Give Your Heart Away

1

Your fingertips are filled with static,

with flames so delicate that they burn

white and blue like the summer sky.

I collect your taste on the tip of my tongue,

your hands in a thousand places at once

and my pulse stronger for their greeting.

2

Today I told you that I loved you for the first time.

You kissed me and whispered

your answer directly into my mouth

and I felt it everywhere at once.

3

Your eyes are threadbare,

they have been asked to conceal too much

for too long and this dedication has made them soft.

Your heart has been lived in and acknowledged.

I’ve seen you give it up a million times,

you say the heart is necessary in every pursuit.

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Wordle #161

My thighs slide together
same as any other womans
when she has found someone
worthy of drowning inside.

I keep finding myself strewn across your hips
with your heat pressed right up against my threshold.

When you left this morning
you were notably hostile.
A million questions
spilled through my mind
that I could not answer
and did not dare to ask.

I cocinnate a vase of silk flowers
and place them on the long table by the front door.
The watery colors just catch the eye
and they look to me like something lifted
from the pages of a fairy-tale.

I hope that in seeing them
you’ll remember our bodies spread out
underneath the constellations
and the sound of my heart
up against your ear like a seashell.

I never know quite what to expect
when you come home
but this constant state of peripeteia
has left fissures in my heart
deep enough to run my fingers through.

Dressed only in shadows,
I can still feel your echo inside of me,
your climax thicker than blood
and more vital than water
trickling out slow and sinful
from between my boneless legs.

Genius

I can conjure a suicide from anything

even the air can serve as a noose

if you have the time and patience

and I have both.

There is no one more capable

of my execution than I am

in that way, death is a bit like masturbation.

I know what I want and what I fear

and how to combine the two 

for the greatest effect.

 

Of all the ways there are to die

I prefer poetry, it is defiant,

it is an incubus pressed to the chest,

it is the moment

when nightmare and epiphany

collapse side by side

in an awkward but torrid embrace.

 

We always speak 

of the things we love

with such violence

because nothing ignites a heart

quite like its own destruction.

We fight the hardest

when we have the most to lose.

Genius is an open wound,

a soul gutted, deboned, and dredged

face down through the stars.

Photo Challenge #295

– Sarolta Bán

 

My roots catch behind your sealed lids.
Your blue eyes are the firmament,
your pupils two defunct satellites.
Dissected and withheld I huddle
in your sightless sclera/apogee.

The mask most worn becomes a cage.
I am neither effigy nor disciple.
Must you assign all your misgivings to me?
Must you curse my name as if I were
a murder of crows come to pluck
your righteous harvest?

The clouds are my flesh,
my bones, the dreams
into which I situate my organs.
I am no better than you,
only different.

Gaslight

I embellish myself with your skin,

if not for you I would be naked,

because of you my heart requires

barricade and armament.

You have made me a soldier,

you have made me a scrimmage.

 

I dress myself in your clothes,

a virgin thirty times over.

I am accustomed to sacrifice,

to the diminution of my beliefs.

The tears in my eyelashes do not hold

they collapse over my cheeks and hands.

I am too old to start from the preface.

 

You say that I am hysterical

whenever I speak my mind.

You say that I am preposterous

whether or not we disagree.

Does being perfect compensate

for the privation of your soul?

 

There is arsenic in your kiss

and malice in your tempered grin.

Intention can be either palliative or poison.

You fashion armies of my former allies

and all who would attend me now

have only euthanization in mind.

 

I consider every covenant

that we ever professed

even those said in jest.

The tapestry of us is moth-eaten

despite prodigious care.

That’s on me,

I paid above your worth.

 

I trace each laceration patiently

as though defect held 

an incantation that when whispered

would resolve all distinction

between my life and your departure.

I really did love you, you know.

 

I think I’ll take the shears

and cut strips for my diary.

The faded prints will look beautiful

pressed inside your sly love letters.

–

This is an old poem as well but I have added a lot to it. I actually wrote this one originally when I was in the process of writing/editing my first book (I always felt it was unformed/unfinished).

I recently submitted 2 poems for publication in

Ephemeral Elegies

https://ephemeralelegies.com/

They are currently open for submissions. They are seeking confessional poetry similar in style to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Stop by and check it out!

My submissions

Walk Away (to be published on 1/2)

Decomposing Heart (to be published on 1/28)

 

The Sunday Whirl “Wordle 435”

My veneer curls at the edges,
hands pressed against my chest.
I hope that my heart doesn’t get out
she is too needy, she is too wild.
I hardly recognize myself
in the glow of your smile.

I promised myself
I wouldn’t blush,
in front of you again
but here I stand
shining like a beacon.

Your arms are open
and there is a twinkle in your eyes
that could reorient the heavens.
We speak with our eyes closed,
lips intractable, tongues touching.

I hope that we’ll never keep score.
Resentment is a thirsty mistress.
I have seen her turn good men into stone,
I have seen her turn women acerbic like smoke.
Whoever told you that life should be fair
forgot the prejudice of greed.

Your knee brushes mine
and I know that you mean to depart
while there is still heat between us.
I wish I could be more cheerful,
watching you fade in and out of view.
I blow another kiss to ease my mind.

Scrooge

The weather resonates my mood.

Grey and ponderous, I do not think

I should like to do anything today.

 

There are those who would inflict

their seasonal happiness on me

as if a smile were no better than a cold.

 

I hope that they are blessed.

I will masquerade if they insist

but my heart remains unmoved.

 

I don’t have much of an appetite

for Christmas this year,

maybe you’ll think it selfish,

 

maybe you’ll think it plain

but the only gift I want this year

is a goodnight’s sleep!

Walk Away

In the soles of your boots

I followed you, piecemeal, down the stairs.

Down and down you went

unaware that your cruelty held me hostage.

It’s not an exaggeration

to say that you were a psychopath

and I am certain that there are others who suspected.

–

Only a shell could protect against your trespass

and I have one that would

make a mollusk weep with envy.

For years I was as empty as a widow’s uterus

but in your absence I find myself filling with blood and air.

All that is vital, all that you withheld

is mine, at last, to feel.

I could never return to your side

knowing now what it is to live.

–

There’s a crawl space inside of me

just big enough for a clenched fist.

Within its clammy walls I keep

all my feelings, good and bad.

I wear this space as if it were a badge.

It is a point of pride that I survived you

and whatever comes next

I know that I shall be the better for it.

–

I have yet to unravel the scars

that you laid with each betrayal.

Sometimes it feels as if they are all that I am.

Then I remember that you are dead

and I take another faltering step forward.

I hope that in quietus you remember

the pain that you alone have inflicted

and I hope that it haunts you,

at least as long as you have haunted me.

–

This is another old poem reworked. Below is a reading of yesterdays poem I hope the link works fingers-crossed.

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Wordle #161

If I am wild it is because you have
provoked me into pathology.
I have become your weapon of choice,
the poverty on which your art insists.
I cannot erase our initials from the old oak
the cuts we made are much too deep.
But if my heart becomes too heavy to bear
give it back while I still remember the shape.

If your tongue were a vise
I might not stray so often
into the eel like passages
of my own personal narrative.
We have deified depression
and every day upon her alter
we bleed ourselves to husks.
A smile, however, articulate
cannot mend these broken feelings.

Society exterminates its martyrs.
I never asked you to be a better man
and I would give anything to see
what lies underneath your ego.
I think I could love him.
I know that I would try.
Perhaps we are just not
ready for the impossible?

My instincts stopped serving me
the moment I entrusted them to doubt.
I am governed by the weather,
by the transitory and intangible.
How am I supposed to anchor you?
In the end our lives amount
to little more than a game
of musical chairs.
–
This is an old poem but I made a lot of changes to it in the editing process. I have started working on my second book again. I have the content. I have had the content for years now. I have the content for many books. I have no excuse. Also I am thinking of switching from posting 6 am/0:600 GMT +1 to 6 pm/18:00 GMT +1 comment if you have a preference.

Sunday Writing Prompt “Monster”

Must you distort my intentions
to suit your moods?
What a monster I must seem
with your face laid on top
and your words rammed
down my throat.

I can think of a million things
I’d rather swallow
most of which are contained
within your multitudes.

The air is so heavy
that I cannot lift my tongue
to speak.

What good are these feelings
if I cannot dream?
Must you criticize
what you do not understand?

My bones are scarcely
worth their weight.
I’ve been dragging them
around this room all day
and they’ve yet
to prove their substance.

Loving you consumes
my heart wholly.
I’ve hardly the time left
to cry.

I’m tired of crying anyways.
I’ve made up my mind
to be a new kind of beautiful
the kind of beautiful that doesn’t
ostracize strangeness.

–

On a side note I have an Instagram account. I will still mostly be centering around poetry. So there will be short poems, quotes, some poetry readings.

https://www.instagram.com/yves_k_morrow/