samuel-fox - Hello Poetry

Twilight: bittersweet. Sweaty from work, and in the cold, I shiver under a cotton-candy sky. Is it so much to ask for validity? Is it too much to ask for brick and mortar? I’ve been trying to build a church out of my many failures and one feeble success. Is there no cornerstone here that I may lay a foundation and watch the blackbirds settle under my steeple? I: the patron saint of migrations and chapped knuckles. I: the purveyor of silence who takes wage in the form of holes. Holes I still cannot fill. I: drowning in debt within a society I never asked to claim me. I work at a gas station. My education has gotten me nowhere. I reorder words into lies in hopes I name a bigger truth. My one success? I’m still here, barely; still breath and flesh and jagged tooth.

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Feb 20, 2017

Feb 20, 2017 at 1:41 PM UTC

After Working a Double Shift

Twilight: bittersweet. Sweaty from work, and in the cold, I shiver under a cotton-candy sky. Is it so much to ask for validity? Is it too much to ask for brick and mortar? I’ve been trying to build a church out of my many failures and one feeble success. Is there no cornerstone here that I may lay a foundation and watch the blackbirds settle under my steeple? I: the patron saint of migrations and chapped knuckles. I: the purveyor of silence who takes wage in the form of holes. Holes I still cannot fill. I: drowning in debt within a society I never asked to claim me. I work at a gas station. My education has gotten me nowhere. I reorder words into lies in hopes I name a bigger truth. My one success? I’m still here, barely; still breath and flesh and jagged tooth.

1

On a porch swing that creaks in the likeness of ancient knees, I think about the last time we kissed, how it felt so much like losing a tooth. The moon smiles crooked, slanted, a tilted guillotine scarring the darkness to blur the trees that rustle like fluid opals, fluttering like thousands of white flags. I was broken before you found me, a rusted hinge stuck half open letting anyone trespass. I imagine you walking up the drive in your lacey, white blouse: a ghost of Alice lost in the madhouse of a world fully armed by spades, all pointed like a thousand fingers at your collarbone. You would have gladly bore their nick for me. The moon is the Cheshire cat, questioning why I imagine such things. A dog barks at nothing down the block. A rabbit’s outline slinks into a gutter. Am I crazy to have loved you and sever us? The moon blinks. We’re all mad here, I think.

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Feb 17, 2017

Feb 17, 2017 at 4:44 PM UTC

Aubade with Cheshire Cat

On a porch swing that creaks in the likeness of ancient knees, I think about the last time we kissed, how it felt so much like losing a tooth. The moon smiles crooked, slanted, a tilted guillotine scarring the darkness to blur the trees that rustle like fluid opals, fluttering like thousands of white flags. I was broken before you found me, a rusted hinge stuck half open letting anyone trespass. I imagine you walking up the drive in your lacey, white blouse: a ghost of Alice lost in the madhouse of a world fully armed by spades, all pointed like a thousand fingers at your collarbone. You would have gladly bore their nick for me. The moon is the Cheshire cat, questioning why I imagine such things. A dog barks at nothing down the block. A rabbit’s outline slinks into a gutter. Am I crazy to have loved you and sever us? The moon blinks. We’re all mad here, I think.

26

A wound is a well save that a well can be full; a wound just empties. To love is to bleed delicate: a maroon flow. One can love too much. Every time I think about how she’s not here, not lying next to me the sutures are loosened: as soft as unearthed marrow. No amount of milk, honey, copious ***** can heal the hair-thin fault line in the core of me: the best medicine is our bright laughter. A pair of wind-chimes letting breeze cast its blessing. The good news: she cares enough to call me by name, a sufficient grace. The bad news: a wound will sometimes reopen, and will consume me should I not allow light to trespass. A wound is a well but, unlike a well, remains after it is dry.

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Feb 17, 2017

Feb 17, 2017 at 3:00 PM UTC

Untitled (About Wells and Wounds)

A wound is a well save that a well can be full; a wound just empties. To love is to bleed delicate: a maroon flow. One can love too much. Every time I think about how she’s not here, not lying next to me the sutures are loosened: as soft as unearthed marrow. No amount of milk, honey, copious ***** can heal the hair-thin fault line in the core of me: the best medicine is our bright laughter. A pair of wind-chimes letting breeze cast its blessing. The good news: she cares enough to call me by name, a sufficient grace. The bad news: a wound will sometimes reopen, and will consume me should I not allow light to trespass. A wound is a well but, unlike a well, remains after it is dry.

29

I fancied burning; nursed charred fingertips from placing them between. lips. I enjoyed love warm. Love was easier to kindle with friction under sheets pre-lit, shaped by body-heat. Somewhere, an oasis is brushing her hair, is rippling with light, lush with a fleeting smile. I found her in autumn laughing like a creek. Her hair the color of poplar leaves afloat. She, restless, cascading away and sometimes over me, cannot be contained readily. My other lovers: they were forest fires, were all holocausts filled with sharp facets. An oasis is still sharp to the taste. Her kiss smooth: I can feel it douse memories of cinders: her eyes turn soft with mist within my scorched daydreams.

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Feb 17, 2017

Feb 17, 2017 at 2:54 PM UTC

Love Affair with Water

I fancied burning; nursed charred fingertips from placing them between. lips. I enjoyed love warm. Love was easier to kindle with friction under sheets pre-lit, shaped by body-heat. Somewhere, an oasis is brushing her hair, is rippling with light, lush with a fleeting smile. I found her in autumn laughing like a creek. Her hair the color of poplar leaves afloat. She, restless, cascading away and sometimes over me, cannot be contained readily. My other lovers: they were forest fires, were all holocausts filled with sharp facets. An oasis is still sharp to the taste. Her kiss smooth: I can feel it douse memories of cinders: her eyes turn soft with mist within my scorched daydreams.

30

you were the lacunar bolt the part of a life spent wishing on stars if stars had ever granted anything but light chatoyant the yellow pilot lamp down the street trembles weakly wanting to burn out it flickers like a sun struggling long past its expiration date I was an absquatulate scholar of wrinkled bedsheets and the way the light ineffable shone around us as though we were the ******* center of it all a slow-motion salvation is better than instant gratification behind words like I believe I can’t accept this I will give you back your left behind particulars: your lingerie your photographs the calligraphy in your letters the blanket I have slept under for three years dreaming you might give me back the ring I willfully saved for you in the abditory between these walls I was building for us broken promises refract sanguine light and shape future homes into abandonment

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Feb 17, 2017

Feb 17, 2017 at 2:47 PM UTC

Of the Smallest Pieces

you were the lacunar bolt the part of a life spent wishing on stars if stars had ever granted anything but light chatoyant the yellow pilot lamp down the street trembles weakly wanting to burn out it flickers like a sun struggling long past its expiration date I was an absquatulate scholar of wrinkled bedsheets and the way the light ineffable shone around us as though we were the ******* center of it all a slow-motion salvation is better than instant gratification behind words like I believe I can’t accept this I will give you back your left behind particulars: your lingerie your photographs the calligraphy in your letters the blanket I have slept under for three years dreaming you might give me back the ring I willfully saved for you in the abditory between these walls I was building for us broken promises refract sanguine light and shape future homes into abandonment

23

Should wedding bells chime in a dream you have, I pray the man, miming affection near the altar is not me. I am ragamuffin; a butcher with no cleaver in his shadow, instead a bouquet: Clenched in my silhouetted hand flowers turn into torch. I burn as a filament in a bulb half-expired. I have smoked through my pocket money in order to scatter cremated angels from my throat. I am cloaked by anguish my grief poorly sheathed a tattered nerve. I have only learned how to praise darkness. Light is painful as it shimmers against frost: grass gleams in steady growth discolored scars healing. Here I am letting out a blood-letter addressed to you, wondering if I send a snip of my own vein will it remind you how one missing piece from a whole can forfeit the future. All any future is: a motion into the next moment, its pending indecision none can envision. We can’t help but revise malleable pasts. Memories flux rippling water and enough light changes it’s refraction with each new ripple. I cannot be a lover if love is not static humming at least from its hymnal. I write this letter in calligraphy mourning, like most poets do – rending heart rendering this broken universe – with bone and feathered quill. This feather is from my wing, the pair fallible love clipped the first chance you took to kiss my darkness. I’m charting learning a path to winter in an opposite sky: one only I can fly.

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Feb 17, 2017

Feb 17, 2017 at 2:36 PM UTC

Dirge

Should wedding bells chime in a dream you have, I pray the man, miming affection near the altar is not me. I am ragamuffin; a butcher with no cleaver in his shadow, instead a bouquet: Clenched in my silhouetted hand flowers turn into torch. I burn as a filament in a bulb half-expired. I have smoked through my pocket money in order to scatter cremated angels from my throat. I am cloaked by anguish my grief poorly sheathed a tattered nerve. I have only learned how to praise darkness. Light is painful as it shimmers against frost: grass gleams in steady growth discolored scars healing. Here I am letting out a blood-letter addressed to you, wondering if I send a snip of my own vein will it remind you how one missing piece from a whole can forfeit the future. All any future is: a motion into the next moment, its pending indecision none can envision. We can’t help but revise malleable pasts. Memories flux rippling water and enough light changes it’s refraction with each new ripple. I cannot be a lover if love is not static humming at least from its hymnal. I write this letter in calligraphy mourning, like most poets do – rending heart rendering this broken universe – with bone and feathered quill. This feather is from my wing, the pair fallible love clipped the first chance you took to kiss my darkness. I’m charting learning a path to winter in an opposite sky: one only I can fly.

8

You ask me what I'd wish for if I knew it would come true. I knew it was true: you left me to sleep out in the cold, dawn hours and half a globe away. If it meant I would receive frostbite, shiver uncontrollably and turn cyanotic, suffer hypothermia underneath the window with the blinds closed and you behind them shedding tears I cannot catch, I would suffer. I did. It reminded me of the Thanksgiving my uncle had me grab the prong of a wishbone, my best friend on the other side. We made a wish and the horseshoe of ivory cracked, and splintered into two pieces. He got the larger half. I still kept my wish hidden, hoping, that one day I'd meet you. I would suckle the sorrow from your fingers, wipe the tears and mascara with my cheek, and croon to you I will change. I can change. But, I must do that; and not for you. Our love is like that wishbone. Every time it breaks, we wish but do not work to see it through.

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Oct 7, 2016

Oct 7, 2016 at 7:00 PM UTC

I Break the Wishbone (to Discover there are no Miracles)

You ask me what I'd wish for if I knew it would come true. I knew it was true: you left me to sleep out in the cold, dawn hours and half a globe away. If it meant I would receive frostbite, shiver uncontrollably and turn cyanotic, suffer hypothermia underneath the window with the blinds closed and you behind them shedding tears I cannot catch, I would suffer. I did. It reminded me of the Thanksgiving my uncle had me grab the prong of a wishbone, my best friend on the other side. We made a wish and the horseshoe of ivory cracked, and splintered into two pieces. He got the larger half. I still kept my wish hidden, hoping, that one day I'd meet you. I would suckle the sorrow from your fingers, wipe the tears and mascara with my cheek, and croon to you I will change. I can change. But, I must do that; and not for you. Our love is like that wishbone. Every time it breaks, we wish but do not work to see it through.

24

It didn’t really happen. I was awkward, a sloppy crocheting of clumsy hands. I was scared of my body; or maybe, I was scared of her body. Foreign, but bright from the veil of curtains slighting a late spring light. I kissed like a maniac, but when it came down to the business of pleasure, I could not make a transaction. She later told me I could have gone on longer than my half-a-minute slow grind before I chickened out. Even now, after my fifth major relationship and plenty of romping and dancing atop mattresses mine and not mine, I feel my first **** is how I approach love. Tentative, too contemplative, and none-so-bold. Perhaps it is because I learned early, to hate myself, this body that is still so new to me: twenty-five years owned and I still don’t know how to love myself. I just hope that one day, I will be that light streaming into the room, touching everything around it, feeling with tender warmth the goodness of what soon hinders its path casting shadows behind what I come to kiss.

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Apr 28, 2016

Apr 28, 2016 at 9:08 AM UTC

First ****

It didn’t really happen. I was awkward, a sloppy crocheting of clumsy hands. I was scared of my body; or maybe, I was scared of her body. Foreign, but bright from the veil of curtains slighting a late spring light. I kissed like a maniac, but when it came down to the business of pleasure, I could not make a transaction. She later told me I could have gone on longer than my half-a-minute slow grind before I chickened out. Even now, after my fifth major relationship and plenty of romping and dancing atop mattresses mine and not mine, I feel my first **** is how I approach love. Tentative, too contemplative, and none-so-bold. Perhaps it is because I learned early, to hate myself, this body that is still so new to me: twenty-five years owned and I still don’t know how to love myself. I just hope that one day, I will be that light streaming into the room, touching everything around it, feeling with tender warmth the goodness of what soon hinders its path casting shadows behind what I come to kiss.

26

the patrol car has left the block once more, a bull shark circling nearer to some shore, headlights blared, a black silhouette steering the vehicle; night kisses the horizon, pecks it sharp like a bullet case scraping the darkling pavement, only the whitest stars visible above. many like me stroll sidewalks at this hour, smoking a stogie or sitting on empty swings in playgrounds vacant of laughter; it is better that children sleep while they can and can dream before the true night, that blight of bruise blue, sirens wailing on their way to steal away some dark man from the streets. where I stand on an apartment stoop I count the vehicle for the fourth time, lurking out around the corner, like a wolf dressed metallic. nothing gets better come nightfall. nothing gets done while asleep. i slip on my shadow, hood dark, concealing my face. lean back into the steps and light another cigarette. inhale. exhale. most don’t have to worry: their paleness turns them ghostly, invisible, to the patrolling cars. but I wear my darkness. i wish I knew how to make sparks fly, have them issue from throat, crack into splinters of glass. the law tells me to sit but I refuse. i am a phosphorus fuse; i am whitened; but i am impoverished, and I too have my own reasons to be frightened.

0

Apr 22, 2016

Apr 22, 2016 at 12:48 PM UTC

While Homeless in Raleigh

the patrol car has left the block once more, a bull shark circling nearer to some shore, headlights blared, a black silhouette steering the vehicle; night kisses the horizon, pecks it sharp like a bullet case scraping the darkling pavement, only the whitest stars visible above. many like me stroll sidewalks at this hour, smoking a stogie or sitting on empty swings in playgrounds vacant of laughter; it is better that children sleep while they can and can dream before the true night, that blight of bruise blue, sirens wailing on their way to steal away some dark man from the streets. where I stand on an apartment stoop I count the vehicle for the fourth time, lurking out around the corner, like a wolf dressed metallic. nothing gets better come nightfall. nothing gets done while asleep. i slip on my shadow, hood dark, concealing my face. lean back into the steps and light another cigarette. inhale. exhale. most don’t have to worry: their paleness turns them ghostly, invisible, to the patrolling cars. but I wear my darkness. i wish I knew how to make sparks fly, have them issue from throat, crack into splinters of glass. the law tells me to sit but I refuse. i am a phosphorus fuse; i am whitened; but i am impoverished, and I too have my own reasons to be frightened.

36

Trill of beak into birch. Dawn spooks the graveyard into silence. A heart hardens at God’s withered finger reaching but not reached for. I trim the hedges and the whir of weed-eater disturbs a nest of yellow jackets into tornado, dust devil, of translucent wings and sting. I walk among the dead three times a week. I am learning their language. They relearn the mundanity of white noise above and quietly forget, quietly forgive. This hill is the crest on a wave of coffins, each one a boat through the world below. Submerged in a bloodshot morning I listen to a woodpecker in its throes of building a home out of the depths of bark. In the chill, the soft fog rolling, it pecks and it knocks. The doors to these lives long closed, I hush. I do not believe God will visit these grounds to reclaim his clay: I plant flowers in it between the plots, each name engraved of marble a blank stare. The flash of red flushes from budding branches and I return to work. No one answers. I relearn the dead’s language, their silence, relearn every day how to repair stillness.

0

Apr 22, 2016

Apr 22, 2016 at 12:38 PM UTC

Aubade with Red Woodpecker

Trill of beak into birch. Dawn spooks the graveyard into silence. A heart hardens at God’s withered finger reaching but not reached for. I trim the hedges and the whir of weed-eater disturbs a nest of yellow jackets into tornado, dust devil, of translucent wings and sting. I walk among the dead three times a week. I am learning their language. They relearn the mundanity of white noise above and quietly forget, quietly forgive. This hill is the crest on a wave of coffins, each one a boat through the world below. Submerged in a bloodshot morning I listen to a woodpecker in its throes of building a home out of the depths of bark. In the chill, the soft fog rolling, it pecks and it knocks. The doors to these lives long closed, I hush. I do not believe God will visit these grounds to reclaim his clay: I plant flowers in it between the plots, each name engraved of marble a blank stare. The flash of red flushes from budding branches and I return to work. No one answers. I relearn the dead’s language, their silence, relearn every day how to repair stillness.

26