#spilledpoetry
My love is the shape of canine teeth and claw marks
I leave around your neck,
the way I leave poems decaying in an unforgiving landfill —
the gods have turned away in disgust
as I sit and lick, like a rabid dog,
the maggots chipping away from the inside —
the entrails of my grief, all pulled out without mercy,
without a deathbed confession,
without a god to listen.
I long for something else to unfold;
something sacred and beautiful
when you turn my body inside out, but lo.
This is as deep and far as we go.
Tell me, I beseech, does my filth look better inside out,
uncovered, on display,
penetrating your very skin?
Take what you need, love, they are all yours —
my sins, my wounds, my impiety
in exchange for your darkened heart — I’ll spit it out
and swallow it back
down to my underbelly where no one can ever take it —
not you, not the gods, not their fallen, forsaken angels.
Forgive me — forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.
Forgive my unforgiving hands, forgive my unforgiving poems
if our sick, twisted, defilement is all they ever know.
Dec 13, 2022
Dec 13, 2022 at 9:41 PM UTC
Such a classic mortal blunder to lay
my spine as it erodes, graceless, inelegant
on Galatea’s cold, ivory arms;
such delicate carvings can never be human, look human,
feel human under my lonesome bones.
I long to see you flinch and break
into fine, liquid, rain of dust blinding me,
covering the walls of this room
in a blameless shade of white: a new asylum ward
for my kind of insanity,
you say.
It envelopes like light around my awe
and my forlorn limbs,
tangled with Galatea’s unmoving ones.
I look for comfort within brittle carcasses
scraped of everything they could ever give.
The quiet persists eerily.
But here, Pygmalion’s gifts remain untainted:
the apex of auger shells, the beak of a songbird
the blunted ceriths, the rusty chisels
all impaling my spinal bones.
Yet the sculptor’s kisses, long erased,
the careful carvings, long defaced,
long reduced into a Grecian ruin.
I bury my body on your arms yet they find no rest
against the ghostly pleas of mammalian tusks.
How many for your fingers?
How many for your hair?
Tell me, Galatea, were you carved to bear the weight of
all the sea salt I swallowed as I drowned?
Soften under my meandering thoughts; I long
to see you flinch and break — like all the dead elephants —
any reminder that you yield pliantly to the voice
of the love goddess, that you were once turned human.
Break now, your solid arms, under my own collapse
over the sea foam caught on fire.
I am no longer bending and weeping to pick myself up.
Here it all goes down and ends:
my bones,
and yours,
burning,
snapping.
Nothing —
nothing less glorious will last after us.
— Fray Narte
Dec 5, 2022
Dec 5, 2022 at 10:05 PM UTC
slice my tongue until the pieces resemble flower petals — until poems tremble on my very lips. on summer afternoons, they will look like the dried amaranths on your bedside table — in a city apartment you left. slice my tongue until the pieces resemble smoky quartz. it will sit quietly — each side showing the wild and quiet ways of aching. slice my tongue until it heals its wounds — until the sunset casts what's left of its light, and maybe my state of decay will finally look beautiful.
May 15, 2021
May 15, 2021 at 2:08 AM UTC
dig me a boneyard in a field of daffodils —
beneath their sunlit softness
and rustling leaves;
they aren't the first things
my body would ever taint.
i used to tremble as sunlight ran down my skin:
a crouching, wounded fawn
that knew no god —
and if there was, it would be of death.
i used to tremble as sunlight ran down my skin,
before dissolving into
a thousand foreign sorrows i cannot name.
now, sunlight just leaves a trail of smoke —
a forest fire beneath my feet
and no ashes to rise from.
now the rain just falls passively on the soil
but what good is petrichor
when it's your body that rots beneath the dust?
for out of it were you taken;
and unto it shall you return.
dig me a boneyard in a field of daffodils —
beneath their sunlit softness
and rustling leaves;
they aren't the first things
my body would ever taint.
dig me a boneyard and call it transgression.
i was not the first thing
i did ever taint.
Jan 21, 2021
Jan 21, 2021 at 1:51 AM UTC
to kiss you senseless until i am a seaglass buried deep inside your skin. to lick salt off your palms with paper-cut lips, until each breath has gone haywire. to quietly sigh your name until it baptizes my heathen tongue. oh, the wars i would start; the wars i would end — darling, there is something soothing about all the violent ways i can love you.
Jan 7, 2021
Jan 7, 2021 at 4:05 AM UTC
i.
the scent of sorrow, hanging in the air
rotting away what's left of this skin.
wrists — sewn shut
are wrists undone:
the morbidity of it all pervades —
this i confess.
ii.
look not. turn not, for
each careful stare, each scornful gaze
has me falling back into darkness;
maybe eurydice has found comfort in its arms.
maybe so have i.
maybe this is how it's always meant to end.
iii.
lately, sunsets no longer melt
into an afterglow —
they just turn into the night.
at least it dims
the futility of drawing each shallow breath
from places filled with smoke and dust;
there used to be something there:
this, i confess.
this, i remember.
there used to be something there.
there used to be something h e r e.
— fray // november, must you be so cruel to my trembling hands left with no heart to break?
Nov 22, 2020
Nov 22, 2020 at 6:04 AM UTC
कुछ कहानियाँ,
कहानियाँ ही रह जाती हैं।
न वो अधूरी होती हैं,
न वो कभी पूरी हो पाती हैं।
वो अक्सर लोगों को,
समझ नहीं आती हैं।
पर फिर भी ये कहानियाँ,
लोगों को करीब लाती हैं।
Aug 5, 2020
Aug 5, 2020 at 4:00 PM UTC
ये आँखे आत्मा का दरपन है,
बिन बोले सब बयान कर देती है।
छिपाती नहीं कुछ भी ये,
इंसान का हर राज़ बतादेती है।
झूठ इनकी फ़ितरत में नहीं,
ये तों सच का साथ ही देती है।
झाँकना हो किसीकी मन में तों,
रास्ता भी यहीं बतादेती है।
Jun 16, 2020
Jun 16, 2020 at 2:31 PM UTC
ऐ आने वाले पल
कोई तो अच्छी खबर लेकर आ।
बहुत देख लिए दुख सबने,
अब तो थोड़ी खुशी देकर जा।
कब तक मैं आँसु बहाऊंगा,
कब तक इस दर्द को छुपाऊंगा।
एक बार तों मुझ पर रहम तू खा,
या छोड़ तनहा या जिन्दगी से मिलवा।
Jul 5, 2020
Jul 5, 2020 at 2:44 AM UTC
& today when
I sat to write down
my feelings,
I found that the
pen I carried had
no ink & the paper
was already drenched
with my tears
& so I scribbled my
thoughts with the blood
that dribble off my
fingers on these
rough walls that
caged my soul.
~your smiling queen :)
Dec 4, 2019
Dec 4, 2019 at 9:39 PM UTC
midnights still find me retracing the moments
that led to our thousand lakeside kisses;
they were secrets left in a summer dream.
each second — a bowline knot
leading straight to our
late night drives
and vehicle breakdowns
and last minute goodbyes
at the break of dawn.
midnights still find me sleeping
next to a shoebox of the books you left;
i still hear your voice
when i read the lines
of your favorite paragraphs
the clock hands, mocking,
leading me through a maze of
memories and parking lot conversations.
midnights still find me rewriting histories
with resin-pressed flowers,
maybe the petals will point to where
i started losing you —
and maybe it's in every direction.
the black, bold numbers have become my crumbs
leading to road trips and
to all the bus stops we missed,
kissing;
now i still miss my stop
without your lips next to mine.
and midnights still find me
writing poems like these
but clearly,
you're too far off
for these words to reach.
and now, midnights still find me wanting you back.
and 'til now, midnights still find you gone.
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 7:52 AM UTC
my idea of love
is diving headfirst
into the corners of your mind.
Jul 15, 2019
Jul 15, 2019 at 7:07 AM UTC
With me, you don’t have to dip every word on a honeycomb or flip through tattered pages looking for unused metaphors or make sure that every line is in its most poetic form. Darling, I don’t even want poetry or structured sonnets and all that cliché crap with coffee cups and sheets.
With you, I want the raw — the grammatical slips and the illegible penmanships and the 3 am honesty and the ****** up, messed up thoughts when you’re angry at the world. Darling, with you, I want the things poets don’t write — things poets don’t read.
Jun 26, 2019
Jun 26, 2019 at 11:19 PM UTC