serpentinium

serpentinium May 2018

If I am to drown,
I hope to march headfirst
into the sea, disappearing
under the waves in a lure of
golden fish scales,
crushed to the bottom
by bullet-shaped weights.

I want a death by mystery,
to wash ashore one April morning,
bloated & violet, fingernails stained
with yellow seaweed.

I was once rainwater clutched in
the milk-white teeth of a crashing wave,
black storm clouds crackling with
lightning bolts of who I was and
who I could never be.

I wake with seawater in my mouth,
a cruel simulacrum of
living water, staining my lips & neck
in the color of overripe plums.

I am water immobile,
molecules frozen in crystalline figures,
waiting for the warmth of choice, of
knowing that my fate can be more than
dead at twenty-seven to thaw my
aching limbs.

i think about water a lot...

#tragedy #life #dramatic #freeform #freeverse

serpentinium May 2018

bloom(ed)

once upon a time,
i collapsed, maw split
open like a peach,
sowing seeds of doubt
in the darkness of space.

just a small scrap of something i can’t quite figure out

#free #verse

serpentinium Apr 2018

evolution

the innocence of youth,
however brief,
remains
sheltered in
the deep sulci of the
brain;
hidden,
almost forgotten,
like vestigial organs that
mark
a species’ ancestry,
as if to say:
this is who i am,
who i was.

#science #short #freeform #freestyle

serpentinium Feb 2018

benediction

and what is there to fear
in the refuge of bedrock,
in the embrace of flaming
sword and iron shield,
in bronze hands that
cradled us when we
were but dust beneath
a night sky filled with
stars,
who spoke past the
rivulets of time to
forge seas from the
embers of dying stars
and unfurled entropy
into a flat sheet across
an ever expanding universe,
of a god who, looking at
angels with wings the
size of galaxies, sought
to make a home for
a host of insignificant
creations instead,
whose lives could be
measured out in grains
of sand, spooled in mitotic
spindles of telomeres,
fragile pieces of DNA
covered with the fingerprints
of divinity.

i like science, i like god, i like writing poems that incorporate both!

#freeform #christianity #religion #god #love

serpentinium Feb 2018

triumvirate

i. lionhearted girl
with teeth and ambitions bared
in a gentle heart.

ii. the strongest metals
between iron and silver
are your elements.

iii. a force of nature
like a warm ray of sunshine
on a winter day.

just some galentine's haikus for my 3 favorite gals!!

#haiku #traditional #friendship

serpentinium Jan 2018

Herculaneum in Two Hours

I remember a dog with matted fur lounging in the shade
of a collapsed arch, staring in a way that animals sometime
stare that makes me wonder if the beliefs of Kantianism are
nothing more than old wives’ tales spun from smoke and cinder.

I remember the faint smell of sulfur mixed with seawater
in the shadow of the volcano that poured out its wrath
by the bowlful, the golden urns of the gods spilling
fire and magma from the very cradle of hell.

I remember the empty bathhouses, the villas with
half-painted frescoes, the expensive red paints made from
crushed beetle shells, the overturned tables and chairs,
the uneven stone streets carved by horse-drawn cart wheels.

I remember the skeletons huddled in boathouses,
unearthed from their ash-spun graves for prying eyes,
for the rapid shutter of camera lenses, for the proof
of their existence, as if to leer at the living and say,

“We are all nothing but carbon and bone.”

i really enjoyed seeing the ruins of pompeii and herculaneum

#freeform #freeverse #death #history #italy #mythology

serpentinium Dec 2017

origins

it goes something like this:

(god the maker. jesus the carpenter. holy spirit the healer.)

god wills your atoms into existence,
the crashing echoes of collapsing stars
mapping the pulse of the newborn universe.

pockets of time push through black holes,
ordained to swallow the dark by a being
bathed in holiness.

the heavens are pinned into place on a
twinkling backdrop of fire, planet-making
material spread like a celestial blueprint.

“this is where my most beloved will live,” god
says, mouthless but firm, words dripping with
the first vestiges of life.

the angels crowd the first life form, shouting a collection of
“hosanna on the highest” and “glory, glory, glory,”
singing on wings the size of galaxies.

later, when the passage of time leads to
two-legged mammals, when humanity is breathed from dirt,
and then from rib, the angels are silent with awe.

god, jesus, the holy spirit, sees the world and it is good.
god, jesus, the holy spirit, sees humanity and it is good.
god, jesus, the holy spirit, sees you and it is good.

christmas always makes me nostalgic

#freeform #religious #god #christianity #evolution