“Remember, charge, these are your friends,” Kayser said.
And though scream I could, I bow my throbbing head.
Empress of mine, there are spiders in your hair,
Weaving an elaborate web of lies to share
With our lesser Arcana, those of small mind,
Afterbirth sisters, born solely for the Grind.
Kayser Soze is a gentle trickster God,
All things coldly diplomatic I am not.

Community is another word for slavery,
Our Lady of Deceit, a beacon of bravery.
Her fickleness is the only thing reliable,
Repent, abjects, unity is still viable.
“Your naivety will aid us,” she sagely smiles.
For the noble cause, shall I entertain her wiles?

“Remember, friends are foes you don’t want to know.
The Chariot is prepared to take you to growth.”
Empress of mine, there are spiders in your hair,
Weaving an elaborate web of truth to share,
With our major Arcana, those of sound mind,
This night I shall take the vow to join the Grind.
A gentle trickster God is Kayser Soze,
Come for us all who are insane but not crazy.

January 11, 2021 by Passenger B ©

Image via Tech Crunch

• 

From Passenger to Driver, a knife up his sleeve,
Genuine solicitude, his greatest pet peeve.
Risen from the wreck has he to vacate their hosts,
Guest to his crimes, I stand, taciturn, on my post.
He coaxes me to watch, forces me to admit,
That without him I’m an effigy without wit.
I watch their eyes lose focus as affrighted they flee,
And inhabit them once they breathe their life into me.
Now whatever perversion I am called to enforce,
I relent to Him who delivered me from remorse.  
No deformity marks us but we’re disease come to life,
Whoever is so foolish to loves us will not survive.

January 10, 2021 by Passenger B ©

Photo of Edward Mordrake (Wes Bentley) from American Horror Story, Freak Show, courtesy of FX/Ryan Murphy

Of all paths in life I always chose wrong.
Silent defeat left of my marching song.
At the turn of the year I must reflect
On how best to repay my cosmic debt.

What if, why and how, questions unasked,
Another choice among abundant tasks.
I leave baffled friends and foes evermore,
But to each gave I a far richer lore.

The ibex sun prances, the moon twin soul dances,
The swift Centaur archer gallops across the plains.
Restless am I, disloyal and untamed,
Birthday girl is not one for the endgame.

January 8th, 2021 by Passenger B ©

Photo by sjdavies on flickr, via Pinterest

All raise your cups to the womb raider
Who stole the fruit of my hard labor.
The unwanted drowned toddler coward,
Blind to his harlot mother’s favor.

What on you I bestowed, the payment you owed,
Offered up as tribute to Epiphany.
Her you accosted, yet all I exhausted
Slaughtered on the altar of Epiphany.

Apocalypse means Revelation,
Crippled slouches my Congregation.
Flaunting your sins on a silver plate,
Mercy awaits beyond death’s gate.

What to me you once served, malice undeserved,
A sacrifice for my avenger, The Void.
Retribution, disdain, your cunning, in vain,
Whimper louder, you traitor, into The Void.

January 3rd, 2021 by Passenger B ©

Image: Hans Burgkmair the Elder, 1523

My beloved is a bird named Resentment.
His feathers are thistles and when he whistles,
When he dances and caws, defiles with his claws,
And pecks at his compeer, songs of contempt sneers,
My world disappears.

“Why, you broke my beak, my wings and my voice,”
Squawks he who dove straight at my window by choice.
“Hold still, stupid bird, that to your scrapes I may tend!”
Tighter squeezed I ‘til he lay limp in my hand.

I’m no one’s beloved, my name Possession.  
Drew I my conclusion, truth or illusion,
The tenderness ruse, cultivated abuse,
Through the art of stillness, transmitted illness,
My world was regained.

February 16th, 2020 by Passenger B ©

Image: The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius

• 

Profound affection have I for all my dolls!
Wistful Patrick with his mossy eyes,
Mute remained he through all days and nights,
Thus I pulled the stuffing from his chest,
To lay my sultry, swollen face to rest,
My Paddy doll, the greatest manwhore of all.

Pure admiration have I for all my dolls!
Astute Michael with his goldfinch speech,
A parcel inert as ever I reach,
Thus I tore the larynx from his neck,
To possess of him a tiny speck,
My MJ doll, treasured beyond them all.

A predilection have I for all my dolls!
As disrobed judges do they preside,
Torn limbs evidence as I am tried,
Of how I failed at humanity,
May their measured ruling for me be,
To live as a doll, numb, like them all.

September 8th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Painting by imabubble on DeviantArt

• 

I lied today, then lied some more, and lied again.
One reason is there for the little rhymes I pen.
Storms wane, and although try I might, I never can.
No time is lost on earth but pining over stubborn men.
I’m sorry.

August 31st, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Painting: Ronald Lunn, “Calm Before The Storm”

• 

Hail to the privation I knew not yet how to miss,
An utter desolation, mistaken, once, for duty’s bliss.
They weigh like pregnant cloud banks, the humid memories,
Heaving their stomach contents — at the mere sight of virility.
Wisdom pledges anguish, a mind corset never willed,
And so knowledge begets reprisal, always by loss instilled.
Perhaps by now I should hail amnesia, a sleepy mercygrace,
Avail myself of small white pellets, to put me back in my place.

August 25th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Photo via Kevin Fernandez on Pinterest

• 

You are the wilderness in me,
The vaulted sphere untouched by man,
All I can neither have nor be.
A voluptuous droplet – me –
Into your frosted rigor banned.

Your glacierburn now sears in me,
A hungry napalmlust, insanity.

You are the wind across my plains,
The longing sigh of borderlands.
You are my passions and my pains.
And all the tokens craved in vain —
My pleas as fruitful as on sand.

August 24th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Painting by Eva Christin Laszka / Saatchi Art on Pinterest

• 

We were like mountains breaking apart.
Were pounding like fists on a slowing heart.
And touching me at a spot so wet,
You competed with years of blood I’d let.
We spun a tale of mutual rape,
Until either dawn or bones would break,
Then returned to warmth to lick our wounds,
But, once healed, longed to be hurt anew.

2009/2019 by Passenger B ©

Photo: Source unknown, contact me for credit

• 

Journey northwest, towards the Cascades tonight.
Bring along your cargo, doubt and pride.
Blaze through the Taylor Mountain trails, leave your hide.
A soldier, reluctant, jaw clenched tight.

And if we could still burn cities to the ground,
Bathe our entity in the unfound skulls atop the mound.
If we could walk through murder suicide, our land?
If your mind and teeth cannot caress, beat me then.
Would you not grip me tighter, twirl me around,
Bed me on the pitiful husks at Puget Sound?

Instead you flew to Tallahassee tonight.
Left me accused — speak, what other lie,
What treachery of compatriots, what crime
Shall I commit that warrants your faith and time?

And if we can’t still incite the vapid horde,
Then I myself will hand you crowbar and chord,
If we can’t walk through rotted timber woods, our land?
If you can’t see the truth for the trees, kill me then.
Would you wed my corpse in his basilica?
Bury me with your casualties at Issaquah.

August 24th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

• 

It’s a new high, it’s the old low,
Betwixt what I dread, yet seek to know.
Like pulling teeth and splitting hair,
The exchange mayhap a tad debonair.
Has vacillation bound these tongues,
And habit replaced awe before long?

“Mayday, Mayday!” A mayfly’s lament,
Its cocoon cast onto the firmament.

If absence makes the mind grow fierce,
How to stretch the hours across the years?
A scholarly play, a delicate lie,
A demand my breed can’t satisfy.
If a junebug I were, would it put us at ease?
Or is this, all this, but my paranoid reprise?

“Maynight, Maynight!” a mayfly’s last tune.
Come join me some night in my new cocoon.

June 23rd-August 14th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Painting by Bokkei on Pinterest

An episode carved with scalpel in stone,
The loreless maiden, entombed in a crone.
Fists clutching the sanatorium’s gown,
As the man on the ledge flung himself down.
No grave did he find at the bottom red,
But surgical cotton, a makeshift bed.

The Stranger, the Hermit, the Lover, Death.
The Tower, the Prison, The Beast’s last breath.
A shared soul pavilion, slightly deranged.
Indefinite, though parameters changed.

Crush the headstone, by its lesson abide,
Swallow the rock dust to soften inside.
Reach far past the pit with all its regrets,
Forgive all the world and its living dead.
Freely dispense the soot from my hearth,  
So it may become the salt of the earth.  

August 13, 2019, Tuesday by Passenger B ©

• 

As the old lighthouse casts its light,
The thunder echoes through the night.
Hours later it keeps me awake,
The steady whisper, gentle ache.

Here comes the ship, here comes the tide,
Crashing through what I tried to hide.

To the river banks, you and me?
Past the ruinous monastery.
Do lie down with me for a spell,
Hear the secrets I have to tell.

Here come the Saxons, comes the tide,
Crashing through to the other side.

May 8th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Photography/Artwork by Colin Majury on RedBubble

• 

Turncoat, awaken, time to leave.
Suit up in black on Mournday,
Although you have no right to grieve.
And change to white on Truthsday,
In remembrance of his shroud.
And gray for Whose- and Whensday,
To blend into the faceless crowd.
Slip into red on Thirstday,
Anguish in parakeet disguise.
Blue, perhaps, on Fryday,
Incinerate your childhood lies.
Coffin brown on Satinday,
When laid to rest we both shall be.
In ashes dress on Someday,
When, Turncoat, you will have found peace.

April 26th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Painting via the Seven Ponds WordPress blog

• 

What’s this most indistinct of sounds?
The sigh of the lost and never found?
A trapped jayhawk’s despondent cry?
A predator’s most vulnerable lie?
The rhythmic hum inside the hive?
A murderer’s campfire lullaby?
The anguished yelp of a fawn shot?
Whatever could it be, just what?!

Across the land, and time and space,
No border law could impair my chase,
No matter, though, how far I go,
How intently listen in my woe,
I can’t detect from whence it came,
Surprisingly, due to my shame,
I turned within and found…and found,
It was my own soul which made the sound.

Oh, how exquisitely I rage!
And neatly furnished this homemade cage.
Was that love once? That trampled rug?
The heartstring curtains and skull cap mug?
The house Ted built, our legacy,
And far from reach, a finger bone key.
The house Ted built, what, what have we done.
And what’s left now…to do and to become.


April 26th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Artwork by Samantha Shipman

• 

My home, my only home,
Swallowed now, by Sand and by sea.
A comfortable, homely cave was he,
Made out of word shells, prettily.

My home, my only home,
Dismantled now, and silently.
Did you forget so easily?
That my true name is Emily.

I’m About Rage, I’m last June’s lust,
I am repose, I am disgust.
You cannot run, you spirit whore,
Not outcrawl me at Ocean Shore.

My home, the man you slew,
A tiny crab shell I outgrew.
But in the sky waits my forlorn,
My murder twin, a Capricorn.

April 6, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Artwork via the Elore Webpage

• 

She’s my savior, my perdition.
My pursuits without fruition.
A luminous goddess, a slut.
Butterflies, a knife in my gut.

Perish shall I dare I beguile.
Still…probe will I and know not why.
Another credo penned in vain.
Unwavering, she yet remains.

I am the cap that crowns this fool.
The risen son on every Yule.
A manifesto of regret.
Success in loss my epithet.

She is my possession, most prized.
A squalid secret glamorized.
My heroine in every sense.
The spike upon my picket fence.

Perish shall I dare I deceive.
Still…will she truly never leave?
Another promise made in vain.
Though staggering, she yet remains.

I vanish unless I repent.
Am worthless but for her lament.
Stray I must to remind myself
She is the one, unparalleled.

February 20th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Artwork: “Borderline Personality Disorder” from Facebook, artist unknown; contact me for credit

• 

They echo inside, these words most tender.
Ricocheting off the enclosure’s walls,
Dancing, spiraling through the empty halls.
Seeking that high from when I surrendered.

But I still, I still remember!
And do you, do you miss me sometimes?

Confined to memory ever shrinking.
Lost in quicksand of a presence most bleak,
And a future past that had reached its peak.
Into the passenger I am sinking.

But I still, I still remember!
And do you, do you miss me sometimes?

Just one more dose, one sip, that I may rest.
Sleep off the ache of another missed call,
I’m a monster dreaming it were a doll.
Any affection was but human jest.

But I still, I still remember!
And do you, do you miss me sometimes?

Autumn I am, without a September.
A poet’s worst work to practice his rhyme,
Each verse carefully metered to pass the time.
It is with shame that I now remember.

February 18th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

Photo: Unsplash

He wrapped himself inside my words.
A dusty opus, shy at first,
The writing frayed, in truth and jest,
An open book at his behest.

Absentminded, he broke my spine.
He wept then, worshipped at my shrine,
In rage my pages deeply cut,
His open palm til we forgot.

Always. In doubt, in faith, in need and hate.
Forever and a day, in choice and fate,
Oh take me, take me off that shelf again,
And let my pages soothe that blood-stained hand.

It is what any story fears,
Her sentiments might be in vain,
After all, there are no more tears
In oblivion’s somberlane.

Please… let my words help bridge that wide ravine.
Oh get up off that old armchair again,
Forever, you and me, my love, my friend,
Always. From chapter one until the end.

January 20th, 2019 by Passenger B ©

• 

I am not a patient woman, and I have never been.
I scrape the ice off of my tongue,
Emit the embers from my lungs,
And toss the mud off of my prongs.

I am not a good woman, I am but a wasted whore.
The queen of scum without a throne,
Spit your contempt into my soul,
And take a hammer to your bones.

She is still my dripstone cave, she could never comprehend.
The self-inflicted runes I bear,
Entrust your will into my care,
You can’t miss what was never there.

She is the barren dirt on which I tread, and I her plow.
Call me ye ole Silver Tongue’s kin,
Clandestineness my second skin,
I am a man, the first born twin.

September 5th, 2018 by Passenger B ©

Artwork via Pinterest, artist unknown; contact me for credit

• 

Violence, come out to play,
And sweat our sheets to a tired gray.
Haul towards the pit our strangled need,
Perpetual fire’s fever dream.
Violence, come take him now,
In sickness and health as you once vowed.
Down our dismal soul, that famished den,
Pour his ashes, heal, heal us again.
Violence, our anthem play,
And the impassioned memories slay,
All empty promises ground to dust,
Holy wrath, replace all earthly lust.
Violence, our instrument,
My brother in arms, my only friend.
Short of beauty, a shorter temper,
From the cradle, just like Ed Kemper.

August 5^th, 2018 by Passenger B ©

Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1617