Truth

D a n Ke l l e t t

Truth Soul Armor

truth horizon want outweigh mama soulja crow poetry by Dan Kellett design by Glorianne Kada

drift dead poet napalm penance may steal my feathers

the bent of cornelius

Tru D Truth T Trut T r T K Truth Truth Truth Truth Tr Truth Tru

Truth uth Truth ruth th Truth h Truth Truth ruth Truth uth dan Kellett nudge away from tremendous rhyme away from truth

truth truth truth

It’s always been a prelude To the way down For me Being of stone inscribed descent The bloodline of blood shot eyes close enough to liars to known verity Yet too close to trust my own tongue My hope is reluctantly perpetuated in slow moving glances of blured tender chaos In that screaming divide between what blooms And what wilts Sitting beside worn down messiahs Cookin up mountain words and ocean songs Irreverent revelry A nudge away from tremendous A rhyme away from truth

truth

oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil

il oiliill i l i l i l o i l io liillil i l o i l horizon

with symptomatic palms guiding our animal hearts to doom in blind herds chasing the seedy scent of gain carving checkbook scripture peeled from egocentric visions of The Profit

the inner walls of purest fertility seep mournfully from a global womb alive spawning sedition an Apache resistance between my temples

as she bleeds like a hemophiliac lanced by an appetite of unnatural hunger known to no inborn belly only to corrosive heads with corrupt tendencies who march steadfastly towards breaking their own backs

Wa

A wind rips rise throug I find it’s about the win It’s A level down, Swift to Broken......

Swarming mindful taverns of grief mythology, Not capable of, Compliance, Or Complacence, Or The swoop of warm delicate things, I’ll close myself away, Before the wars

Scrape severed signs of where I’ve been, cross my face, Displayed dismay, The crutch of squander,

I have my way out.

I know where to burn through.

My healing lays still, Soaking on shores,

ant

gh my prisonmism ng and the want to fly Soaking un(sure) To where the taint of wrongs swell, to just below desperate nostrils but just above guilty lips, An ever-present-death threat.

It’s been a dereliction of my symphonic sky, Bow down days been flowin, Bow down days declared dead, (do not resuscitate)

A wind rips rise through my prison-ism, I find, It’s about the wing, And the want, To fly It’s about, the wing, and the want, to fly

so i carve my name into the stratosphere the frail reasoning of tired oaks in the face of swooping gusts send forlorn’d limbs toppling like a mighty albatross struck from the blue by a viscous arrow l au n c h e d f r o m a j e a l o u s b o w exposed taverns settle in stifling layers of grief doctrines where disciples are bound to the dirt gumptions idled within the damning walls of a shrine masoned by a depraved selfish cortex

outweigh

they read of wars marring themselves vicariously meat tags scraped cross flesh by a lying hand sordid claimants of scars who are absent the wounds they display by leaning on squander like a crutch so i carve my name into the stratosphere where the pure tones of perfect symphonies form a belly and linger and drip into the mouths of those who split jaws wide enough to consume a thing that outweighs themselves

Out here World slipped crimes between us The kind that bombast decrees can level down Mow tips off the screen Thunder rattle rip cage The bellow moan of mama soulja Speak back gainst the wares That tare Point out for them that spine That runs straight and right to the head

Mama sOuljA

To where we should not seek out the brilliant things but seek out the brilliance in all things

To where we should not seek out the brilliant things But seek out the brilliance in all things “We had seeds to raise’ Time forged scholars in the ways of men In the ways of them In the ways of you In the ways of us

Sycamore worries may bow branches to week But there are no lies in bloom In the whites or the greens In the loving, bellow moan Of mama soulja The eyes of a motha fucka Forever this side of the dirt Immaculate perception

i am in the incision i must still be in this skin somewhere i still feel that plundering back sprung rage ripping me from the pillow pouring me into the day to move amongst clay minds in brick buildings my temples pulsing like a liars heart

into the graves of my eyes where philistine crows by my carrion red their black beaks

grief clubs me like incest splayed and lashed keeping me writhing down round the drip of my own slime in the lurch defused in the eugenics of scribing corinthians who’s frames know no sway and bare no weight

the clock pounds like a smug bully ruthless like gravity matching the pulses of my heart beat for beat only one of the two will stop

i must still be in this skin somewhere or i could not pile this rage

c

death is closer to me in this minute than it was the minute before but not closer to me in this minute than life

i am left with fist-fulls of freedom that i rip from the shallows of these days and i will fill my fists til the last click echoes in my mind

crow

i held you there Just above gnashing torrents Keeping you from the swallow The sink That slow false dissolve to pity Earnest in your un-movement You achieved Suicide by atrophy You were the Proteus The keeper of your own panacea So I let you go And I have since Let them all go I let them drift away.

And I snapped a branch from a gracious intent And with a blade I forged you from spirit Carved it Slowly Into Contempt.

And into these days I’ve used it As a walking stick As a wand As a weapon.

Drift

There will always be the siege of your scars Your Cravings Your Endless disobedience Bound in my obstinate marrow.

There will always be that.

It was when you last laid eyes upon me that I knew A demon was coming And I braced for impact Cause you know Dad We Never Run. So I dare the wave bare down and halve me So that I might rise To spite What took you.

the bleak then shun light away my lament poured upon soul thick enough to cover my years since birth a soul meets stone inside a heart dressed in thrice to hurt it could bear the way your quiver voice shattered my hope and my tremble finger touched demise directly on its main vein and I felt the death pulsing

dead late night phone call ‘you need to go to the hospital dad’ ‘no son, I’ll let you take me in the morning’ how stubborn blokes allow the chokes to rip and bury them away

‘okay I love You Dad. I’ll be there early’ ‘okay Son, I love You’

Dead poet is one of the first poems written by Dan Kellett. The poem reflects the style of his earlier writing and he has chosen to keep the original wording and structure of the poem in order to maintain the raw emotion this piece captures.

I kneeled in next days sun as it streamed in through slits of gaping curtain windows and begged you to move something a finger a toe take a deep breath please take my breath please anything to force the blackened end from hopeless sunken eyes to bring to rise You my soldier You my tower You my true and solid heart I felt the devils and swarming demons and in the colossal tragedy a lesson that bore to my core and the drip and drizzle of at least one truth there is nothing subtle in the deepest of weeps there is nothing as fleeting as You

poet

nap He died about three years ago now A raging alcoholic that died as a result of an upper GI bleed As a result of chronic alcoholism As a result of his prior death in Vietnam Wilting clefts speak in tones of sob and fleet Stagger men sink back to mottle streams Disintegration plots Drowned by beasts of mist cringe existence Liar kites wind bound Spiral down Empathy reduction Atrophy induction

palm Upper GI Bleed 3% mortality rate I learned that as I googled his death certificate Trying to find what I could have done to fix it Hoping there was nothing I was disappointed by the answer Each pulse becomes treason Pumping towards slow drip tragedy Drowning ‘bluebird’ Drip drop fade

Vietnam 100% mortality rate I learned that in Irish pubs in the Bronx Trying to find out if they could have done something to fix it Hoping there was nothing I was disappointed by the answer War role cast in yellow man fox holes Machine crumble march in devil trench Mortar binge and purge and stomp and drop Shrapnel evermore Faith thwarted By napalm reality His shell made it back stateside long enough to give me a last name I wonder now if escaping the potato famine was a good trade for the draft He was drafted on St. Patty’s Day Luck of the Irish I guess Swarms be thick when prison bars are ribs And the shackled Pumps Down in the shiver Next to hate and history Hooks in the temples of the martyr drone enlisted Entrapped, disemboweled sent back to scramble amongst warless eyes With more war

And less I I found him dead outside his bathroom I could see where he fell against the wall and slid down to the sitting position He had been sliding down for a long time Since St. Patty’s Day, 1967 Disheveled patriarch soaked in drop dead air Phlem spit against a tyrant’s breeze Long gone causes They disrobe and wait to be counted Each throbbing in a lusty, salivary want For it’s death credit Picking over a dead man’s heart Each with a trophy grip On the part it killed Regret, pain, loss, ambivalence, melancholy, All lined up Sneering I wondered if he apologized to me as he slid down Before he faded For dying like that Knowing I’d be the one to find him Knowing I’d be the one to clean up his mess

The rant of a child Steady in the matters of me and me Shuddered by carcass and light Looking for an apology In a last breath I was a fool I owned the apartment he lived in I had to get it rent ready I had to paint over the mural he painted on the cinder block wall in his bedroom I cried like a baby

Erasing slays the swells of regression Crippled chaos named Prayers be something less then this Less than painting Over painting Erasing you away I found the poems On napkins I found black mold in the sink The poems were unfinished The mold was thriving That is what surrender Looks like

Pe

Cast like a tomb This fracture Running low through my gut A bleak and monolithic belly Overflowing Sending Condemning laments In regiments Of viral prison songs Marching like faceless paratroopers Into the slump of landscapes That I ache for This ruthless gap of reproach Keeping my Sinful Dreadful Hands

From the wanting inner thighs Of wayward maidens Who dance a woeful dance At the breach of Shrangri-La So I sway A captive Grizzly kind of sway Side to side With moan, groan, spit Incessantly a moment away From disgorging The sickness that is My Penance

enance

t h i s w i n d m ay s t e a l my fe at h e r s b u t t h e s e w i n g s c a n f l y o n b o n e

nudge away from tremendous rhyme away from truth Copyright 2011 Dan Kellett