"I love you," you said
Three times
Sober
Or, at least, after only two glasses of wine
With an expression that wanted me to see its sincerity

You thought about the way your face looked
And how I was looking at it
Which, naturally, made me suspicious
Less of whether what you said was
Or is
True
And more of whether you really believed it

I certainly don't
Although, regrettably, too big a part of me
Hopes that you do
But you won't even go out to lunch
So the concept is moot

If you dwell on me so frequently
Where are you?
Not here, in the growing rift
Between our potential and reality
Where I fume

You flatter
Whipstitching my raw edges
But your adulations can't repair
The fact that you don't know
My favorite color
My stance on religion
Or the quality that I admire most
In a friend

Negligent though you may be
I'm harsher still
On myself
Allowing you in, while I know all of this
How you must find me!
So easy
Malleable
And still I permit you

"We're alike," you say
And you tell me how you care
So little
About so much
But not when it comes to me, apparently
Or so said the lips
That have only kissed me once
Without seeking more

But I kissed you then, anyway
Knowing what would come
Freckles
Sinful dimples
The unfathomable brown eyes
For which you hold so much disdain
The slightest gap
Between your front teeth

Your encouragements didn't stir me
Already shoved
From my resolution
Before your many admittances
And rare
Melancholy musings --
These, perhaps strategic
But disorienting, nonetheless

I'll chalk it up to us finishing the bottle
Which I started
Frustrated
Half an hour before you arrived
And carve myself some apathy.

I had a dream last night
Of being pursued by a murderer
A homicidal man, whom I'd seen ****
Again and again, with merciless vulgarity
And who hunted me like prey.

But as I fled him, he knew my habits
He foresaw my strategy to escape
He discovered me.

And in the raw terror of that exposure
Scrambling before him, in the dirt
At the height of my adrenaline
I came to a jolting, sick realization
That I was enraptured by him

And all his poison
His carnivorous mania, and blood-drenched agenda
And I felt the Hunger in his approach

And simply waited there, suspended
In that loathsome state of horrified ardency
For him to Consume me.
And it was not in the frenzied seizure of awakening
But only after a lengthy absorption, when I noticed

That I called it a dream, rather than a nightmare.

I wish not to want you
For fear that, when I hold you,
My touch change you golden
With greedy alchemist's fingers.

I wish not to want you
And liberty, command you
From the nobility --
Metallic -- which bars you from love.

A Queen of Phrygia
I sow sin in good nature
Chest hollow for dictums
That confine my pow'r to transform

I've no eyes to covet
Yet I birth my own idols
In chambers forbidden
To those of conscience staunchly pure

I plead you, stay iron
And I'll be happily robbed
Of my talent to turn
Wretched an organic desire

I wish not to want you
As I lay my hands on you
But I have not the gift
To breathe such wishes into life.

Peace:
For the time, there is Silence.

But deep in its bowels lives a sound...

And a word yet unheard
Still holds Violence.

...Its potential for Chaos abounds.

At moments, I fear I am a sociopath.

Do I only feel shame, love, guilt,
Empathy, when buried there at the root
Is myself?

Does this fear itself absolve me of suspicion?
Doubtful.

****.

I have such icy innards.

The ceiling fan is deafening
and my vision is as unfocused as your appeal
both spearing forward in fierce concentration
only to phase into vagueness, midway to their destination

As you continue to speak
my eyes continue to blur the scene
and I hear a series of moods, rather than words:

Anger... Anger... Injury.
Injustice, Pleading.
Righteousness. Vulnerab-- Demanding.
Reason... Reason... Reasoning.

I sit this way, fuzzing out your face
and decide it's effective, attending to your aura
selfishly shielding myself from the specificity of your language

but listening, intently listening, to your atmosphere

ringing out against the drone of that **** incessant ceiling fan.

After one night of many nights all rolled into one
You shoot me through with one pass.
It’s a clean break as I fall into consciousness
Tumbling through unfamiliar seas of painful candor, sovereign guilt
And reckless bliss.

The weighted bullet around your neck reminds me of your careless aim
And my selfish craving to be its target.
The metal is cold against my lips and unforgiving beneath my fingers.
I cannot help but cry when it touches me, weeping with longing from one eye
While the other flows with regret.

Three pulses rust now, as my commitment turns to ash
And a scarlet phoenix blooms from the blood of a union sacrificed
Yet the irony is taunting me, as I see clearly
That I’m gunning for salvation as you engulf me in temptation.

What a dangerous pair we make, we two, the Silver Bullet Brigade
Firing round after round into the establishment
And ruining our souls as we shake to set them free.

Your newly empty chamber is still hot from its release.
I’m unstable. My exit wound is ragged.
But the smoking gun is not held in one pair of hands.

Sometimes,
I wish I were a plastic toy.
Inexpensive, but cheerful.
Why did we outgrow those things?
I would trade the pricey seriousness of my pearls
Any day now
For some cheap happiness.

Oh, how I wish that I could trust you
But we’re running out of daylight
And ghosts of questions past will soon emerge

To envelop us so stealthily
Even as we flee them
And you’ll duck for cover, leaving me to stumble as they converge

And so I’m haunted each dusk
By these phantoms so persistent
As they race from my head to nip at my hasty heels

But if only I had the courage
Or the wisdom to confront them
I know they’d lead me to your refuge, all revealed

And though I long for this occasion
I cannot bear to turn my head
And simply face the jeering, spectral things directly

But I grow weary from the chase
And as I rush into the night
I know that, willingly or no, they'll overcome me

Slashing, swallowing tongues of fire

Igniting his own funeral pyre

The soldier stumbles, heartstrings rent

From his gun’s chamber, bullets spent

Haggard and ruined, he cries surrender

Welcoming death as his soul’s avenger

Faltering, crumbling, face to the earth

He closes his eyes and accepts his unbirth

After I have conquered all
And my history unravels
Through the few whispering tongues which bore witness,

May irreverence be a challenge
To the eyes then gazing southward
As recollections of my triumphs are brought forth.

And though the spoils of flesh may spoil
May consciousness prevail
The endless valleys far beyond become familiar,

May there be thoughts left yet to ponder
Whilst the restless souls be sated
And in brilliance, let us rival the unknown.

When lilies’ petals fade to gray
But to spring forth again next day
May it be known that my conquests were not in vain,

For the battles won victorious
Will have been much worth the fight
When they summon my name wandering again.

The moon is lost forever;
the sky has swallowed the stars.
If the heavenly bodies retain no hope,
where may we mortals find ours?

The world was born of steely gray
An utter blending of the shades
Of miserable black and righteous white
Indicating wrong and right.

Or is it white whose hue condemns
And black from which the conscience stems?

Never matter, our impartial domain
Favors neither of its veins
Confounding at its very core
The moral and amoral score.

In a perfect world, we would turn from lust
But I’ve kissed the devil and lived
In a perfect soul we’d find glistening intentions
But I’ve sin enough to forgive

I hope that the Lord looks down on Earth
And still considers me his child
For long moments I've faced a deepening ravine
With long questions of unleashing my wild

Disobedient ways, to let them flow freely
And terrorize any purity left
Plunging down deeply into the abyss
My shell of a conscience bereft

Though prudence and virtue have always won out
The battle from time to time rages
And I fear the day when, if I cannot quite quell it,
Hope abandons for more worthy cases

So may my Father forgive me my ignorance
Each time that I prove I’m a fool
And though, on occasion, I may tempt damnation
Please save me from my own misrule

She laughed.
It was a mirthless sound, full of echoes
and taught with strain

A sharp flash of insight
to some pulsing, deep-rooted ache;
A crackling outburst of electricity

With heat and light searing through,
The passageway opportunely provided
By the void in the afflicted sound

All which dimmed swiftly
As the noise abruptly faltered,
Caught, died.

With it died his illumination
Of some burning passion she kept,
Deeply hidden, closely guarded.

The sound and percipience had ended.
She could not revoke the gesture.
A silent ambivalence grew quickly.