42 Mice

Pendulum

2005-11-10T02:42:14Z

This waiting game is a test
of patience
for a patient
who needs no more tests.

A month,
nearly,
I’ve been looking through this looking-glass.
I should know: I’ve been
counting the hours as they trickle by
in a stream
of ticks
and tocks and
sunrises and sunsets.

The minutes stack
but I never had the world’s best balance,
did I?
I’m coming close to the end of this rope.
Tying it, tying it, tying it:
my hobby of choice.

No more games, I’m sick
of playing.
I want the real thing now,
refusing all the cheap imitations.
Her. Only her.

I want a decision to be
made; answers
to a question I am too afraid to ask
because I know
I’m not ready.
But God
damn it all! I want to be
ready!...
for her.

A sigh in a darkened room
…repeated
with every rising of the moon
and revisited
again
with dawn.
A yawn,
a tear,
a bittersweet resignation of what is to come.

I guess I’ll just have to
keep waiting,
won’t I?
Right, dear?
Right?

"Sunsweet Tea"

2005-08-12T00:28:50Z

These memories have not left me.
They're just tucked into my back pocket.
Waiting for the next time I lay about,
careless. Heedless
of the tickling and itching;
the movement from that back pocket,
as some whisper of a summer day
seeps out
into the atmosphere
of this crowded room.

The smell of warm grass and lemonade tea
silences this ugly banter
called conversation.
I am on my back, breathing deep,
eyes closed and sounds of thunder and fear
coming from my chest; this phantom rib
is knocking on my tempest heart;
the storm inside grows
while my eyes slide
backwards in time;

More than the smell of grass and tea
there is sunlight
in all the yellows of childhood.
Laughter fades from now to then;
from equal and low
to giant and high;
a mature laughter, looking down
but not condescending.
Patronized patriots
gazing across the lawn.

Another sip of that sunsweet brew,
another smack of the lips,
a contented sigh,
smelling of sugar and lemons,
rushes out
to meet the fireflies.
Bobbing lanterns in the twilight;
guides to wayfarers seeking hospitality
upon this oaken oasis
in the Southern grass.

Choking (a haiku)

2005-07-01T05:11:40Z

Water in my lungs,
No hand reaching through the waves,
Chest burning in ice.

The Deepening

2005-05-01T04:45:30Z

The Deepening
By C.R. Gage

It has been repeated once more,
A pawn in a long line of mercenaries.
The spade that should have been cast aside
Has been raised,
Handle-in-hand, once again
From the stinking muck.

The digger, that being
He with the pen,
Wipes the salt from his brow
And resumes the deepening.
"China's not far, now!" he bellows
To those walking forth to gaze
In confused wonder.

Daylight's a sad dream
In a raucous brothel to him yet
The dirt soars lower and lower.
The rancid taste
Of the alchemic mixing of swears and tears
Burns his tongue and splits his blistered lips.

Any other would have stopped
For death or intelligence
By now but his curiosity drives him
To Suicide to ask
"What's on the other side?"
The better question to unearth would be
"Is there a bottom?"

And when night falls and the chill air
Crystallizes the acid
Upon his forehead, he takes it
As a cool drink and a hope risen,
Girding him to press the spade-head
Into the bedrock.

The shrill sparks leave ghosts of themselves
With every blink and wince yet
Even they know where they are.
They are deep,
Deep in The Deep.
Where blackness is broken
Only by flint-fire and night-dreams.

All else is black,
Brown and grey.
The digger is an infant
In the womb of Mother Earth.
But being deceived by passion
And by grace, his fingernails scratch
And are left behind as he tears
Through her walls and up towards her throat.
Out! Out whichever way;
He must get out!

The cell he has dug
Is closing in, his lungs no longer expanding,
They scream and whisper into the dust.
He strikes with the murderous tool;
Strikes it upon that which it built
By his hand.

The scars inside this terrestrial esophagus
Bleed pebble and grain all over their maker
But he is a whore and an abortionist,
Striking again and again upon that born of him
And birthing new canyons small
Against the lining of the throat of his mother.

Rapist!
He knows his Sin now,
It has sunk deep its fangs
Into his chest.
For he has forgotten the sun
Only remembering the warmth
A morning too late.

In too deep,
He casts the shovel aside
And stomps the industrial bastard to iron-wood shards
As Hell presses its ears against the roof and listens
To his reflected questions.
He dug for purpose
And dug for pleasure.
His intentions were pure,
But purity alone cannot save an active fool.

Now the only one who could save
This pitiful miner
Is tossing pennies into the dark.
She started days ago
But now the first one strikes
The splinters at his feet with a ping!
And Hell swells with greed
Towards the sound of feminine bane.

He implores again: "Why?"
But his answer is another copper raindrop.
He cries out
And writhes
And froths,
Spitting up at the ground
And cursing the gracious well-being
That spurned him to pick up his shovel.

He thinks of Death and of Hell,
Neither being far away.
But he can not touch either
Soon enough.
Death is a slave to hunger and madness
And Hell opens its gates only for Death
Yet our man is fat
On tears and reproach;
Death comes too slowly for him.

He cannot go to Hell prematurely
Because though he can hear the screams beneath him,
That which he traveled there with
Now lies defeated and broken
Beneath his sandaled feet and he cannot climb
Back up to that love which ignited this digging.

He is too perfect in his artistry.
The walls are too smooth and steep to climb.
He feels resolutely feline as he paces his cell
And paws at the sides.
His thoughts run out of room
And bounce back at him but
Now in different voices.

They tell him
To cry.
They tell him
To climb.
They tell him
It is all his own fault.
He knows this already
And he knows there is no escape
From this newest hole.

He has no hope of climbing out,
He could only swim
And float to the top
After drowning from the effort.
So he brushes aside the many handled splinters
And sits, staring upward
In silence,
Waiting for the rain.

Whisperings of a July Evening

2005-05-01T04:42:51Z

Whisperings of a July Evening
C.R. Gage

This has to be written
Because I have no room on the inside
Anymore
And I know when I finally write
This goodbye to the memories
I'll be able to have a lopsided grin
Again.

It's bursting through and burning deep.
I'm stuck between laughing
And crying,
Sometimes doing both
And I can't seem to stay
One way
Or the other.

I'm either happy about this
Or sometimes I can't stop crying.
I miss what once was
So bad it hurts and I feel
The tears welling up deep inside
And everything seems
So blue and grey in composition
And nothing else matters but the memories
And the wetness on my cheeks.

Moments later I laugh it off
And go about in a faggot way
To proclaim how wonderful friends are
As I smile through the fogged window
Before you roll it down.
I can't decide if the other side is green
Or badly clotted spraypaint.
My pants hug tight and my fingers trace
Emo lyrics against the sky
As I hug your scent against my chest and grin
With wet lips
As I taste the salt on them.

You know
It hurts but nothing can change
The path laid out for my broken legs to drag across
And the dust waves at the moon
In the night sky as lightning flashes in the distance.
God's own fireworks show.
It won't stop, the catastrophe
Inside my heart and I pray
To love my sister as no one else
But never anything more.

It's worse when I'm alone
And can't talk it out,
Breathing against the clicking of my fingers
As words roll along, clipped and small
Against the sheen of technology.
You know you caused it but don't take
The blame for my blissful ignorance. I made myself
Naive for the sake of nirvana and
Paradise will never last.

I've learned so much from you
And I want to thank you every day
But I know I might kiss you and that
Would kill me,
Suicide by love. But love is
Suicide,
That's what they say.
And I told you I'd wait
But I don't think I can.
Not without giving up
On what was and what could be.

I give up on patience,
I don't have the sanity for it.
I can't give up on you but
I can give up on me
And damn that's a good idea
Sometimes. This black shirt
Hides the wet spots from tear drops but it doesn't
Hide the smell of the perfume you wore
And the shampoo in your hair.

I never wanted anything but the taste
Of your lips and the sound
Of your voice but everything seems so black
When unrequited,
Unreciprocated and a heart
So desecrated. I can't hate you
And I don't want to
But I wish I'd never loved you
This way.

As time went on
Platonism didn't and my shortcomings started
With three simple words and I
Can never take them back.
As if I'd want to but you know that already
Don't you?

Everything can be forgiven but not
Always forgotten and the memories
Won't quit flooding
Because they won't drain away
With the tears and my eyes
Are so blue right now because they're clean
And pure and I wanted nothing at all but purity
from a union of intertwined fingers.

I'm alone in the world now
Because God isn't
In the world she's higher up
And silent as black but I know next time
I talk to you my world will have meaning again
And I'll be able to smile again.

Not because I
Love you and not because I
Kissed you and not because I
Miss you any less;
because I
can't stop loving you regardless. I'll always
wish I could have kissed you
One last time.
I'll never stop missing you because I
Know we can never go back
And do it right.

No, I'll be able
To smile again because the more I talk
To you, the more I realize it's true
That time heals all wounds; I know
It's true that love never dies,
Just changes forms; I know it's true
That close friends are better than closer illusions.

I smile when I talk to you
Because I don't love you the same way my memories do.
I smile when I talk to you because
When I talk to you, I know in the end
It will be all right.

Madmen Exist Best Without Sleep

2005-05-01T04:39:22Z

Madmen Exist Best Without Sleep
By C.R. Gage

It's a vulgar kind of morning,
Perfect for a ramble;
This wouldn't be here if sleep was:
Madmen exist best without sleep.
Dry, urine-tinted mucus
Still on the corners of my eyes.

Writing it longhand
Across faded blue lines
And over gullies and wrinkles.
Threw my pallet away and resurrected it,
Like some paper crucifix,
In the namesake of boredom and insomnia;
My two most loyal compatriots.

I'm not feeling anything
Worth verse,
So I'll cage this up in stuttered,
Broken form.
Who cares
About structure
Anymore
In this world anyway?

Not feeling poetic
In any major or corporate sense, i
If only anything...
Feel slighty prophetic,
Psychic in a metaphorical sense.

'Tis probably the estranged overdose
Of sleep
With which I consume three hours too early
To be worth
A good escape from this
Idea of a world.

In a few hours,
maybe sooner,
If sleep keeps chugging along,
A tortuously stretched arm's length away,
I may add this to electricity
For all the world too see
And more for me to hear the clicking
Of the chaotically disordered alphabet,
The random morse code of my eclectic mind
And didactic heart.

This time I may do it in the attic,
The acoustics outweigh even the bathtub's echo
Per crimson drop if you count them by ear.
What am I saying?
Stainless steel is to good for me,
I don't have the steady hand anymore;
Faith made sure of that.

Disembowel my chest instead
And maybe I'll make a few horizontal motions
Before memories of a sunday
Re-emerge and I remember
The wrong reason to live
And the worst reason to die.

Undoing and redoing my zipper
Over and over again.
Not meant to be provacative,
You just like the sound.
Sleep is tonight's anti-drug
For someone like me; a junkie.
Where is my newest batch of somnorific heroin?
I got it at Disney, don't you know?

What's the use?
Dr. Seusse quit his tutoring job,
Leaving me standing here,
Pen in hand,
Tears blending in with the rain.
He left with my youth,
Left me with nothing.
I had to make myself afterwards.

I'm back to building again,
Brick by morterous brick and
It's morose work;
Mortifying to the mind and I feel
Exanimate about my work;
There is not an expectation
Of the house I build now.
It's a big one too, you know?
I have to fit plenty of money in it.
Not cash of course, that's a social taboo.

I have to be rich in fancy artwork
And grand piano sports cars.
You know I'm fine now,
My puncuation proves it.
I only get sad when I forget to capitalize.

Of course if you
Were a friend worth knowing
You'd know that wouldn't you
Mr. Knowitall?

He hung himself by a violin string,
The open-eyed genius.
I'm so jealous of that kind of creativity. I,
Stuck here with a mechanical pencil;
Laziness by way of progress.
We're 17, we don't need no stinkin' pencil sharpeners.
No, we just click an eraser
So it knows it has a job coming up.

The irony is flooding downhill
Like magma, not lava
Because it doesn't know sunlight.
I do...
I wish I didn't.
Call me magma why don't you?
I'm burning myself to oblivion
and falling as I do it.
Sounds fun,
Don't you agree?

The letter E has a vendetta
Against me,
I think.
I can taste the poison on my lips and it tastes
Like cherry kool-aid.
Thank you for serving the refreshments,
The party was great.
Will you be coming with me?

Yeah, the lightning stopped flickering last night;
I must of hit the wrong switch.
Don't blame me
Because you don't have any candles
To smell by.
You're lack of preparation
Is why I'm lost now anyways.

Don't add bricks on top of a cardboard fence,
Your neighbors will begin to worry,
You know.
Especially when your parents say
The cardboard has to go
And the bricks break upon contact with the ground.

You got my hopes up
But my foundation faltered;
I should have looked for better support.

My hat's on sideways again,
I wore it straight for you
To get a laugh or two,
But you never grinned.
Let your hair down for once,
It's cute like this but it's not you.
I know you're nervous when I see the bun.

Enough of that,
I took a two hour nap
And went to bed at ten.
Obviously 5 hours of sleep
Was too much:
I'm up now, aren't I?
You should feel honored,
You've just read
An exact auto-biography of 15 minutes
Of my life wasted
On graphite and wood pulp.
I hope you enjoyed the show,
But the lead dust is snowing pretty
Thick on my eyelashes again.

For sake of me and forever,
Whose patience is wearing thin,
Looks like I have to say goodnight
To my compatriots mentioned years
And pages ago.
And don't think I forgot about you.

So Much Nonsense

2005-05-01T04:15:44Z

So Much Nonsense: An Exercise in Existentialism and Vocabulary Abuse
By C.R. Gage

The sky flashes amber
Against the crystal sea
Amidst cottonballs,
And silver embroiderie
Lines the polyamorously toned palletes;
God paints with a pallet knife.

The dreams of Monet
Are gone in the next flash;
Evanescent and leaving behind
A scent of morning dew.
The heat rises and the colors
Wash away
Or maybe out;
Too intense for recognition.

I take for granted
The torture I'm guided through;
The scrambled eggs
Congealing inside my skull.
I nail a board to the wall
And paint on it
The great American past-time
And observe the rising blades as a hobbie
During the off-season.

The shadows shrink,
And expand;
Overlapping and darkening
Towards acceptance on a California sidewalk.
The road is epileptic...
or maybe it's me;
Of the two, one of us
Is sure to suffer a seizure in the bright light.

The pneumonia-written,
Non-dairy creamer sky
Is interrupted by the dreams we make
For ourselves
When looking up
Serves no other purpose besides tropical suicide.

Riddle-speak confuses itself
With delusions of a momentumless mind
And the confusion stacks;
A skyscraper in an airfield,
Checking its emergency stopwatch countdown.

It's only elevensies
And the silent samurai continues
His gravelly pursuit;
Seen but not heard;
Him or her?
Him I should hope but fame
Claims a fine line
Easily broken.
Taught red thread on a black satin sheet.

It began an hour ago,
Winked at me
With a listerine breath
Past a quarter-inch iceblock.
If no one is awake to see it,
Is the dawn still beautiful?

Two months down,
One third to go before dawn
Has a plentitude of ignorant company:
The caffeine junkies march
En mass on main street.
Now forward! and look
To your left
As you pass the minute hand and hope it waves.

You watch the circus
Freak of a frisbee;
Mailed in public for your scrutiny
Because three arms are more useful than one.
You lullaby into a lull
And sink into the violet cowhide;
Violet for the violence line.

Then upon the wind the herald calls;
A great grey steed
Driven by reckless abandonment.
The vanilla cream and cherry dreams
Are replaced
By inverted starry skies gridded
Out and speckled with rectangular galaxies.

You have four hours children:
Be sure to enunciate
When memorizing your illusions:
You're being graded.

Of Faith...and Effort

2005-05-01T03:48:56Z

Of Faith...And Effort
By C.R. Gage

Like a bird just out of egg begins,
Like a petal fallen from Mother Rose,
Set to take flight into that swift wind,
Or flutter softly into streams that flow.
As are we.

The bird in Tin prison sings of the sky,
A song of hope from voice of youth;
Not a downward note to feel such strife,
Flapping wings in joy though they ne’er flew.
As are we.

As Atlas with such burdened shoulders,
On ours this coming day is set to be rested.
As Sisyphus lonely except for friend boulder,
And family pride is thought to be tested.
As are we.

Like young winter flowers bloom amidst the ice,
And the bird flies through the tempest storm,
As love felt true is blind to the eyes,
And the colt does walk as soon when born,
So we will be.

What's Left Behind

2005-05-01T03:47:38Z

What's Left Behind
By C.R. Gage

No more fields of high grass and dainty daisies.
No more footprints staggering and swaggering
Through the sand.
And no more Jinx! You owe me a coke!
And no more scraped knees with a lipstick band-aid.

No more holes in the dirt and mud on the face.
No more secret admirers with a Check for yes
Or a Check for no.
No more Saturday mornings with “poofed air”
And no more untied shoes flying in the breeze.

No more crying out loud when you know it’s okay.
No more night-lights and ‘Goodnight, sweet dreams,
I love you.”
No more winding roads and a holy chorus of “wee”
With the world a-spinnin’ and the wheels a-turnin’.

No more of that, no more games in the sunlight,
No more of those silly pocket posies and stiff green
Army men with rifles raised.
No more toothless grins and mangled locks,
And no more fun for you young man.

No more time to sit and watch the beetles crawl
Up the side of that tree that’s beggin’ for a climbin’
From the next bundle of joy.
Now it’s time to be obsessed with letters and numbers,
And whether it’s the calf or the decaff.

Now it’s time to log that forest up high,
And fertilize the one on the chin down below
Because image is everything.
Don’t be late, don’t take your time, it’s no good
To learn how beautiful the sky really is.

Now is that day I will wish was my last,
Dotted with flames atop towers twisting up and up,
And that same damn phrase
Written all over the place like a sign from God.
Today is the day I will remember as the worst of my life.

Mayday Mayday

2005-05-01T03:44:59Z

Mayday Mayday
By C.R. Gage

This is
Not a drill.
This is
An actual emergency.

Calling God
On channel Mayday Mayday,
Your assistance is requested
On grounds of urgent,
crumbling,
sanity.

Take this load off: just a bit.
I'm not strong enough
To handle all this.
Let me be
A boyfriend,
An actor,
A poet,
A friend,
A child,
An adult,
A student,
A teacher...
And nothing more. Just...
for a little while.

I want
Some peace in my head,
And some
Love in my heart,
Before I have to leave it all behind.

I have grown quite accustomed to this place
And certain peoples herein
and thereabouts...

Let me enjoy this place.
And those peoples.
And this unraveling youth.
Deal?

Lost in Blue

2005-05-01T03:32:39Z

“Lost in Blue”
By: C. R. Gage

There's too much to love and hate
In this world
To resent the rising of the sun.
Emotions; they are the filters
That color the world around us.

The irony is that pink and red
Are so close in hue.
But despite this, love
And hatred
Are not equal;
Never will you find
A secret hatred
As hatreds are obvious,
Never automatic
Nor mysterious.

If you loathe something,
There is always
A reason behind it,
Whether sensible
Or not.
But love,
Like fireflies on a summer night,
Needs no excuse.

And like fireflies,
You are only aware
Of that beauty
Which you can see.
Do you ever smile
At the fireflies behind you?
No, when you stare out
Across a summer's eve,
The only fireflies that were ever in the world
Are right there
In front of you.

Love is but the same;
If you cannot see it,
You rarely acknowledge its existence.

How many times must you fall asleep
At your sweetheart's side,
Before you realize
The pure beauty
Of just listening to them breathe?
How blind are we to
The hidden beauties
We've forgotten to love?

If you only knew
What you ignore...

It takes a drop of sweat
On a scraped knee,
To know that a skateboard and a baseball bat
Are really not so different.

It takes a broken heart
Asking a question to God,
Before you finally see
How beautiful the sky really is.

It only takes
A skipped heartbeart
To lose a lifetime gazing
Into such blue eyes
And be reborn again,
And never notice anything,
But how amazingly lost you are
In those eyes.

I could lose myself for days
In those eyes; and never be lost,
Because I'd already be home.

This ignorance
Of the things we never knew
We could love...
It has assaulted me as well
For so long.

It took a suffocating need
For a chill breeze
To step outside and see
The wonders of a grey sky
Over the dying sun.

And only when I
Could no longer bear to stand
Did I learn to grasp
The tattered edge of eternity
By just watching you
Drift to sleep against my shoulder.

When you have known Heaven…
Have seen the green fields
And tasted the waters,
And felt the cool, unkempt, grass
Between your toes,
And the whispers of the wind
In your ear...
Only when you have felt Heaven
Inside you
Can you understand...

How forever can be born
And die
In the flutter of sleepy lashes.

It is a very forced hate when you've been
To nirvana
Times before and know
That in times ahead
You will return there
Again
And be able
To call it home.