Writing Prompt #171 “Collage 27”

I do not adhere
to your notions of winter.
I am neither spring nor fall.
I am not even summer
despite the diaphanous flames
that rise from my lattice-work like a mirage.
–
You cannot reduce me to lunar cycles.
You cannot collect me as a novelty.
You cannot determine me
divine me, grasp me without explicit consent.
–
I am not strange, only curious.
Serpent, apple-peddler,
do not tempt me with your wares.
I have seen and tasted much
and although I still hunger
I will not eat.
–
I could have loved you
in any conceivable way
it was normalcy
that failed us
the terrible need
to belong together
when we do not even belong sole.
–
My god the flowers are grinning,
swollen genitals obscene with pollen.
If only I was more audacious,
but I do not even have the nerve
to hear myself out.
–
None of these identities suit me
each one more beige than the next.
And the face in the mirror
is as vague as it is hideous.
Being her is exhausting,
all that swallowing and seething.
Who will mourn me when she has gone?

–

Quick write. I am very sleepy so I am sure there are some typos and grammatical errors I have overlooked.

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Poetry Prompt #13 Risky Business

Within this tempest I am vast,

Coiled within the planes

Of my primordial awareness.

I am irrevocably myself,

Beyond the mirrors of place and time

I am eternal, enigmatic in obfuscation.

A universe, the universe I belong

That much is afforded my existence.

The body is only a vehicle

And the earth likewise.

I spin lopsided circles in a puddle

Of my own specificity.

–

When I close my eyes I see the stars

Of what I might have been.

When I close my eyes I see the stars

Of what I still am despite my boundaries.

When I draw all the breaths afforded me

I shall again be beyond definition.

The risk undertaken by all,

With or without consent,

Comes in shrinking one’s immensity.

For we are, each of us, important.

–

Authority cannot be just,

That goes without saying,

And even if it were possible

I have a heart that wants

Desperately to get out.

Some of us are born

With a stroke of mischief,

Some of us only breathe.

The wind is at my back

And I am stooped like a buzzard

Over a foreign architecture.

I choose to love and that is

Hardly a choice at all.

Wordle #78

Your blood burns

My throat like razorwine.

Drunk to the coffers

I have nothing left

Worthy of enunciation.

–

A grating silence

Geminates out of control

We have become puppets

To the same inept moon.

–

Stygian and sour

We rape the sky

Of all its accouterments.

Technicolor stars spilling

Between the torsion

Of gnashing teeth.

–

We are not rare amongst men.

We are indigenous to pain

An offense to the powers

That rendered us,

An affront to the madness

We claim, we claim, we claim.

*

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/wordle-78-september-14-2015/

Wordle #128

My edges spill unbidden down

A hillside swarming with nettles.

They gather in forgotten places,

In snatches of penumbra.

–

I’ve seen it all with nothing between.

Ghosts worship in a stringent chorus.

Patches fail to conceal their truancy,

They are exhaust and ectoplasm.

–

The air in my lungs sharpens

To a shriek, I will never forget,

The exact spot where I died

Broken by my own menace.

*

On another note I am really struggling to keep up and catch up right now

Wordle #72

I pour from the lips

Of a dwindling bonfire,

Hair catching on ash

And dragon teeth.

Once held nothing

Escapes my heart,

Unmarked vessel,

Supplicant,

I pick splinters from

Trickling knees

And contemplate

The bastards both

Piqued and imagined.

A world emptied

By a tenacious wind

Compounds

My myriad fractures.

–

My eyes track the shadows

Pinioned inside,

The liminal shards

Of my untethered mind.

I rip the sleeves

From my favorite shirt

Plug the holes

In my leaking chest.

Demons glimpsed

In a hallway mirror

Bulge behind

My wallowing eyes.

Circumspect,

I swallow my feelings

With a glass of salt.

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/wordle-72-august-3-2015%E2%80%B3/

Wordle #145 (Audio)

Audio here

I juggle my ferocity,

The writing which facilitates

And tames my delirium.

Scraps of aspect sent,

Belligerent in foreign countries

But familiar when embraced.

–

I haven’t the time

For my human failings,

For tyrants who reach

Into my enormity

And underestimate my plans.

I haven’t time for the mask,

For the strands of elastic

Which sustain a more prosaic state.

–

A discretion long

Past scolding

I know who I am

And what it means

To be imperfect in perfect bliss.

I may not be the paradigm

Of my virtue, likely nothing,

But it is my nothingness to fill.

–

I fill myself with alphabets,

And the fragments of bones

Sucked to vacancy.

I am transparent, inarticulate,

A disease without remission.

–

I haven’t done audio for a while but as I am home alone I thought why not. The sinus infection may be affecting my voice at least I think I sound more nasal than usual (my ear is also blocked up so it’s hard to say).

 

 

 

 

Shit

There exists in both squalor and dejection

A gift, a prize no scale can compensate

Though its weight is heavy for those

Who venture to lift it up.

My beginnings were but the scraps

Of another man’s ruinous end.

I have survived this and much more besides

–

My heart is damp and pungent

A fertile vat into which all invasions

Are tempered with growth.

Tis a fine thing indeed to be shit,

For every molecule contains life.

Photo Prompt #39 “Scream by the Pier”

Arno Rafael Minkkinen

I swallow each plank

Mouth oblong, exacting

A splinter-filled well.

The distance

Between us is arbitrary,

An illusion generated

By our inability

To dismiss labels.

If truth does not conform

Then what will?

But truth does not

Always favor the majority

Sometimes only one

Rises to the cause.

 

If a fantasy the moral

Would breathe its very last

In the very first kiss

Living does not imply

Perfection, it is an art

Fueled with whatever madness

Ignites but does not wholly consume

The soul it confesses.

 

Steady hands struggle

To contain the pulse

And when the water rises

One cannot but scream.

To be human is to hunt

In the wreckage

For a weapon capable

Of defrocking these myriad veils

To be human is to drown

Whether above or below

Whether within or without

Sensation is not optional.

*

For

MLMM 

Voyage

Jee Young Lee

The end comes with deliberation

And a good deal more emotion

Than I am prepared to admit.

We were friends, lovers of a sort

The kind that does not exchange

Bodily fluids

As an excuse for intimacy

The sort whose proximity

Necessitates the linking of shadows

A oneness that does not

Permit isolation but air enough

For breathing (at least I found it so)

And in me you became

A weed more beautiful

Than the flower overtaken.

 

Perhaps it is irrational

That I should want to be the one

To say those words first

That I should be the villain.

Your new life does not include me

Your ideal life scarcely

Vents my passage

Is it so strange that I should want

To die by my own hand?

To preserve the illusion

That you might return

Grateful that it was I

Who annihilated the bridge

Grateful for my oversights

For the splinters left.

 

The raft of my body

Remains in harbor

Waiting for your touch,

Your foot, to continue

The voyage we began.

Wordle #31 “Cenotaph”

When will these invisible armies recede?

These murders, these lichen-gripped cenotaphs

My neighbors, my brothers will you dismiss me?

Feast on my currency, on the enamel that holds my heart

That candied apple, will you tear away

The sweetened plastic sheath and disregard

The grainy flesh underneath?

Do your eyes follow the slope of my breasts?

The slope of my breath as it escalates in plain sight?

Will you step on my bones,

Rip the nuance from my smile and if the mold

Cannot be made to shelter will you break me?

 

What a terrible crunch the soul makes.

I do not need to be a miracle rising again

A new woman for every trend and occasion.

I do not need your idols, your face, your laws

Your prejudice I know who I am

So why must you root me out and say

That I am not fine, not sane, not prosperous

When it’s your mirror that breaks.

Why must I apologize when I have lived gently

Despite the cradle of your violence

Despite your persistence, always turning,

To forgive is a miracle, to forgive is a hex.