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54 · Jan 2020
That Fuck Cupid
Briscoe Jan 2020
That **** Cupid's at it again.
But this time he hasn't gone for my heart.
He aimed at my eyes and went straight through them,
Getting my brain as well. The **** which was smart
Is permanently dumbfounded.
Oh, to be so brain dead.
"At last he set her both his eyes;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas, become of me?"
-John Lyly
54 · Sep 2019
Rhyme of Repetition
Briscoe Sep 2019
With each dusk, red recedes into darkness.
Empty desires echo like antique rhymes
Of Shakespeare, speaking of love fictitious.
Like apes to grapevines, up my desire climbs,
Incoherent growls of primal intent
For fruits. Perhaps a date among the thorns.
Gold light diminishing, as the moon's moment
Looms aloft, with a pale and nervous form.
The passage of time and carnage of thoughts
Project an old, desperate fantasy
On my bedroom ceiling. My feelings caught
In my true knowing none shall come to be.
The veins of time having washed off notions
That these desires could lead to devotions.
54 · Sep 2019
Hope
Briscoe Sep 2019
There will be time to rise and raise a child.
There will be the night to rise and write
Loves and lives that were wordless in daylight.
There's a season to Spring to life and wild
Bursts will bobble from our seas who simmer.
Blooming perfumes with flowering flavours
Will sway like winds in our trees who shimmer.
The grassy Earth coloured as it covers
Hills from place to place in grassy embrace.
When your enslaved pieces, break free from hate,
The glades all softly supporting your pace
As you walk toward the canopies gate.
Though this is not today, nor tomorrow
Those fires begin low, then they grow and glow.
54 · Feb 2020
True Horror Story
Briscoe Feb 2020
Today, I napped,
So some demon snatched
My sleep for the night
In a three hour snap;
And you can say that wasn't very bright
But it was when I napped
And now it's dark at home
And I'm all alone.
"It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."
-John Steinbeck
53 · Oct 2019
Sins Linger in the Smoke
Briscoe Oct 2019
The cigarette circumference
Is smooth against his face
And the smoke clouds precipitate
To tar teardrops. Pooling as a lake.
Before they all evaporate
Like decayed lungs of late smokers.

Last year
I found my uncle in his cave
Starved, greyed by paper embers,
Cursive scriptures and veils in waves.
As fires fade the way December
Eves into days of a brief fatherly presence.

This year,
I hear my cousin's down there too
With our brothers, under that wreath.
Round is the jaw of the their tomb
And jagged are the snaring teeth.
Like thorns that hook against sinew.

Round. Round and round.
They chant "It's not deep enough."
Down. Down and down.
Doomed to look, loom and drown
In tar teardrops.
The smoke lingers.
It remembers
It looms. The fumes and Hume.
How do I accuse
And can we agree
Which cause is true
Of that father's lesson.
Leading to the question,
To wonder if the father
Teaches to consume or fume
With incense or loss of innocence.
That commandment of his example
Vital as the signs displayed in pulsing waves.

A son of some man appears from the cave.
He turns back and sees that ember
Dwindling within.
Then takes a step toward the light.
"6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
This is the word of the father
-Deuteronomy 6:6-7
53 · Sep 2019
The Strange Way
Briscoe Sep 2019
The night drew itself across the scene
Like velvet over thin thighs and there was Ursula.
Her face drawn and painted like some artists scheme
Her round eyes the piercing blades of a peninsula.

The awkward moments couldn’t live long for some reason.
"You once told me you feared the ocean."
"That's because there's a place that steals and bends the light and offers no more, but a slithering flowing crystal. That dries and lies ‘I will quench the thirst and drench to drown away the filth’. But only chills flesh into a collection of bumps against the skeleton."
"It's strange to agree on such a particular decision."  
"And yet we agree?"
“We do.”
People can connect over things.
53 · Sep 2019
The Dragon
Briscoe Sep 2019
I see it's black and I see those pearl eyes
Staring through caverns of caves and darkness.
Though withered, weathered eroded bone lies
Scattered, I must disprove my cowardice.
As it growls, between its teeth I see a furnace
With golden glimmering, shimmering flames.
Ancient and old, slithering tongues whispered this
Retreat, whimper, return to safer games.
This place is made of dangerous pieces
Shattered glass, jades and jewels like jagged blades.
Blood does not prevail, passed my scaled, monstrous
Tail, and men make no echo in deep graves.
Moving my living corpse round the corner,
I ask
Would you leave ashes for your coroner?
53 · Jan 2020
Take. Take. Take.
Briscoe Jan 2020
Take one of those hot days
When it's fun to be mindless,
When thinking's the only way to feel your pain,
So you lose your mind on purpose.

Take a taste of meaning.
Enjoy flying like a limestone,
Stationary until some wise being
Picks you up and your thrown.

Chisel your own name
Into a comments section
For the fame
Of three idiots appreciation.

Take a beer to spare
And spend your life
Dancing, prancing like a mare.
Take some bad advise.
"The unexamined life is not worth living"
-Socrates
Briscoe Sep 2019
Eggs?
Am I your Easter Sunday?
Your Christmas, or a second birthday?
When I say, 'No.'
Is it your fountain of youth that says so?

We have bled.
So the son is sacrificed
By knife and crucified.
So only the father and the phantom
Are left behind
Like ashes of the Sun.

Dad,
I know you sacrificed for my future
And learnt from your past
The scripture of your mind
And you fought until the last man
In your army of one.

Yet,
Do not decapitate
To put your head
On my shoulders of clay.
I will make your mistakes.
I will break your mountain stones.
I will ache the way you ached.
Then when your gone
Maybe I'll obey your bones.
But I will not suffer to surrender
To your commands.

Instead,
I will leave a mirror in my room.
So that afternoons from these days
I will be replaced
By the son you wished to see and say
"Okay."
Whisper soundlessly the phrase,
The words
You want to have heard.
"The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
    today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break[b] them with a rod of iron
    and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.”

10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
    be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
    and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son,
    lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
    for his wrath is quickly kindled."
Psalm 2
52 · Feb 2020
Ignorance
Briscoe Feb 2020
Can life stop opening my eyes?
It's scary when I see.
Can life stop opening my eyes?
I'm trying to sleep.
52 · Aug 2019
Unfairness
Briscoe Aug 2019
If only fair creatures played with fairness
Then I could have made this maiden happy.
She fair and far beyond me in finesse
And fitness and my heart proving feebly
That I cannot change my mind on her. So
I await when she will chide or charm me.
Choose if my flesh be cared for or hollowed.
For fair creatures are unfair as they tease
Evoking envy accidentally.
Jaded, jealous pieces of mess within
Swing me from fantasy to imagery
Of her and other men, in conclusion.
For this fair maiden has made my heart
Halt hopeless, then with her glass glance restart.
Briscoe Feb 2020
Lick a nicotine lollipop coz that sounds cool.
Kick start a guillotine to drop out of school.
I'd rather you judge 'drunk me' than 'bored me.'
That's not true but it's catchy.
Tell yourself you're filling your life with spice
As each season goes by as recklessly wasted time.
I have a friend, he can be so stupid and so proud of it, because he thinks taking ridiculous and unnecessary risks makes him cool. Which is funny because that used he me and now that I've done those stupid things, they're a part of my identity and my own sense of masculinity, yet here I am criticising someone for that behaviour I take a sort of secret pride in. In the end I guess I can only say that I'm grateful my mistakes haven't had worse repercussions and try learning to take pride in something more valuable.
Briscoe Feb 2020
I like to retreat into my head at times,
The background sounds like a breeze of night
Flowing through my brain.
My mind a great open plain
With nothing to worry about at all.
My view, all these shapes, colours and transferals,
Where people and places used to be.
I like to be inside my head
Especially
When there's nothing thought or contemplated.
"How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d"
-Alexander Pope, Eloisa de Abelard
51 · Jan 2020
An Australian Lament
Briscoe Jan 2020
Like flesh on bones
My home's covered with smoke.

I smell undwindled fire.
Staring at the window,
Afraid to see further.
Cold is shade and shadow.

Lashes of flame
Collapse the homes
And the cold pains
Seem pale and lame.

This weave of dreams
Unravel in
The fires outside
And the hopes dim
As this rose grows to ****.
Living in Australia, it's very sad to see this happen to my home. This is more of an outburst than anything.
Briscoe Sep 2019
She came back in the afternoon.
Usually she leaves me my peace
Till after midnight. But she came too soon
And ruined dwindling light through spinning smoke from teas.

Ten songs ago, I saw her sway,
I tasted her cold shoulder and
Came back to receive her reprimand.
I never saw her voice and more
Never heard her face,
Only feeling some embrace
As we danced till twelve.

But she came back too early
I wasn't ready enough, nor strong nor steady.
She took me back to an old dance
And with bittersweet memories
Ruined my afternoon teas.
50 · Feb 2020
The Artist & The Agnostic
Briscoe Feb 2020
I don't mind my life
With an invisible brush
Behind every shade and light.
I like my life
With a blossom and blooming flower
In every manhole cover
And shooting stars
In everyone's headlights
Rushing by like fiery eyes or fireflies.

If there is a soul above,
In the heavens
With veins of silk magic and white,
If he has found me to love,
I don't mind him so much.

And if not, then now is enough,
Enough time not to mind my life.
"Be thankful that you have life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one."
-Richard Dawkins

"9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and **** and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
-John 10: 9-10 (NIV)
Briscoe Sep 2019
After antique whispers and thoughts, we are
Children of the Silver Millennium.
Slithers of light reflect on peaks out far,
From waves of a rising tide or Autumn.
The alchemy of notions, the cold ocean
Encircling, on our electric windows.
All our memories born in some fiction,
Projected out from within screens. But those
Glinting pearls of the ocean out beyond,
Shall defy gravity, yet we won’t dare
Go there, where we would be beyond our bond
To this mortal coil and this planet fair.
Lest this planet won’t always sustain us
We must cease to release black winds thunderous.
"Perhaps we are wiser, less foolish and more far-seeing than we were two hundred years ago. But we are still imperfect in all these things, and since the turn of the century, it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor virtue have increased as rapidly as the need for both."
48 · Feb 2020
It's Trying to Get Out
Briscoe Feb 2020
There's a haunted door in my house.
I hear it rattle and shake, all throughout.
Maybe there's a human there,
Locked inside and scared.
Maybe that's what's it like to be gay,
In secret, with hands battering at the closet.
Something's licking at the ****.
Something's tongue's a flicker
And even from your bed
You feel it's hunger.

Meanwhile your too scared to even look that way,
Down the hallway.
Convincing yourself that desperate whimper
Was just the wind or a nightmare.
48 · Feb 2020
The Use of Light
Briscoe Feb 2020
When it was dark and decayed
I once crawled to the deepest peak
In my heart of rock and clay.
There was a great black sea
Expanding beyond me.

I had been saving a bundle of fireworks
Ready to set them off with a kiss,
As I was told to by all my unsung teachers.
But finding myself so foreign from bliss
I threw the fireworks to the abyss.

Then far up on the surface
A single finger touch my face.
Then from a spark echoed a thunder bolt
That split my heart in half,
A sheen beam of lightning
To ignite…

A thousand sparks of green, red and gold
Danced like a rainbow
No longer segregated to one flow.
Each streaming particle
Of blue through to purple,
Wobbled like feathers on Angel wings
Settling after flight.

I still had to climb back down the mountain,
I still had to do it myself,
But the way was bright,
And I now knew why I should do it.
"Seems like only yesterday
Life belonged to runaways
Nothing here to see, no looking back
Every sound monotone
Every color monochrome
Life began to fade into the black
Such a simple animal
Sterilized with alcohol
I could hardly feel me anymore
Desperate, meaningless
All filled up with emptiness
Felt like everything was said and done

I lay there in the dark and I closed my eyes
You saved me the day you came alive."
-Foo Fighters
43 · Aug 2019
Sonnet for the Sunset
Briscoe Aug 2019
If you end each day alone, without love,
If your friends have left you nothing but stress,
Look and see the sun no longer above,
See he slowly goes to the west for rest.
Even though darkness will stalk till morning,
He's reborn in a burning, golden dawn.
Breathe in deep before the night and lightning.
Be and become calm. Watch that closing yawn.
A soft view of wind and vapour. Slowly
Afternoon floats and flirts with evening.
But surely turns to be a tapestry.
Fear's woven thoughts forgotten for dwindling
Twilight dances. So daylight's glow diminishes,
As a shadow cast from the West stretches.

— The End —