#annesexton
Your demons don’t play well with mine,
They bite and they bruise and entwine.
Yours weaponize tears,
Mine whisper, come near.
The chaos is purely divine.
We drift to escape, dark and slow,
They bloom with our secrets and grow.
Yours pull at my seams;
Mine knot in your dreams.
A dance only demons could know.
Jul 24, 2025
Jul 24, 2025 at 10:31 PM UTC
i remember five months from now
how i sprawled across your lap like chainlink
and you traced an urban skyline
peeking through my skin.
i asked which radio tower was your favorite.
what's most beautiful about the city
we have yet to build.
Feb 10, 2020
Feb 10, 2020 at 12:22 AM UTC
City cops, either
all pigs or all fathers,
break cement curbs with rubber
as the shin of a warm body
brushes a front bumper;
warning sign clearer than headlights.
I stand arrested across the highway.
An idle ghost, mouth agape, eyeballing
the Record Courier parking lot,
officers breaking cement
breaking kneecaps of a civilian.
Where he kisses the ground
I once analyzed the black of the sun,
diseasing slowly from time and the light.
I soaked the now with a present mind
and active heart, living for life
defined by want.
I recall Impressionist interpretations
of Carson Valley sitting on
the windowsill of the Courier,
a hand wrapped around my wrist
using its nails to pick off my skin
naively, so I’ll bleed out
through my scabs and my corpse
will be captured in that moment.
Handcuffed, legs pressed
between my shoulder blades,
but seconds still pass.
Divorced from a faded past,
I wait until three uniforms
shove a man into the backseat
and drive to the station.
We’re now shadows of
our former selves in
the lights of a cop car,
separated from when
our heartbeats were the loudest.
May 1, 2019
May 1, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
There’s a house Anne built
with a crumbling frame,
she’d eat the paint chips
off the wood and dream
of a sun set she’d parallel
as an identical being.
A life cycle of dissolving
lithium batteries in *****
chasing doctor death
by staying still. Carbon
monoxide filled the cavities
in her brain and her corpse,
a beautiful foundation
destroyed in broad daylight,
do loved ones say goodbye
over the remains.
And in blood visions I see
the home I’ll put together
and tear apart. Is what’s
inevitable a tragedy?
If I stay in the garage
and let the car run,
the wood in the floorboards
would still be fresh. Anne,
my future is in all the
architecture I’ve admired.
If they’re all delusions,
then reality’s a great
impressionist and I’ve
been picking off all
of the yellow paint.
I will set with the sun,
I will set with the sun
when day time comes
to an end. and over
what’s left standing,
say goodnight rather
than goodbye.
Apr 11, 2019
Apr 11, 2019 at 4:52 PM UTC
i see the same hillside.
with you, completely
there, growing into
something taller
than skylines
with broken ribs.
your breaths fall
out your body
over me. the way
your pupils expand
in shock works
like flood lights
into the dusk.
our lips split
as a still
landscape,
with your breaths
still warm. my ribs
crack to the beat
of my heart.
i see the same hillside,
skyways and all,
with you, completely,
in the black of your eyes.
Apr 11, 2019
Apr 11, 2019 at 2:35 AM UTC
love is what love is; i've always spoken it into monuments. their eyes would be pearls among cheeks captured in marble, and i spent a lot of time time tracing bone to bone over the bridge of my nose thinking if my touch is the same as others'. love is what love is and i've acted as Midas. under all the suns kisses are dandelions, we run through the blossom. in the scratched blackheads there's pollen and i lie fetal as a raisin and whisper **** it out". break my shoulders, whiten your hands, **** it out.
love is what love is; I've started to wonder if raindrops **** intimately, so the pollen pours out at paint's pace. love is what love is what's real is what's slow. i can count blackheads among vacuum suction marks. water trickles down the post, jogs after each other 'til one catches the other in matrimony. i wonder if they **** if they love, and if the rising action is longer than what i have to live. but love is what is, slowly but surely. moments in time can't be lost if rain ***** forever.
Apr 10, 2019
Apr 10, 2019 at 2:54 PM UTC
i could have been a field medic,
you suggested, with my gentle touch
running down the thin skin
of your spinal notches. i bite my
nails but i still could pinch glass
out of your pores and press my hand
so red would fill my palm lines.
the version of i, completed with you,
is a war vet’s firework dream
of what grandeur really is.
you’d talk of lactating with
your closed wounds, we’d retire
to a wheat farm, and i’d plant your
stomach into the garden. maybe the
baby’s blood cells pump forsythia.
our favorite, but really, yours.
i could still be a field medic, you
suggest, but not the only one.
i’d stitch slits when, if ever,
rain comes down on bare you
planted & abandoned
in the flower bed. you’d
still lactate, just wouldn’t
bleed. and the planted baby
would know me as a father
or a gardener but i’ll only
ever be a medic. the
statue i once was,
imperfections cleared,
is crushed marble on
a mausoleum floor.
medic can’t recover with
no bones to heal.
Apr 1, 2019
Apr 1, 2019 at 6:44 PM UTC
I break down into a heartbeat
through a whipped cream canister;
God’s feet whomp at the Pearly Gates.
Incapable of sin, I’m unable to think.
Love jitters through every pore
of my skin & laughter drools
out. In an out-of-body only
Malcolm In The Middle exists
when Dewey asks, “is your
brain big enough to get
your feelings hurt? Me
neither”. My life replicates
art, choking out brain cells,
and I no longer have to know
what my heart feels. My brain
is too small for that.
Mar 26, 2019
Mar 26, 2019 at 5:59 PM UTC
i.
i watch people die.
the romance moves slowly
on camera film; a lover
crashing through pvc
to kiss pavement,
windows behind relay
a tragedy captured
with ***** lights.
ii.
i transcribe scripts
to my bathroom mirror.
i see no Winslet.
green in my eyes
mark an imperfect creature,
no feeder's hand to bite.
i speak to my reflection
in self indulgence.
iii.
i don't have a role to play.
who i am is minors and leads
of movies shaped by the past,
but gas on the celluloid
makes the memory blur.
feelings died with the character
dead in the past.
iv.
i just watch people die.
casablanca;
temporary love rejected
when the bone and
the heart shatters.
v.
i don't know who i'll become.
i don't know if i'll become.
Mar 20, 2019
Mar 20, 2019 at 2:56 AM UTC
wherever you go, there you are
in a world of silver legacy
where all you feel are
living emotions of memories
you thought were dead;
hands on the dash,
passenger seat,
their eyes are too friendly.
glass ***** that act
like warm pillows, i'm
ready to fall asleep.
no melatonin,
no split palms or slit wrists,
no fever dreams of vision loss
where i'm left a
broken nose bruised beauty.
i'll be a beauty, or something like that,
but i won't be nothing
like i've been recently.
Feb 5, 2019
Feb 5, 2019 at 8:42 PM UTC
you said:
"pull my hair",
and so i did.
dragging the albatross across
pavement stretching several states
i turn my back to where i'm going
for a fishermanwomxnbeing
to spear me in the back and
hang me as one of their own
in case your feathers get bent
and crows tear at your meat
until i'm wearing nothing but a
skeleton at my ankles
but even then i doubt any killer
will pry my mouth open the way
you did when you wanted me to
feed and even then i doubt
they would look at me with
the affectionate fear you had
of never having the sight of
two glass worlds you thought of
as yours again and even then i doubt
anyone would be able to **** me
because i'd be dead already
if i was completely without you
and no evasive species
has the strength or the claws
to drag you sea from sea
and open their wings wide enough
to envelop you with the warmth
of the beating heart you've called
your pillow for as long as
you have been sleeping well
and asking me to pull your hair
and so i have but i am tired
of begging for my own ******
as i drag you around because
you aren't my albatross.
you're the one i love
and i'll carry you as such.
saying "I love you I love my baby
I love my baby so yes yes oh yes
you can fall asleep in my arms
forever you will always be safe
you will always be loved"
whenever I'm carrying you
until we can
fly together forever.
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 3:54 PM UTC