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 Mar 2013 Joseph S C Pope
robin
i warned you about this
i told you, i told you
that loving a poet leads to nothing but heartache and regret
and ringing ears and fingernail scars scoring your chest
and you told me you could handle it just fine.
i warned you about this
i told you, i told you then
that a day would come when i would project everything on you
and you would feel the brunt of my emotional monsoon
and you told me you could handle some crying.
i warned you about this
i told you, i told you
that i hate you and your stupid ******* determination to keep standing even when the wind threatens to break your legs because the oaks that stand proud fall broken
and i hate you and your words that mean ****-all and actions that mean even less
and above all i hate you and your stupid ******* decision to love me because i hate me worst of all
and you told me nothing.
you asked me once before
why i listen to my music loud,
why i let strange men scream in my ears
and interrupt my rhythm with their own.
you asked me why i listen to incomprehensible words,
where’s the aesthetic appeal in
choked screams -
you asked why i let strange men scream in my ears:
it’s better than letting you whisper.
better than letting you murmur sweet nothings -
if the screams are loud enough maybe i won’t hear you anymore.
no lover can’t you understand:
“i love you” isn’t the right answer to “i want to be alone.”
no lover can’t you understand:
your love doesn’t prove anything,
except maybe that you’re dumber than i thought,
dumb enough to waste all your life on a straw girl,
dumb enough to breathe till death do us part into a ***** hurricane.
dumb enough to follow the ghost-lights into the swamp
even after they scream at you to turn back turn back before it’s all over,
but you choke on the swamp gas and the will-o-the-wisps
just scream themselves hoarse.
resolutions make you a better person and anything’s better than murderer -
this year i resolve to die like a sociopath
alone in my room with alcoholic  fumes,
fireworks like
twentyone guns.
this year i resolve not to **** you for being gullible enough
to love me.
i resolve not to **** you  for trusting me.
i resolve to choke on my own swamp-heart,
poison gas and roots.
yes i’m alive but i harbor death -
saprotrophs are my children,
scavengers are my brothers,
and i am just the moth too much like a maggot to be a
butterfly -
oh, but i’m an aurelian
you whisper soft because the screams aren’t loud enough.
pin me to the wall with your thumbtack thoughts
and wonder why i don’t come around anymore,
why i just sit with my back against the door so you can’t break in with your
butterfly net
and your light traps:
oh you know me so well,
a will-o-the-wisp seeks its own,
and my ugly moth wings seek self-immolation.
just leave me, just leave me
don’t spear my wings and preserve me forever.
just leave me, just leave me
don’t follow me into the ***** swamp.
just leave me, just leave me
i don’t want your help i don’t want your love i just want you to leave and save yourself cause i won’t ask you to save me
and that life raft can only hold so many words.
verses are heavy things and you don’t need an anchor where you’re going.
i warned you about this.
evacuate before you’re swept away
and the strange men scream in my ears.
 Mar 2013 Joseph S C Pope
miranda
Words are supposed to free us. But I feel trapped - my thoughts cannot be expressed through writing. I feel like I’m being suffocated, buried underneath emotions I’m supposed to feel, underneath appearances I’m supposed to keep, all whilst striving to create beautiful combinations of words in my mind. Why should we connect our energies, wasting thoughts, faking tongues with meaningless conversations and shallow understandings?
I’m covered in ugly curtains. My room is too cold and smells like you and I am nostalgic, I am forgetful, I am lonely, I am bitter. I am always holding my breath.
I don’t ask for much. Car rides with the windows down and I can’t see with my hair in my face and the air is cold and it smells like cigarettes and it feels like it’s four in the morning but it’s still 6 PM. I’m only looking for the people whose dreams always glow together. And I’ll stand there quietly until I can close my eyes, puff out my chest and somehow slide myself inside the niche that I so desperately want to belong.
 Mar 2013 Joseph S C Pope
Ugo
burn the light of fire
and wax the ears of injustice.

chide the moon
and bid ado to the reckless sun.

count the blessings of misfortunes
and wave verbs in the air--
breathing the hopeful breaths of married sandals

Label the pains of a billion rain drops and fawn the feathers
of a nightingale over the glory of failed
triumphs known as yesterday.

break the hands of a wristwatch and make a ******* of time--
for through the God in Satan was how Earth was won.
 Feb 2013 Joseph S C Pope
Ugo
I remember the morning Tuesday was invented—
how gleeful we sang across the streets—
forgetting that the day after tomorrow would be Thor’s day
and that one we didn’t own, too.

I remember the bathroom stalls, the sins of Leviticus
we survived
comforting our confusion with the indulgence that God too
love man, kind.

Let the purgatory full of half good men sing about their sins
with pride and laugh at the moons and stars for being without limbs
and tongues to protest their innocence and Idontgiveadamnisms;


For I remember being fed the tenets of heterosexual history in elementary school
yet wondering why queer gods are the ones named after the planets.
In the loving memory of David Kato Kisule (c. 1964 – January 26, 2011)
*If We Keep On Hiding Away, They Will Say We Are Not Here*

— The End —