I traversed the modern world -

in seven days and seven nights

there were no rituals I’d left unseen,

no sacred rites gone unperformed.

If I must wake up tomorrow

hardened like a diseased heart or

stiff like muscle two days after death,

it won’t be for lack of trying.

Silly me, working against destiny

for the selfishness of my own needs -

the shared fear of the human race;

what will kill me? what will kill

the ones I love?

I’ve already heard the swan song

so you don’t have to minc words with me.

I looked into the welcome maw of death

at a tender age, many years ago,

and heaven has heard my name

more often than my mother wants.

Now, when I wake in the morning,

I am alive, the sun shines; as I slept

the Earth spun, my hair grew a fraction of an inch.

No longer am I jealous of the leaves in autumn

for I learned lose so young

death dares not hunger for me now.

Let me hold you for a moment, please,

while I think hard on the best way to explain

the tenderness of most people like me,

who chose to burn, once upon a childhood;

with melted wings, ground bound forever,

I have learned to love the world as if it’s all I have.

Does hell wait for all those

who did not try to die by their own hand

but wished for an ending, dared not to pray,

though they walked out into the open night and

begged the universe to strike them down?

Give me your hand, I’ll try to tell you a truth

without having any of the answers.

See, if the car sails off the cliff

or the rain comes with thunder and lightning,

there are another six billion years

before the Earth falls into the Sun

and none of us are going anywhere until then.

Across the street

the neighbor’s car idles in the cold,

rumbling through the silence of the night

with blaring music, shouts to his roommate.

I used to hate his noise,

stare out my bedroom window in scorn.

I though I could make him quiet down

without even knowing what he looked like.

Many nights passed, summer came and went

as there are no constants in life but inconsistency -

a curse on all our lives, a hard truth we must live with;

there is always the man in the night with his noise.

And maybe his presence will teach me a lesson

on how to sit back and let to world scream

or blind me with its high beams at 11:30 at night.

I should learn to treat differently

the things that treat me indifferently.

~ Chey Brabo

#poetry

Last night I dreamt I saw you again. I was trapped in a cellar, a boiler room, perhaps the basement of a hulking, concrete building. The ground, the walls, and I were shaking. Dust was shooting from the corners of the room. I clung to a staircase like a drowning swimmer. A metal monster, artifact of wartime came stomping like terror in the night. On the last step of the stair was the boot of a killing machine. I bid no greeting, I asked nothing of it and yet, it stepped towards me while the whole earth quaked. With one steel hand it smashed the faceplate of its helmet. Inside was your face when you were young and sweet. With the same hand, you made a fist and all the air left the room. I woke up, suffocating. Your phantom hand was still around my throat and I missed you.

In the darkness and the ice,

In the vacuum, the cradle of life among all deathly night,

There grows one kind of plightful mind.

Only isolated, lonely times does it propagate.

A hundred thousand marbles scatter the black sky,

On one round, glass ball of blue, turquoise, and white

It’s mammals gaze into their own black night

None know it yet, but they are trapped inside for all of time.

A curse above all curses lurks to be discovered when their sun is high,

When one glass bead sees another tiny, sequin dot begin to shine.

Perhaps it shall turn a thousand cameras to the sky,

And become suddenly obsessed with the reflection of itself.

If they dare try to look outside their single pane, telescope-window

Their own droplet, their native and designated pocket in time,

They shall know that they are not free to travel far nor wide;

Humankind is kept a prisoner of destiny and the inside of its own mirror mind.

I have spent five years,

Searched high and low my brain and life,

For which day changed my mind

From prosperity to greet terror, galore.

Was it great papa’s death?

That which I sense in my bed, miles away?

And then mine purgatory sentence in limbo

Wherein I lived between my mourning and survival,

My life and death and the death around me?

What made me cursed as I am?

What age was I when death first spied me?

And which parts of me were prettiest,

Which pound of my flesh was sweetest then, toughest now?

And why did I, distraught with sorrow, later on,

Dare ever let death in, dare let death speak with me?

Still, the past is done and gone.

Today, years on, death and I commune like lovers.

I sleep with death, dine with it, bathe with death on my mind.

I cradle death again my chest at night,

Whisper promises as it counts the beating of my heart

I spin tales of our reuniting soon, for I so suffer.

We speak more than my closest friends, most physical lovers.

Perhaps death and I have come so close

And become so compassionate with each other

For my beckoning of death, my taunting of it,

My longing for it and so too my fear and hunger of death.

It is the toll I toil to pay, for death to take me one day

Sooner than my end days, shortening my earthly stay.

A curse I have so placed upon myself!

A curse by the enemy I treat as my friend!

I was born in a black soot, ash cloud,

With foreign mud beneath my fingernails,

And a blue-black bruise around my eye.

Within the womb I came this way,

Like the brand of a tree set for logging,

Or the scar-graft of cattle; possession; their's.

I was coughing up tar before my child age;

The consequence of every chain smoker

That ever lived, lies within my chest.

This oil pumping from my soul

Seeps out of every pore upon my skin,

And I cannot hide the steal like shine of my pain.

You may not notice me, as a passer by;

My sweat is grey, in tracking, metal streaks.

Though I must warn, whoever you are, I am not like you.

Still, look closer at my skin if you will;

I stink of nickel; I am a beast of tar or methane,

In my hair you'll find the paper blossoms of dead trees.

Do not come too close to me,

I will pull you in the pits as well,

For it is in my cursed nature; I, being a beast of hell.

I, the beast of dissatisfaction,

I, the patron poltergeist of habitual greed,

Shall forget my nature, yen of yen.

Shed my weapons, my every mean of possession,

Wash the blood from my hands for thee.

All you’ve ever had to be

Is willing to share my gluttony with me.

Tell me what I’m doing here; tan skinned and red eyed.

The oak trees are burning and I’m running for my life.

Why did I walk here, in this path of hatred?

For some wild glory, described in vague terms like god and the stars,

So close to the fire my lashes are burned and my shoes are melting?

Did I crave, like the many, bitter smoke to burn my lungs?

Can you say, will you tell me, why the flame still burns?

My ears are red and my nose is burning; snot dribbles from my lips.

Is it the winter now? Has the snow fallen yet? Is there enough rain this year?

I have been in the flame for so long now, my Sister.

A moment ago you were drowning in the muk,

In another, your metal hand closed around my neck.

I am choking on your good luck, in six feet of fear and heartbreak.

This place on Earth is not for me, and more so it is not for any of us.

Whatever wonder resided in this place, it is gone now;

They have taken wonder away from everyone.

Yes, I see that now my sister, and you should too;

It’s all a hellhole here; no matter which corner turned, there's something terrible.