I enter the blessed count,
there is nothing left
but to commemorate.
You mustn’t welcome
my apologies they are poison.
–
I carry a wooden cross
in the place of a heart.
My smile is a brush
sweeping and scouring
your fine woolly sneer.
–
I am only a girl
spinning plates.
I am missing parts
but of my misfortune
I have made an art.
–
If I were free
I would not betray myself so often.
I would turn my hands
up to the sky and take hold
of all that is boundless and unseen.
I snatch your angels
From the waves
Of a treacherous silence,
A box apart from
The residual graves.
As simple as a moon
Fashioned of clay
My self recriminations
Spring up helter-skelter
In moments overcast.
–
How could I have lost you
When I held on with all my might?
What can fix perfection
And if not you
Then what can I alter
Without covering up
These essential lies,
These transparencies
Which distinguish
One void from the next.
–
We were quite the pair
Miscreants starved for reason,
Two perfects eggs
In a cycling bath.
My courage no longer raw
I cling to a barren science.
Your kisses thieving worms,
Your eyes retracted halos
How can I die in the cradle
Of such a gorgeous silhouette?
*
Unrelated to the poem I am having technical issues with WordPress. My notification feature does not seem to be working, so I no longer receive emails when someone likes a post. This feature is very helpful for me because I have memory issues and so I really hope that it’s not been phased out =(
Have I ever composed an apology
That did not gesture for sympathy?
I have always sought to avoid blame
And those violations which can not be
Rectified will likely destroy me.
What is an apology without amends?
And can one ever be sufficiently
Reformed to qualify for forgiveness?
–
I am selfish and generous
But the former, though essential
To survival, is impermissible.
How do I become a god?
That I should not want,
That I should be limitless,
Without exception and always ready.
How can I commit to promises
That do not permit my imperfections?
–
I understand the need
To confess plainly
But when I am the mistake
How do I avoid repetition?
I am, at least in my own mind,
More criminal than crime.
An accusation comes seemingly
At the expense of my life.
I am a coward.
I can think of no explanation for love
Only that I will never admire the portrait.
How can I see beyond my own self-loathing?
How much guilt can I ingest before
Living becomes itself taboo?
–
I want others to think well of me,
I am scared to acknowledge
My faults without clarification,
Clarifications inevitably beget justifications,
If I do not justify does it imply
That I do not care?
Do my justifications seek
Eradication of self?
I do not know.
–
I feel compelled to recommend myself
Because I cannot shake the notion
That I must earn love anymore
Than I can shake the notion
That I am undeserving of its reception.
I cannot bring myself to give you
A reason to leave.
I do not want you to leave
But experience has proven
That I am intolerable.
–
How can I apologize for your feelings
When they bear no semblance to my intentions
And come from insecurities furnished before
I was even born? I was not born a devil
Even if I fell directly into enemy hands.
You did not love me from the first
And perhaps not for a long time after.
There is no law against hate
Only what follows so often in its course.
I have wanted for love ever since
But those initial absences cannot be filled.
Though I have forgiven you,
I still find you prickly and take offense
Where none may have been intended.
How often you cite my short-comings
And some days I find it hard to initiate
Knowing that my failings have already arrived.
1
I dust the feathers
From the wilderness
Of your ceaseless ablations.
The scent of hyacinths
Overlapping the scent of frost.
Wax wings coagulating
Inside the brittle pretense
Of a binomial darkness.
I watch your holiness subside
The Blood of Christ
Was never strong enough
To subdue your animal urges.
2
My pelvis somersaults
Whenever you mention my name.
Ribs, a corset unlaced
For the sake of aviation.
If I fill my lungs with helium
Can I follow you East?
3
The controversy of doves
Leaking prohibitions
Into my guilt matrix
Immobilizes.
I could spend all day
Here with you debating ethics
But there’s more truth in terror,
In the abdication of thought
For the sake of gratification.
–
For
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/writing-prompt-104-rorschach-test-take-2/
Fate has a way of preserving
One’s idiosyncrasies.
I am, having previously wrought.
Events do not always
Proceed their immediate beginnings.
Sometimes the consequence
Comes in the night
Like a bottle-necked stranger
To slake all effulgent protrusions.
*
My mornings itch,
Poultices damp from sleeps’ gyrations.
I unwind myself,
Carving features into the scabrous mass
That has become my life.
A caricature digs into my shoulders,
The great weighty head,
My mother earth perched
High above a lagging Atlas.
If my heart was
A spare key
The locks that defend
Your penitence
Would not revolve.
To remember you
Is to forget the mien
Of my ambivalence.
I cannot alter
A single thread
Even though the attempt
Extends deep into
My sacred complex.
A souvenir,
Your smile is only
Beautiful on display
Wedged between my teeth
It looks oddly cynical.
There’s not enough beauty
In you to compensate
For the beauty
Blocked in the crux
Of your ongoing trial
I wish guilt were a virtue
That heaven might not be
So quick to judge.
Traffic begs in the fever
Of a belated dawn
A casual seance
A kiss with hydrogen breath
As passive as stones
We suck on chapped lips
In the frigid mantel
Of a clinically negligible aurora
We have ruined everything.
*
I have been thinking a lot about the inability to forgive oneself and the consequences. About how we “create” our own hells.
For
http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/wordle-38-december-8-2014/
From the shadows I appear an imp
Red as an apple, red as the lips
That occupy its scabrous flesh.
My eyes wallow
Tucked into the furrows
Of their considerations
Veils woven of regard
And denser with time
Like the patches of a quilt.
A world of aqueous distortions
Awaits me, a world
Of seas pulled drop by drop
Through a channel smaller
Than a needle’s flirtatious eye.
My memories are cold
My bridges razed
Bat-winged passages
That shriek and nip.
I must be a masochist
To come here so often.
Your fingerprints
Sheath my bones
A film like the smut
Of cream on plastic
Water does not absolve
Your breach and soap
Does not penetrate scars.
My thoughts are with you
Against you, powerless
In their recounting
And what is the epoxy
That holds families together?
Is it blood?
Is it the thresholds of salt
Like the tracks of cocaine poured
Cautiously over a cosmetic mirror?
Is it the transmission of secrets?
The indictment of a soul
Too young to comprehend cruelty?
Is it guilt which boasts the deepest roots?
Nature’s Geisha@Deviant Art
I don’t know
The precise moment
When my wings
Were canceled
In the aura
Of a molten stalk
Like the elevated eye
Of a motionless crustacean
I remember only
The meticulous fragmentation
Of my scaffolding,
In other words
The heartless severance
Of my burgeoning faith.
My legs are useless
When unbuoyed by the salt
Of my transgressions
If only I were newly born
But the fetid womb still grips
Like a parcel of anthracite
Around my naked lenses
Thirst rallies
A mute brotherhood
Faith mislaid
Breeds sickness
A weak man’s confessional
Does not absolve sin
Anton Semenov
A rage both impossible and irresolute
I have no credence to my favor
No leniency in which to stash my fangs
I am wronged by my own wrongness
A hypochondriac devoted to anomaly
A portrait for each asylum, a zero, a space
Essential to calculation but itself meager
My guilt is not simply for show
It is an occupation by which I rend
My heart as if it were a hymen
In the incidentals of a precocious terror
I am a paper moon cast in admonishment
A one-dimensional puppet leaping
From mirror to mirror in search of a face,
A visage less pained to occupy my vanity
mindlovemisery 