POEMS BY: MARCUS

If Everyone You Love is Trying to Kill You, Do You Still Exist?

my darling
   my darling
there is nothing sadder than the wind
   as it tears at the awnings above me
a thousand voices screaming in the night

yes I know you are there
I can still smell your rotting flesh
I can still hear your heart coughing up tar and ash
I just pretend sometimes
   that you are gone
the pain got boring
so I pretend I have forgotten
   the way the moon looks when she cries
      or the sun when he bleeds

I lie here alone
   listening to the wind
and think about lying alone
   in the old house by the lake
two or a nine hundred years ago
thinking of you so far away
or I think about lying in a hotel room
   in Colorado or New Mexico
   or on a stranger's couch in Mississippi
   or a tent in Montana, or a car in Texas
thinking of you so far away

my thoughts have been reduced to only
   the memories of dreams
you have been digested in the bowels of time
   and shat out into a cloud of nebulae across my    view-scape
yet there you remain
abstracted and obliterated
but still haunting

I lie on my back on the couch with a typewriter on my hips
I can feel the key levers strike my balls with each tap
writing is masturbatory anyway

candle lit night
window cracked
and the mountains breathe down fast and heavy upon me

there is nothing more beautiful than the wind
washing away the tracks my clumsy feet leave behind
singing its atonal song
and pressing relentlessly on

I like the heat

I like the heat
it reminds me that I'm made of flesh
and apart from my surroundings

epidermal frenzy

spring breeds complacence
dissolve into its soothing caress
autumn gives an ominous glimpse of death
raining purple leaves from gray skies
winter stifles and enervates
life siphoned out through fingertips

I like the heat
or maybe I just respect it

sadistically invigorating

I sweat regardless of the heat
because inside there is a fire
and in the sun I see my only brother

summer's voice whispers
shouts
screams
in urgency
the hour to roast the demons has arrived

funereal breath

the heat does naught to hinder
rejuvenation or growth
it is the impetus for expansion
and there is never a time to save the daylight

illumination

but I am well acquainted with the darkness
-oh yes
often there is nothing else

and in the darkness I find peace

I am the king with a crown of shadow
I am the silhouette seen through closed eyelids
I am the stranger tapping at your window
I am the splinter of light gliding across your neck

skin trembling in the solar wind

princess of darkness
princess of peace
maidenhead shattered to butterfly dust
taste the smoke swirling from charred lips
mend the twisted bands of time
lift the shroud from your head
for your tiara still shines

twilight

there is beauty in a moonlit scar
there is an echo from the silence
there is peace in the darkness
there is peace in the darkness

thus spake the prince of pain

I go down to my reflecting pool

I go down to my reflecting pool
hemlock grows abundantly all around
I nurture it lovingly
I keep it for myself
just in case
not for those pigs
whom I loathe so
no they are beneath my wrath
I'll let them choke
on their own shit
the most odious of all
those who had the chance
to become something more
but chose pigdom instead
striving to be mediocre
flashing false smiles
chewing their cud
le petit bourgeois

anyway
a bit of contemplation is needed
a man must go into the
desert alone
to become a man
a prophet
a painter

he must be alone to hear the song
of the desert wind
as I hear it now
played on stinging clouds of dust
and sharp rays of sunlight

the ancient cliffs sing
they sing of
a painter without a canvass
a prophet without a god
a man without a home

I sing of
heat
desiccation
hunger
the sacred triumvirate
needed to cope with the pain
they swing from the nails
hammered into the corpse
of isolation
and they pull
pull
pull
until they tear themselves out
then the bleeding begins
and only then is there cleansing
only then will the music start
to play again

sometimes I'm on my way
someplace
but as I drive I see
the sun setting into the
mountains before me
and I just keep
going
but the buildings won't
move quickly enough
and I never quite
get there in time
before the blackening

when the music stops
forever
I'll know its time to go
but not til then
and for now
I'll let the hemlock prosper

and if you happen to see a smile
split open across my face
I assure you
it is real

Marcus Crowe:

Marcus does not write poetry. In fact he doesn't even like poetry. He probably doesn't like you either. Marcus is a scoundrel and a creep. He has no friends and spends his time brooding over vodka, wandering through slums, laughing at tragedy, eating dead animals (not because he doesn't like animals but because he hates vegans,) and trying to seduce young girls. You will squirm when Marcus even glances into your eyes because you know he can see everything you've spent your entire life trying so carefully to hide from the world. You will fall in love with Marcus because he is dark and mysterious, aloof and menacing, brilliant, and of course devastatingly sexy. You will say he is the best friend anyone could have. Then you will learn to hate him. But you will be a better person for having known him. Marcus is an incorrible optimist, a vice he displays through constant insults and his "evil eye." As they say, "Marcus works in mysterious ways." Marcus is "a self-satisfied, pompous ass," as someone just told him on the phone. He has a messiah complex and if he is nice it is only out of spite, for he has no heart. Marcus does not write poetry - intentionally - but he accidently lets one slip out now and then, like a wet fart. He thinks he's too good for Arden's page, and everything else, but he's posting on here just to prove that he's not too cool..