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I felt your skin
strip away from me-
you said you’d be right back-
as you slipped into foreign bodies,
lips soft with easy dinners,
who forgot the lightbulb burning out,
the lid left rattling on the counter,
a suit of pots dented, stacked,
steam lifting from a rust-ringed drain.

That studio in the Texas Riviera
was never meant to last-
brown carpet, AC rattling,
bass beating through drywall,
neon from the Whataburger sign
bleeding through blinds.
We were two beautiful accidents
in a month-to-month, always paid late,
your sweat a spell pressed into my skin,
ankles grinding on parking lot gravel,
the road outside a forgotten promise.

And when you smiled I held you
like a chipped glass,
rim still sharp enough to cut.
The ember died against porcelain,
the glitter was swept with the crumbs.
Your armor slumped in the pantry corner,
rusted tins, lids unfastened.
You walked away, naked and ordinary,
the light left buzzing in the kitchen-
outside, asphalt slicked with oil-sheen,
my body, also, dissolved
into the shimmer of the road.
From the Corpus Christi journals (1993)
Even here, miles from town,
Joshua trees raise twisted arms,
like dancers locked in a song’s last note.

I lower myself,
not as a hero in the final act
but as an old father grown tired,
disc inflamed in the back,
knuckles scraped, work
too new for such an old body.

My youth spent bent in labor,
family cut away in anger.
Before I rot away in some churchyard,
I kneel with the fool’s wish
that the spring could wash it all from me.

The sun drags its red spine
across the ridge.
Stone steadies my shoulders in its cool grip
I dissolve into cloud,
a child warmed in arms of water,
its breath rising around me like ghosts.

Rain breaks, sudden and brief.
Creosote exhales its sly, eternal smell.
A cairn rises from the sand,
stones balanced without name-
its long shadow
measures this sand in silence.

Alkali on skin,
sulfur edge to air,
dust on tongue.

Gravity presses,
bone across rock,
and heat seams my back-
a mercy scraped thin,
hours from the outskirts.

A mountain hangs upside down
on the pool’s surface.
I drink not my reflection,
but the earth’s fire gone gentle.
Sorelle Aug 12
My head says
"Leave before the floor disappears
Before you wake up
With nothing but splinters
And a mouth full of questions
You already know the answer to"
My heart says
"Wait
He’s just tired
He’s just busy
He’s just trying to find the words"
Hasn’t he had enough time?
“I don’t know”
It’s a language you’ve
Decided to live in
While I’m translating
Myself into nothing
My spine folds in
My ribs start counting the days
Without you in them
I try to remember your voice
Without the hesitation
But all I hear is the pause before
“I don’t know”
I’m holding the door open for
Someone who can’t even
Look at the room
I’m swallowing glass
Calling it patience
And every piece cuts deeper
When I tell myself you’re worth it
My head says
"This isn’t love anymore
This is erosion
This is weathering yourself down
To fit a space that’s already empty"
My heart says
"No
Remember his hands
Remember the way he made the world Small enough to hold
Remember how you’d do it all again"
I think about next week
The way you’ll look at me
And say it again
And my chest will cave
And my eyes will sting
And maybe that’s the last time
Or maybe I’ll let it be another

"I don’t know"

"I don’t know"

"I don’t know"

And it’s killing me that
Neither do you
The war between the head and the heart Has no winner
Only the wreckage of loving someone who Can’t say if they want to stay
-Sorelle
fish-sama Jul 21
My queen! Inhale each grain of sand and reign!
Take all you touch: castles, footprints, poems
sung with muted cries of rasping pain.
Your servants await, bikini women and ******* men.

I stand knee-deep, each night you rise and fall,
stealing bits of me until all that remains
is an ivory statue studded with barnacle kisses.
A trip to the beach
Before you left,
I was a paradise,
A magical land of prosper and beauty.
When you left,
The rains stopped coming,
All the magic dried up to sandstone.
Then you came back,
With a river running wide,
Eroding the armored stone of my heart.
I prefer the sequel
Jeremy Betts Aug 2024
The is basically what I'm saying
United we can do anything
Divided begins the ending
A foundation's crucial to a building
Especially to the occupants who'll later will be residing
This universal truth sits, underlying
A fundamental truth we're collectively ignoring
And it will continue eroding
'Till it's left us with nothing
And this "nothing" is deserving
No matter the wording
Listen to the message we're sending
We must ignore the extremest energy both sides are implementing
Take this with a grain of salt but know this isn't simple flavoring
I don't understand the debating
If you don't get it by now what's the use of explaining

©2024
Phia Oct 2023
You peeled back
all of the layers of my existence
to reveal cracks
in my weathered being.
My soul eroded and destroyed
from the harshest of rains
and the most unforgiving storms
Just some random thoughts.
Jeremy Betts Mar 2023
A life time lost, mindlessly searchin', wanderin' aimlessly in the margin
Lingerin' in the gray, outside yet somehow dead center of socially accepted norms and action
Starved of affection, but by design, never forget to mention it feels safer with zero human interaction
Parched, withering away, no reaction, no peace, only life but just a fraction

A scorched Earth, a nightmarish vision, a dream state of my demons risen
No rhyme, no reason, no time to be forgiven, is it a sin if the motive is kept hidden?
Does one exist if forgotten? No answer if you can't remember the question
Hence then, to stay afloat one must stop the spin of the downward spiral one finds oneself in

Listen, or don't, it won't matter in the end, frightened without the knowledge of when
A last breath taken after finally on the mend, would it be different if hope wasn't given?
A permanent decision, forever finally allowed to begin but could it be considered a win?
It's all about perception, a frown flipped upside down is a grin

Eyes wide shut, lie and try to pretend they're open, heart closed off, can't repair what's been broken
A conversation with a villan disguised by the voice of a friend, a danger unspoken
Another bad omen, no one around, both voices coming from a location deep within
What's been awoken has stolen emotion and allowed the erosion to begin

...and here...we go...again...

©2023
Ken Pepiton Aug 2023
Jeffers on salvation- the eventuality, winning by grace.
Meditation On Saviors
"
Love, the mad wine of good and evil, the saint's and murderer's,
the mote in the eye that makes its object
Shine the sun black; the trap in which it is better to catch the
inhuman God than the hunter's own image.
"
Little dare I care if I hold, comprehending,
holding center most attention, intending

to behold a beauty we all share below our cares,
cast away, worry of worthlessness being made known,
when I die, and you are not made aware I was ever there.

To all the unread poets,
a muse I used has gone to offer solace devoted
to silence.
I find Jeffers, again, I walk the hills west of Mendicino County,
imagining Glass Beaches in the future, as all our excess erodes.
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