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559 · Sep 2020
Skinwalker
Bri Stokes Sep 2020
Time is a trickster;
the ticking clock: its vicious heart.
It impregnates.
It destroys.
It heals.
It unravels.
It dons the skin of an imposter
in the coldest stretch of night:
a magician weaving fantasies
that sear.
Neutralize.
Inspire.
Though I wonder--
I worry--
are the days too long?
Are the nights too dim
and fleeting?
Do I dance through each
crescendo
in a lurid,
patchwork nightmare?
Or are my dreams so full of pain,
that soon,
I'll shatter beneath them
and finally wake up?
A tale of 2020.
Bri Stokes Nov 2020
I never read your letter.
I can’t bring myself
to confront the sting of
budding,
simmering
Regret.
I can’t bear to
part the veil which shields
my failures from my
body,
from my lips
and legs
to listless
hours
spent
avoiding variables;
violent
vestiges
I ignore to keep
my weary eyes
above water.
See, reality wrinkles
its nose at the fantasies my insanity
can concoct
when I’ve yet to find a reason
to chase you away.
When the tethers of my grip
have yet to give way to anxiety, leaving me to wonder
if I feel too happy,
look too good,
want far more than what
my karma will allow.
I never read your letter, as I’ve been
consumed with playing
dress-up, draped in finery and fixtures
fit to outshine all the glow of
unshed tears
under pulsing
neon
light.
I'll coax it open it yesterday, but never tonight.
408 · Oct 2020
should kings fall
Bri Stokes Oct 2020
For witless wonder,
I wonder,
do its servants
chase
winkless
wrinkles
in time long-gone?
Is a thin piece
of cloth
so performative?
So political?
Or are you trailing
crescendoes of
long-tuneless
songs?
Wear a mask. Please.
380 · Sep 2020
Musings on Quarantine
Bri Stokes Sep 2020
Solitude is like a
feathered embrace.
Like a swell of moonlight
on dewy,
manicured
grass.
And should you go looking
for the magick--
for the secrets
unveiled
in stillness
and beats
that stretch for miles,
from one
shivering
heart
to another,
you’ll find realms of
untold dreams.
Rheems of
bursting starlight,
of long-squashed fantasies
in demand
of your attention.
Daydreams that unwind
until you’ve found
what you were searching for:
the secret,
long-lost
places
you hadn’t known
were long-since missing.
Without suffering, there is silence.
352 · Sep 2020
corpses
Bri Stokes Sep 2020
I watched you sail away with her
to places so divine;
to paradises I could not reach,
phantoms of fantasies
I could not meet.
I felt a slow,
bitter
current
kick up in your wake,
awakening nightmarish
symphones
of debts
long-since paid.
There,
on sapphire tides,
I watched your ship leave the port.
Breathed in
simmering flames of Hell.
I might've bid you farewell,
if I could just see
above
the encroaching walls
that shake
and shriek
with the corpses
we called:
"You and I."
I heard you're getting married soon.
218 · Sep 2020
Mermaid
Bri Stokes Sep 2020
In the highest barricades
of Millennia
and wilted fields of Lavender,
I might’ve loved you.

I might’ve taken your hand
and let you lead me
through ghoulish night.
I might’ve held you

with the fervor
of endless,
winkless
Dreams,

in holy concaves
of majesty
and infatuation,
saturated

by opal irises
and kisses of
California summer.
I would’ve made you mine,

had I known then
what the Sirens now sing to me,
unrelentingly:
the secrets of Infinity

laid bare,
like iridescent
oil spills
in an empty lot

sodden
with weeds between cracks.
In another life,
I’ll call you back to me.

I’ll draw you back again
with a wrathful, raging love:
wild enough to wake gods,
fierce enough to tame odious tide,

deep enough
to drown aeonic suffering.
And not even Adam
or Eve

themselves
might undo the knots
of Fate
I’ll lace

between You
and I, then.
And I’ll grant you passage
to a second world

with a key that unlocks such
sacred Regret.
And I’ll point out all
the stars named after us,

as they swirl in
clouds of Violet,
storms of Indigo,
seas of twinkling,

ruptured
Gold.
And I’ll set a dagger
on your heart,

and you to mine,
and we’ll die together,
erupting
into

dazzling
bursts
of destined
dust,

travelling far enough
to be drawn together
once
again.
This is a story of regret.
199 · Sep 2020
Gargoyle
Bri Stokes Sep 2020
Somone
some day
might love me;
might gaze beyond
the terror
and doubt;
the walls that stand
like angels and gods,
shielding me from
all the Bad Things of Before.

Someone
might say I'm enough,
and make excuses for the pain
I inflict--
for the icy,
blood-soaked
blade
I brandish so easily.
The thousand cuts
that lead them
to their ends.

Someone might open my chest,
see the rose-colored
soul
that shivers there:
the terrified child crouching in shadow,
and long to comfort
and give her
a home.
To shower her
with recognition
and acceptance.
To promise peace
and eternity
and the weight of gold
in an undeviating
kiss.

But for now,
I know only memories.
Only the cold,
dawning
glow
of regret.
The sting of curiosity
behind a cracked
and dust-sopped
window.
The horror
and tragedy
in Truths I cannot challenge.
Bri Stokes Sep 2020
i wanted to die today.
i thought about
old wreckages
of wistful,
trodden
Glory.
i thought about
The Hanged Man
in mirrors--
all the stasis.
All the waiting
on a railway
for a train
that won’t show.
i thought of how
my bed feels like Heaven
and Hell
in fevered
spades.
How the doors that lead out
seem to be doors to astral
places,
terrible places,
full of Bogeymen
and Sprites
in untold waltzes
of consecrated
chaos.
And they’re all out to **** me,
anyway,
so i thought i might want to die
today.
Tw: suicide
136 · Sep 2020
Persephone
Bri Stokes Sep 2020
In veiled,
onyx
lace,
I chase your ghost
in scores immeasurable,
in crescendoes
of yesterday
and shivering
melodies
of dreams.
The contours of your flesh:
a refrain of constant agony,
solace withered
by ancient hymns
of how you'd kiss me in the dark.
You--
in your cheap,
tweed
suit.
With your history books
and cigarettes
and your drab apartment
off of Sunset,
where the August sun
would teem
through windows
in perfect
bursts
of chaos.
Particles that mapped
perfect roads
paved with ivory skulls,
arching along the
highway
and drifting down
to the Kingdom of Death:
the gilded streets of Hollywood,
so oppressive,
my mind has not left.

— The End —