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Andrew Rueter Oct 2019
You’re my afterburn anchor
your array askew
alike an abnormal apparition
an affecting avalanche
asked to dance
with an atom ant.

Size is relative
to the hell you give.
You aggressively grow
in my mind
I shrink in size.

I feel your essence
weighing down on me
like an anchor in my cognition
scraping the bottom of my brain
kicking up dirt from the trenches.

Floating
in space
I find a black loop-
hole and crawl inside
to find the avarice
of imagination.

A fantasy develops
where a disciple
stands before God
and is treated as an equal.

A reality develops
where a heretic
stands before God
and is punished for living in a fantasy.
Kyle Kulseth Jan 2016
It aches when I smile.
My State's a disaster.
Coal rollers, burnouts and days full of rapturous
laughter and "Red Face"
down in Lusk in the hot days
of Summer--it's boiling;
Winter winds burn up your face.
I first learned to hate
myself in a snowstorm
on Dow Street in Sheridan.
My best friends are the slow warmth
that spreads through the chest,
lifts a cold heart, grabs popcorn and pints
at the Blacktooth on hundreds of nights.
And 500,000 simple souls are a sight.
Still they're just half a million salty
drops in the ocean--
A quick squall of rain on the Bighorns.
They've opened the floodgates for *******,
morons, bigots and rednecks
and rich, ******* ranchers thinking
          everyone owes them.
And their dollars are deadpan
gallows jokes down in Cheyenne.
But I've seen cheap smiles 4 miles wide
out by Sundance.
And I've got good friends that I still carry with me
like the potent, sweet, earthy afterburn of good whiskey,
or the smell of the lodgepoles in the Spring
up in Story.
And it's still my home
even though it's so empty.
It's still my home
though it sometimes seems ******.
That State's in my bones,
I don't think it'll leave me.
So please understand that some nights
when you find me,
you've stumbled across a small splinter
chipped off of Wyoming.
My relationship with my home state of Wyoming is kinda complicated. There's SO much about Wyoming that really *****. It's sparsely populated, largely rural and hidebound, unquestioningly conservative (the "'Red Face' down in Lusk" is a reference to "Legend of Rawhide..." check THAT one out, cuz **-LY ****); you sometimes run into a lot of really ****** attitudes and ways of thinking. But, at the same time, there's so much jaw dropping beauty there, too, and so many people with open, generous, accepting hearts. I've had tons of really heart wrenching experiences back there, but also tons of really awesome, fulfilling experiences too; plus, some of my very best friends are back there.

Form-wise, I really don't think I like what this poem turned into. But, eh, whatever.
Kyle Kulseth Aug 2014
She's all Spring and Summer
                Strength
         and words of shelter
He's all maps and formlines
                    waits
        in wings for Springtime

Take these tattered ghosts
                    from their trenches
ink-smeared, tethered tight
                      to the depth curve
Autumn only waits for the silent
                       ones sometimes.

"If their voices chase
                   out the brisk months,
quiet those windy wights
                     with a new song.
Autumn only waits for the silent
                      ones," she said.

In 3/4 time
the distances unwind
so swiftly
Afterburn of quiet nights
                      glows, fading.

He's all sovereign anger,
               righteous, stiff
                      but twisting
She's all cavalier, now--
               cat-quick through
                   projections

Past the legends,
               rose our directions
Keyed to Winter's
                 dumb introversions
Years just spilling over the levee's
                         prescribed edge.

With their weathered ghosts
                           in the trenches,
tired-eyed, tethered tight
                          to the map's edge
Autumn only cares for the silent
                             ones some days.
Tammy Boehm Feb 2015
"Slowly, silently, now the moon..."--Walter de la Mare

If only the days slipped soft
Eider down from quiet skies
“Slowly, silently now the moon”
Crests and ebbs in the star swept horizon
Mercury moments I consider the sinister things
The rush of blood banging at the back of my throat
The cadence of daybreak
And heart break and darkness hearkens
Scurrilous thoughts scatter faster
Roaches at the flip of a switch
Writhe in the light
Seek solace in shadows
Rats scrabble for higher ground in the downpour
Drown me now but I’ll never be clean
I carry the disease of this civilized beast
Scorpions under my tongue
And splinters in my skin
The higher rungs are toxic
And the air thick with afterburn
The antiphon of the apathetic
Chirrs me from daydream to entropy
Peace is hospice for poets and fools
Grit under my nails
And ***** in my mouth
Forever falling forward
The warp and weft stretched
Taut expectation
Of the cut that never comes
Just let me fall
Feather light and quiet
Let the gravity relentless
Have her way
TLBoehm
040113
Lily Aug 2013
You are the afterburn image of lightning

glowing behind my eyelids as i retreat

from the  storm.

you are the singed hair

and adrenaline rush,

but you are also the

cardiac arrest.
Rebecca Jul 2021
Don't you think he would know better;
Disappears for a while;
Hums with afterburn
Upon return;
Her, older and married;
Him, youthful and dense;
Yet she continues to bait;
He continues to travel;
As it all unravels.
Cursed with longing
That's just deception.
Unreal in the real.
Only good in the steal.
..and now that we're subsidised by the state
it doesn't matter about being
late
we're no longer working nine to five
I am just trying
to stay alive.

But
enough rope is enough for the hanging
and I ain't hanging around for that,

and that, is the flat rate of income tax soaring,

this decade will become known as the roaring
twenties,
I can already hear the roaring of the female worker as the twenty pound notes in her wages desert her
and the men?
well
they'll be in the **** again.

we're done for
doomed
the workhouse looms

Marshalsea advertises rooms in the Metro
compact and bijou
for a touch of the retro
and
we're done for.
Cindy Baldwin Jun 2019
April sank its teeth in 
And wouldn't let go -
Marrow deep -
That bone-break kick
And shaking apart from the inside.
The sharp swell of fire in the blood,
Sweet and hot and alive - 
Sunburn hot and choke-point tight,
Aftershocks skating across raw nerve.
But time inevitably 
Collects its dues from us all,
And this is all I've ever wanted -
Warm, smokey laughter
And blue eyes that have never played fair -
There is no world outside this room,
And we know this dance -
That boom-swell of wicked.
Our blood sings,
And I could die of it -
Your fingers leaving flames where they touch
And choosing this kind of wrecked.
Everything tips sideways
With the kind of force that wakes spirits,
And I follow -
Wanting.
The sky stretches by hours over the earth,
And none of it matters like it should.
The way you draw it out - one stitch at a time -
And I can't catch my breath.
Fireworks and honey - 
And a sweet burn on the tongue
That hangs like a fog and sifts into pieces
With every breath we take -
Coming apart in a series of exhales
That taste like your name - 
And I return,
Chasing the way you speak.
We petition gods & saints -
Any distance between us is too much,
Consuming us like a riptide,
Gripping with fingers that can no longer feel.
That delirious afterburn,
The sun like a brilliant, sweltering heart,
And what good is warmth we cannot feel?
Give me another sip from your smile,
And let's watch our hell catch fire.
Batchelor Apr 2020
The fluttering of eyelids breathed new life into the moments caught like fresh Polaroid snaps, the afterburn of the camera flash persisting, like a memory that fought its way to remain, resisting time and wear til the end.

The flesh knows the aching, burning want. The mind knows the still, cold pools of fools, the soul rolling with the blows of said fools, who thought time as it was would never be everlasting : A shrieking defiance, with the Chariot being pulled along by hanged men ; an everlasting idiocy.

But dreams & memories do just that. Syphilis-like consistency, marauding us all with persistent innocent tendencies to drown us in nostalgia, regret and fury. Yet we still have them on repeat. To not have known, is far more terrifying than not knowing. After all, we fear what we don't know. What we don't understand.
Welcome to the corner of your mind.

December 2017.
Batchelor Apr 2020
What happens then, when I run out of things to say?

What happens then, when you look me in the eyes and see nothing?

What happens if I tell you I'll bleed for you, and we leave each other bloodied and broken?

What will either of us do, when words become cheaper, more affordable than actions?


What if three a.m never comes, what if we stay awake beside each other with the nightlight on, no longer craving the contours and sweet of each other?

When it's all said and done, won't I just be a creep?

What if I don't become drowsy anymore around you?

When it's all said and done, won't we just get tired of each other?

I refuse to slow down even once.

*Let the afterburn match the aftermath*
Lay down next to me, and devour me whole.

Autumn Love, Spring Romance Of 2017.

September 2017.

— The End —