When the walls cave in

the laughter begins

in earnest

(mad, perhaps; but smiling, at least)

When the drugs fade out

the blood comes clean

after awhile

(depressed at first, but quickly fading)

When the old guard dies

the sex burns hot

for new future

(cuddle up with evolution)

When the plague breaks loose

the fever comes

with a black wave

(washing over, lay your head down, God is cancer)

When the New Age births

the stars all shift

in the cycle

(rain pours down, tide rise up, flood is coming)

Maybe one day I’ll care again

but I’m too old now to die young

Can’t seem to burn bright

I just seem to fade

My heart’s so hard

call the spade a spade

All the truth has run dry

now my life’s a lie

Can’t catch my own fish

no matter how I try

Need a miracle but I forgot to pray

and I make the same mistake every day

Lay my head down at night so I can sleep

only place I feel love is in my dreams

Haven’t touched her flesh in a thousand days

this loneliness could drive a man insane

If karma is the law, I plead the fifth

the scale’s so heavy I could never lift

Try to be a feather but my greed is gold

and I sold everything except my soul

Set the ship to ocean but it’s taking weight

water level rising to seal my fate

Lungs filling up, getting hard to breathe

broken moon hangs above a darkened sea

Blood runs thick through screaming veins

it’s all vanity, faith, guilt and pain

One last word escapes from these lips

no intentions left to manifest

I always thought fire is how I’d burn away

but I’m sinking straight down in this watery grave

Maybe one day I’ll care again

but tonight I’m sleeping with the fish

my only friends

6/15/13

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar

Time edges along at a creeping pace near the periphery of broken boundaries.  Dimensions of truth shatter and splatter across the infinite abyss of space, scattering into super nova stardust.  Long into the night, the people stare at the sky, wondering what will happen next now that all they’ve ever known has been irreconcilably and irrevocably altered.  There remains nothing left of what once was.  Illusions of a past that can’t be properly remembered hang at the outer edges of consciousness, teasing and taunting the minds of those whose history has been torn asunder forevermore.  A feint hallucination of recollection irritates the frayed, numbed nerves.  A feeling of “what if” lingers.  Emotions of “could have been” lace the limelight.  Until the sun bursts, and then, too, all vision becomes distorted.  Black eclipsed destiny manifests in a burn out.  Disaster area cordoned off.  Picket fences and yellow tape litter the scene.  A lightning rod of negative attention pulses at the parallel poles of fractured reality, twisting and turning like a tattered flag in the wind.  Makeshift solutions are conjured up in the cauldron and let loose in a frenzied fashion.  A brutal sense of urgency emerges from the mud.  A new beast with designer genes evolving with adaptive qualities to counter the chaos.  The dawning of the new day arriving without much fanfare.  No horizon to rise above.  No way to know what’s happening.  No truth to be gleamed.  Part and parcel to the wholeness of discombobulating decomposition.  Everything is off by a fraction of a second.  Calculations break down.  Entropy approaches.  There is no turning back.  There is no saving face.  There is no getting out alive.  Make your peace.  The world has died.

breaking, breaking, breaking

until it’s broken

gasping, gasping, gasping

until he’s gone

hoping, hoping, hoping

we could save him

losing, losing, losing

until we’ve lost

          no regrets

          in the aftermath

          with a war torn mind that’s been ravaged

          tried our best

          in the moment

          but close enough never gets us far enough along

singing, singing, singing

through the sadness

crying, crying, crying

with blistered eyes

destined, destined, destined

for your greatness

so long, so long, so long

father sky

feasting, feasting, feasting

until the fast comes

drinking, drinking, drinking

until I’m sober

resting, resting, resting

with the flowers

waving, waving, waving

as he leaves

2/8/14

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar

Four new poems out today:

For Some – Dead Snakes

Still Birth – Dead Snakes

I Am Not Conquered – Tuck Magazine

On Knowing When to Stop – Tuck Magazine

And that’s all I have to say. The wine is running out. The cash is running out. Time is running out. That must mean the real fun is just about to begin.

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar

This isn’t a joke.

It’s more like staring a nightmare in the face

and knowing it’s about to haunt your dreams

for the next three weeks.

Try and laugh that shit off, Bubba.

Not exactly water

off a duck’s back.

Not exactly

an easy peasy piece of cake.

But when the walls start caving in around you

it’s better to just let them fall all at once

instead of wasting precious energy

trying to save your dignity in small doses.

Suck it up, take the fall, enter the abyss.

Welcome to chaos.

Hope you brought your big boy pants.

There is no time to taper off slowly.

There is no money with which to buy a reprieve.

There is no wine left for the blood to kiss.

There are no excuses remaining

that can help to shrug off responsibility any longer.

When you make a deal with the Devil

you better damn well believe

that at some point down the line

your half of the bargain will come due,

and that sleazy bastard

isn’t going to give a flying fuck

about your pitiful hurt feelings,

your brokenhearted emotions,

your frayed, torn neuron receptors, or

your stuttering attempts to try and buy

a few more days to come up with the cash.

The bill is due in full.

It’s here.

It’s now.

It’s this.

Pucker up, butter cup,

the bookie wants his pound of flesh.

Brace for impact

because the bookie carries blunt objects

for cases such as these.

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar

I sense an Apocalyptic storm brewing right outside my windows. Streaks of electric lightning tendrils reach out and rip through the evening air, crackling with a violent urge toward desolation and destruction. The howling winds screech with the panicked sounds of Karmic Retribution on the move. The cycle is turning once more, and I am caught in the clutches of its strangling precision.

A thunderous roar booms, shaking the house and rattling my bones as it heralds the approaching tornado. It attacks with a powerful lust for carnage and mayhem, crashing without mercy into the walls which have, up to this point, been precariously keeping me safe. But now their structure bends as they begin to crumble all around me. My whole world is coming to pieces as a maelstrom of chaos and confusion wreaks havoc upon my fragile, weathered consciousness.

There is no escape. There is no safe haven toward which to flee. There is only the descent…the abyss…the fall…the end.

But then, at the edge of total devastation, in a moment of clarity that swarms like a flash of Revelation flooding through my neuron synapses, the realization enters my mind that my world already collapsed long ago. So what matters one more dance with the cruel fate of chaos? What matters one more hellish tumble closer toward my ultimate destiny of dust and ash? I was born into this world to one day die, but so too was I born to eventually rise.

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar

Three new poems added today:

Like a Thief in the Night – Your One Phone Call

Order Ab Chao – Dissident Voice

From Whence It Came – Muddy River Poetry Review

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar

A Sudden Descent Brought on by Exhaustion

breaking…breaking…breaking…
broken
collapse

Selah,

Scott Thomas Outlar