The Puppet
Weakened by years of being
held captive to her blatant
stranglehold.
She took the meaningful
coincidences encased in
the crimson ring.
The mouth spoke words
of love and all along, a
dream of rhetoric.
Synchronicity did one last swan
dive, an ode to the swan song, fatal
embrace, death grip vises, burned
at the stake of abandonment.
Stained glass crucifixes, death in
black fubar’ ed oceans, nautical
nuances, dancing in transfixed
stallion gallop.
Jade palace of exile skipped town
at dusk, nature will have one last
clutch, a gasp at reasonable sanity.
Love will be sacrificed in the new
kingdom, leave ashes shattered and
remember the positives of who we
were, so long ago.
Survival
I have survived the madness of the mean streets of sadistic night, homeless vagrant, salt riddled upon snow glistening street’s, an enigmatic shadow plucked from loose embers of Celtic myth.
I was the poetic, drunken troubadour, wandering the realms of madness, my own worst enemy, wanting to die, casting ashes in a transcendental breeze.
I have bottomed out in the psychiatric ward’s of a WWI Veterans Hospital, exchanging the demons of a haunted past, arising like pillows of pale smoke, ascending into the heavens, welcomed home by no one.
I have been ransacked like some Nordic village from ancient times, I have been pillaged and burnt to the ground, kicking and screaming, platonic and lost like a fetus in its mother’s womb.
This is survival, this is life’s existing paycheck to paycheck, this is life stripped bare again, only to lose it all again, to start over alone, again, and again, and again.
This is my fate, and this is your fate, a catalyst thrust meekly into the wonton ghettos of a fractured universe.
This is survival.
Fates of the Stars
Plumes of ancient smoke arise, sweet
dreams of love songs wrung into the
submission of snuggled cosmos.
Warm in the belly of universal submission,
we shall arise and be found innocent in the
cradle of humanity.
Oh, wise sage, where do we ramble on
the wasted red wine vine?
Born in the accolades of sunrise quiver,
our bows have been drawn and are poised
to lash out at the fates of the stars.
About the Author
Wayne Russell is or has been many things in his time upon this planet, he has been a creative writer, world traveler, graphic designer, former soldier, and former sailor. Wayne has been widely published in both online and hard copy creative writing magazines. From 2016-17 he also founded and edited Degenerate Literature. In late 2018, the kind editors at Ariel Chart nominated Wayne for his first Pushcart Prize for the poem Stranger in a Strange Town. “Where Angels Fear” was his debut e-book, but due to unforeseen circumstances, it was pulled from the publishers’ list of titles.
