voodoo

voodoo Sep 2015

I think of you on days the odor of water makes me dry-heave.

Our photographs still throw me, offguard, into flashbulb memories. Every detail etched into my brain with a hot scalpel.

This isn’t an apology, this is a confession. I am not guilty in my eyes.

That was my hollow lava, this is what it crystallized into. Look at it, laugh at it, break it, keep it. My words were only meant to be beautiful in someone else’s eyes. In your eyes.

Drown my breath in a tub of sand, tell me everything that isn’t alright.

You can weave our veins into a dystopian novel, stamp it with 'fiction' and we can pretend it never happened.

The ordinary incinerated in your palms and I’m reeling from this hamartia.

Paint your carcinogens on my skin, carve them into my bones, punch them onto my eyes. Hold these hands one more time and feed me a blatant lie.

Feed me anything that’ll help me swallow these choked up cries.

I’ve wondered how the others were, how you were.

Was it art when you wrapped blindfolds around their necks?

What was it to them? How were they dying?

How am I dying?

Because I wake up in the odd hours, my chest feeling like it’s soaked in salt water,

and you’re standing at the edge of my bed,

with a mug of poison,

smiling,

telling me it’s okay,

it’s just a bad dream,

here, I made some coffee.

And I believe you.

for K

#love #lies #dying #poison #memory #dystopia #hamartia

Sep 2015

Tom Leveille

hands on fire

let it not be confused
let no one else's name
ring throughout these sentences
let this be a hatchet
let me put this to rest
this is not a test
i don't want to think
about shipwrecks anymore
i am tired of folding apologies
into origami birds
and placing them
at the headstones to your tantrums
this is not is not geology class
these are promises
written on razorblades
& if you are getting choked up
then maybe you should be
maybe we should be buried
with our telescopes face down
my mouth is full of sorry
all for being honest
we are falling out of orbit
we are burning bystanders
so cast away your callous condolences
because no one is clapping
in this waist deep water
this is not a baptism
so do not tell strangers
that this was a chance to drown
any differently
i am not a catalogue
of constellations you cannot name
this is not mythology
so stop believing your horoscope
i am not a wishing well
i am just a wall for you
to paint post nuclear fallout & antonyms for catharsis on
we destroy the things
that are not ours-
the wanton ways
we embody wrecking *****
and then cry over the rubble
this is not a heap or a mosaic
this is leaping
off a thousand story building
with no one to catch you
at the bottom & maybe
that's why some quiet moments
are so fragile, maybe that's why butterflies have mimicry
your words are black powder
and poetry is your musketry
i guess that makes me your blindfold

Sep 2015

Tom Leveille

submissions to post secret

kissing you was like swerving into oncoming traffic

i can never tell if i am more haunted by empty picture frames or the ashes of their contents

you taught me that the saying "pick your battles" meant not answering when love was at the door

sometimes when i drink whiskey i swear i can hear your voice in the creases of my bedsheets & i sleep on the floor

i still catch myself running my hands over things you touched the most, looking for the echoes of your fingertips

i practice things i'll never say to you

i remember the day you told me you didn't like poetry, how "everything's already been said" & how "nothing meaningful can be captured without being cliche" you know, i don't miss you like the sun and moon, i do not miss you like tide bent waves crashing on the shoreline, i miss you like a chernobyl swingset misses children

rumor has it that drowning is a lot like coming home, that drinking bleach can **** the butterflies in your stomach

for your love of cigarettes, i would have been an ashtray

this halloween i want to dress up as the you when you loved yourself and show up on your doorstep

i never understood what you meant when you said i was an instrument, back when you would cup your hands around my chest and breathe through the holes in my heart, i still wonder if the sounds i made remind you of wind chimes

i never paid much attention to abandoned buildings until i became one

in my dreams all the flowers smell like your perfume

i am the only person who has ever wished for the same snowflake to fall twice

if i could go back, and rewrite the definition of audacity, it would be how when we lost the bet of love, you said "we never shook on it"

i love you, if the feeling is not mutual, please pretend this was a poem

the only apology i want from you, is to have you repeat the names of children we will never have in your parents living room until they *****

we are the same person if you find yourself up at 4am dry heaving promises, or if you are kept awake by the laughter of those who've abandoned you

nobody ever told you that goodbyes taste like the back of stamps

sometimes i'm convinced that the only reason we hug, is so you can check my back for exit wounds

Sep 2015

Tom Leveille

carousel

i always thought
you were thru traffic
that you were just jet lag
background noise
the kiss in the rain
i've never had
but what if you aren't?
what if this
was the thousandth time
i have loved you?
what if this is just a fresh coat of paint?
what if god
keeps a handkerchief
soaked in the day we met
next to his bed?
maybe theres a reason
i reach for no one in bed
the way i would
if someone used to be there
you know, they say
the road behind us
is littered with things
we couldn't hold onto
i wonder how many times
you've slipped through my hands
like hour glass sand
do you know
how much erosion you've caused?
i heard cupid
stopped keeping count
of how many times
we came together
just to come apart again
maybe it was just a rumor
it makes me think
about how many times
i've almost had you
like if all this talk
about history repeating itself
endlessly replaying is true
i wonder how many times
things have happened already
like the time
i tried talking you
into loving me back
back fired
or the time i could have sworn
jesus & lazarus were playing chess
with my heartbeat
but it was only you smiling
how many times
have i tried to tell you
how many times
have you read this poem
how many times
have i tried not to meet you
in my dreams anymore
it's like sleep tries to warn
me of what's happening
before it does but
i keep having this dream
where i tell you bedtime stories
and each one
is a different way you die
and in every one
i can never save you
it's like you're this song
i have on repeat
and every time it starts over
i forget the words
it's like you picked up the book entitled "us"
and the back cover
said you'd leave
so you never bothered reading it
tell me you aren't
going back in that bookstore
just to do it again
or will you tell me tomorrow?
or is this the time
you don't say anything at all?
if this has all happened before
if we call it quits
before we begin
again
from the beginning
i just want to ask you
to be my fire
because i am tired
of these old lives
and i'd like to see them
burn

Sep 2015

Aarya

For Ellen:

If I could,
I would pick up my ink pen
and drown an ocean into you
instead of drowning you in it.
Extract these rotting feelings
for the sake of your ignorance.
Carve scriptures into each delicacy of your brain
so you wouldn’t have to dwell in such misery every day.
Wire faith
to your blemished heart.
Imbue purity
to your sullied soul.
If I could,
I would write you through all depths of insanity
without any harm
so that your
mind no longer persists the thought of death.
There was a time I thought you were dead.
Only you were painted red
in a black and white world.
Like you have been walking barefoot on a broken road
your whole life.
Your demons imitate life
And life imitates the demons.
You are the one being tied down by invisible, nonexistent chains.
So unaccepting of help that has come for you
Watch
the sun touch the horizon
reach the meeting of sun and ground
and
Find further still,
The limits you would like to reach only run from you.
You have such a murderous tongue
for society
people.
But one day I hope to see you write yourself into existence
Rather than to let yourself drown in it.
Why has you dying become something so habitual?
Darling, death is not a friend of yours
Nor are you a friend of his.
But I know of your frequent dates with death
Tell me
Does his neck feel like happiness
And do his lips relieve you of your suffocation
Now
are you lost?
or are you found?
Do you recognize the irony
Of the most terrifying things happening in the most angelic places
Charm yourself upon that bridge
Whose lights light up the city in golden arrays
With a glazed look
you’d think.
In sadness seen go by
You are charmed by either war or hope.
These occurred robberies have taken much
But they left opportunity
Important people
And a moon in your window
A future that only you know the ending of
And a slice of the midnight sky.
So it goes.

Sep 2014

Tom Leveille

emergency room knuckles

i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear