Wordle #87

Her smile sags,
Tears too prodigious to enumerate.
His smile chaffs,
Conversations too errant to precipitate.
Dew blossoms across her exotica,
The train of her dress glides
Over the marble floor
Like telesthesia.
–
She is a thousand miles away.
She is dressed acutely
In white and she is here
Docile as she takes the altar.
–
He crushes a champagne glass
Beneath his Berluti loafer,
And he is happier than he has ever been.
If it were a funeral he would dress the same,
Connotation makes all the difference.
–
The shivaree noiseless
At the suggestion of his lips.
She take his elbow,
Her emotions toppling
End over end.
She is delirious with joy
–
Staggering with possibilities,
She slices the cake
Shoving the first piece
Into her lover’s grinning face.

Soup

Peel back the gauze,

the mesh-work,

the skein of your vast

improbable being.

I want to see

the spaces where your pain

is still fresh,

those wounds which

are still malleable.

I want to see you

before you’ve shriveled

into a scar,

into prisms of panic

and unfinished flesh.

–

An inchoate soup simmers

on a hearth of my own design.

Into the pot I press

your inconsolable words

and your tears vague as dew.

The only way to know a man

is to consume him, piecemeal,

without the ruse of sentiment.

There can be no secrets between us

only omissions and oversights.

Say Goodbye

I bite my tongue discreetly

am I dreaming

or is it the world that sleeps?

Melting, miming I exorcise

the eidolon from its tattered nest.

–

I crawl to the surface

is this how we are intended to live

crossing and recrossing

our vestigial limbs?

–

I throw my ego

to the mad women

lining my kitchen drawer,

to the silent corrosion of my blood

as it splatters over skeins of flesh.

–

A moan slips past our shackled lips.

This is how we say goodbye,

 all we ever do is say goodbye.

*

In addition to The New Yorker I have submitted to 4 other poetry magazines Neon, Word Riot, FIELDS, and The Baltimore Review. I imagine it will be many months before I receive my verdicts.

Scapegoat

Once upon time,

Is the color dreams

Develop on ripening.

–

My world is concave,

No longer small

But steadily inverting.

–

I think I would look

Better if I were inside out

Then you’d see

How deep my convictions run.

–

Perfection is an illusion

Favored in hindsight.

–

All this wanting, all this looking

And still nothing achieved.

How does one fill a hole

That isn’t there?

–

I am paper, I absorb

The realities imposed on me,

The contradictions

The fallacies labored

And satisfied at the expense

Of my gravel-ridden soul.

–

I have no questions for you

Only accusations and even they

Are mostly self-inflicted.

Clean

I lick concrete, the rut

Of your inconceivable footprint.

We are ancient as the stars themselves,

We are weary of spinning gold into fire.

–

Winter is for shedding sentimentality.

I thread my cold fingers around his heart

He endures, he adores, he is a superstition

Imposed and dispossessed.

I write my poems in the dark,

Whomever the muse, it’s always my blood

Supplying the ink.

–

Predestine is the default

Of the uninspired.

I stroke my erections with

The knife’s scheming edge.

Life means courting the reaper

With an open-fist.

–

I twirl my hair into dirty alphabets.

Apprehension is the only faith I preach.

Greys blossom into purple and vermillion.

I am alive, in a manner of speaking,

But beyond the technical there is

Very little that I or anyone else can say.

–

My only chair faces the window.

I shuck paper dolls, shavings of soul

Mixed with December’s unending treads.

Is it true that we are born clean?

–

When I post I never know what publishing interface is going to appear. Why are there 3 different ones? This has nothing to do with my poem, it was simply curiosity. You may have noticed before but gender/sex means nothing in my poetry I could be a boy, a girl, or both.

Mag 295

painting by Rubens Peale

The red roses cluck

From their hideaway on the mantel

A dozen chiding tongues

Eyeless but persistent.

Three slices of chiffon cake,

Feather-soft crumbs crushed in

A magpies’ sticky-fingered beak.

–

She stirs, a room over,

Admiring her roundness

In the hallway mirror.

Corset incorrigibly close,

Her ponderous breasts

Leap up, two albinos

Gripped in velvet.

Photo Challenge # 88 and Wordle #226

Nelson L “shadows will always follow us” CC BY 2.0

An unholy tide drifts

Through avenues of mist and flesh.

Wherever the abyss falls

I am certain to pass,

Hidden in the grooves

Of an elongated muse.

–

I cannot divine her words,

For my shadow’s voice

Elicits no sound.

An apothecary of light

And mediocre illusion

We are only just beginning.

–

My secrets untouched

I might be perfect in the eyes

Of a man who adores me

But I will never be tame.

She, on the hand, follows me

Quick as I please

Through barriers biased.

Writing Prompt #134 “Collage 11″ and Wordle #86

Loving her is a kind of madness,

She keeps spiders instead of parakeets,

Each with a fine rainbow hat

And a smattering of ambivalent eyes.

In her pockets she shelters chameleons

Smaller than thumb prints,

In glaring Mediterranean palettes.

–

The sun emerges

Behind a clutch

Of gesticulating cypress

Ruffled by the musings

Of a lapis lazuli wind

My heart only a stone’s throw

From where she stoops

Gathering flowers

In bushels and wreathes.

–

She is not the coffin

I envisioned when I first crawled inside,

Ringside and hypothetical

I lap the serum from her hands,

Thus condemning myself

To a life free of obsolescence,

A life steeped in wine and ink.

–

When I’m waist deep in brimstone,

Sucking mawkwish fumes from a banded straw

I like to envision her in a red dress

Her hair toppling in acrobatic curls

Lit only by poignant stems of moonlight.

–

I sift through her books

Her diaries, the little drawer

Where she keeps tube after tube

Of pumice green mascara.

She is my enabler, my strength

The object of all my obscure attachments.

–

Her body strays

In a bed with too many layers.

I drink her, breath by breath

Until there’s no air between us.

Burlesque

There’s something

Erotic

In the act of putting

Pen to paper

Each word unraveling

Before the eyes

Like a burlesque dancer

Disrobing

Layer by licentious layer

Enticing lethal glimpses

Into the human mystique

Sexy little secrets

Sometimes better left

To the imagination

Exorcism

My moorings bend

From the force of

An increasingly frenzied current.

I never manage to untie myself

Before departing and where I lack talent

I have chosen momentum.

–

Within me the stars itch

Drawing the moon

From the oily pith of a sky

That is graciously expanding.

–

Our fingers collide

When reaching for the milk.

There’s no reason for privacy,

Not now that you have seen everything

But let’s continue carving

Moments whenever we can

So that we don’t become

Utterly indistinguishable.

–

The only ghost which

Cannot be exorcised

Is the soul and yet here I stand

Eviction notice in hand

Rattling the cage

With enough force

To break my heart in two.

–

I managed to get one done today but I am still working on my submission(s) so I may reblog on occasion.  Today was an emotional day, I am always emotional after therapy. I am trying to figure out how many poems to submit to The Newyorker they accept 6 submissions at a time but you are only permitted to submit twice in a year. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated!  It takes 6 months to get a response so by then we will have all forgotten.