde hair

  much like we walk through the streets

  with our eyes closed tightly we block out the sound

  the grating within our hearts

&n
bsp; it grows light with antiseptic

  a healthy dose of falsity to the cranial of society

  and our OH SO beauties

  who walk the streets in the hippest style

  with fashion in their hip pockets

  I’ve got the flask

  the love, the burn, the icicle wand

  I’ll give you the kiss from the shadows

  and the scimitar to the belly

  we’ll stroll that catwalk together baby

  painted and rearing to blow…….

  MATT EMBREE

  Rx Bandits

  How many poppies to fill that voice?

  How many angels to kiss those lips?

  How many strangers to woo and cuddle under the same stars

  running the gauntlet like thieves high on freedom and

  sensory lust

  The kings of the road, the buffalo of the concrete jungle,

  the semi truck diesel burners of the atlantic ocean, too salty

  and

  dry like morning after sex, crusty and smelling of razor clam

  still hip on last nights drunken fumbles tracing thigh veins

  and operatic crevice treasure. The miles of time, the soprano

  strings, flat at first but climbing to the top. Add to stir

  an evangelizing head rush all tip and little shaft. Lick lipped

  liability in tremolo and infinity. How long till the blood is

  dry on her satin, salty and thick like when my lips curve to

  reveal my orthodental sacrifice.

  BRIAN MARTINEZ

  Dear Ginsberg . . .

  I wrote a letter to Ginsberg and

  and sent it to the sky,

  through my eyes and to the

  nearest stars and with pupils

  opened wide, I cried and cried,

  unashamed, uninhibited. the

  angels read aloud to Ginsberg,

 

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