You still have not released me
Though it was many years ago

Lips swollen from kissing
Stuttered as hate began to grow

Rusted hands pried open
Salty twilight spotted cracks

And yet you still flicker warmly
Above my chipping eyelid’s clotted wax

A bump from a gentle stranger
Sends me spinning from the train

But those that beat me hollow
I filter through my veins

My hands scream for passion
My heart for pulpy gore

My legs tire from tensing
But my mind still wants more

It would prefer so mightily
I danced overgrown with spines

Pursuing eyes of Persian blue
Golden hair, unleashed jungle vines

It would rather have me wounded
Bashed in until I bled

Over and over again, no truce
My mind, it wants me dead


--Lily

Sleek are the dragon scales
small as a leaf
Grey like the coming storm
Bright lights pulse my way

Clicking in its own weird talk,
Understanding proves impossible
Talkative one stops jabbering
When night consumes the day

Memory is impeccable
The shell as strong as rock
Many times adventuring
But always returning to stay

Shivering when left alone
Erupting fury when it’s not
Talking again in that language
Quivering where it lay

Replacement after replacement
Each smarter than the last
But impatience with each in turn
As their lives slip away

But it's as if you’re ****** into the page on which you sit so precariously. You realize his eyes have become weird again, throbbing to the beat of your love. He looks away, leaning back on his hands, arms taught. And you sit as if alone, watching him tear a piece off your history and craft a paper airplane from your devotion, fingers gently folding and creasing, lovingly shaping, his head turning, focusing, admiring. And when he is satisfied, he throws it with a flick of his pale wrist. It sails beautifully through the air, buoyed by affection and adoration, leaping through the gusts with pride. You reach out a hand willing it to come to you, wanting something so tender for yourself, for your gasping heart. But as you lean in, poised with glory, a thief melts from a burning tree, morphs from the shadows, an ugly, beaten creature, scaly and peeling. It slinks foreword catching the plane in its mottled claws, pinching it slightly as your lover lets out a small gasp, eyes widening. The creature places it inside the steel bars over its heart and suddenly the thing changes and becomes lovely, blooming and whole, an infection of grace and slender frame. Fragrance floats back to you as you cower and your lover looks at the lovely figure descending upon him and you scream and scream, seizing and foaming, something mad, unwanted, hidden from sight. But he is no more than smoke; naked body drooling, jagged blades protruding from his back; and where his heart should have been, there are only iron bars. He turns and howls, an alien sound, unreal, lips curling back, twisting and forcing his screeching notes into your chest smothering your mind. But finally you have had enough; finally you understand, finally you find strength to pull apart the stitching and release yourself and you fall.

You know the way I took it,
At the break of dawn
You know how I slid from your window sill,
Like the gold flakes from my fingernails,
Fandango in the bluing sky

You knew when you awoke,
Rubbing cobwebs from your cracks
When you looked to see it gone,
The gun into your mind

Surely someone clever as you,
Would never let it sit
For a replayed taboo like me,
To steal it as you slept

Your periscope eyes have found me,
Hurdling from the howling woods,
Deep with festers
From your pets

You, you scrawny herbivore
While I eat carnage
Tangy and red
You, it seems, possess some bravery

When you shot those mind bullets
Pushing through my back
But you missed, my dear
You missed

Or was it just your intent
To slash
And torment
Instead?

But you missed, my dear
You missed

--Lily

Teetles tuppled storpidly, along the clurby path
Her toes gribbed at the plirky sand
When she lumbled swanuously round the ragthall pebbly wrath
Her stlilting head tipped back as she breathed the roopled frand

She trippered toinulously pausing at the gurgil streef
To drink slaverously from a Burbore skinned flask
Sea shells stolen plumberlingly from the Briley Heef
Dripped from her pockets as she svointered on the shubbled crask

And in her furling hand she snatched a Stoodle,
Feathered little spine smuffled from the wind so grabbily,
Its beak produced a little snawdoodle
And she laughed so jorbid and trabbily

“Little one, a seashell for you”
She exclaimed and stooped to pluck a sleemish one
And in the Stoodle horpled with a gentle twoo
And she set it in the blurkish sea, spinning loorfilly in the sun

With a sudden shloop
both shell and Stoodle were ****** under
so she stood waiting peering into the gloop
as the Stoodle sunk into the murky punder

Then up the Stoodle popped with sloopish swriss
But Stoodle it was no more, instead a brilly Havergrath
With grey silk back and wuverbul muscles twriss
A smarmy smile upon its jarby grath

And she smiled back at him
A korky, vubblious thing
And he flipped through the air with krim
As one only a Havergrath can bring

--Lily

I* am the one who owns this game
This game of cat and mouse; the chase
Not him, not them, not those
The men
Who think it is in their place

The ones who covet the loving gleam
In a woman’s drawn up eyes
But then tell her that she was no more
Than a *****, a ****; filthy pennies in disguise

They leave her rotten, confused, revised
Writing sickly poems of love and gore
Reflection in her puzzled heart
Rebuild the sloppy, slaughtered gears, restart and then restore

I have written those poems too,
When I bore marks of the lost and broken
whispered words, shaking from my lips,
of things yet unspoken

Now I need no more
For poetry unheeded brings more sorrow on which to thrive
And anyways poetry writes itself for me,
Cause I have eaten it, alive

I have learned the trades of love
And unlearned how to feel
I threw my heart away gladly
For the others I could steal

I am the one who pulls you in,
Not you, strong soldier, the statue,
clearly cut and manned
I am the one whose glistening strife
Slides, dripping, through your open hands

I have the voice, purring rolls of silk,
Emerald slants, gaudy blue feathered eyes
Lupines bloom upon my lips
And foxgloves on my thighs

I have the sterling studs of class
The cocky robin smile,
A drink like silver wine am I
From a savory crystal vile

I have the shift of gentleness,
A tender, blooming embrace
You hold nothing but trust in me
Adoration upon your disgusting face

But I know something you do not
That only I have the key
Patience until the shaking burst
A monster waiting to break free

She howls and rips your heartstrings raw
Ignores your pleading glance with glee
A smirk, a sneer, arched lips pause
Knowing your demise is our reward
We won’t stop until you cease to be

I have strength beneath my beloved monster’s wings
The power to bend with whip-like throw
Each man I take, battles for my neck
And I slaughter each, basking in the glow

We have done this for ages
Sold perfection, curving laces at every door
Like gypsies we steal what you cling to most
Our silver infused fingers beckoning for more

Love is no longer fun for us
We crave deception, challenged lies,
We’ll never give you what you want
Only slay your mind and watch as it dies

As the madness creeps on mottled claws
And you beg and plead curled up in pain
Letting us in through your wracking body rocks
A glimpse, peeled back to reveal the stain

So pound the floors as much as you want
Drag splinters from your drooling cavernous screams
Throw yourself away again and again
Cause I will never leave your mind,
Having sown myself into your dreams

I am what you think about
What you've sold every scrap of yourself for
But I am a fake, a mask, the satin covered machine
What you fear will reap your corrupted core.

You never knew that all I want
Is to take but never give
To ****** but never stay
The girl who steals your love to live
And buries it in your own decay

After every sumptuous feast,
We give a trill, a gauzy lilting stream
Notes lift our cool heads high
Poised waiting for the choking screams

And as we slide through fractured lives,
My monster and I
We ponder the day we'll wake in hell
Eagerly awaiting the reward for all our lies

For we're not scared of death or flames
Flickering bodies of damnation
Cause we know we’ll live forever
In those suffering from love starvation

--Lily

I used to tell my mom
I'm scared
when the wolves came calling out back
but really I was shy.
was ashamed to admit
all I wanted was to be one of them
to slip into their paw prints
feel the dewy night kissing my ears
to lift my face to the wolf gods,
their bodies reflecting my dark eyes

I'd scrabble through the stale snow,
run until my lungs were scorched
I'd follow until they let me in
to touch them
feel them
lick their cheeks,
winding into their memories
with a slightly steaming spool slowly spinning,
ready to gobble them up
and replace my own

I'd yap and howl the way they do
Leap; spine arched,
into their midst
and match their moon choked tones

I'd want to be a mystery
Have those feeble humans claim they know everything
about me
but really, they’d never even scratch the surface
of the wolf who gleams like ivory
of the wolf who streaks like fiery song
pulsing through the snow

I'd want to be the invisible; you know, that thing that’s watching you
bending through the slip of trees
the thing your eyes strain to find
the thing you wait all night to see

I want to have them look at me,
the ones who think they found me first,
I want the poets
the artists
and writers
to look into my face and say
how beautiful, those eyes
how brave or fierce or wise
and I would grin my wolfish grin
bare my snarling teeth on cue
ignore their stupid human stupor
knowing what they never would
that being a wolf is better than sitting alone
inside
waiting
for them
each night
to lure me with their round raw voices
their silver heart shaped faces
their unforgiving bodies tensing
tails whipping
hammered paws sailing
like white frost oceans
the kings and queens
searching for castles
among the rabble
rubble
waves

--Lily