Her lips paw clumsily at the air,
Deliverance sought in lieu of sobriety.
She siphons herself from the echoes
Of their evading jeers, a target
Not of designation but of connotation.
–
Her lofty brow pants,
A cask upended in frivolity.
An uninvited touch soft as chamois
Shrugs aside her hurried fists.
Her heart has gills to avoid drowning,
Notches carved through galaxies
Of flesh and illusion.
–
For
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/wordle-73-august-10-2015%E2%80%B3/
Your lips, though muffled, sizzle.
Every enunciated hello burns
With a singular commitment
A desire for addition,
For language both raw and organic.
I will not be a number, however,
Profitable I have a right to more
Than my ill-placed existence.
–
The sun stomps malignantly
Through a fair-weather sky.
I empty my hollow leg
Into your ripped stockings.
The background seethes
Deities of necessity and invention
With scratch and sniff powers
And interminable reach.
It takes a lifetime
To forge one’s desires
And several more
To elicit them.
*
Not such a good day for writing I have a serious case of sleepiness despite having already slept long and deep!
Ever since the cabbages died
Her smile is a partition.
Beside it I rest a Paper Tiger
An altruist tearing
His pockets in shame
But no man has the right
To claim a woman’s pain.
She called them cabbages
But they were always children
Our sons and daughters.
Anabiosis cannot be
Breathed through war,
Whether meteor or bomb
Heat curdles just the same.
Ever since the cabbages died
I sit on the porch in silence
Draught after draught
A beggar’s bowl
Between my knees
I asked God first
But some prayers
Only the Devil will seize.
No woman has the right
To censure a man’s retreat.
A visage twinged
Sings the saddest songs
But who will listen?
The days are sparse
The days are wearisome.
Default or defunct
Each man crawls along
A broken heart cutting
The palms and knees
Of whoever greets him.
She called them cabbages
But they were always children
Our sons and daughters
Taken by the Country
To fight in wars that the rich
Should have sufficient fodder
To seed their seedy schemes.
*
I took one look at this Wordle and knew immediately that it was going to be a challenge. I mean really what was I thinking?! Thanks to Jen for introducing me to Tim Buckley because it gave me inspiration for this piece.
This entry is for
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/wordle-49-february-23-2014/
Pawel Kuczynski
They line up single file, pockets stitched, pupils blown.
The particulars are a sphinx without resolution.
An X mutes alternative, dims hearts when leeched.
They slit their throats on dollar bills,
On dreams not worth their weight in confidence
Becoming less with every meaningless acquisition.
*
I generally like to try a new form twice. This form is fun, no rhyme or meter!
Written for
http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/bjs-shadorma-and-beyond-november-22-2014/
If it was up to me
I still would not choose
Your version of individuality,
Society has nothing to do
With humane interaction.
Society is comprised
Of unsustainable priorities
That leave the barer empty.
Empty people need only apostrophes.
Glitter is favored to marrow
And when the lights have gone out
A thigh can serve as a torch
No matter how dead the eyes.
There is no space for a heart
When the ego is a colossus.
Perfection cannot be defined
By human standards
It is the greatest deceit
To convince an audience
That they are neither accurate
Nor original and that they
Must change if they are ever
To be realized.
To remain day after day
Broken just so, scalpels tearing
Scarlet rainbows from a heart
That castrates itself
Far more than a tenet ever could
In a room without witness
In a ritual of self hate.
What a grotesque buffet
What a cruel prayer to insist
Manufacturer’s error
When the intended use
Is so wholly disregarded.
What if I am the purpose?
What if I must exist
Poor symmetry and all
What if pain comes
From aversion to itself?
What if right and wrong
Are sometimes reversed
In moments of intense fear
When the world is viewed
From the palm
Of an obfuscating recoil?
I know who I am
Without being told
Without definition
I still exist
Everywhere I look
A mirror illumines.
The road is my map
The tongue my serpent
The hands can either be
Dungeon or platform
Depending on
Their orientation
And intent.
Would I rather be free?
Or would I rather be you?
A uninhabitable paradigm
An ideal buried
Within linen and flesh
A coffin snuffing out
The very source of life?
I’ll take my chances
Without a script.
Do you approach me now
To assign a destination
To the topography
Of my inhospitable flesh?
I have traveled for miles
Down ravaged gangways
Unaccustomed to the brevity,
The shark eyed infrastructure
The transparent hunger
In eyes that never suspend
Their purpose for long.
I labor over my identity
As if it were applied
A clumsy wooden frame
That holds more charm,
More beauty than the occupant
Can woefully prescribe
I could look at that frame
All day but the portrait
Does not resemble me.
How strange it is to start
But never to cross
A single boundary
Even with the gun waving
Before my estranged eyes.
The threat, the authority
Perhaps it is why
I only run in place.
I am not alone,
There are others faster than I
Sweating for both
Effort and effect
Wearing their pink soles
Blue but going nowhere.
*
More of my crummy photography. This is me I am wearing hubbies’ jacket which is too big on top of a large skirt that is why I look so lumpy lol
There is no incision
That does not compromise its host.
I thought I might bleed today,
Drag my ancestors
From their common red graves,
A séance where no one speaks
Their secrets are safe in me
Perhaps repeated but never staged.
I am the jar, the chalice,
The latched box
Inside of me even darkness laments.
Those who live in the gutter
Brew in the piss of their benefactors
Those who live in the gutter
Never forget that foremost
In their composition are stars.
The clouds are my anchors
I flicker as a man
Approaching death
In another war
I might have been a gun
A solider, a limping child
I might even have been a stone
Mute, encrypted,
Worshiped in retrospect.
I am not limited to what I perceive
Some days I curse and others sow
There is naught to do but ascend
But I’ve done my fair share of tunneling
Hope is always stronger
When there is no where else to go.
You may find me ignoble, wanting
You may scoff at my suffering
My education, the tenor of my constructs.
I am proof of your excess
Proof that a smile heals
What antiseptic can only bleach
Proof that love is endemic
And that when there is nothing
Left to give, there is still more
Than enough to share.
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.
Natalie Shau
I need to believe
That there is something
Inside still salvageable
Some overlooked heart fragment
Still red, ripe, and pumping
Some hint of the original
So that without
Too much embellishment
I can say
I am still myself,
At least the parts
Worthy of presentation.
I thought it was okay to die,
My right to step into the war
And come out again
A hero, in a discreet box
Adorned with some flag.
A picture of you perhaps?
(The one who murders
Has the right to confiscate
My body, having emptied
The suit for deployment)
I have thwarted evolution
My component fibers
Coarse as burlap
Settle in the gut
Like a mutiny
Of bewitched caterpillars
They chew the binding
Of all my diaries
That not a letter arrives
In the order of consignment
My self-improvement efforts
Are much too clinical,
They don’t leave much space
For living, only doing
And I’ve done enough
To earn the title of Sisyphus.
A visit to the anesthesiologist
Will keep me ostensibly numb
Numb as a glacier passing
From ship to ship,
An eviscerating tower
Unalterable in its contacts
The less we know
The more encompassing
The excuse
I live to pilfer
If you possess it
Why shouldn’t I?
And if I am you
Than I’ve no reason
To acknowledge my roots
Those obscene snares
Which remind me
Of the refuse
From which I rose
No I’d rather be you
That I can remain pristine
A Goddess, infallible,
Untouchable, reduced to ash
In the eyes of unscrupulous mortals
Yes I’d rather be death
In a human disguise
Richard Keeling
We of the swollen carapace
Shall know pain mightily
Shall learn when to hold
And when to surrender
But until then we carve
Our ruts especially deep.
The world is a petri dish
And my expectations
Are irrelevant to the duration
Of my species as a whole
I speak for no man who does not
Possess a heart and tongue
Equally capable of noise
Sometimes there is even
Music between us
A kind of invertebrate symphony
Our flesh more easily stitched
Than bone or is it?
No amount of persuasion
Could draw this veil aside
For there is always another
Willing to negate the privilege.
We are alive but only just
Who among us can face
The collective consciousness?
We’ve created a society
That is contradictory
To life and our sorrows
However, scarce their content
Cannot find amelioration
In any known conquest
We contend that as children
We lived but every whisper
Contains its dose of poison
To be is to be had, to become
For the sake of an approximation
That in conflict does not stand
There are no eyes only
Pits of contagion
No smiles only frowns
Of inebriation worn askance
No hands without blood
For mercy does not fill
Leather as hate does
The seismic universal
Of self-worth is S slashed
We never look into the fires
That we have lit unless
We’ve found in some
Fool a culprit or alibi
There is no accounting
For denial, we survive only
In this moment
No matter how precariously
The future rests
*
I got too excited about the prompt Jen suggested so I went ahead and wrote something. I might have to move that challenge up in my schedule lol This is just where my mind took me on reading it.
mindlovemisery 