2024 Official DUP NaPoWriMo Challenge

14/30


Crystal Web

over the years, I grew
dark & more demented
slowly transforming into
cold & calculated

I've been spinning a web
intricate and connecting
I've caught many items
that were meaningless, empty

then one day a spider
came trotting along
and he asked me if he
could weave me a song

so I bundled up my satin
into a cacoon
crystal web of safety
of solitude

a space free of clutter
no burdens, no mystery
it is here I sit now
with the truth, with clarity

14 of 30

Heart.

Heart is flow
A subconscious turned conscious
Turned super conscious,
With letting,
Go.
A let, lead by trust,
An acceptance,
Of how you know.
Of how,
Sense will know where to go.
You are the instrument that you play,
Each and every breath,
In every way.
You are,
The craft to which,
No other knows.
The craft to which you owe no other,
No other, but yourself
And that self of your soul.
Your heart is flow,
Is captain, wind and sail.
Know your heart,
Heed your heart
And go.

14/30

Memories trapped in glass

Turn all the lights way down low,
come over here and we can take it slow
you know its you I need to keep it real
lost inside the way you make me feel

I'm ridin alone on a midnight train,
lost and lonely in the freezing rain

Last of the lovers at the end of time
in those arms the world starts to unwind
a warm sun coming over that hill
its bitter sweet as you take that pill

I'm ridin alone on a midnight train
lost and lonely in the freezing rain

The devils in the detail
shes on that midnight train
the devils in the detail
I've seen her face again
she'll tell you that she needs you
down by the fire side,
you know you cant resist her
even when she says goodbye.

14/30

Melancholia

A sadness within
does surely reside
ekes out its place
unwilling to hide

Forever overtaking
each fragment of thought
alone and isolated
desperate, distraught

Lost motivation
inspiration gone
lacking self-will
not carrying on

Shackles confine
repressed fears alive
escape not apparent
failing to thrive

Much the plight
a melancholic mind
critical illness
cruel and unkind

14/30

once someone asked him

master, what will be
the signs
of the end of the world

and he said,
loosely transated,

that we would be
doing our 9 to 5
just like
in the days of noah

concerned about deadlines
and the cost of inflation
and if the second chakra
was getting enough attention

and why can't I this--
and it just isn't fair that--
and someday I'll--

even as the bombs
are going off
inside your head
and you can hear
their screams
and see the spurting
blood from severed arteries

and legs detached
and lying so incongruous
against a tilted wall

while you remember
tomorrow is tax day
and the uncle you never met
will not get a card
this year
because you just can't
get things together

and you want to blame
the government,
israel, the patriarchy

he also mentioned
earthquakes
and signs in the sun
signs in the moon

because that's how
we believed in those days

but nothing about
the children of gaza
which was apparently
the translator's redaction

because he knew
our hearts
because he knew mine.

14/30

Listen More
(and Speak Less)

Most folks when engaged in conversation
Only hear while the brain prepares a response
Not fully paying attention could often lead
To communication breakdown

Instead listen with intent to understand
Empathize acknowledging their feelings
And though at times we may deal with bitter pessimists
I guess you can say more by speaking less


51 Unique
53 Total

#14

Smoky Blue Ridged Mountains

Hill patch blades rustle gently
Sun blood creeps to rest among
Such smoky blue ridged mountains
Night, crawling out from the hollers depths
Where some shadows make their home
The daylight, a passerby. Here, listen  
And ear to the bluest grass, slow
Longing echoes, hear, as ages ago
The mountain sound, constellates
Years in time's linen, crying out heavy    
Moon shine seeping through woodsmoke
Because the sun burnt out like a match
Such, in smoky blue ridged mountains

14/30

Musical Upbringing

When I am most down,
doubting my purpose,
my worth, my utility;
the missing salve
for my wounded heart
is the sound of
a familiar melody
the words and music
long since
tattooed on my brain.
That when played,
with me singing along,
transports me to
the place and time
when first I heard
it's happy, sometimes
melancholy refrain.
My path, is much smoother
when paved
with measures
of soul satisfying notes
songs that give voice
to my innermost thoughts.
And give wings
to my journey-weary spirit.
Opening my eyes
wide
to life's simple pleasures.

Unique word count: 69

14/30

Seeing into Infinity

Smoke, stars & fire
Painted in the paint of war
In case you
Didn’t

Know
or

Were not

Aware

***

Ah-War/that old-familiar practice
Practice/d by practitioners
Warlords upon thrones of stone & twisted metal

Skulls peeled back – Seeing into infinity
Skulls-stacked to electric Heavens
Whirlwinds
&
Havens
Collective humanity in herds
Dark ones

Sons of Black Suns
Inheritances
of

Fire, stars &

Smoke: Invoked so as to be evoked

🤣

14/30

Fixated

Serpent uncoils
Wraps around my neck
Time to unwind
Gasping for breath

Slithering scales of justice
Squeeze into their function
Clawing at the seems
Of my own assumptions

Fang bared
With what's within them
React
Beautiful venom

Ensnared
The rising pulse
Prepared
Start to convulse

Behold death's creation
Fathomed beyond imagination
Forked tongue tastes the air
Sweet smell of asphyxiation

15/30

Death By Taxes

Exploiting the need
Setting the cost of this dead end living
In this system, the consumer is the feed
Lives for auction, waged efforts in short changed bidding

Cycles of debt make up bondages of dependency
Desperation to control in this market of captivity

Oppressive price tags and credit scores to earn a right to owe
Qualifying for financial burdens
They own the ground in which we sow

Harvesting more costly endeavors in this death grip for a home
Culture of the illusion of success
Retirement savings for future complication
Affording everyone their ransomed breath
Pseudo political saviors sell hell in the shell of salvation

It rolls down hill from blood on the hands of money marionette ventriloquism
When everyone is puppet to the dreams that hide the nightmare
Ranks of users bully us into formations of submission
Everyone’s got a battle but no one likes to fight fair

Beat into the patterns of a routine heist
Subject to oppressions of direct assault
Getting sized up for coffins in place of paradise
No one is innocent when everyone’s at fault

Voluntarily bought in as advertisers brain-soil through vision cast
Hypnosis of material conveniences trending
Mortgaging the temporal in pursuits that never last
Chasing the means to achieve false summits never ending

Cash out, pushed to the brim
Set the rates at which we’re going bankrupt again
Cut close, just enough to break even for the day
Reoccurring collectors tell us what to pay

Signing on the dotted line when we never had a choice
Conditioned into this script of our society where money talks but no one’s got a voice

Putting words in the mouths of paychecks to fit us into the mold
Saving for freedoms relegated to the generic dreams that we’ve been sold

The house, the spouse, the cars, the modern age
When all of us are props for fabricated smiles posted on a Facebook page

Faking alive to make believe in breathing
When everything is a slow fade, the inevitable means to end
Temporal value worthless in the reaping
Our hearts revealed in every penny that we spend

Caught in the web, twitching on the line
Wings tangled, when all we see is the box we’ve been conditioned to
The limit of the vision is a relative sense of going blind
Losing all we hold too close from a lifetimes point of view

This is a shotgun wedding to conform
When it’s the street or a shelter for pennies on the hour
We all face the torrential downpour of a storm
Married to occupation
A hostage situation
Wasting lives to feed another’s lust for power…

14/30

Somber Season

Notice her skeletal hand
As she tugs the wine soaked curtains
See her dirty nails….
…..Or what’s left of them
For they’ve been chewed to the cuticle
I think she gave up long ago
When the seasons soured, she often wonders what went wrong
The renewal of spring, the sunny kiss of summer, the crimson and carmine of autumn, and winter’s pearlescent days
She never liked the cold, it consumed what little warmth was left
But there were angels in the snow, and that was enough for her

Four seasons have dissolved into a muddy river
She calls it another day of utter misery and waste
Like Jadis cast her spell, so to has this world become an eternal nightmare
Not one yielding icicles or hellish castles
She calls this one
“somber season”
For it holds nothing, yet everything
It doesn’t make sense until you live it
And if you see her house covered in smoke, knock on the door
You can break in if there’s silence
Hold that hungry little girl
Share a bottle of loneliness
The curtains are closed many weeks at a time
It’s painful to hope, despite what she hears
Trying to find goodness in this wasteland brings her defeated tears
All in the name of “healing”

I must confess, she checks the windows every now and then
Should she see the day
Those four seasons of old, return again.

15/30

I CLOSE MY EYES

I close my eyes and wish the world to go
away. I lie in bed and curl up tight
it’s foetal how I face the day and though

this old routine still plagues from childhood’s night
you’d think by now I’d really learnt to flow
away. I lie in bed and curl up tight.

The world is full of compensation’s show
persuading all that life is homely-light
you’d think by now I’d really learnt to flow

beyond the tyrant’s whip to “do it right”
and walk the line that favours how to grow
persuading all that life is homely light.

The heart hides secrets what is truly so
dissolving marching jack-boots in the fight
to walk the line that favours how to grow

a revelation honing eagle’s sight —
it’s foetal how I face the day and though
dissolving marching jack-boots in the fight
I close my eyes and wish the world to go.