Venom

 

They say that lust is antecedent to love.

If true then it is not my heart

that is wounded but my ego.

By that logic I should be able

to find a substitute for you.

Yet you continue to occupy me

day and night the way that rain

makes a home for itself in every hollow.

 

A choice never seems as such

the moment it is finalized.

I could wait but waiting

feels a lot like penance.

Sometimes patience

leads to obsession.

 

I didn’t die the way I planned.

The chains were too thick,

the armor too heavy

and for all my inventions

never once did I think a door

would serve a purpose

other than invasion.

 

My heart is a well

and every night

I reach into her depths

in search of water

to quench my thirst

but there is only

so much blood

one person can drink.

 

You were supposed to love me.

Not because I willed it

but because I gave you an invitation.

How can I follow you now knowing

that I am just another shadow

dragging behind your back?

–

I saw this in my list of poems to edit but I could not find the original in its entirety. You might recognize some lines from it.

Advertisement

Sunday Whirl #359 and 363

 

Her

He speaks and I am diminished.

I dig my hand into my ribs

trying to muffle my heart’s entreaty.

Any minute now I will shed my skin,

my turbulent, brittle terror

and set off across the lawn with a quiet resolve.

Him

I undress you every time we meet.

Your electric blue eyes lower in tandem.

I have no reason to define my lust.

From the cabinet you extract two long stem glasses.

The clock reads 2 minutes shy of midnight.

Her

If I were a boat I would take to the sea,

my weight suspended in a skein of watercolors.

My bones remember your weight

and I know that I should refrain.

Why can’t I refrain?

Him

The bend between your hip and waist, the perfect ratio.

Our bodies twine in greeting, the red wig is a nice touch.

Save your words for when you are face down,

pillow underneath your pelvis, body indecent.

There is no space for love in this equation.

Her

Beneath you I am worn stone-smooth.

We dance across the floor,

eggshells shattering beneath our shoes

and you will not speak of sin or shame.

I know exactly what is in store for us,

what becomes of women who live too long in the shade.

Him

The only promise I ever made

was that I would not be amended by you.

I am exactly the man that I said I was.

Could it be that you are someone else entirely?

No Use

Is desire such an empty thing?

Each time a star falls

it is greeted with a wish

and there is no end to the greed.

–

I am a window without resolution,

a door impeded and without passage,

a slide that spirals down into infinity.

If I were nothing would you love me?

–

When I am called to action

I find myself a mitten instead of a boot.

Were I to crawl I might find my dignity,

the shards of an ego gone circumspect.

–

Why do you look at me that way?

I am not a plaything, a secret

willed into existence

by a disreputable muse.

You cannot strip me of my roots.

–

My curves have worn me down.

I am sparse, thin in inflation.

There is no use hiding my face

behind yours anymore,

no use at all.

–

Together our skeletons make a nest

but it is without warmth

that we lie frozen back to back

facing our respective walls.

–

I keep catching shrapnel.

The wars we carry inside of us

are so easily misplaced

and I am tired of being a mark.

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.

Photo Challenge #132 and Wordle #267

fineart-photos.tumblr.com

I rinse the screams from your ashes,
the aftermath from my fingertips.
My chest tightens, submits its will.
–
We made a mess of each other,
of dreams and ultimatums-
of our hearts’ heedless hinterlands.
–
I am but a shadow against
your diaphanous imposition,
a bible of bones wed and dated.
–

I never wanted to be free,
feed me, season me, throw me into a pot
with herbs and tubers and just stew.

Wordle Special Addition Sound “August 1st, 2016”

A percussive rain deafens
my fingers dim, wafers of immaculate moonlight
rustle from underneath a whoosh of fleece.
–
My ears echo with thunder,
with a nocturne of heartbeats
and gurgled bare-faced sobs.
–
The wind crackles as if it were a fire
and I too am a fire, thready and popping
in the exaltation of diminishing heat.
–
My strident breath brims,
a whistle of bones, a weft of scars,
buzzing deep down.
–
I am a carapace
with more projections
than I can manage.
–
These sonorous storms seize
peel my layers back
show me for what I am and what I am not.
–
I knew sound would be a hard one!

Whirligig 7

The sun rushes forth,
prodigal and full of longing.
I inhale cotton and exhale rain,
the whole world deadened to a smear.
–
My hands are like sandpaper
too coarse for drowning.
They pluck and scatter
crippled by their own identity.
–
If you listen hard enough
you can hear the gravel roar.
We find each other
in the strangest places
but never where it counts.
–
I treasure you,
a self-effacing scandal,
a grieving tide
displaced by wreckage.
We learn in failing.
I enter and exit the tavern alone.

Because

I spread your ashes

in waves of unrepeatable fire.

–

The moon clamps shut,

the stars hang amiss

in a sky without margins.

–

In my grief, my insatiable grief,

I rip out arteries and passages,

poems too unfocused for print,

poems hammered into shoe boxes

for later burial, or perhaps

a good ritualistic burning.

–

Isn’t it curious

that I am standing here,

shivering in my bare feet,

hours before sunrise?

–

Nothing ever happens

and when it does

I resent the implications.

–

You’re not dead at all

only missing in action

and I’ve burnt all your belongings

just because it satisfies

a certain hunger in me.

–

Miracles are often stingy,

I haven’t seen one in years,

and in this moment

I could really use one,

if only, to bridge the distance

between your comings and goings.

–

I have decided to share the poems I submitted to various poetry magazines. They were all rejected but I worked hard on them nevertheless.

Wordle #25o

No one wants to be selfish
it’s just a consequence of loneliness.
I stir and stew, eyes woven,
knuckles drawn like a veil.
Every other word is “no”
there’s no compromise at all.
–
I am a serpent, a road
undulant and without map.
As defiled as the swastika,
no news leads to interpretation
and I’ve reason enough to rant.
–
Your heart is only for show,
I stroke my memories
through the aftershock
a shell entranced by the peeling patterns
of my recumbent cell.
The moon never leaves my side.
–
I wrestle your mass,
your mighty inertia
silencing my retreat.
We do not flow
but stick together,
two sheets sweated through.
–
Your name arrests me,
a chant grating to the ear.
I hate you every bit as much
as I love you, perhaps a little more.
I’ve blocked all the exits,
your leavenings left to lie.
–
The word swastika comes from the Sanskrit svastika, which means “good fortune” or “well-being.” The motif (a hooked cross) appears to have first been used in Neolithic Eurasia, perhaps representing the movement of the sun through the sky. To this day it is a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism. After WW2 we came to, at least in the West, associate the symbol with terror and genocide. That is what I meant by “as defiled as swastika”

Writing Prompt #159 “Collage 23″ and Wordle #109

It starts with a whisper,
doodles and old records,
summers thin and self-righteous.
–
She blurs in crisis
a score of hierograms
spilling from the friction
of our bodies interspersed.
–
She kindles like a letter handwritten
side by side, perception immanent
we unlace our limestone thighs,
our sins purely contextual.
–
There’s a heart 3 inches deep
and wholly transparent
crouching in the fence
outside of your house.
Sometimes I look for you,
sometimes I simply wait.
–
They threw you to the clocks,
the weight of their expectations,
the weight of your sorrow
cutting me off like a dream.