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Waverly Jun 2012
I come back
for promise.

The tea leaves
told me it would be
all it should be.

My bags were packed
the same way a child packs a bag,
everything vital
was left
on
the
bed.

I took satisfying trinkets
because pollution
dulls.

Oh,
I
am
at
your doorstep
once
more.

The lady in the techni-colored
shawl
with eyes like a rainbow,
brought the water to a boil,
dropped in the leaves,
told me
my future
would be ready
in a second,

I'd know everything in due time,

and it was.

The tea leaves told me
in a raspy, Pall Mall
voice
that everything was going
to be
all it should be.

So,
here I am,
at your doorstep,
and everything vital
hums through woven lips
on your bed.

I have come for a teddy bear
that I have hugged
too long.
Waverly Jun 2012
Lovers trapped
in flourescent corners.

Skin shimmers underneath
loose tees,
beige with the kind of sweat
that blackens
Levi's in the crotches.

Her fingers *****
at his mice-sized ears
which hunger
for the acrylic traps
she lays with her fingernails.

If lips had tongues
his lips would say:
"I've had plastic flesh
and mercury is in my veins
cooling me
until I'm frozen
in the arms
of death."

And his lips never touch
hers:
neck,
breastbone,
cleft-chin,
chapped ear lobe,
crackling scalp,
fracturing spine,
splitting abdomen,
scarred heart.

his are never touched by
hers:
lips.

They finger the hills
of each other's skin:
velvetine,
innumerable,
wet.

Starships beep in the night.

Beep through receivers
from a place against the earth,
but not touching it.

THeir voices are intimate
and not there.

Cries are heard from space
and cradled as breathing
treasure.

Intimate,
but not there.

Their fingers touch each other,
infinitely
and not at all.

He feels her
as the earth feels
remote beeps
in remote intimacy.
Waverly Jun 2012
E.J. pulls the last one out of the box,
slowly now,
with his forefinger
and thumb.

The fore
is square.

Almost cut.

Like he'd taken a box-cutter
to it after inhaling
all that BUD Light
in that dangling,
shimmying
hose in the truck.

The thumb is normal.

He lifts the Pall to his lips
with the deliberateness
of a crane operator
laying the last brick,
before the whole thing
burns to the ground
in fluttering, liquid ashes.

The fore is useless,
so square
that the **** dangles
even when he pinches it.

And E.J.
looks down at it with those watery
fire-choked dog-blue
eyes
and
exhales a
spectre.
Waverly Jun 2012
Carmen's legs
are pixilated cerulean.

Rubbing beasts
that itch at untouchable
bruises beneath her skin.

Her computer is on.

She rests crossed legs
on its desk.

There's something sticky about her skin.

Carmen's date is calling,
her speakers make a sound
like **** plopping in a toilet.

The webcam blinks
like Sauron's eye.

Carmen has never had
any of the cards
in her hands.

Not a whiff of a queen of hearts
or a jack
of all trades.

It seems she's been slipping for awhile now,
in her black room, colored
by the glow of some
techni-cyclops'
cavernous mouth,
crimson, heart-shaped teeth,
and scythe tongue.

She has never known the war machine
of love,
or the war machine of self-determinism.

Now she does,
her compudate buzzes on-screen.

Tiny sprouted pixels
jump into a constantly
buzzing whole.

He's got a bored face,
and Carmen knows this is the look
of the generation.



Carmen lifts her legs from the desk.

Puts her hands on her lap.

Licks her lips.

She wants to know
what lowered human beings
do when they are restless.

She is seeking something
moreso
philosophical
than
******.

"Bored, much?"

Carmen asks sardonically.

He took it literally.

He jumped at attention.

"Oh, no,
now that I've seen you."

"How do these things work?"

"Well, I guess we talk to each other,
and if you like me
then we go from there."

And to Carmen this was reticence,
this was blasphemy.

She had the cards in her hands,
finally.

Carmen's legs are pixilated  high cerulean.

Cerulean the color of
a tiger ocean,
****** cakes,
slushies,
a sun-****** sky,
a corpse. Skin against a computer screen.
Waverly Jun 2012
We dine off of  hearts
goaded from the sea.

Hearts drawn to dead promise
and
cold hooks.

The gills
taste metallic
and the flesh is sweet
with mercury.

The haul is yanked overboard,
and the tuna fly
like angels of vengeance
to our dinner tables
where wine
condenses the poisoned bodies
into forkfulls
of pleasure.

The meat is sweeter
than anything we have ever tasted,
we hope that it puts us to sleep.

Not wanting to ****
or cherish
the bones of each other's bodies
has led us to gorge
on these fish,
these harbingers
of comas
that we are too awake
to realize
are the dreams of the stars
filtered through the
diamond-studded
rollers of the Pacific.

The blue and cold Pacific
it pumps out
the fuel for restaurants.

Restaurants
where we gnash our teeth silently
against oily meat.

Restaurants
where I have a drink
and you have a drink
and we have our fill
on vicarious oceans
that decay in the parties
of our bellies.

Tonight we will sleep
because we are drunk
with poisoned meat.

Robbed meat.

Catastrophic
is the grinder of your mouth.

A goaded heart
is an atomic bomb
and we have our fills on them.

Until we no longer want to ****.

The mercury
courses.

The waiter
dashes back and forth.

The cook
slices and dices.

The fishers haul in a line
ten-ton lines of bycatch.

All for a single forkful
of the most sugary
thing
two people can share
when their bodies
are useless
and wheezing for the oxygen
of a purified love.
Waverly Jun 2012
There was no time
there was never
enough.

It was hard enough
for me
to sit beside you
and not stroke your leg
like a crystal ball
and feel you beneath
your trembling skin.

It doesn't make sense
to have all this religion
and nothing
resembling
truth.

When you got up to go
to the bathroom
I took notes
on your hips.

How your thighs swayed
against the weight
of a poverty of faith.

Split apart skies
by lightning
bolts from some
jealous gods
seemed to crack
your iris's.

Mistrust from the past
pain kept you
held in a barricade,
a battalion
against your better will
to gather my
unchained love.

When you sat back beside me
I was afraid
that you would look at me
like a stranger
that had studied
every line of your body.

Your lips remain unknown,
and the thunderous crack
of breaking steel
withdrew inside of me
as I wanted
more.

As I wanted to know
what had happened
to make you so vicious.

Vicious love
made for a vicious lover
for a vicious
interpreter
that took notes
on a ****-poor notepad
yearning for a faith
in the spirit
that leapt up against my fingers
underneath your skin.
Waverly Jun 2012
As we ****
our souls
touch the bottoms
of the river
where pirannahs lie
in wait.
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