Darling?
Don't read into it
too much

When I put out my stale headache cigarettes
in your ashtray
and I put out in that
tainted-with-cheap-*****-cracked-lip-kisses
way that I do so well

Then lay my head down
next to you
on your
worn-out-*****-box-spring-no-covers-only-refuge
and you feel secure
like everything lasts forever

Keep in mind
that old adage
that's as tired as I am
about keeping friends close
and enemies closer

And hey
Darling?

This ain't going to end
with one of those awful deus ex machina
dream wake ups

This isn't the dream we're living
so let's make the best of this disposable outcome
get some sleep
and do it all over again tomorrow
in that
over-indulged-but-still
unhappy-first-world-prison-paradise
kinda of way that we do so well

-From discarded poetry found in the trashcan
of Fiona Eris Strand

In the half-life half-death
of cold capsule prison cells
The shaken but unstirred synapses
of my sedated frantic grey matter
are left cruelly seduced into dreamstate contemplation
Forced induction into comatose hypersleep
all systems shocked and slowed
Reduced to internal monologue
debating tranquility and frustration
captured amidst nurturing seas and predator skies
Life support machinations online
so that I must deal with life offline
My interlude thoughts in full control
as they run amok
through the living dead dreams
forever frozen and framed
in iced over glass
floating through the black nothing
of all encompassing space
alone

This is the kind of poem I wish I had
an old rusty typewriter for
so each disgusted clack crack and punch
hit like your shatter jaw swings
But this will have to suffice
and
yeah
okay
fine
It makes you feel better
to put things
in such a stark black and white
that ugly gaudy stale whole-half-truth you
claim to love
then
yeah
okay
fine
All the ill forgotten pill hurts were all my fault
and we can pretend all the long scarlet letter
scratches you carved on my back were
from someone else
So burn my name to the ground
and put your cigarettes out on
my pictures
and all it will amount to
is your last denial
of all I had to give

You know
I was thinking how much
I'd like to just leave it all behind
and let loose like a mad
rebel with plenty of caws
flitting through sunlight that creeps
through the trees
because anymore
I can't get behind another day of
constantly dragging on more
supposed last toxin riddles
while your hands become these frail metastatic
cooling tower fingers
I can already see them already shaking off
clinched jaw fuel droplets
onto cancerous rancid mass graves
and I don't want to imagine what's beyond that
Besides
lately I've been preoccupied
with the feel of timeworn ciphers etched
in my charcoal wings as I
descend on power lines joining
scorched throat jesters cackling murderously
at this scorched earth
See I want to get away from our plutonic friends
all they want is to binge on residual radiation
raising their safety glasses to their excesses
knowing their acceptable risk deformities await
with contaminated breath
Sure we've got a reputation of being devious
but I'd rather proudly flaunt tattered onyx feathers
than sit around with
decaying radioactive half lives surrounding
inactive decaying half lives abounding
We crows scavenge our meals indiscriminately
but we don't dare eat our young as you do

I've got prose
in different area codes

Her lips thrum
like reverb droplets
as I steal
trembling kisses
before the mad dash
out the door
into sun brushed
ruin

All their money will turn to dust
The shopping centre cannot hold
The television signal to noise ratio
borders on obscene
The light of their superstars
already dead when they hit
Their songs will fade
as the music boxes burn out
It all rusts
It all goes silent
It all burns off
Everything decays
Everything dies
But if I can hold on to you
in our unspoken covenant
on the edge of forever
perhaps we can defy the sweeping hands
of this mortal coil
and turn our backs on time