Return of the Butchers

by Craig Shay

This is still a slaughterhouse,
though it may appear
that the butchers
have closed shop for the night –

The animals know –
The butchers will return any day now,
having sharpened the blades
of their wilted knives.

Now that the Revolution Has Begun

by Craig Shay

Material things
lose
definition –

Our eyes,
indefinitely hold
back
fear and trembling –

Bludgeoned
into assimilating
with consumer
culture –
though disinterested in the
charade of
selling one’s soul
for wireless, high speed
illusions –

While the promise
of enterprise
mystifies us
and forces
participating
in the madness
of serial murder.

It is belief in
the fraud
of these illusions
which destroy us –

We live in an age
where everything
we know
is a blatant lie.

Waking the Dead in the Land of Make-Believe

Craig Shay

I am turning a concept of reality over in my mind.
Dragging it blindfolded through dead streets,
dissolving it in puddles of blood
and leaving it out in the rain.

I am lighting it on fire,
then saying a prayer to heal it.
I am giving it away to the homeless,
then grieving in the darkness for hours.

It is a lonely concept, this reality.
I am watching it through the keyhole of a church door.
I am looking through a spyglass atop a skyscraper.
Smoke rises from its breath,
and it sounds like the revving engine of a wrecked car.

Smoke curls appear around it, like the tail of a dragon.
It is everywhere, and inside of everything.
It is everything I am at my core and the absence of what I am.
It is immeasurable and microscopic.
It is every drop of rainfall over the ocean –
It is a pledge of freedom on a despondent planet.

It is living in the brains of the people of my town.
Breathing like a prisoner held quietly at gunpoint.
It is crying so loud, I cannot understand what it is trying to say.
It is the grotesquery of this modernized world.

It becomes a flock of white birds and then a giant albatross,
as it glides overhead –
Its body has changed so many times.
It splits and duplicates itself.
It even disappears for a time
and reemerges from the darkness as a billion drops
of October rain.

It is unexplained and mysterious,
the last man who tried to solve its riddle
lost his mind and became a shepherd.

It is in that body, pirouetting on the tightrope
over the edge of civilization.
It is in the oil soaked banknotes

It is in the gaze of women in dark sunglasses,
intensely reading, while curling her hair between her fingers.

It is turning itself around to face us,
becoming more and more like us,
opening a can of worms and seeing it there
inheriting our thoughts and emotions,
replicating our ideas and imagination.

It is leaving the school of wisdom
and setting the past on fire.
It is spreading out its vampire wings,
shedding its suit and tie
and flooding through the opened gate of the underworld.

It is in the condemned warehouses of time,
where heretics are placed to wander the streets after a nuclear holocaust.

It is the cracked hands of a pianist, a writer, or a painter
who remains, trembling beside the tomb of a pharaoh.

It is the stirring of life, in a reality upside down.
It has been diagnosed schizophrenic.
It is in no man’s land,
collecting shoes and dog tags of the dead.
Walking through the kingdom of creation completely disoriented.

It is a winter long bout of delirium.
It is a lifelong battle of xenophobia.

It is the energy of light, traveling across the cosmos.
It is a wink of the eye,
it is in piercing cry of the lunatic
as he wakes the dead in a land of make-believe.

Death Waltz

by Craig Shay

We are waltzing instep to a cold wind,
blowing us toward extinction.

We are waltzing, in the glow of computer screens,
while specters haunt our American Dream.

We are waltzing, because we support illegal wars every day,
with our tax money and by pretending they don’t exist.

We are waltzing, while innocent civilians submit
to the brute force of our military.

We are waltzing through shopping malls,
while foreign cities are bombed to ash.

We are waltzing quietly,
unaware that our government,
which preaches freedom and equality,
is the world’s greatest purveyor of violence.

We are waltzing, with our hands held
tightly over our mouths.

We are waltzing, because the American Dream
is really the coma of consent.

We are waltzing through massively corrupt systems
of monopolies and oligarchies.

We are waltzing through decades,
suspended in consumer hypnosis.

We are waltzing up to voting booths,
believing lies, fed to us by puppets.

We are waltzing, while a handful of corporations
control the music of the dance.

We are waltzing, while our media provides
the chanting drone of obedience.

We are waltzing, because denial reigns,
like a pistol, butting everyone over the head.

We are waltzing through our empire of illusion,
too petrified to act out against it.

We are waltzing, while waves of false history
knock us back into the Middle Ages.

We are waltzing as serfs and peasants,
on the manors of dark lords.

We are waltzing on vast plantations,
working for ruthless masters and demonic butchers.

We are waltzing, like zombies down dead-end streets
with faded promises tattooed to our eyelids.

We are waltzing through a luxurious ballroom,
without realizing were are on a sinking ship.

We are waltzing, though the glass ceiling is caving in,
and water is slowly rising around us.

We are waltzing, without realizing that we are dancing,
with entities of death and annihilation.

We are waltzing with blindfolds on,
oblivious to the emergency,
with nothing but apathy in our souls.

Riding Alone for 3,000 Miles

by Craig Shay

I am riding through seasons of insanity
  with a madman in my soul.

I am riding a subway train
  six-hundred feet below the city.

I am staring out the bus window,
  deflecting the forests jaded glances.

I am riding through the eye of a needle,
  listening to the engine sing me to sleep.

I am riding past people who have gun barrels
  where there used to be eyes.

I am riding a white plastic horse on a carousel of illusion.

I am riding over infinite rivers, because
  I want to know what the water knows.

I want to know that woman I see skinny-dipping by that river.
  I want to know what the grass knows, pressed closely against her skin.

I am stopped outside another industrial town,
  waiting on the library steps.

I am riding out the glow of television sets, which light up the night.

I am riding with my soul, through a sea of laughing hills.

Galloping Horses

by Craig Shay

Dehumanized,
riding
  towards
    disaster.

Nature,
  no longer
    a comrade.

Mankind,
  no longer
    astonished.

Luminosity rests,
  a sickly grandfather,
drinking down his warehouse
  of history –
taking a nightly stroll
  through half-deserted streets.

The horses have been
  unleashed
    they are kicking up dirt
    in the deadland.