Volatile Constructs

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

I turn indignantly towards

a tremulous room

and one by one

the ants resume

their impervious,

earth-bound march.

–

I am a solitary migration,

a winter broken in two

by the horizon.

Pauses yield to silence

and silences to rooms

thick as oil.

It is within these

volatile constructs

that my heart pretends

to sleep.

–

I miss you,

the dull, windowless ache,

the effervescence,

the sudden creak of a smile

falling into place.

I tug at your coat

as you walk away

but it is as all things

only air.

–

Somewhere a door closes

and the sudden shock

is as obvious as gun fire.

I have to let you leave sometimes

but it hurts enough to kill.

–

There are days when you love me

and days when you don’t.

I am never sure which day it is

but I am sure of the uncertainty

that moors my breath

and of a love that is

its own special kind of loneliness.

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Wordle #285

Photo by Christopher Parker on Unsplash

All the flowers in the garden have been plucked and repurposed into halos, vase-fillers, and oracles. None of which have served me particularly well. My life is mostly decoration and sleight of hand. People enter. Bridges burn. Hearts puncture (my heart has more holes in it than a colander).

I still view everything through the speculum that is trauma. I am vulnerable. I am exposed. I am open from the inside and stretched to my limits.

I am an ordinary person living violently at the bottom of a well. I have no outstanding features, unless by outstanding you mean distinctive. I am a pile of bones woven together with flesh and red string. I would rather be a kite than a thimble-full of brackish water. I would rather be a catalyst than a consequence of reason but you can’t have everything and that’s why I settle sometimes. If I could have everything then I would have a cabin in the woods, an attentive lover, a Pagan wedding, the soul of a poet, and the heart of a dog.

The sky is gray and gluttonous I pour my sorrows into the rain and the mud that wallows underneath my chilled feet. I have no stories, only rancor and a vague but unshakable sense of hopelessness. The only service I am capable of offering is lip service and like anyone else I search for meaning wherever I can find it. Mostly my life feels like a series of roundabouts and one-way streets. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast. I dance when I hear music. I think in words. I feel in words. Sometimes my soul comes loose and I drop to my knees and wait for the moon to strike me dead.

Just gibberish rambling. I have been writing intensively for several days and now I need to recharge myself.

Wordle #283

The moon hangs cockeyed and nebulous

between two supervisory clouds.

Her pale, obsessive light moans and is lost

to the wind’s pervasive howl.

I watch for her in the day time,

my lost lover,

my mercurial muse. She is always

beyond my grasp.

–

The stars are love letters ripped-open with longing.

Dead or otherwise unanswered.

They are proof of the uneven passage of time.

I must be immortal for in searching my memories

I find evidence of my life again and again and again.

–

My nerves shake

and rub together in front of an indeterminate fire.

My dreams are too spread out,

none neighbor to the other,

I must traverse great distances

and vast continents

in my quest for unification.

One day I will be a person

who can stand up and fall down accordingly.

–

I am uncomfortable in my claims.

Beware of the man who knows too much

for he admires nothing but the fingers of his own hand.

I am just as uncomfortable with the notion of certainty

as I am with the notion of uncertainty.

One defines the walls of your prison,

the other rips off the ceiling and beckons you

into the unknown and ever-changing sky.

–

A bit of writer’s block today.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2022/08/15/wordle-283/

Wordle #282 Hiraeth

A raw overcast sky

hangs softly outside

of my insolent, unblinking window.

A milkshake of monochromes

and bald-faced satellites

march unseen

behind the ashen veil.

–

I can feel myself sinking

with every breath.

My thoughts are heavy and insistent.

My hands are caged birds

weakened by tension

and fragile as they pound

fruitlessly against my pillow.

No one but me

can hear the cracks

taking hold of my heart.

No one but me can hear

the terrible, taunting hiss

of my liquid pain released.

–

The stars

count my wishes.

Wishes that I will

someday follow

from one adage to another.

Wishes that must be forgotten

to reach fulfillment

because more often than not

I get in the way of myself.

I am not patient

the way nature is patient.

I would rather destroy

something than contemplate

the hours between

one moment and the next.

–

The space between us

feels especially solid,

it has fangs and claws

and if I let you in

too deeply

I know your absence

will consume me.

–

We will always have

the moon floating

like a pumice stone

on top of the water

by the lake.

The leafy hands

of a primal nation

extending towards

our bare legs

like needy children

as we spin in circles

from one end

of your unkempt yard

to the other.

–

As I sit here,

in a state of hiraeth

and mild panic

I wonder

if I really have what it takes

to belong to someone,

to have memories of someone,

to be at home with someone

and not get lost

between the words.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/wordle-282/

Wordle #280 and Dream Interpretation #3 “Unfinished Songs”

Photo by Jamakassi on Unsplash

A cluster of butterflies

should be called a jest

because of the way

they tumble through the air.

We were wild once,

our gardens ripe

with forbidden fruit,

our words falling

carelessly into space.

–

There is no cure

for love

only a slow

amelioration of guilt.

The heart

which exists

within and without

is turned

so that the nerve endings

are totally exposed.

–

My blood is sludge,

it pools and gathers

in the spaces

that you once occupied.

When I close my eyes

I am vivid

with your memory,

vivid with the taste

of my tears.

Tears that run both

hot and cold.

Tears which beat

against my cheeks,

gentle as pixie wings.

–

If I were diaphanous

I would accompany you

to the dark places

and the bright places

simply to be at your side.

–

In a universe

where time does not

move in a linear fashion

forever is an unbreakable promise.

A day eating sundaes in the park

could be eternal

or it could be two shadows

devolving in the light

of a new day.

–

I am inside out.

Humiliated.

Alone

with my memories

both good and bad.

I am not sick

so much as fallen.

God may not love me

any less

but you do

and that hurts

more than enough.

–

To you I am the enemy,

the interloper.

I know too much.

I understand nothing.

We lost each other

in a simple game

of hide and seek.

–

There are scars

where the stars

should be.

Furrows

of indifference.

Dreams

without fire.

Dreams

like small bones

which crack

when tested.

To me you are life itself.

I miss you

sounds trite

because you

were and always will be

momentous.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2022/08/04/dream-interpretation-3-unfinished-songs/embed/#?secret=lgy4K2mhtg

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2022/07/25/wordle-280/embed/#?secret=VbeUweWrwb



Wordle #279

There was pop and a sudden searing sensation as the hot dog released its juices into his waiting mouth. The sun overhead was relentless, like the needle on a sewing machine, it imposed upon his bare arms and his cleanly shaven face with unnerving precision. His hair was too hot. His clothes were too close. He stood some feet away from the vendor, near a tree. The tree was decorated mostly with old shoes. It provided little in the way of shade or holiday spirit but he liked the idea of it. The idea that simply by changing ones’ shoes you could become someone else, you could take a different path, you could discover an entirely new mode of being.

The hotdog left him feeling vaguely queasy and not altogether satisfied. He licked the mustard and ketchup from his fingertips and threw away his soiled napkin. If only it were so easy to throw away blame. His wife blamed him for a great many things that hadn’t worked out in her life. She couldn’t cope with the loss of her youth, with the loss of her beauty (according to her), with the fact that he looked ten years younger than she did even though they were the same age. He wasn’t entirely sure how his youthful appearance offended her but it did offend her greatly. She was jealous now. She hadn’t been jealous at the beginning of their relationship. He was just as loyal but for some reason she didn’t believe him anymore. She was, to him, still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, only now she was angry most of the time.

He fingered the bishop in his pocket, it was all that remained of a chess set that his grandfather had given him when he was a child. It was his good luck charm and whenever he felt something uncomfortable he held it between his fingers very gently to ground himself. He’d never really developed an interest in the game but he could remember playing with the pieces much the way another boy might play with toy soldiers or superhero figurines. The bishop in his pocket was made of dark wood and his caresses had worn it very smooth. As he stood there wondering precisely when he had lost his enthusiasm for life his eyes fell upon a red pair of Converse sneakers suspended from the tree beside him. Good condition. Right size. He took them down and exchanged them for his own shoes.

As he walked around the city, in his borrowed shoes and his borrowed identity, he felt more like himself than he had in years. His whole life had been a myth. Love. Success. Beauty. It was all just an elaborate social hoax, a game of chess, a caste system which split the world into the haves and the have-nots. He was technically on the winning side. He loved his wife, however she felt about him. He had a job. He was a photographer and he was good at it so the pay was good. Only in the process of making money and getting good he’d lost interest. He wanted to take imperfect pictures of unlikely people. He didn’t want to take pictures of people who posed like museum sculptures. He wanted to take pictures of people who hadn’t yet had all their humanness wrung out of them.

Just then he saw a young woman in a red dress leaning over to kiss a young man in a white t-shirt and faded jeans. The man fumbled with his phone and offered her a weak, fictional smile. He could see the scales in their relationship were unbalanced. He could see her heart broken and eager surging up in her throat like vomit. He watched her smile, then grimace as she swallowed her disappointment. He watched her pick up her own phone and jab at it half-heartedly while throwing her disinterested lover the occasional wounded look.

In her he witnessed a desire to connect, a desire crushed by mediocrity and indifference. Conversation. Affection. Intimacy. These were archaic notions. Civilized humans networked and stigmatized. Civilized humans didn’t build foundations, they built facades. Civilized humans walked in the park while looking at pictures on their phones. Pictures which had been carefully edited to remove all that was genuine, vulnerable, and imperfect. Graham, for that was his name, decided that today he was going to pick flowers for his wife instead of buying them. He was going to dig them up by the roots and plant them in a little ceramic pot and give them to her. He hoped that she would laugh at him. Not a mean, derisive laugh but a sweet, giggly laugh. She looked younger when she laughed, when she was happy and her nose crunched up and she forgot the symmetry of her face.

–

Wordle #279

I spent my days and nights

alone,

wondering what you felt.

if you felt

lonely,

if you waited

for me,

as I waited for you.

–

I spent my days and nights

watching

celestial bodies paint the sky

in a myriad of colors,

imagining

your nakedness

spreading over

my nakedness

and in the heat and height

of arousal,

I cried.

–

I spent my days and nights

wishing

for your lips to part,

eager to drink

of your sentiments,

hoping

that your words

would clarify my feelings.

–

I spent my days and nights

desperate

for you to choose,

swallowing

my breath,

my arms reaching

out to you.

–

I spent my days and nights

suspended,

with my heart

half-way in and half-way out,

ready

to run towards you,

ready

to run away.

–

I spent my days and nights

crouching

like a child

in the darkness,

pulling petals from flowers

while you stood

hesitant, but accessible

like the wind.

Wordle #249 “preview”

Two days

could be

the difference

between sterility

and an eternity

well spent.

We could live

or we could

sit together

backs turned

plotting out

an exact course.

–

I want to get lost

with you, in you.

I want firsts not rehearsals,

clumsy conversations

awkward hands,

clothes that break away

like wrapping paper

at Christmas.

Leave out the punctuation,

the mind fuckery,

the lists of possible complications.

For once in your life

fail to be perfect.

–

I want a celebration

a communion,

a moment with you

which hasn’t been

set in stone,

ear-marked,

twisted like a strand of hair

around a school girl’s finger.

Leave your scent,

your fingerprints,

forget everything

but the exclamation.

–

You are patient.

I am fire.

My freedom

cannot be exchanged

for ambiguity,

for a 100 gallant promises

repeatedly broken.

If you would have me

then you’ve only

to speak the words

loud enough

that I can hear them.

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2021/07/12/wordle-249/

Wordle #244- Introduce Yourself

You are like the ghostly green penumbra

of a firefly on a damp Southern night.

Haunting and nebulous

I watch you pass into my dreams

with saintly restraint.

Your heart partially undressed

as you hold the door open

for me to follow you

to places inscrutable.

Behind your smile,

a kind of prayer

upturned and quixotic.

I love you until it burns.

–

My bare breasts sink

into your plaintive microcosm.

Your smooth

animal warmth

falling in waves

around me.

Your cautious tongue,

your misplaced hands

swirling the ether

within and without.

–

Once I had a name for you

(I called you Axel, DM)

Once I had a name for us

(I called us twinflames)

a name to coalese and clarify

but now I see that

we are altogether new.

–

Now I call you

DL

(introduce yourself)

Dream Lover

Down Low

because you

are a secret

because you

are a mystery

Divine Liason

because you

connect me

to something

bigger

than I am alone.

–

I am so RUSTY also very emotional today so gibberish?

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2021/06/07/wordle-244/

Wordle #225 “Lure”

He snarls into her breasts

and inhales the scent

of the man who came

before him.

He is crazy about her

and she knows it.

–

His heart goes

back and forth,

noose-heavy,

a cuckold.

He doesn’t cry

as he once did.

Not outloud.

Not in private.

–

He takes pleasure

in his own precedence;

in the way she returns

without repenting;

in her animal scent;

in their corrosive repertoire.

It’s become a game.

They speak in dark whispers

about dark deeds and he detects

in her mischievous pulse

a strange aversion to love.

–

Deep down she knows

that she would rather

be here with him

in this basement bound

than above ground scavenging.

Her body is a ruse.

Her smile is ambidextrous.

She swallows

crows and stiff-legged lures.

She swallows men by the dozen.

She swallows them whole.

Hollow as a crescent

he owns her.

–

She laughs and he thinks

the sound is like dry leaves

rustling in an intermittent blast.

She laughs and he thinks

of stars in water,

and of asphalt in summer heat.

–

Her thighs slide apart

dangerous and wet.

He enters her like a muse,

bible-heavy,

he begets her

again and again and again.

---

For: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2021/02/01/wordle-225/