Wildfire

Photo by Malachi Brooks on Unsplash

I am not a solitary flame,

a candle shivering demurely in a sedate

but nevertheless captivating darkness.

I am a wildfire that chews up

continents and constellations

without so much as a breath between.

I am the kind of fire

that turns everything

around it black.

–

My whole life

I have been a warrior,

charnel ground,

a crumbling tower of a person.

The kind of person

that consumes oceans

and hearts and stars

for the sake

of its own continuance.

–

Numbness is a lack of space,

a crowding together

of emotions and thoughts

which have yet to reach

the stillness of being.

–

You can’t squeeze an entire universe

into a poem, a suitcase, or even a body.

Emotions have no language,

no barriers, no bones of any kind.

–

My loneliness is so vast

and so obliterating

that I can’t even find

myself inside of it.

–

I am struggling a lot right now with abandonment issues and dysregulation so my emotions and thoughts are a bit all over the place.

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Wordle #285

Photo by Christopher Parker on Unsplash

All the flowers in the garden have been plucked and repurposed into halos, vase-fillers, and oracles. None of which have served me particularly well. My life is mostly decoration and sleight of hand. People enter. Bridges burn. Hearts puncture (my heart has more holes in it than a colander).

I still view everything through the speculum that is trauma. I am vulnerable. I am exposed. I am open from the inside and stretched to my limits.

I am an ordinary person living violently at the bottom of a well. I have no outstanding features, unless by outstanding you mean distinctive. I am a pile of bones woven together with flesh and red string. I would rather be a kite than a thimble-full of brackish water. I would rather be a catalyst than a consequence of reason but you can’t have everything and that’s why I settle sometimes. If I could have everything then I would have a cabin in the woods, an attentive lover, a Pagan wedding, the soul of a poet, and the heart of a dog.

The sky is gray and gluttonous I pour my sorrows into the rain and the mud that wallows underneath my chilled feet. I have no stories, only rancor and a vague but unshakable sense of hopelessness. The only service I am capable of offering is lip service and like anyone else I search for meaning wherever I can find it. Mostly my life feels like a series of roundabouts and one-way streets. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast. I dance when I hear music. I think in words. I feel in words. Sometimes my soul comes loose and I drop to my knees and wait for the moon to strike me dead.

Just gibberish rambling. I have been writing intensively for several days and now I need to recharge myself.

Pearl

Photo by JJ Jordan on Unsplash

If I wait for you

there will be more pearls in me

than there are names in the Bible.

I will be valuable

but razor-sharp

in my opalescence.

–

Deep down though I will be

soft and sweet like the sea

and who among men

could sustain the currents of a woman

who seeks validation

in the bright and outrageous act of love?

–

Soon I will have more

value than substance.

Soon I will be

a wardrobe through

which the worlds of mankind pass

but never enter.

Soon I will be too lonely with war

to remember my original function.

Growing Back My Virginity

Photo by Oscar Ivan Esquivel Arteaga on Unsplash

In the blank, covetous darkness

you reach down like lightning

and the whole of my soul

surges forward in a greeting

that is simultaneously

obscene and disconsolate.

–

We both know that nothing

will come of your touch

but for several minutes

we bounce gently together

our bodies pressed tight

as a stack of porcelain plates.

–

In the heat of starvation

we evaporate slowly

and I hate to say it

but months of anticipation

have turned to something

that feels a lot like

dread and indifference.

–

If you crack my bones

you will find nothing

but ink and the cinders

of a once formidable fire.

I don’t want to be

forbidden, excepted,

a penumbra suspended

fitfully between two worlds.

Rainbow Adjacent

Photo by Rhett Wesley on Unsplash

Never surrender to pretense

when there’s a door

or a window or the faintest flicker

of the vacuity and vastness

that is conscious awareness.

–

Let your laughter dissolve

the clouds that overshadow

the fiery indolence of youth

and lie down with me

on a sun-saturated patch of dirt

underneath a tree

who speaks to God

about the seductive wisdom

of certain fruits and reptiles.

–

We can get married

and arrange things together

in organized piles

and pretend that wishes

are our best kept secrets.

For example I promise

not to test the water

before drowning

in any adjacent rainbows.

The only halo

I want wrapped around me

is your smile.

I don’t have wings

but my hands

hardly ever touch the ground.

–

There are so many ways

to strangle the life

out of a relationship

I never thought

that my love for you

would become a weapon

until I realized

that its content

was mostly rocks

and that what I took

for sophistication and spontaneity

was just a sly way

of crossing the street

without being recognized.

–

Magic like everything else

turns out to be real

right up to the point

that it enters into the eye

and in that still, viscous pool

everything takes on

an air of artificiality.

Deep down I think we know

that nothing is real or realized

outside of ourselves

which is why

you are an angel

and I wear a grin that looks

more like a bread knife

than a waning crescent.

–

This is the third poem of the day. The others I am planning to submit. I hope this one came out okay!

2nd Poem Published “The Taste of Winter” in Do Not Submit

The Taste of Winter by Candice Daoud

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Published in Do Not Submit

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Poppies and Stardust by Candice Daoud

Wordle #284

Even the flames of appetite

pass unanswered and unremarked

in the faux pas and arrogance of a new dawn.

–

You were never final,

never trustworthy,

never one to answer my prayers,

spoken or otherwise,

but in a dank and inscrutable darkness

we made use of our bodies

and created a moment

which felt very much like an always.

–

I watched you sleep

from a distance

and from a distance

you looked very much like love.

So much so that

I left my number

carelessly beside your phone

and put on your sweater

instead of my own.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2022/08/22/wordle-284/

I am that wilderness

Photo by Michael Olsen on Unsplash

I have too many emotions.

They stick in my teeth,

in my twisted viscera,

in my glowing red heart

in my stiff grey lungs.

They are my hands and my feet

and all the spaces in between.

–

Feelings can’t be ascribed

to any one organ

they rise up between

the solid bits.

They are a void.

They are eternal

right up until the moment

of exchange.

–

I am inconsolable

whatever my orientation.

Viscous and viral

there is a wilderness

so wild and so vast

that no map could ever

hope to translate it.

I am that wilderness.

–

I never have

the same emotion twice.

Each emotion is its own construct.

The only thing which is certain

in me is uncertainty

but that does not

bring me comfort.

–

I sleep hundreds of hours a day.

I am the dream, not the dreamer.

I do not wake but every now and then

life comes pouring in like salt water

and takes me to another place

and in that foreign place

I take on the arduous task

of drowning.

Add Me

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

My heart became

a magnifying glass,

a weapon of light

and ongoing deformation.

I do not mean to burn with love

but I am desperate

and lacking in imagination.

–

All eyes and no soul

my heart looked into yours

and fell against its little bone door

with fear and trembling.

If I let you in

I will never be free of myself.

Eyes opened or closed

you will always see me.

–

Love became a thing,

an extraordinary and incomprehensible thing.

Even if I give doubly of myself

I will never be able to earn it

because that is not part of the exchange.

–

I always seem to be missing

something and that absence

creates a distance between myself

and the object of my interest.

How can 1 plus 1 be of more value

than 1 times 1?

Multiplication seems so powerful

until the numbers are forced

to confront the possibility of solitude.

Maybe we need each other to grow.

Maybe that’s why my value never rises.

–

When I think about it

I have been searching

for someone

that I can occupy.

I want to be a ghost

in your home.

To be with you,

to be seen and not seen,

to possess intermittently,

and above everything to dream.

–

I have been struggling with Depression fiercely lately even though I feel I have so much to rejoice and have been on some lovely adventures lately and have also received tremendous support and love.