This is all of my poetry which I feel fits together and forms a (totally work in progress) collection of poems. Please feel free to let me know what you think of any of the poems and which (if any) are your favourites!
October 2013(ish)
Burn
Spent reading the paper together on the couch that sagged in the middle
Pulled together by the inevitability of gravity
Repelled by the undeniably of clipped silence
Cups of tea steaming by elbows scrapped with uncaring movements.
There was no space left between you and I
Words festered like wounds in the crevices of my tongue
Leaving me to choke and gag
On hardened vowels and rotted verbs.
Closeness easily becomes cloying in apartments
Devoid of space.
There was no room for hollow pronouncements
And yet we made them anyways.
Platitudes reaching up to crack the silence
Toppling our frames like houses.
I found myself watching your every move
Reality becomes clearer
When seen out of the corner of an eye
Your limbs had begun arguing with themselves
In the twisted movements you made
No longer the smooth gestures of unreal Thursday mornings
Now we move towards each other in starts and stops
Mechaniations slowly sinking into rust and decay.
I searched for the trip that would give voice to the lie
Held in the curve of your spine and the jut of your hips
Cradled between your lips.
A lie that twisted the veins in my arms every time your skin touched mine.
I knew it was held within you like an ember hidden within ash
Just waiting for something to set it alight.
And I was born to burn.
October 2013(ish)
Rain
It falls in fits and starts
Leaving behind wet sidewalks
And full gutters
Sometimes I am asleep
And wake to a world come undone
Filled with the sharp smell
Of water fallen
And worms risen
Most of the time though
I am simply not looking
Cast in pale blue
Under florescent’s toxic glow
Eyelashes slow to part
Molasses sticky grip
Of chunky black mascara
By the time I open them
The clouds have passed beyond my view
World scrubbed grey
Never able to turn the corner
Quick enough to catch the colour
That you can hear just ahead
The pitter-patter of heavy rain
On a red tin roof.
December 2013(ish)
kitten
Whatever is alive in the wind hates me,
Pinching me with its tricky spiny little fingers
Splintering like twigs against pale blue skin stretched too thin
Pointed teeth nipping at the bruised tips of skeleton hands
Leaves crunching like the snap of bird’s bones in a cat’s jaw.
Pinching me with its tricky spiny little fingers
Splintering like twigs against pale blue skin stretched too thin
Pointed teeth nipping at the bruised tips of skeleton hands
Leaves crunching like the snap of bird’s bones in a cat’s jaw.
The steps of the building crumble into the street below
Roots of trees older than the concrete rising like the spine of some ancient corpse
Ruination perfected by time, arched and twisted.
Under the eroding fluorescents, she was green skinned
Sickly and ephemeral with beads of sweat trailing between pale breasts
Smell of antiseptic thick and cloying, static of stale air surrounding us
Arsenic green wallpaper peeling at the edges as we met
Diagnosis: immedicable.
Under the eroding fluorescents, she was green skinned
Sickly and ephemeral with beads of sweat trailing between pale breasts
Smell of antiseptic thick and cloying, static of stale air surrounding us
Arsenic green wallpaper peeling at the edges as we met
Diagnosis: immedicable.
She smelt like rotting fruit and decaying teeth, sweet and choking
I gagged with the taste of her on my tongue
Thick and viscous she moved into me, curling inside my pores
Scraping her way down my throat into my veins and womb
I knit her a scarf and she wrapped it around me,
Squeezing until black spots dance around the glitter of her smile.
Cat got the canary.
March 2, 2012
the lucidity of cordate words
Will it still be a homicide? Or will it be a love affair,
Wrapped up in clean sheets and drying dishes
And all the other pieces of our unrelieved lives?
If I kiss you while you’re dying,
Will they check the lipstick for a fingerprint?
Or will they assume it is a stain, announcing my infatuation,
Bruise-black and smeared across your skin,
An old postmark marking ‘return to sender’?
If I leave you while you’re living
Will you follow me while I wander to hell? Or will you stay,
Slowly crawling alone in circles in your apartment
Eating the worn pages of fairy tales?
I can’t listen to your words that fall like rain,
Stinging like chunks of ice in a late winter blizzard.
I have watched you sit by the fire enough times to know
My heat won’t blister your skin.
The cacophony of my broken-down mind never sounded so sweet
Till you joined me there
And at the centre is a twist of the heart that is nothing short of dying
And nothing close to love.
The way you looked at me in the summer
Left nothing but temptation leading into the fall.
The heart that wins is soaked in blood
And I never lose an unfair fight
With fists in my heart and bones of steel
This contest will be won by the one who loses most.
I will say I love you when I slit your throat.
January 20, 2012
Eden
There’s a whisper in the red of nails drawn across skin
Something so innocent, like a diseased fruit of Eden
Something so profane, like black lace slithering down
It sits hunched and ugly on the bathroom counter in July
Watching with disinterest as I shiver on the cracked floor
It follows me from place to place.
She sits in the dirty diner like she owns the place
The tattoo on her neck a vulgar sigil etched into her skin
Legs stretched out as brown biker boots dig into grey floor
There’s a forest in her eyes like a burnt Eden
The flies buzzing past my head remind me of the choke of July
And I can’t stop myself from sliding down.
I know that there’s nowhere left for me to go but down
But I still ask if there’s a better place
The sign cheerfully states that the bathroom was last cleaned in July
And she tastes like smoke and rain and dry, chapped skin
And there’s a lost paradise in that burnt and broken Eden
It sits hunched and ugly on the bathroom counter in July
Watching with disinterest as I shiver on the cracked floor
It follows me from place to place.
She sits in the dirty diner like she owns the place
The tattoo on her neck a vulgar sigil etched into her skin
Legs stretched out as brown biker boots dig into grey floor
There’s a forest in her eyes like a burnt Eden
The flies buzzing past my head remind me of the choke of July
And I can’t stop myself from sliding down.
I know that there’s nowhere left for me to go but down
But I still ask if there’s a better place
The sign cheerfully states that the bathroom was last cleaned in July
And she tastes like smoke and rain and dry, chapped skin
And there’s a lost paradise in that burnt and broken Eden
Dragging heavy soles back across that gunmetal floor.
The air stretches solid like ice from the roof to the floor
And I can’t help but let myself sink and shiver down
Wishing for the world before the morning star rose over Eden
So that I could stand to stay for more than a minute in a place
Without feeling like I was growing and stretching out of my skin
And the sun would always be soft and hazy like it was July.
There’s cold lips that press against those black teeth in July
The walls have peeled and the blood never got washed off this floor
And there’s something crawling under my skin
Though there’s nothing to be done but swallow it down
And I know that there’s no way back to that place
All that’s lost could be named a kind of Eden.
Her name is thick on my tongue as we approached Eden
Grating in my throat like the fires that burn down July
And like a dutiful daughter I take my place
Screwing my feet into my designated spot on this dance floor
Letting my arms rise and my jaw dip down
As shivers rip and tremble across blue skin.
It emerged the moment I found Eden on the dirty white floor
It followed me from that July day, letting me dance further down
Leading me screaming to my place, hollow inside my own skin.
The air stretches solid like ice from the roof to the floor
And I can’t help but let myself sink and shiver down
Wishing for the world before the morning star rose over Eden
So that I could stand to stay for more than a minute in a place
Without feeling like I was growing and stretching out of my skin
And the sun would always be soft and hazy like it was July.
There’s cold lips that press against those black teeth in July
The walls have peeled and the blood never got washed off this floor
And there’s something crawling under my skin
Though there’s nothing to be done but swallow it down
And I know that there’s no way back to that place
All that’s lost could be named a kind of Eden.
Her name is thick on my tongue as we approached Eden
Grating in my throat like the fires that burn down July
And like a dutiful daughter I take my place
Screwing my feet into my designated spot on this dance floor
Letting my arms rise and my jaw dip down
As shivers rip and tremble across blue skin.
It emerged the moment I found Eden on the dirty white floor
It followed me from that July day, letting me dance further down
Leading me screaming to my place, hollow inside my own skin.
January 6, 2012
A circle of salt will protect you
We lay on eggshells as days peel. We
Ignore hell’s choirs as in church we kneel. We
Live only after and within the dark. We
Sleep on broken benches in the newspaper park. We
Dance underwater in the lungs of God. We
Watch dealers carve cities roughshod. We
Draw lines in dusty libraries and cool tomes. We
Watch as dead boys use ivory combs. We
Dare not laugh too loud tonight. We
Hear the devil rides on pale moonlight.
2012? 2011?
Untitled
children screech at their play
their laughter lifts your blood
a timeless rote that time forgot
hammer, hammer, in the dark
remember all that has not happened
in dust, in dawn, in dirt
wishes seem so sweet
before and after she disappears
heaven and hell have lost their sway
she hoped you had died (i did too)
pounding, pounding, through the filth
forget all you once had remembered
in dust, in dawn, in dirt
god cries alone on a broken swing
we spin through the empty spaces in between
faces raised to the deadening sky
thin fingers twisting in pantomime
throbbing, throbbing, in the night
what’s happened you’ve already forgotten
in dust, in dawn, in dirt
i hoped to find you standing there
but the devil came and took me up
and in heaven he tortured me,
spine arching upon a golden throne
groping, groping, in the light
remember all that has not happened
in dust, in dawn, in dirt
i was once a little girl
now we lay against the pavement
unfeeling as he rapes you
hands tangled in grasping bloody claws
dying, dying, in the grey
what isn’t forgotten hasn’t happened
in dust, in dawn, in dirt
give me anything but this
words that don’t care enough to lie
and the whisper that this is to be expected
is the worst truth of all
hammer, hammer, in the dark
you don’t want to remember what’s forgot
in dust, in dawn, in dirt.
Literally no idea... 2009?
A Brief Horror Story
Truth be told mouth agape at this horror
Unable to bring forth the screams he demands
She looks to the light to restore her
But the lights flicker off, he simply needs more
And with a final shuddering moan, closes the door.
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