"cryptid" poems
Between the din of dusk and dawn
Runs Sleepy Pillow Lane,
Where gators guard the Gates of Thorn
And cryptid creatures reign.
They glide across the midnight sky
Like grime in sanguine sewers;
White canines long and talons drawn
Spike rodents on a skewer.
Gray giants glare from full-moon eyes,
A ghastly ghoulish spell;
Sweet sleepers swell the wells of Nile
While centaurs swing the bell.
Horned vipers writhe into your fears
Like scythes through strangled weeds;
And severed heads of angel hair
From shouldered stumps relieved.
A putrid pile of newly-deads
Awaits the devil's scorn;
And legless maggots gorge in beds
From which the fly is born.
Hungry hyenas howl in packs
While circling carrions crow;
And chunks of flesh are torn from backs
Cracking bones bare below.
Scavengers feast on man and beast,
No rotting limb is spared;
From hanging tongues to napping feet
Blood splatters everywhere.
Brimstone and thunder fill the air
With hail presaging doom;
Ten toothless witches shriek and cheer
As zombies creep from tombs.
Masked mummies stalk with stakes and stones
In search of sleeping heads;
They crave the skulls and living bones
Of bodies slumped in bed.
Through R.E.M. you toss and turn
And roll on restless wheels;
Alas Red Rooster blows his horn
To end your grim ordeal....
~ P
(January, 2013)
Jul 20, 2013
Jul 20, 2013 at 3:22 PM UTC
You say confidence is what completes a woman
But I am no woman
Or did you forget?
Confidence is not my friend
Confidence and I haven’t spoken
In many days, and many nights
It’s pointless for her to help me
Because I am no woman
I am the moon
I am the most confusing
Reverse cryptid
You’ll never get
To figure out
I hide myself among curtains of darkness
I call them my friends
The stars protect me and let me see
I call them my brothers
The sun reflects it’s light on me and calls me beautiful
I call him my lover
Isn’t it funny
How I only let you see
What I choose to show you
I will let you see me at my fullest, but only for a night
I won’t let you see me at all
And each day I reveal and conceal, whenever I choose
And even then i am a mystery
Because a valuable piece
To this complex puzzle
Is missing
Because just like every woman
Don’t I have a dark side?
- C.M. 9/3/17
Sep 3, 2017
Sep 3, 2017 at 12:47 PM UTC
Her voice trembled under unsettling cold
breath hitched at starless dusk,
an ocean of black ink
drowning the moon's marvelous magic
Footsteps echoed her own
a balancing act in the dark
playing with unwritten spellwork
scattered in her shaken eyes
She wasn't afraid of what lurked
Beneath the running seas and crashing shores
the orbs that followed her
all but left to her cryptid-tale
Oct 4, 2020
Oct 4, 2020 at 7:23 PM UTC
it’s easier writing poetry in second person because then you don’t have to face your own experiences and emotions, but this forest has been getting so thick lately that i can’t see the sky between the trees. (i can’t see the forest for the trees.) i’ve been having trouble trying to sleep because the wind keeps whispering through the leaves, the pine trees keep dropping needles, and the redwoods are suffocating, and the oak trees are dripping with sticky syrup trying to trap me, trying to encase me, trying to enrapture me. spring is so suffocating - everything won’t stop growing - but at the same time winter is so scary - i’m scared of everything dying - i don’t want everything to die - i don’t like looking at the leaves as they’re falling - i don’t want to see them change but i’m horrified of them staying the same - why are the trees moving closer to me? why is there nothing but trees surrounding me i don’t like facing the fact that all these trees are growing in my own soil in my own brain and taking up all of the space I WAS TRYING TO MAKE SPACE FOR STARS AND PLANETS BUT I CAN’T SEE THE SKY ANYMORE
i can’t see the moon anymore.
and in the shadows bigfoot has been creeping through my trees like they’re his own like maybe i’m the cryptid despite the fact that this is my brain this is my forest THESE ARE MY TREES but i’m the thing that nobody sees i’m the blurry photographs and disappearing acts and the curiosity, the mystery. how do you know that you exist how do you know that other people exist how do you know that the universe really exists how do i know that these trees are trying to **** me WHY ARE THE TREES ALWAYS TRYING TO **** ME i’d like to climb them without falling and skinning my knees i’d like to run through them but i get tripped up by the poison ivy tumbling into the soft dirt until it’s trying to swallow me (nothing exists in the ground past six feet) and there’s no way out no way out NO WAY OUT but i can hear the creek rushing and tumbling over rocks and through roots and i know if i can find the creek then i can get away from the trees and the clouds overhead threaten rain but the drops can’t touch me until i leave the trees and the trees keep moving and changing until i can’t see the forest anymore, just the pieces and leaves and i want to leave i want to leave i want to leave because everything is green and i love the color green so why is this so nauseating why am i hyperventilating why can’t i get out of my own head please let me out of my own head i don’t want to live in the forest anymore i don’t want to be trapped in the forest anymore i don’t want a treehouse anymore i don’t want to write poetry in first person anymore i’d like to leave please I’D LIKE TO LEAVE
Aug 11, 2017
Aug 11, 2017 at 12:48 AM UTC
The reflection in the mirror
returns me a known and tired smile,
the dried-up hair barely catching the light,
and those brown eyes sinking like holes in the ground.
Who could love that face?
With its bland features,
its coarse skin and bent nose.
A pyrrhic beard and that weak chin.
And what about those arms, huh?
Long and thin like church candles,
but with no flare.
Not much of a chest either,
there are gravestones with more bulk,
and people are far happier to see them too.
But above all it's the barrenness that scares me,
the sinkholes run deep and the candles cold,
and the gravestones go down to the foundations of the world.
The reflection in the mirror returns me.
Nothing
Jun 5, 2022
Jun 5, 2022 at 12:19 AM UTC
I am the light rain
That sways ends over in flight
But only lands once
I am the car horn
Bursting to vigorous life
Until the last ear
I am the asphalt
Frequently I am tread upon
Too firm to hold prints
I am the cryptid
The blood ******* vampire
One of the lost boys
I am the light kiss
That jumps onto lips at night
But lands just briefly
Apr 24, 2018
Apr 24, 2018 at 12:28 PM UTC
When you look at me
I feel the winds of the rapture lifting me up
Oh, I am a sinner,
rabid, manic, unholy
but I will fall on my knees for you.
I have boiled my wings
and produced sweet nectar for us to share
in anointing ourselves.
We shimmer like mermaids
dancing in parallel through the sky.
There is a reason
why sirens are women
and the earth is a mother,
not the kind who is cold and vain
but the kind who provides.
The kind who gives us teeth
to make a last stand when
backed into a corner by howling voices of hate,
and teeth to devour each other
before time devours us all.
Mar 9, 2020
Mar 9, 2020 at 6:10 PM UTC