The Wilderness

In my time of understanding
I’ve seen many failings
they’ve been death to life
and have cursed the wild things within me
I have roamed amongst them and they’ve known me not
yet I have joined in the hunt and it has brought me low
I harrow from deep within and have spilt much blood

I have toiled in fertile fields and seen them barren
a reckoning has parched my soil to dust whence I came
I long for healing rain so I may stand beneath
renew my growing and my soil reclaim

I have reached out to the universe and it has shown
me silence

I have pled my case before man
and witnessed only a prevaricator’s judgment
as  holy creed

in my time of understanding
I know not whence wisdom comes

I sought it in the dark places that showed me
only delirium without meaning

I sought it in places aflame with prurience
and have seen the longing empty flesh
and theft of beauty

I sought it in the things which move men to covet
and have seen their hunger rending

I sought it in the powers and movements of the day
and have seen consuming baseness
without equal

I sought it in the wounded
and have seen only the bitterness of blame
with no communion of souls

I sought it within mine own spirit
only to haunt
the ruins of its wilderness

where can I seek to find this knowing?

in my time of understanding
I need only this guidance
and I will forsake all careless abandon
cast down my wants and attend

 

 

Written by Scott Schoffstall
©  February 12, 2011
all rights reserved
Poetic Sojourn

Your Apocalypse Beckons

between love and hate is nothing but indifference
the self absorbed rotisserie of the soul.

now, never mind that cold, duplicitous, intent
of unctuous, aging, strap online cunts
busily lusting texts with networking kindred’s progeny.

no, your gig is spaced between football afternoons
and friday evening mixers
little ones clamoring about requiring something called love
that you heard about, once upon a time,
under a table after many Jacks on ice
from a soft voiced blur later moisturizing your face
with a slippery tentacled musky octopus grasping for your last breath
as if it already had an expiration date past due
followed by a treacherous dance of arbitrary agendas
while smearing on a coat of diamond back lip gloss.

your gradual submerging into that pot of boiling afterbirth
becomes the tendency to waste life during
weekday dream death and weekend whiplash
practicing high wire acts while unplugging the give a damn.

picture a streetwise instigator turned after work
paraplegic in piss stained polyester
puking guts into public walkways and crawling back in for a
 “I’ll have another, need one more for the ride home right?”

meanwhile back at the enabling chamber
little ones scream while soundly thrashed within an inch of their beauty
aging them like made for TV serial killers
by desperate, retentive, intoxicated compulsives with the,
life’s all about making me the one the world revolves around, rue
and exacting what’s due on the platinum checking account,
mortgaged, middle class, metal box, errand running,
bulls with balls calculatingly sliced off, who
then passively pacify into the flickering glimmer of the electronic soma.

some where in the distant foggy mental half life
was a throbbing heart laid on a chopping block
now ripe for 3 piece blood sucking negotiators stalking the college fund
and rotten nest egg while later rendezvousing with soul vacuums
doing their serpentine lip crawl under the neon hue.

after all the sparks fly and the trauma sets in, there’s only 20/20
and the long wait for the inevitable while you watch your
chip of the ol chopping block on America’s Most Wanted.

take heart confused one as at this point,
you’re looking at the catatonic state of dis union.
Of thee I sing.

 

 

Written by Scott Schoffstall
© January 18, 2011
all rights reserved
Poetic Sojourn