"A child's prayer'

                                            (In  earlier months we found ourselves warily fatigued, famished amid carnal                                   idealizations and immediate recreations.)
                                             All along the terrestrial forests, a sacred hymn discoursed along illumined trails of seething foliage, 
                                             elfin honeybees swiveled along mortal boughs of celestial tiding.
                                             sullen oak tree pinions swayed and withered between pale morning hours                                                of placid daylight.
                                             bucolic backgrounds combusted in unquenchable flame
                                            wrought in an diabolic forenoon.
                                             It was, and is; of the earths tranquil heat and kindred velocity; quaintly                                 shimmering in arid billows of seasonal mist upon the voluptuous vale hillsides.                                 Let us not fail to render the toxicity of
                                             mortal flesh and 
                                             avarice
                                             Ascend! do the autumn nymphs rise above barren foothills of
                                             broken humanly spirit; maternally lost amid embryonic constellations of mythological eternities;
                                            speak no more the sarcastic anecdotes that pull ascetic tapestries down upon the poor widows livelihoods.  
                                  
                                             immersed  in desolate refuge , misplaced and depraved amid scorching deserts of abundant futility,
                                   reposed at the hot-gates of Crete
                                           We marveled amongst ourselves humbly,  while eminent days transgressed in transient intervals of leisure; wrought through illustrious fields of columned grain and moonlit eclipses,  Fidelity being our central focus and desired objective; while our hearts acquiesced demonic motes of routine interactions, subtle coquetries of negligence, our digression flickered incessantly through our frail psyches,
                            
                                               Evening residences; rural silos and lemon-yellow husks of interstate evanescence, (aside a pleasant state highway)
                                                   . A 57' Chevy sauntered up the remote desert mountains; below emblazoning atmospheres of ultraviolet piety;
                                               crescent pinnacles of freeway breathing, automatic, then hushed to dissipation..
                  
                                              (A child's prayer)
                      
                                        Priceless hymns echo down neighborhood walkways; tombstone stove of electricity; hand-me-down damasks spread out in retrospective kitchen alignments; we listened vigilantly while narrative talk show hosts unraveled our domesticated fate. Papa beat me to a bloody pulp when bringing up politics; he was always drunk, so it didn't make any difference if we were in a bar.
 
 

(the lame progression of illness)

                              I've seen the tiresome journeymen stumble in and out of dim-lit barroom vestibules, with stale morning footsteps; whispering snarlingly on broken bar-stools, silently adulterating- blindly staggering down narrow hallway landings; firmly mounting tenement staircases; grey bloodshot eyes prying-peering out from second and third story window balconies. Furrowed clod plots and piled dirt patterns align an autumn courtyard below; among the layered brick and columned mortar; shadows die in the eminent depth of countless dreadful evenings aside a dry fiery mantel; wretched sounds that lull from distant outbound trains and railway cars of ole rustic tiding,
                              sullenly domesticated; enveloped in soaked cardboard binding; a soiled paper bag refugee remains homeless and wayward tonight; garbage disposal headlines stretch vaguely out across grim night-sky networks of white electronic brilliancy  .
             How brisk and blithely, the naive neighborhood schoolchildren frolic round cemented sidewalk corner-stalls, promenading down dusty streets of ornamented silhouettes.
                    It is the worn forlorn age of monumental suffrage laid out for a season's cycle, embedded oak firmaments, late November archives of mid-autumn growth;
                                     
                                                      ( the lame progression of illness)
                                 
                          Florid red and sea-foam green: and not with impunity; our dying memories flicker like dead boughs of bare cypress trees wrought  in the deep green depth of remote forest hillsides. In the innocence of ungodly hours we find ourselves at home, within a hearth's tranquil heat, in dens of unflattering recreation.
                    
                                     our children have not won the war, though
                                     let it be known, unto
                                     their deaths they shall fight
                           
                           what a frail woman has said and done to me; my adorned ghostly wife
                           her undergarment oaths of sacred anointment; let 'em shine tepid bright streams against the hollow ceiling. A family promise made wholly from a heart's faith; vacant windowsill candlelight refracts sordid shadows from the clear cluttered night. Late city streets they bleed midnight tendencies; remain ethereal and gloomily immortal in flesh-like eternities.
                             Our mid-afternoon garden of common residence; casually speaking in terminal tongues; how habitually mortal we are!; clasping a pale feminine sole of your bruised dainty foot ; lying naked on a bedspread; I flung a velvet pillow by your heirloom headboard; I fancy you tenderly; but how rottenly spoiled you are! Watching you hesitate upon crucial awakenings, prevaricating lucidly to ones self, disgustingly; and so beguiled! attempting to justify ones self to ones tattered self; beaten into self-afflicted submission; to surrender and to
                                   admit complete defeat is
                                   but a transparent awakening into
                                                             a selfless proclaimed progress of glory, holiness and
                                                                                     fearless
                                                                                          victory.
                                    
  
                                 

"Rikki's Requiem"

                                            Alone with a vacant soul and a perilous heart: I resided wearily, in a dim-lit one-room basement efficiency on the downtown outskirt. A friend practicing a Christian ministry attempted  guiding me toward radiant daylight, through active worship and daily abstinence. A flat suburban highway stretched invulnerably before spectating motorists; consciously dead at their steering wheels, between coffee gas-station intervals. Tedious workdays being a lifestyle necessity for me during that time; how else can a junky feed his insidious obsession? 
                                            Rikki lived a few blocks toward the heart of this factory town and its weekday traffic. She possessed a petite body frame with small slender shoulders; strawberry-blonde hair with dark highlighted bangs. Her gray-hazel eyes were often shaded in black mascara overtones. Rikki lived directly behind the Main st. nail salon. While malicious evenings of tedious reckoning were at hand; we interacted efficiently through stale moonlit corridors and drunken pavement pilgrimages.  Chemical endurance fluctuated through a season's nostalgic cycle. Amid late-Halloween ornament alignment; Row-home residences adorned in precocious maple seasoning: pumpkin-porches along wooded stoops of auburn. A late-autumn recluse returned home upon a gravel driveway parking-lot; leading to a rotted lower-class apartment building, An unmaintained tractor rested idly outside my cellar window.
                                             Dear Rikki, a meticulous feline swindle merchant of dry and deadly goods. Her sinful, reposed life remained indifferent; to the far desolate cries of plagued remote wildernesses.
                                            Rikki's body now rests between brown-gold burial leaf-piles; a gray-grain tombstone eternity amid haystack needle cemeteries. Deceitful and syringe-full; blood-red q-tip acquaintances: pale narrow wrists of cellulite abscesses. A guaranteed cure manifested nightly, by stupefied heavens of unconscious sorrow. St. Peter in all of his acclaimed glory could never of predicted such unnecessary heartache, nor abrupt departure. Dear Rikki angelic valedictorian on high, in an earth tone corduroy jacket, ripped denim jeans while commencing local barroom upheavals. Midnight recklessness and diseased drunken mayhem shrouded her tumultuous days. Nocturnal cloud shapes grimly oscillated through black omnipresent horizons.
                                           Anxiety-ridden, dear Rikki pleaded in foxhole prayer. Coming out of 5th. St. woodwork havens with artificial Sunday piety. Quaint afternoon streets temporarily humbled her involute quest of endless desire; among the wind-swept dooryards.
                                        Prescription sleeping pills never sufficed her psyche with rest nor contentment. Her morning obituary bled ink-red hues through the Daily News. We already read the headline while she slept in her apartment bedroom; behind the nail salon; where her front door opened out onto backward alleyways of intermittent torture. To think, was to be enslaved to dear Rikki. Rehab forenoons in stone sober-settings; as institutionalized as I was during that time; tomorrow became a rapacious fear to her that yesterday could hardly handle.
                                          A fatal progression took Rikki's frail life not long ago; amidst her daily evening travels to Kensington and back. If not one thing; then perhaps another. A plagued orphan toward dissolute wreckage.  Rikki perished, morbidly misplaced among her familiar so-called friends.