voodoo

voodoo Sep 2023

asking someone you love about the weather

I never thought about love when I thought about home. never felt the pulse of it.

the sun kisses my side of the planet but never touches my skin. I try to twist the knife inside me,

write lines that gut and bleed

but not every lived moment draws pain and demands witness. not every morning

clothes itself in deep indigo and creeps in on lithe legs to sit on my chest. my breath

no longer entwines with yours — you with your feet on the ground,

rhymes and rhythms are all the same to you. you move like you know you belong,

like the very air around you

rushes to meet your limbs. and yours met mine with a reverberating heartbeat.

I tell you I never think about love when I think about home, but

to me there is no difference between going home and rushing across the state to you.

and when they start to pull apart, both moving in opposing orbits

your corner of the planet a stranger to my house,

I’ll call you, listen to your voice wax poetic about new love,

and in the silence that follows I’ll ask you,

“Is it cold there, too?”

#poem #poetry #love #loss #absence

voodoo Jun 2022

skincrawler

oh, lovely –

another of my ugly insecurities has come undone –

unraveling from my heart, tumbling across the space between us,

ungainly in its amble towards your feet.

if i’m sorry, will that be too little? if i perform an even bigger act of affection

(not always only for compensation)

will that be too much?

was it too much the last time?

as you watch me scramble for words, for explanations,

for comprehension of my own actions,

are you sick of me?

does it make your stomach turn to see my flaws? it sure does make mine.

i can’t tell you 𝘪 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 without lying

that 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦, 𝘪 𝘸𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥.

anyway, would you like some tea while we watch this show?

this tragedy of errors on an endless timeline?

anything else to make your experience better?

am i condescending when i ask for concern? is it fun to battle my quiet anger with your quiet neglect?

i’m sorry, maybe i assume too much. actually, i’m sure i do.

it’s so humiliating to find meaning in everything even when i know better.

oh, lovely –

yet another insecurity.

#selfhate #poem #abandonment #insecurity #anxiety

Jun 2020

blankpoems

If my hands could tell a story

If my hands could tell a story, they'd say how your spine always looked beautiful in the morning,
when the sun's rays created shadows that danced along your back and flirted with your neck
like they'd never meet again.
They'd say how your lips always curved upwards as if they were saying hello.
If my hands could tell a fairytale, there'd be no happy ending,
there'd be no end at all.
I wish my lips could finally part to say the right things,
because all I want to do is hear your name roll off my tongue,
in the same sentence as "you're mine".
I want them to tell the story of your lips,
red, and taunting and always mysterious.
I always got a toothache when you weren't in the room.
I think I need a root canal.
If my knees could speak they'd tell you how lovely it was
to bend to curl to your legs.
If my knees could tell a story, they'd describe the cold, hard
bitter kiss of death they shared with the pavement so many times
when I found your bags at the door.
If my knees could beg, they'd ask for forgiveness.
For being too bony, too weak,
for not being able to support your dreams.
(I'd give up anything now for that little apartment in New York
and nothing but two typewriters)
If my fingers had a chance, they'd trace the familiar lines of your collarbones
and over your shoulders, because by now they've committed them to memory.
If my fingers had a chance, they'd hold yours again.
They say to stay away from broken people but I saw you as a puzzle
just waiting for someone to put you back together again.
If my eyes could tell a story they would whisper softly of your flowing hair
and pixie-like body.
They would ask you to stay.
They would jump out of my body to give you a glimpse of how I see you.
They would show you how utterly unprecedented you are.
If I believed in heaven I would tell you that you're a miracle.
That you are something I wished upon for years as a child.
You are a star.
You are a supernova.
You are a black hole, ******* me in and twisting me about until I am nothing
but battered limbs and my broken heart.
You are God with the Devil's kiss.
If my lips could move they'd say "stay".
You were mine.

voodoo May 2020

powder room

white surfaces flash in fluorescent lighting –

this is no opus, heaving on cold bathroom tiles,

blood and grain against porcelain,

convulsing creature in all its grotesque obloquy:

bleary and snotting. four-walled, windowless, antiseptic vivarium;

life crawls outside. it thrives, it devours, it fortifies.

inside, here, it repulses. ****** effluvium of all kinds.

sharp shrieks of skin across glossed floor, tears soak

before the cliff of the jaw. nothing stays.

wiping drool off the sterile sink and sweat off my knotted back.

snarls choking into sobs, sobs gasping for air.

this is no opus; blackening from corners,

the repugnant vignette held between fingernails –

for the contagious odium of the resigned abhorrent

bleeds and drips and stains.

neglect and rejection strewn like pearls,

pearls, worth nothing, feeling everything.

a fly buzzes in the stark fluorescent light,

and blackness climbs in. blackness consumes.

#napowrimo #depression #selfhate #grotesque #gothic #poem

voodoo Apr 2020

dreams of a dryad

under the sludge of this depression, I am awake. it’s morning outside but that doesn’t change a thing.

tiredness takes me to quiet places. I follow like I’m devout.

this forest is new. there’s a drumming of a heartbeat within the trunks of these trees.

it thrums under my fingertips. blood rushes forward to touch this rhythm.

songbirds nest, plume against plume for love and for rest. the birdsong is sweet as saccharine.

I taste the sap on my lips, its nectar, thick with agape. a salve for myriad laments under the roof of a single bell jar.

the indigo sky convulses, telling of fortunes. the clouds retch gilded roses.

blades of grass fence the circumferences of leaves in gypsy winds. the forest warms like a flame.

my body sways in solipsistic wonder. the crescents of my nails are crusted with lichen.

my limbs are drawn into its boughs, like gravity. like the bark is starved.

my mind is foliage and my crown is littered with inflorescence. my sky is finally cerulean and lilac.

each gall is an ancient hurt. each wound is a knot.

I breathe my mourning. I wait to bloom.

#dryad #napowrimo #dream #poetry #poem #hozier #depression #self #heart #sadness

voodoo Apr 2020

quietus

even when I was little I had a hard time leaving wounds alone —

the absent-minded uprooting of scabs and the slow flame of revived pain.

to bleed in so many small ways, to be so oblivious to being real.

if only they were tiny sacrifices, tiny offerings to whoever dealt out hurt and sadness, if only they were enough to keep my nose above water.

I find myself lost within four walls in more ways than one.

they say you should smoke sage in all your corners,

smudge its grey into the darkness. they say it puts the past to rest.

I burn leaves and I burn grass and I burn letters and thoughts and touches and it makes me blacker, blacker, blacker.

the remains of grief wait, latched shut in its music box. I can’t bear its singing. I can’t tear this flesh off my bones. I can’t make myself fiction.

but you did. you did and now I fade into a ballad not even worth its weight in the heartbreak it rhymes.

to have sought poetry only to plummet into misery. to have the currency of my decomposing tongue and no concoction of words to soothe the damage.

the rot runs deep. the rot is real. the rot is all I feel.

you’re all the lives kept out of my reach

#love #loss #poetry #napowrimo #depression #grief #witchcraft #childhood #sadness

voodoo Apr 2020

static achromatic

I scrape the crust at the folds of your reflection.

it’s dismaying to know we’ve to retire yet another door.

I keep tasting grey everywhere I go. I wish something would surprise me.

every day blends into the next,

a cocktail with no flavour but plenty of potency,

drowning memory and time into glasses of obsolescence.

so I go on burying my ichor in dirt.

you, in your temperamental Lethe —

you can mourn your loss and

you can lash your back in repentance and

you can swear you’ll never let your heart beat in your hands again and

you can swallow each year of sorrow like a bitter pill and

you can chase it with the poison of amnesia to **** the ghosts of loss and

I will stay on my toes because hope is petulant

and she knows how to resuscitate the dead

even when lungs and worlds collapse.

I’ve lived in goodbyes for long enough to know their taste in words

but you never let me kiss them off your lips so I’ll breathe —

and I’ll hope that hope does what she can.

#love #loss #grief #depression #hope #past #ghosts #death #regret