Death Seed

The pain is no less when I smile

Though it is necessary some days

To be “just fine” whatever the case.

I peel your scent from my flesh

No matter how oft I wash the canvas

The blood remains embedded in its fibers

A penitentiary embellished in red

This body with its surplus of DNA

This meager body which serves

A nightlight in the darkest rooms.

 

Even art hurts when you are the source

A nightmare from which I do not wake

A nightmare the body fuels and circulates

You are the seed of death within me

The call to war that drives me to annihilate

I will not see you again, not even in the finale.

That your ghost should cling to my grief

Is a threat that I can not endure.

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2 Poems (Gehenna and Well) *warning deals with abuse*

Gehenna

In a ruined temple

I offered my heart. as small

As an infant’s fist

=

I held my tongue when

Faced with your authority

Defenseless and scared

=

I truly believed

In time you would love me as

I needed to be

=

As a daughter not

As a surrogate to my

Very own mother

=

Was I born broken

Or did the light displace a

Structural darkness?

=

I recall your hands

Peeling wool from a flock-less

Sheep to hide your sin

=

Grinding bone so that

Crippled I would never walk

On my own again

=

It was your black veins

Spiraling around my throat

To silence the screams

=

Never the monster

I supposed myself to be

Now a willing stray

=

What have I become?

An unchecked antihero

Denouncing all love

=

A dragon-scaled waif

Patiently suicidal

Tending Gehenna

=

Well

Windows black as a night sky unpinned

Eyes darker still, mouth a well, an

Open-mouthed ossuary, in my soul the

Bones of a dead child turning tricks at

A critical deficit. I am a little more broken

Than I thought I would be, in the end a

Savior unsaleable, ophidian these neural

Pathways exiled by repeated exposure

To wicked  trees, I opened my eyes only to

Blink you were there father remember?

=

(I read this book recently on child abuse and it really got me apparently.)

Making Monsters

Softened by a whimsical palate and sealed

In vacancy there was a time when shadows

Slipped from that carnivorous aperture, from

The hostile shock of pomegranate within, so

Unlike the soft pastels without. You, father,

With your reptilian eyes have disguised yourself

Well within its darkness, within those closet-dwelling

Fiends in which I came so tenaciously to believe

=

Supernatural, psychological, nightmares

For which I swore you could not be blamed

But I have seen you raven-cloaked in the dead

Of night, cancerous silhouette, dislocating from

The walls to slink invertebrate into my bedroom

=

It was self-preservation that led me to fashion

Monsters on your behalf, better my own madness

Than a sickness capable of unmaking the world

=

I am reading this book that deals with childhood trauma so I find myself writing a bit more darkly

Submission for Magpie Tales

The Mag