Wordle 15 “Oil and Blood”

She slathers nimbus over her chatoyant eyes

That no mortal in afghan should seduce her aims

She is volatile, promethean,and in her wildness serene

She postures herself in books assuming

Both confidant and thief, both villain and ally

 

Society weighs upon her as pollution, as oil in blood

Nailing down her crisp white feathers as so many crosses

Such is the onus of the radical and she does not care

To linger among them, invalids with their shrill eyes

Nesting in deep black pits pulled taunt as a corset

 

They pass glitter as salt to season but taste nothing

And know nothing of genuine artistry for everything

Consisting of heart is too deep for their convenience

She steadies herself on a divan drinking deeply the air

The skeptics inducing her tears as fireflies

To illumine in captivity and she unapologetically

Easing the lid for fear that her dreams will starve

 

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Drip

Sylvia Cloud

She gathers the stars

And draws them flaming

Into the palatial chasm

Buried beneath her breasts

I summon her as a hearth

Filling her sulfurous belly

With bitter fruit and straw

She fancies herself a poetess

Cries in myths, torrents

Of sparkling constellations

Drip from marcescent eyes

Shut

Nothing of your heart is granted

Though I hold supposedly the key

The lock has calcified

Too much saliva

The extrication of old sutures

With an arthritic tongue

I know that you do not deny me

That you have set so many traps

Against intrusion that you

Have become morally wounded

And thus incapable of answering.

 

The door remains bolt upright.

Like the starched flesh of an ancient beast

We measure it as one measures

The universe with both

Trepidation and awe

Knowing that all we possess

Is infinitesimal in relation

 

A single breath is at times

All we can muster

And at times a triumph

Worth more than the printing press

If I could I would write of our love

But no one would believe it

It’s too fantastical and the blankness

Of the mirror disputes you

That’s the price of immortality

Banishment and we in the dark

With our bones worn and hollow

And nothing but

A pale blue handkerchief

To absorb the anguish

*

I did a reading but I am very shy and if anyone is at home with me I get very self-conscious so that’s why I sound distracted. Also I made a mistake I say mortally and not morally in the reading

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0KWhEn09riB

2 Small Poems (Jig, New)

Nicoletta Ceccoli

Jig

Whatever your words they ensnare

As a worm flexing on a arched talon

Whenever I approach the hunger

Perforates my palate and all my words

Minced together with blood

Sound to my own ears like paper

The expense of your flesh is too high

And I shall not be fooled again

By your histrionic jig or any

Of the asthmatic songs

In accompaniment

New

Your smile settles as a paring knife

Into my ash-white heart carving out

Such delicate slivers

That if I did not know better

I’d think myself again a child

For the pain is so articulate

That one of us must be new

 

Contraband

Chiara Fersini

Where do you keep it?

Why won’t you show it to me?

When I gave it to you

I imagined that you’d wear it always

As precious and delicate as blown glass

I thought you’d guard it

Display it, caress it as air

A spiritual nimbus infusing

Your unkempt chakras

In moments of despair

 

I thought if you held it inside

That love would kindle

A waxy lupine moon

As infantile as a tealight

To nudge you home

You who have never known

Anything akin to family

 

A lozenge to obscure

Your grotesque suffering,

To exorcize momentarily

The apparition corroding

So utterly your throat

I should have written you a script

Knowing that you did not posses

An answer capable of averting my wrath

 

Hate travels the same narrow veins

As love and so often mixed

Perhaps they are not antonyms at all

But prerequisites of a vast

Psychogenic ecosystem

You who are the quickening

The accelerant that burns

My puritanical bones black

You who birth me unrecognizable

And disturbingly human

 

You immerse me

In the iridescent plumage

Of nodding flightless birds

A star perching stupidly

In its brittle unsavory womb

A tiny sparkling sarcophagi

Destined for a life of subterfuge

 

You bury me as contraband

As if I were filthy and illegitimate

You do not speak of us

In the company of others

You do not even seek such company

As would necessitate speech

But in the dark you turn me over

In your callused hands

As if I were truly precious

I do not understand you at all

 

 

No Avail

 

Pier Toffoletti

1

Your tongue fits me like a muzzle

Navel to the stars I wait for your hands

To dismiss me as if I were sterile

And incapable of transmission

I don’t think you’ve ever loved anyone

And I wonder if I ever could again

I may well have given everything

And you’ve crushed each piece

Fed it into your heart as if a hearse

And buried it miles down

That I should never rise again

2

Your wooden smile, a silent sentry,

Admits so little and favors no one

I circle your head as a vulture

Tracking your dead sinister eyes

Thinking how much better

You’d look without them

How much kinder

For they stand between us now

A barbed-wire fence

I tuck my shredded soul

Into a diary that reeks

Violently of human flesh

Ashamed of the madness

That summons you

Again and again to no avail

 

 

Cryptoquote

 

Chiara Fersini

Do you read the creases in my letters

The anxious braille of my honest heart?

Do you caress the shrill curve

Of my unmitigated tears

As they fumble over linear veins?

Do your eyes note with satisfaction

My dignity jostled and adrift?

Do you blow tenderly on the paper

To coerce or cauterize?

Do you substitute each shadowed pearl

As a cryptoquote

For a passage poignantly spent?

*

I am so tired today I can’t seem to string 2 words together geez

 

Wordle #14 Chrysanthemums

She crushes men as chrysanthemums
The scent of phantom tears choking
The air like a brontide, the growl
Twinkling between her illegitimate ribs
An omen incomprehensible in expense

She sips red tea, her red lips quivering
Like a mawkish string
She was such a beautiful child
Given to palaver and dance
Detested for her genetic gifts
By those who bestowed them most all

She is aberrant only from want of affection
She grazes on uncooked nettles
On pawns with their pink palms pinioned
She cannot arrest her cruelty
She cannot fathom the human forge
The incessant hammering of her heart
Against fine white china

Love that inures and fails always to last
The unbitten pear hard and acerbic
She hangs by the crook of her knees
Knowing that she too shall rot
*
It is unseasonably cold so I don’t think we’ll go swimming. I am wearing a jacket indoors haha On a more pleasant note they have an outdoor cat, I didn’t think we’d see her much but she is very snuggly and has spent most of the day with me she doesn’t care so much about my writing though  that interfers with the neck scratches haha

Smoke

Man Ray

 

I assume guilt as if it were a halo

Knowing my flaws are apparent

With or without advertisement

And that apology is for me

More instinctive than hello

 

Everyone washes their hands

When I exit a room and sometimes

Just as I enter as if in baptism

I was born wrong and it defeats me

I was born ugly and so it is

That everywhere I pass

A fire is in purification set

Even as we speak

My footprints smoke

Otherwise

 

Reinhardt Sobye

Always it descends Lazarus’s cast iron shadow

No matter the shells, I in the meantime gather,

I find that each morning I rise neatly scooped

A well that mourns until it ceases to possess

The essence of its former relevance

I am always unhappy with my selves

All 33 of them, a new one for every year

And all of them vainly simultaneous

 

Poverty recognizes the exceptions

Those queer moments

When the sun triumphs but these

Are not the moments that define

If I am not wicked while I suffer

Then perhaps there is hope

Perhaps there is even free will

 

All around me wings hiss

Dirty feet shrieking in distress

Because they cannot leave

Cannot leave and I too am here

Though I never asked to be

And have at times pleaded otherwise

*

As you know I am dog-watching the plan is to go to the country and stay for a few days because I think it would just be nicer for her then being in this little apartment. Supposedly we’ll have internet there but if I should disappear for a few days you know why.