a winter suicide

/ mbrazfieldm / 1 Comment

There was nothing unusual about the morning for seven minutes. Then the news came.

A winter suicide.

In South Central Los Angeles it was still nothing unusual. The mentally ill with a history of homelessness, drug use and unconventional survival skill die all the time.

We were going to meet to work on goals and stuff. Her new life.

By the simplicity of her allowing me to journey with her, no doubt my life would be changed a little yet again.

Not on the surface, but on the inside. In the marrow of my recollections.

Her life and my emotions were like the sugar in the sorry cotton candy machine. Fluffy and sweet disintegrating under her tears. They speak and share; inform me, keep me employed and then I feed the stats into the county machine and do it all again five days a week.

This one was shocking in a painful way like when you’re kicked in the ribs, but you can’t scream or your face will be kicked in next.

Then anger and resentment set in against the factions of claimants of caring and the keepers of those who matter.

Why did she only matter to me? I, a nobody as designated by said keepers.

Let us not scrape it under the crusty superficial bloody red carpets of the city. I grew up here too. I recall a running record of events. I recall the angles and twists of stories.

Driving through streets filled with junky dreams and the parallels of pathology and human conscience. Crypto gods hoard discarded lives outdoors to make room for the lives whose pockets they can pick within their trap doors.

Later I figured I couldn’t be mad at any higher power we’ve sunk so low I wouldn’t know where to go.

It appears that in the city the affluent are the only ones building up taking over God’s once very holy real estate.

In the night alone in my place thinking about her life and our collective deaths. I refuse to believe the asses or the elephants, the foxes or the talking heads from studios named after pretentious consonants.

Instead, in dreams awake I face the moonless sky. Light a candle with her in mind and believe the truth of the life in her humanity.

reasons

/ mbrazfieldm / 10 Comments

for reasons they dont understand
we must pass we must toil and then die
they dont understand why they rule the way they do just a pure desperation
for reasons they dont understand
they too suffer maybe more than us
we are challenged we devise the fighting strategy we battle and we win or die
but for reasons they dont understand
their fight never ends and they take our children again through the mortal coil sausage machine
for reasons they dont understand
they suffer indefinitely
we suffer into a second skin
and life moves
we hang on
then reasons no longer matter

surrender the pickets

/ mbrazfieldm / 2 Comments

beneath the surface
there’s a foul boil
the stench of misery
in print ads and garbage
we a society
but only the forgotten section
we a society relegated
to a profitable charity
intertwined socialist
dreams of those
who when the clock strikes 5
can go to the comforts of a capitalist home
and what of those
who we march fists up high
righteous rage feet of clay
where are we where were needed
come with me surrender the pickets
exchange them for strong arms
to give them so they can give us back our hearts

before Easter

/ mbrazfieldm / 2 Comments

bells rang five tolls
distance between their song
and me perhaps a kiss away
my flower pots smiling in the breeze
mocha coffee afoot
birds tweeting in the trees
warm shower gentle floors
romantic candles scented in rose
walls steady pictures hung tall
my favorite visions
soft bedding for my tired back
freedom of my thoughts
sliding through my throat
yet i just want to bury my head
hoping that those little hands
cup magic pysanky again
instead of covering those
sad button eyes on their teddy bears
when the bombs go off

don’t want marching saints no more

/ mbrazfieldm / 2 Comments

I don’t smoke anymore. I don’t pay attention anymore. I don’t do much anymore. Anymore matters not to anyone. It’s been about two weeks. There is a foggy dream pricking at my waking reality. There is a politeness as to not give away who I am, and who we are, and what we are not made of. Orion’s Belt has lost another Queen Sister. Look up, see? The castle shines less than it did about fourteen days ago.

Sitting next to me, he, young and professional talked to you about developing a plan for hope. Sitting next to me, your cracked yellowed fingers, stiff like frankincense resin, shuffled through your last official systematic memoir, but he and I didn’t know. Did you know? Or did you know you couldn’t go on? Your blue framed reading glasses made of plastic were spotty and needed a scrub. Your skin ashy and hair matted into a bun, those fingers searching for that someone who told you that you were fine so that we could tell you too

 We met on St. Valentine’s, you tried with all of your might on St. Habet-Deus and laid yourself to rest on St. Alvaro’s soiree. Yet, when the old timer hard core practicing apostles hailed St. Polycarp, I stood looking at the west atop the building’s nest with my back to your door sealed by the authorities of science and service.

2 5 1 C

/ mbrazfieldm / 3 Comments

today was a good day
i thought i heard jazz was coming back to LA
its not the be bopping of the choking addict that i mind
or the thumping clacking of the garbage trucks
somehow the sweating forehead of a trumpet player
is far more joyous than me sweating the long wait at the midnight taxi out front in the downtown bar
i can’t wait for the story tellers to be bold
to pluck and beat and tickle pink the ivory teeth of a piano in 2 5 1 C