(Half Drunk Muse) Half Drunk Muse has submitted the text to our publication, but has been delayed in getting us the authors name and the city, state, country of the author. Contact us with the title of the totem, first line of your poem, and this important information. We will be happy to give proper credit to the writers.

Pale, tepid flesh,
Melt off.
Unveil the void.
Frail vitality,
Feigns immortality

In vain.

Pretentious vision --
Morbid Creator,
Cruel by design.

Behold: Magnificence...

Or dust.

Carnal puppet --
Divine mockery,
Cloaked in
Weary material.

Vicarious caresses
Reverse affection;
Parasitic touch
Produce disgust.

Silicon grains
Slither meticulously,
Slipping within
Slick orbs

And escape.

Vindictive critic,
Ruthless judge --
Undeserving.

Unflinching ruling
Chokes out

A last gasp.

Truth is Elusive, defiant.

Mortal deity --
Covet perfection,
The "Invincible Icon."

Nihilistic martyr,
Simple fool.
Corporeal is Finite,
Time reliant -- Done.
(Half Drunk Muse)

And there have been eyelids that peeled like scabs from dead eyes, collecting in piles of dead skin, burnt to ashes, only to blow in a forever wind to be lost in a forever day. Ashes from these sold souls were auctioned off, their scent steamed of the flesh of bulls, or the blood of goats that thieves stole and drank like wine, later pissed and secreted from their sweat drenched in the hour of time before their eyeballs died to white, their hour of judgment.

And there is a dissection that crawls beneath skin, a universe illuminated by the series of carved glass, revealing wars fought in whispers and cities where no sun rises. These are the lives no one remembers, for the transcendence never occurs, for the death is only a blur. But there is a past to every face, to every article of clothing, there are recognizable scents that shoot the mind to far off places. And with time the body decays, the body grows, the body resists and the body bleeds.

Sewn lips, severed toes and black holes for eyes- this is the future of the mortal, this is highway the immortal speed past.
(Half Drunk Muse)

1 January: we walked in the park, made
passionate love, planned road trips.
21 January: you collapsed, spent two weeks
saying you were conscious, had no memory
of those days. 15 March: having ruled out other
conditions, they tested for multiple myeloma.
7 April: you forgot which of your lovers
I was, the first time. 12 April: they put you on
the hospice list. 3 May: you remembered
which of your lovers I was, the last time.
20 June: you were dead. 20 June
of the next year, I ponder whether
I can ever love another living body.
(Half Drunk Muse)

I couldn't see it
Though I knew that it would end

I involved myself
and I kept myself

and
eventually

what I thought would involve me
what I thought would keep me

didn't.
(Half Drunk Muse)

After a Dream About Meeting Ezekiel
The days when you looked depleted –
plastic grocery bag wedged in the oleanders.
Cheated daylight. Couldn’t photosynthesize
five decades passed that day
…and we still made money off of fear.
Drowned tears in plastic, cellophane, and cat5 cable.
The question of how
young people should have asked about the centrifugal horror
of the threat of nuclear weapons
and the importance of peace
was therefore a matter of moderate, but passing concern.
(Half Drunk Muse)

As I awake and stare across this half decorated apartment, the thought resounds in my head yet another birthday. One more day I’ve stepped closer to the grave and left this feeble cruel world behind. One more day of loose ends and unfinished projects left to taunt me. As I look back on my thirty years one year closer to death and how life is taking away from me. I’m not living or living with the distinct understanding that I’m on borrowed time. To say I’m only human demoralizes me and leaves me feeling empty. I gave all I could to this life, she says. Steadily, with my imperfection magnified, while I sit back, in this half decorated apartment watching others discover themselves and murder ideas. I’m walking now, closer to God yet further away from him, not yet understanding my borrowed life. All those moments I took for granted and left unsaid. I’m glancing into the future now of my mishaps and happenstance and wondering when the next step would be my last. “Just a closer walk with thee,” the choir chimes, yet I’m standing still and wondering when time stopped.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Mind your thoughts, for they dream of words
Mind your words, for they reveal the settlement of actions
Mind your actions, for they hold hands with habits
Mind your habits, for they abstract character
Mind your character, for it illuminates your destiny
Feel
For logic is a tool to strip hearts of all morality
But
Love is a gift to equip hearts for all immortality
(Half Drunk Muse)

Chiseled to the bone
Examined under a microscope
Hope to stand with strength
Shrink to a spec of dust
Shrouded in old, loose socks
Tennis shoes stink
The missing link
Alive because we think
Because we breathe
Because we bleed
We break
We build
We see
What’s inside
We hide
While we’re alive
(Half Drunk Muse)

Am I a man or machine?
Working efficiently,the game?
The true answer is sublime
Death will find me in time

The truth for you to see
A secret kept safe inside
Flesh pulls away to reveal
I am made of bone and steel

When all is said and done
Death finds a mortal machine
Giving way to skeletal remains
A man or machine's fate, the same

Both with a destiny in motion
Supreme Intelligence fuels the gears
Which one of these will I become?
It doesn't matter, we are both ONE
(Half Drunk Muse)

Nature's curved scythe is replaced
by a scientist's sterile scalpel,
Flesh hinges on brittle bone
As microscopes meticulously magnify
skin, red and white cells

Their masters:
Geneticists draped in white shrouds
Destroy the building blocks of life,
the body tested,
A complex whole
divided into a billion questions
with tiny solutions
Impossible to account for
like the grains of sand on a
single strand of beach

Solemn faces
analyzing, formulating,
reaping the fruits of labor:
the X and Y:
silently searching for the key:
in DNA-
But answers are evasive
Hypotheses are abandoned
as a new crop of mortals
seek to make gods
out of
parts of men.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Halting, deliberating, proceeding;
To be blind to the mechanics of choice.
Teaming, dividing, gut intuiting;
To mind not the families of beliefs.
Amoebas in lenses, in functions, out there in the world;
To avoid where classifications lie
(Cells live in another state of affairs).

Will a mushroom bend the view to judge how straight I can be?
Can death's hand clarify truths I merely cannot see?
Is truth best sought living extra sleep off an I.V.?
Riddles split answers in pieces of three.
Try to burst from interpretation, and you will cease to see.
We cannot cleanse our view so completely.
We'll never transcend what's humanity.
Everything spiritual is cut short by mortality.
(Half Drunk Muse)

I stand in consternation at life and death, trying to scrutinize all of the pieces. As my mortal time seeps slowly out of my toes and back into the earth where I came from, I staunchly call science and technology to my door. Here I can make life bend to my will. Here I can control the elements. Here I am God. All of this, and still, for each bit of time my clock turns on creation, it turns that much closer to death.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Shallow, hollow, marrow melting away
inventions in suspension
leave no mention
of the space they cannot fill
though provide room for vanity
which turns into insanity
as a host begins to fade
and can no longer evade
a new dimension
(Half Drunk Muse)

In rain soaked tears I come to you!
Take me in and make me whole.
I seek the mother of greatness and to her beauty it be known.
The darkness has captured my soul and I fear there is no hope.
A marrage was made
Between darkness and light
Now there is no way to break these chains that bind me.
I seek the light but nothing to avail
The morter that holds us together is chipping away
A darker side remains
Children of the night is what we were called
And who can complain
Be strong they say
And nothing will remain

A steak to the heart would end it all
No one wants to live for ever
Bless me mother for I have sinned
(Half Drunk Muse)

Under the scope of life,
we are all just skin-coated bones,
in a cycle, each day,
wearing down this renewal.
The earth tones, like blood,
pulse and rust on the edges,
and someday I will become dormant
like a volcano, run its course.
I will not erupt from the dust.
(Half Drunk Muse)

"Break a leg!"
She cheerfully says
As I stop to contemplate
The scope and meaning of my fate
What is mortal?
My flesh and bone?
Sinewy tissue come undone
Rendered threadbare for all to see,
The inner workings of my physical body?
What of my very essence, my very soul?
Surely that is something eternal
So why bother with such thoughts?
Are they assurances and self-delusions
Keeping us from coming to certain conclusions?
Perhaps...or perhaps not.

The End...?
(Half Drunk Muse)

by some fatal alchemy
slipping upward from
the x-ray slide
slipping downward
by the grade
lisping outward
from its toad-stool shell

This cookie's baked out of herself
poached on the grounds of backwardness
raising her heels in dusty remembrance
(Half Drunk Muse)

There was a life within the void
Of intersections, dear;
I swear there bled a thousand souls
Into a place of fear.

But life is not a movement, wrought
From iron, muscle, and bone,
Nor is it, as was said, a circle,
Through six glasses shone;

And death is not a rider, come
Upon a steed of black,
And death is not a claw to tear
Us to a curtain back;

Death is our hearts, death is our bones,
Death is our muscles, dear,
Death is within us, every one,
Death is the self that fears.
(Half Drunk Muse)

yes, i know.
i could have done differently.
the analytic loathing
was just such a rush.
& there was no one behind me
clueing me in,
so i didn't really know when to go.
still, i saw some highs,
some places.
but i started running with my eyes closed.
of course i eventually slowed,
and then took to keeping still.
but sadly, it stuck.
(Half Drunk Muse)

As I awake and stare across this half decorated apartment, the thought resounds in my head yet another birthday. One more day I’ve stepped closer to the grave and left this feeble cruel world behind. One more day of loose ends and unfinished projects left to taunt me. As I look back on my thirty years one year closer to death and how life is taking away from me. I’m not living or living with the distinct understanding that I’m on borrowed time. To say I’m only human demoralizes me and leaves me feeling empty. I gave all I could to this life, she says. Steadily, with my imperfection magnified, while I sit back, in this half decorated apartment watching others discover themselves and murder ideas. I’m walking now, closer to God yet further away from him, not yet understanding my borrowed life. All those moments I took for granted and left unsaid. I’m glancing into the future now of my mishaps and happenstance and wondering when the next step would be my last. “Just a closer walk with thee,” the choir chimes, yet I’m standing still and wondering when time stopped.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Delicious mushrooms can kill
Science won’t save you
One foot in the grave
(Half Drunk Muse)

If they only knew.
My pleasant exterior hides the festering horror of a million nightmares.
I sing, I dance, all the while hating one thing more than them.
Myself.
They'll never know the truth. I won't let them.
My soul radiates a thousand subtle shades of misery.
I'd shed it in a minute if I thought it would make a difference.
But it won't.
Instead I keep dancing, instead I keep singing.
It helps to keep the maddening wails from escaping.
My inner torment rages on, doubt and self-loathing suffocating my heart.
I want to scream, but it won't let me.
Instead I sing.
Instead I dance.
Instead I slowly die.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Down to skin and bones
Addicted to exercise
Never saw the car
(Half Drunk Muse)

Under the microscopic study of eternity
I’ve discovered that death isn’t an illness
But a preparation to a higher consciousness

Fatality’s hand keeps scratching at me
Tempting me to cling to tangible existence
But I’ve always had one foot in the grave
And the other foot in the breathing world

The traffic light of life
Has always guided me towards my mortality

I was green when I was born
An innocent and naive suckling babe

Then the yellowness of middle age
Began to taint my skin with the stains of time

And finally the red-hot reality of finality
Will viciously throw me completely into the great unknown.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Mortals face the tragedy of doom
Ever so often bittersweet
Yet so putrid in your mouth
So sweet as death
For it awaits those mortal fools….
(Half Drunk Muse)

The marvel of our new age ways,
with Science at the helm.
Has lengthened the lives of many,
giving egos total realm.

What once would warrent a dose of fear,
with a respect for Nature's Mother.
Has given way to arrogance,
and Pride, it's little brother.

We can fix it no matter what,
we can make it better.
We'll break it, take it, move it around,
the bill...you'll get a letter.

There's just one thing we've left behind,
Humility...tis how we started.
For we are merely Mortals,
our errors have since departed.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Did I tell you the one about the Tutsi Runner who could run like a gazelle on crack
I mean fast. He was a black blur.
Damn near a tornado tearing up the dark bread basket earth

Well these men with spears and machetes expect to kill him
They round him up in a gas station with a bunch of other machete’d and bleeding Tutsis
Then the gas comes pouring in, and the match, and the smell
He’s young, a teenager only

Scared too, but he could hide under the burning bodies, which burn him
And escapes too. Found the biggest charred femur
knocked out a window
And ran. Boy he could run.

And I’ll tell you,
I bet it was the leg of that Martyred Rabbi
Whose flesh they combed from his leg
While he burned

Burnt fat and hair is no summer barbecue

So this same Rabbi who’s getting his flesh combed from his legs
He says to his torturers,
'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.’

And it will be years before I get the joke
(Half Drunk Muse)

No one should be out in the open with a microscope by themselves.
It is too dangerous. The sun can get way too bright and those
refracting lenses can be powerful, much more powerful than a rational
man would be inclined to think. There are even more expensive models,
but understand that there aren't available to just anyone. Those
little lenses hunger for the sun; it's the photons they want mostly.
And in a small town like this things are bound to get out of hand.
(Half Drunk Muse)

The why I die don't make me cry for the ones that are forgotten under the land of the freebird that flies sideways of conscienceness into the abyss of the unknown process of death to all in a matter of time to begin to sing like we will never intent to be a part of the living for today is the price of gas is the cause of why we die back to nothing we can do.
(Half Drunk Muse)

Mortal
“Too late. Too late,” came the immortal words of Solomon the Great, the
king who knew wonders of wonders before it really became too late. He,
who declared the gardens of Babylon and talked about the tower Babel in
the sky, of multi- language things, and coloured balloons too. Each
fragile thing is but a whim , a whimsy of horror streaked, look at the
genre and find something to make you laugh or weep. Life is the quirky
dice to throw,my friend, there are never real wins, Throw the dice again
and up comes Cardinal Sin. Rotate your view and you'll see through one
shallow side of Man. Study a splinter or hair like thread to grasp that
knowledge before you are dead. Don 't let the knowledge die with you,
share the spirit of knowing, with friends so good and true. Though with
friends on the lonely road to Hell or way beyond, there is never much
cheer , always the morbid thoughts fill our heads , leak away through
holes and get replaced with fear. Drive on , travel through the land ,
see out interesting things, look through mankind's windows and forsake
the flesh and sin. Join in Belle France the Foreign legion, it's better
than the damned , that army of dead living souls lost before they've
lived or even living begun. Take hope from little things, little things
often grow straight and tall. We are but mere mortals, hurrah! Only
drift wood on a high sea, yet floating free.
-Cleveland W. Gibson, (Author of Billabongo) Faringdon, United Kingdom