I bow and crumble-
your knuckles are blue and gray
like a howling sea.
Wordle #277
I watch your face
tremulous and yellow
where I left it spinning
in haphazard momentum
mere inches above my own.
–
I trace the air above your foul smile,
the abhorrent instinct to return
blow for blow all that you have taken.
There are no answers only eventualities.
–
You ruined me and I allowed it.
I have made a sport out of failure.
There’s no high in winning
when it is only a fluke anyhow.
–
I count them out in your hand
1-2-3 little pink pills
and soon you’ll be as numb as a board.
I am the only one left who believes
that feelings are necessary.
(at least you don’t hit when you sleep)
–
Tomorrow when you’re all bare bones and gristle
you’ll find your way back to the hate
that has sustained us all these years.
Tomorrow I’ll leave quick and holy
without so much as a eulogy.
Wordle #260
I sweep your boiling shadows
into my fury, into shrunken parks
with swarms of confectionery crows
and chain-link fences far as the eye can see.
–
I watch you shimmering,
ripping me open like a wound.
My blood rises to meet
your kiss, black with exertion
and the deceptions
I have been made to swallow.
–
I have such terrible dreams,
such terrible inclinations.
I turn and turn,
but for every passage
there is another wall
twice as thick.
–
Your eyes search me as a storm
stripping me of everything
save my crucifixions.
–
I watch you rippling
your careless eruptions
castrating my silence.
–
What is this illness
that shores me up
and plucks the sutures
from my seams?
Is this love?
–
Who is this woman-
her features pleated as a lampshade-
peering past every reflection?
Is she the avatar
of a querulous soul?
Is she me sick with excuses?
Incensed
The first incision was effortless,
The second like stirring
Ash within fossilized amber.
Compatibility is only as deep
As the intentions by which
The union is first conceived.
I will never remove you,
Those diligent cells may
Just as well be my own.
Malignancy feels beautiful
Before it starts
The intensity, the enormity
Like some grand irrevocable truth.
My incensed heart skids
Under your watch it constructs
Its meager triumphs, its weedy castles
Cut from the shadows of carnations
Your damp eyes echo piteously
Knuckles cast as stones
Into my sly silhouette
As it slithers over paper thin walls
Everyone knows that we hate
Each other, that we eat
From the same plates
And wipe our hands
On each other’s clothes.
You who are, as volatile
And unnecessary as tonsils
Have taken now my voice
I sit in silence, seething
Wondering where the pain enters
Is it the vertical smile
Thrust into my back?
Is it that smile that doubts
Your sincerity?
I know that you will stay
Because tombstones remain
Wherever they are placed.
*
For those of you who have ventured into my archives you might recognize a line in this poem but aside from that line I have rewritten this poem completely. The topic isn’t even the same exactly but I did keep the 3 Wordle words contained in the original: incensed, skid, damp. Speaking of Wordles though this challenge expired years ago you are welcome to use my graphic and link up entries to my blog if you are feeling inspired.
When I was young and just starting with poetry I was very much influenced by Rimbaud’s style. When I gave up writing for several years and resumed it with this blog I didn’t really have my own voice. I had no idea who I was as a writer or even as a person. A lot of my early blog poems, seem very generic to me now (the original of this poem for example). Some poems I keep largely intact when editing. Sometimes I like the subject of a poem but feel the writing itself is too cliche, ornate or whatever. Sometimes I like certain lines but feel that the message wasn’t clear or that I didn’t venture deep enough. Some day I hope to create a very beautiful blog, right now I still cringe when I think of people reading my earlier stuff. It’s not all bad of course there are some poems that did turn out to have a lot of feeling in them but I think you can understand where I am coming from just the same 😛 This poem is fictional I really wanted to capture those words.
Victim 19
Every scar
I’ve ever worn
And in secrecy
Been made to endure,
Is yours darling to profess
*
It is your heart
Covetous and calescent
That has branded me
That has fashioned
Of my fine roots
A marionette
*
The strings
By which I hang
Are both
Noose and anchor
I remember not
The former tenant
Only this waning
Parasitical soul
That is not me
But who dresses
In my flesh
Nevertheless
*
I know
That beneath
The surface lie
The bodies
Of countless girls
Nameless I trace
The cracked symmetry
Of each neglected numeral
Their pine box smiles
Betraying a history
Not confirmed
But soon borne
=
This is fictional I have to stop watching such depressing programs
500 Word Story “The Grin”
A demented pixie fabricated with transparent horns and a Glasgow grin to match. He’d been the one to drag that condescending smile ear to ear, the one to reshape the landscape of her pretty face so that she, now a freak-show, would be recognized as such by the world. He’d taken the diplomatic route in all instances previous, if anything his behavior had been exemplary.
=
When the relationship took a dangerous turn for the worse, he’d kept his hands and insults to himself. The same could not be said for that horrible woman who thwarted his best attempts to conduct a rational conversation. They’d sought conventional counseling, separated, reunited under more favorable circumstances. In the end he’d gotten a restraining order, which had been taken as something of a joke and thus never as conscientiously enforced as his sanity and physical well-being necessitated.
=
She had hit him twice with her car, on the 2nd occasion at a sufficient speed to break two of his ribs and the arm he’d used as a makeshift shield. After their final breakup he’d never reentered the dating world despite admonitions from friends. He dared not to utter even a single syllable to any woman that was not of his own blood lest she turn out just as insidious or become the victim of a jealousy that required no provocation beyond delusion. She sold his prized guitar collection out of sheer malice, destroyed his property, drugged him on numerous occasions, accused him falsely of rape, which resulted in a loss of employment. She had taken his soul apart brick by brick, unraveled him so totally that he had lost all sense of reality, of himself. No dating was out of the question, he was in no condition and his baggage came with a vendetta and a will all its own.
=
There was no justice for a beautiful, manipulative woman, hell even he had forgiven her more times then he dared now to recall. When she poisoned his German Shepard, all the crimes he’d stoically endured, all the slights forgiven and forgotten in light of more atrocious crimes came crawling up from his bowels, like poisonous black bile. There she’d stood laughing, proud of her cruelty and there he’d stood unhinged, incoherent, blinded by rage, grief, and a desperation that made him feel physically ill. He’d grabbed a kitchen knife without consideration, for in all those years that he’d entertained retaliation, he’d never actually went so far as to plan it. In that instant, however, he knew what was to be done and all other thoughts, like those of consequence or morality fled. He hadn’t continued to slice away at her face, had never intended to kill her only to imprint upon her, that sick murderous smile. He was the one arrested, labeled insane and sent to live in Anwar Heights, while she became the victim, a symbol for abused women everywhere. He didn’t care though, he was untouchable behind these walls, free, in a non-world.
=
(no idea what compelled me to write this but its my first completed short story haha The picture would be before the grin lol)
mindlovemisery 