Wordle #150

Sanity is merely an affectation,
a veil underneath which
the darkest shadows may pass.
I am just a girl, insignificant,
in the scheme of things.
There is comfort in
the knowings and doings other,
in penny-gush and reflection.
There is comfort in
the superficial and mundane
though I do not count
myself among them.
–
Iris assigns names
to those she does not know.
She gathers their ghosts
into sickly webs and sews
them throat to throat.
–
I cannot bear to hear
pretty words spoken of me,
labels are much too expensive.
I will not grovel or peak
under another man’s agenda.
We are all mutable,
beyond reason, insane.
To represent or to copy
that has always been the game.
I own my occhiolism,
my bittersweet nothings,
not altogether unlike yours
but enough to distinguish.
–
Iris assigns names
to those she does not know.
She gathers their ghosts
into sickly webs and sews
them throat to throat.

Advertisement

Wordle #270

I kick at your insulation,
at your smile as it fades
into oration.
I would listen to you talk
all night if it would save me
the enunciation
of my own bungling sentiments.
–
You are not original.
Heel, toe, line
lines flashing,
lines insistent
lines without terminus
or dominion.
–
Without statement
you are trivial and cold.
A park in the depth of winter.
I adhere to your limits,
so much as they admit me.
–
You are a terrible mimic.
My rims quiver and itch.
Alone, in a valley
of infinite selves.
–
My heart flips and fritters.
I am envious of silence,
of open spaces,
of transience
and all who appear
inevitably before me.
–
If only I could tolerate myself
long enough to become someone else.
–
I am really struggling to express myself at the moment. My anxiety has been particularly high lately.

Wordle #116

A string of staccato vowels,
a coterie of fireworks, a protean waltz
churning beneath my left breast pocket
like so many precipitous waves.
I wilt under observation,
there are too many eyes
in this room and I cannot
answer them without forgetting myself.
–
I am a dummy, a trampled wallflower
peeling my spine-prim as a starched collar-
from the shell of a walnut.
I would do anything
to avoid the strop, the proboscis,
the razor-tongued princesses
deadening in their conceit.
–
I am a well no deeper than a thimble
what I lack cannot be embellished,
what I possess is scarcely worth mimicry.
The stars lie down for me,
they beget me, how can I go on
wasting chance after chance
in the preservation of illusion?

S Slashed

Richard Keeling

We of the swollen carapace

Shall know pain mightily

Shall learn when to hold

And when to surrender

But until then we carve

Our ruts especially deep.

 

The world is a petri dish

And my expectations

Are irrelevant to the duration

Of my species as a whole

I speak for no man who does not

Possess a heart and tongue

Equally capable of noise

Sometimes there is even

Music between us

A kind of invertebrate symphony

Our flesh more easily stitched

Than bone or is it?

 

No amount of persuasion

Could draw this veil aside

For there is always another

Willing to negate the privilege.

We are alive but only just

Who among us can face

The collective consciousness?

We’ve created a society

That is contradictory

To life and our sorrows

However, scarce their content

Cannot find amelioration

In any known conquest

 

We contend that as children

We lived but every whisper

Contains its dose of poison

To be is to be had, to become

For the sake of an approximation

That in conflict does not stand

 

There are no eyes only

Pits of contagion

No smiles only frowns

Of inebriation worn askance

No hands without blood

For mercy does not fill

Leather as hate does

The seismic universal

Of self-worth is S slashed

 

We never look into the fires

That we have lit unless

We’ve found in some

Fool a culprit or alibi

There is no accounting

For denial, we survive only

In this moment

No matter how precariously

The future rests

*

I got too excited about the prompt Jen suggested so I went ahead and wrote something. I might have to move that challenge up in my schedule lol This is just where my mind took me on reading it.

Stage

Beautiful but circuitous

I remain estranged

Salutations that never

Extend invitation

Lips too buoyant

To indulge profundity

*

There is loneliness

In the sustainment of doubt

There is loneliness

In a sealed heart that grows

Emptier with the passage of time

*

To possess a tongue without guile

A betrayal to both barer and expectancy

There is freedom in awkwardness

In the way it forbids assimilation

*

I am not an actress and no stage

No matter how obliquitous

Could detain me

Clay

Being clay

I find myself

Responsive

To alien whims

Hands

Furtively press

Me into

Companionable molds

But I never maintain

Any impression

That denies

My composition

As a whole

Asymmetry

Between the paving stones

Skinny bodies torn and coarsened

Overtake an indiscriminate sun

Even poverty dreams, even shadows

Dwell adjacent to divinity. Am I not

Human? My guilt-ridden bones retire

And aspire same as yours. If society

Disowns me, will I not wither in neglect?

=

Artifice would bid me leave, the blue

Heart of winter amidst artificial springs

Eel-tongued sycophants would cater my

Etiquette to suit recreant needs, never

Question, never think outside of trends

Let there stand only one woman and one

Man, of perfect symmetry. Peace manufactured

Through puppetry and masquerade

We have lost all sense of connection outside

Of imitation. I am aberrant, deviant, guilty of

Treason I surrender my heart to the unlit moon

To the mystery of eclipse, to the anarchy of my

Thrilling inquisitions. I will never become you but

If your arms should fall open I will welcome you

Into me, not in spite of the differences, not in

Spite of anyone or anything at all

=

I have a pile of poetry at the moment I did go to the country today all seizy and crazy as it were. I wrote a poem there too but I was outside at least lol I might make errors in my poems if you catch one let me know though my errors tend to be very strange like replacing coffee with wafer, caterpillar with turpentine the connections my brain makes no wonder I can’t access my memories!

Honey and Vinegar

Replace my heart with your skinny inversions

Claws, retracted, defiant fist, hammering a

Discordant rhythm. All my angels with their

Featherless cloaks spiraling down, as fragile

As paper aeroplanes and I know that your love

Will be the death of my independent belief

Free will being naught but a volitional delusion

I know that I will succumb to honey and vinegar

To migratory promises that fill wombs and hearths

With ashes, I know that my veins will part in your absence

But until then I offer you my haunted bones to sprawl upon

=

I was away a lot, celebrating my sister-in-laws return from Turkey so I am afraid I did not have time to write! I only manage a short one for today and it was done in a rush

Fossilize (Audio)

My heart wears an expression of mute terror

The sort of expression that is inherent in all unsuspecting fossils

Your observations pass over me like an avalanche

Every bone-shattering collision helps to soften my rage

Because unlike my morale gravity is infallible

*

“Blood dilutes over time”

My heart is an underfed furnace

When in school they used to shove

Firewood vertically down my throat

Now I sit clucking my splinter free tongue

In search of none negotiable rubbish

*

“Insanity is the display of any emotion

That defies a preexisting ambiance”

Your limp-fisted smile is the height of fashion these days

Like a guitar string that lacks a prerequisite tension

I find your voice cackling in the pursuit of others

When in isolation, I find that your register has risen

One full octave, as if there were a helium leak

In the space directly above your shoulders

*

I wonder if your eyes have any other orientation

Besides open/closed and if given enough time

Will I be able to force a wink out of you

Or at least an honest to goodness frown

*

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0DL144LftTx

Hypocrisy

I seek validation

In the anonymous

In the cursory embrace

Of a society

Who by its very design

Parries distinction

*

What right have I

To speak of instinct

When I force

My prophetic bones

Into the sleeves

Of a disingenuous mold?

*

What right have I

To speak when my words,

Masticated

In a communal maw,

Lack the integrity

To illicit change?