richard ilnicki

Behind iron bars
I'm found contemptible.
Just one ugly man among many.
They pass the trays
...

When the mysterious'They' finally do decide
to administer the necessary tests,
questions as quizzes
designed to trip me up,
...

When she reaches over infinity
stretching from behind
some uncharted geographical place,
her hands comfort offended
...

They referred to his 'pronounced dead' body
as his remains. These Neanderthals
were obviously unfamiliar with the english language;
they'd probably never learned to read or write
...

Their noses' flared nostrils
were stuck up
into the fluffed air; they were seeking
to breathe deeply
...

blinad as a bat by love I can't see
anyone else but her.
dark shadows manifest immaterial
and hide the moon,
...

Tonight the soft rain comes
and the wind slices whistling blind sounds
cutting a forlorn song's stanzas,
...

I was famished,
that lean and hungry look,
but not of Cassius.
An obvious perishing
...

When the leucotomes, the mind altering instruments
introduced by Dr. Egas Moniz,
entered my skulll,
they were driven by the competent hands of Dr. Walter Freeman.
...

There exists a peculiar fragrance
in forgiveness.
It defies the empirical finite, those smells
of sacrificial decomposing flesh, those subservient little lambs
...

God, the tailor,
our providential robe maker
hjas taken our nakedness,
shame and guilt,
...

Incarcerated thoughts are amputated dreams
dangling invisibly over the periphery.
They are phantom limbs
centrally stimulated by the mystery of memory.
...

By my nature
i am not a hunter.
hunting implies
that killing takes place.
...

I think I'm dying tonight,
but, of course, you'd say
I've always been dying.
But this time I say, 'Not like this.'
...

Sometimes change comes
as if by accident; some unexpected
tectonic event, a paradigm shift
that moves the earth beneath our feet.
...

They say my voice dosen't carry very far;
it reminds them of the sound of flatulence
which barely breaks the wind
and is embarrassingly odorless.
...

When they saw me
on my back eyes

fixed to the ceiling,
...

Paradoxical respiration
catches me off guard
and turns my logic upside down.
My left brain becomes my right brain
...

This morning I became an eyewitness
to a theophany,
an express manifestation of God;
this time He was in the make-up bag.
...

love me tender
or do not love me at all,
unless, of course,
you plan to love me
...