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vermin Jan 2012
[one]

love is:
a recipe without quantities, the pages all torn out and set back at random
here you are, take it, put the pieces back together
with no frame of reference
no identifying features
each part has innumerable intricate delicate machinery
that you will break, clumsily.
because you have no idea how to use it
and if you break  it
you can neverever put it together right.
it will always be half unfinished
a line with the ending word
- minused
cut
dropped

forgotten or misused
lied to and abused
abandoned or pursued

[two]

this betrayed feeling can't begin to cover
the dismay when reeling from a bitter lover
in disarray fleeing from a sinful tether
bells gently pealing to mourn a death letter
unencumbered kneeling before a cement header
diving, graceless, screaming descent forever

praying without hope to a remorseless deity
something like asking a black hole for salvation
like looking into the mirror and seeing the Void
staring out at you with those self-loathing eyes
and knowing why you let that Beast reside

cupping in your hands the black foam that runneth over
glass teeth disintegrating in a holocaust skull
chewing up love like the last morsel of gristle
drunken tales told to bewitch the last symbol
but you're not bold enough to release the animal

so it rages inside
terrified
alive
cage-eyed
wild
the treaty for your freedom is in your peaceful kingdom
find it and flee from all the things you've become
sit down to rest your weary in the warmer season
but the fear will always find you
when the bravery has lost its reason
vermin Dec 2011
sometimes you wish things were different
that every day wouldn't wake up the same homely person
somehow you could be ****** into something less generic
less like your life, where each boring second

is dripping a canyon in your heart's ice age
theorize that maybe you speak a hidden language
something ancient, that can unlock dead secrets
by virtue of how your eyes drift in a set of hexes

if you drew white triangles on the right misty morning
you'd wake up anew to a beautiful sun dawning
and a garden of different faces to choose from
pick one that smells of fresh rain on iron

that never distorts into angry clouds spitting caustic words

you dream about that perfect jawline and how the hair falls just right

but then

you remember

oh

...

this isn't my perfect picture, this is human
this is
bleeding
broken
bruised
a flurry of imperfections
a talented accident
an impossibly improbable confluence of the shy words love speaks
planted by chance
abruptly lucky
forcing a hand out of the ground to grasp the air that flees
as though you knew this destination was perilous
by virtue of murky precognition through your electric embryo
as though your mother had muttered all the secrets before she killed you
and sent you again through the white door to cold air
so now you chant and you pose and you powder your nose
forcing yourself behind glass
into a frame
stood up straight
leering into the mirror just to steer yourself queerer
fighting natural finesse [in compatible] dresses
used to be so perfect
under the knife you're worthless
wishing in wells and walking on shells
someday you just might reverse it
vermin Dec 2011
I want to kiss your cheek in the morning,
to write love on your arms with my hands,
these broken things so undeserving of your worship.

You saw me when my skin was broken,
when I clung to all that had left,
when my love was wasted on gutter dreams.

So now I seek your hands,
the ones that held me so close,
when I was too scared to be loved.

New moments holding a memory sweet but harsh,
like the times you were mine, yet never us,
never something that held any trust.

Nobody makes me laugh like you do,
still I'm uncertain, uneasy in your eyes,
everything I want, yet our sentiment is strange.

A liar's tongue, a braggart's mouth,
the ways we increase this love's promise,
but I'll never find a way to tell it all.

Maybe I sensed it in the beginning,
how we'd always be star crossed
and I'd always want more from you.

...but now it's different
"protege moi, protege moi"
I see you and I'm home.

maybe this always was
the one thing
we'd never know the meaning of

lucky to trust
bound by love
hands intertwined forever
vermin Nov 2011
listen and look,
honey,
dear,
sweetie,
baby,
won't you shut the hell up,
you're driving me crazy.
I'd survive if you'd save me
but

love hasn't saved anyone I've ever met.
maybe someone who wants to know what to expect
like
home before dark and promises never kept,
and secrets in the park with naked words

frozen
on the lips of an adulterous misstep.

this is useless to those who crave the subtle bliss,
who enumerate ridges of skin dedicated with a kiss
and
catalog nerve endings that shiver and resist . and . just . (quiver to exist)
so promises never need be made,
so we can fall apart and it won't matter, none of this

we never needed a place in a poem or a dictionary,
just a dial tone or a few letters to arrange
to call home and portray the strange
and… try… to find a word…
that rhymes with… dictionary

never trying to deny
our eyes cannot lie,
they will fade from glory.
like the dead,
like you and I

like we needed to fake these scrawling notes
that claw for understanding of mistakes we once wrote,
inky sketches that wax polemical over a misquote
and crying starry eyes over favorite chemicals,
the elements we conjure with, so verbose and so broke,
over coffee and cigarettes and mostly ***** jokes
vermin Nov 2011
in a dark autumn forest, five creatures
strangely glow, cold peaked ears are blue,
rhythms of thudding, scudding boots
full of youth, synchronized they run,
outlined in neon, nearly covered in fur,
running amok in the hungry dark.

what do they search for in the dark?
all keening, these tempestuous creatures.
what propels them? what makes their fur
stand on end? faces an oxygen-less blue
as arms are locked and strong legs run
with the heavy monotony of feet in boots.

driven by laughter and labored breath, boots
thunder up dewy hills, disturbing the dark
loam underfoot, disheveled as the wind runs
through and into and throughout these creatures,
and the trees, and the strange aura of blue
surrounding a juggling man with hair like wolf fur.

he is levitating, has eyes like a burning fur-
nace, is manipulating boxes of light, wears boots
that make him seven feet tall, his is the blue
of martyrs, of imagination sacrificed to dark
forces, alight like clicking live wires the creatures
tumble on, finding a new reason to run

toward a long, narrow, white hallway they run
across an empty street, a nearby raccoon's fur
bristles as they break all boundaries, these creatures,
all sharp claws and fearless teeth and stomping boots,
assault the stillness of closed doors and early dark
morning eyes just beginning to distinguish the blue

of the sun's prologue, a deep and melancholy blue.
charging the hall doors, they dance and thump and run
down the shadowed interior, adjacent rooms dark
but for the lights of the lonely and static cat fur.
on wooden floors the cacophonic burst of boots
rumble like wild animal's hooves, here come the creatures!

and as the sun illumines dark corners in orange and blue,
through untidy mists these creatures continue to run,
all flailing limbs and matted fur and brawling boots.

— The End —