"gangrene" poems
Look in the mirror. Let us both look.
Here is my naked body.
Apparently you like it,
I have no reason to.
Who bound us, me and my body?
Why must I die
together with it?
I have the right to know where the borderline
between us is drawn.
Where am I, I, I myself.
Belly, am I in the belly? In the intestines?
In the hollow of the *** In a toe?
Apparently in the brain. I do not see it.
Take my brain out of my skull. I have the right
to see myself. Don’t laugh.
That’s macabre, you say.
It’s not me who made
my body.
I wear the used rags of my family,
an alien brain, fruit of chance, hair
after my grandmother, the nose
glued together from a few dead noses.
What do I have in common with all that?
What do I have in common with you, who like
my knee, what is my knee to me?
Surely
I would have chosen a different model.
I will leave both of you here,
my knee and you.
Don’t make a wry face, I will leave you all my body
to play with.
And I will go.
There is no place for me here,
in this blind darkness waiting for
corruption.
I will run out, I will race
away from myself.
I will look for myself
running
like crazy
till my last breath.
One must hurry
before death comes. For by then
like a dog ****** by its chain
I will have to return
into this stridently suffering body.
To go through the last
most strident ceremony of the body.
Defeated by the body,
slowly annihilated because of the body
I will become kidney failure
or the gangrene of the large intestine.
And I will expire in shame.
And the universe will expire with me,
reduced as it is
to a kidney failure
and the gangrene of the large intestine.
12k
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering --
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.
Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped necropolis
your speckled stone skewed by an iron fence.
In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a ****** dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.
Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.
The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father -- your hound-bitch, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.
6.6k
I see my life flashing before me
Red siren, blue siren
This fathomless landscape bores me
Red siren, blue siren
These ****** destroy me
Red siren blue siren
My God I implore thee
Red siren, blue siren
To save my life.
They pump me full
Thump thump
Thump thump
They always have.
So full of drugs and lies
That corrode in the past.
They pump me full,
Right from the vein
They drain my blood,
With their disdain
They chain me down,
Right to the bed
They shock my heart,
Inject my head
Bump bump
Bump bump
This ride from hell,
Their eyes so wild
My wound does swell,
Does swell so large
Oh gangrene supreme
They shock my heart -
Cut out my spleen -
The room goes dark,
They shock my heart
Cut out my spleen. . .
Bump bump
Thump thump
Oh needle people,
Sticking me full.
Oh needle people,
Take me for a fool.
Red siren
Blue siren
I pray unto thee now
Red siren
Blue siren
I call out your name
Red siren
Blue siren
Because to these imbeciles
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
My life is just a game
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
I pray and I say!
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
Have mercy on me!
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
As these dogs,
They watch me bleed.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 7:02 PM UTC
He was just thirteen,
still a child,
when he lost his leg.
A tent pole from
a church revival
crushed
the life out of it.
I remember hearing
stories...
gangrene,
doctors having to wait
too long...
something about my grandfather...
they couldn't find him
or
he wouldn't sign
papers.
I'm not sure.
The memories of the stories
are fuzzy.
I just know
my daddy had a wooden leg.
It was his right leg...
I think.
We took it for granted.
It seemed so normal,
his prosthesis. We never
called it
that...
prosthesis.
It was his
wooden leg.
You might not expect it,
with a wooden leg and all,
but my daddy was
a great dancer.
Light as a whisper.
When he danced,
nobody knew...
about his leg.
And those who did know
forgot.
I can see him gliding
around the dance floor
with my mom in his arms.
They were as one,
swaying and moving
with the music.
Sometimes...
I got to dance with him.
I remember it so well.
I can close my eyes
and
feel the smooth
polished floor
under my feet
and
my daddy's strong
arms around me.
When I danced
with my daddy
I was secure
and
confident.
I felt graceful
and
flowing.
He guided you,
smooth and easy,
so natural.
I can still feel the lilting rhythm.
Now
I'm not a great dancer,
though I'd like to be,
but
when I danced
with my daddy
I could dance.
I was agile
and fluid
and free.
I skimmed the air.
'Cause even with
a wooden leg,
my daddy,
he sure could dance.
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 11:21 AM UTC
Hairline cracks are breaking through
the slough I'm about to shed.
Dry and dysfunctional
as the neuron sac in my skull.
I'll change my hat and change my ammo
honeysuckle artillery polished,
waiting in my drawer.
Sliding an empty coffee mug
back and forth along a counter
like a puck preparing for a slapshot.
Paper matches in colourful books
pressed between the pages
found leaves for child arsonists.
Takeout boxes filled with poems
are sold as artefacts
Don't be silly, poetry comes in plastic bags,
not styrofoam.
To keep ideas hot, wrap them in tinfoil.
But don't forget to leave a hole at the top for steam
or your fresh concepts will get soggy.
Equipped with tennis *****
spandex suits picket office blocks
standing on chairs and voicing nearly racist remarks
making health and safety inspectors nervous.
Out of control students
launch dictionaries out of third story windows,
donning 21st century masks.
I left my patience beside my keys, on the kitchen table.
Waiting in line for obsolete phone booths
as movie stars soundlessly mouth slang into a receiver.
Nearly responsible
nearly nine
nearly time for bed
I resolve again
that I’ll resolve more
but this time write it down.
Folding kamikaze paper planes
to hide behind park benches, fly into trees.
Let the sun fade the pencil crayon.
I can't run from this blasé gangrene that’s taken my toes.
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 2:02 AM UTC
ah, love,
you're a walking tribute to anarchy
and i love to hear you preach -
boxcutter lips wrapping around
the holiest words of blood and viscera,
rage and fear
that clench in the throat like a diamond called from coal.
in the name of the lord you drink the sun
and the burn is familiar,
an old friend
the father of the righteous fire
that drives you to drag down the sky,
or drag up the earth -
anything to approach
empyrean heights:
in your sermons you scale mountains to break into heaven,
dragging your scars
behind you.
you break glass just to prove that nothing lasts.
every manifesto is another gospel
in your holy book,
your promise
that promises mean nothing.
love me like a miscarriage,
hold me like a cancer -
prescribe diamorphine to the world
and watch it choke on numbness.
*those who fear pain
deserve to feel nothing at all,*
you say,
*those who fear pain
deserve to never die.*
bestowing the world with
the worst curse you know.
boxcutter lips
ripping words to shreds.
molotov eyes
and paper lungs.
your paper-lantern lungs
shine through your back
and you smother them with cotton to **** the sickly glow.
the sun you swallowed is still pooled in your lungs,
and it shines like a blasphemous joke -
green light in your sick midnight,
a burn to rival your molotov eyes,
your righteous fire.
you live like steel to forget your paper lungs.
*brothers, sisters,
have you heard the good news?
you won't be the first to die.*
of course not, love,
we can all see the collision course you're on.
walking tribute to anarchy,
you're crafting your own doom.
{oh, but i'll go down with you, love,
i'll carry all your scars for you
and blow out the sun in your lungs -
let me show you, love,
what i can do.
let me show you how sick i can be -
i've a twisted mind and i'd like to prove it,
like to take all your scars upon myself
and burn down heaven
if they won't hear your sermons.
i am your weapon so wield me well.
i am your weapon
and together
we will bring the heretics
low.}
ah, love,
you're a walking tribute to anarchy
and i want to watch you suffocate
when your fire burns the last of the oxygen.
your footsteps are ashes and broken glass
and i follow
close behind.
you scream
and curse
and cry to heaven
and i smother the sun in your lungs.
in your sick midnight sermons,
heaven pulsates like an open wound
and i stitch you up,
keep the gangrene from your gospels.
ah, love,
in your throat
coal turns to diamond.
rage and fear
behind boxcutter lips.
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 2:25 PM UTC
You who have never known the loveliness of love,
Gather your heads on the torn pillow’s edge of mud,
Under the wood-tar shadows of camphor-aided sleep,
Where your low-flung groans are starvations of sound,
And the amputated clouds, insinuated with gangrene
And blood-stained woods, are still bound to the shooting
Stars that fell beside you and flung up hissing rays of grass.
Parents of the midnight sky, the stolen stars of your children
Open their broken mouths to the battlefield heart of trespass.
To their soldiers’ eyes, the floor of heaven is uncut grass,
Wet with rain and mold and the unlifted wings of Pegasus,
Whose unearthly hoof to unearthly earth scuffs the clod
Of the lunette for the cannons to divulge the great, stuttering
Coda of everything old, malformed of breath and bone.
Some grass somewhere will now seem the hair of a sweetheart,
And those dead eyes will aways stare, too fond of love unknown.
So the dead soldier and grass and sky conspire to hold a woman,
So the soldier makes the truce between earth and sky,
Between man and the divine, though the chestnut trees
In red human tongues, pay their deep-forested encomium to distance,
In misspilled gorgeousness like Apollo surveying his own tomb.
Jul 30, 2019
Jul 30, 2019 at 2:38 PM UTC
paint me the way i used to be
before your vermilion dried in my veins
and clotted in my heart.
paint me the way i was
when my arms were lined with
yellow lace
and my very existence was a symbol.
once upon a time, in a far-away motel,
you painted my chest with green.
it looks like the forest floor, i said,
*green moss and leaves,
life and growth.*
you laughed soft,
dipping your brush in olive,
and told me it was gangrene.
the good only die young, you said,
tragic brushstrokes blooming on my chest.
i whispered words to you in the night,
and you tried to do the same
but all you managed was to mumble colors and techniques,
waiting until daybreak to show me what you meant
colors and shapes in the cold light of dawn.
february choked you
and you were a study in blue:
“cerulean figure with palette,”
“cerulean figure at window,”
“cerulean figure trying to find words that mean the right thing,
but coming up empty
again.”
you loved to hear me speak
but hated to respond
so you’d draw for me instead.
on a bus running from the city
you drew a picture of me,
face like christ upturned to heaven
halo of refuse ‘round my head.
the savior of abandoned things
the messiah of rot,
who would die for the soul of every landfill -
you drew me bleeding by a dumpster,
holy bruises on my arms.
paint me the way i used to be,
before you taught me of cangiante and notan
before i spent all my words on you,
ripped the pages from the dictionary
to explain your thoughts to you.
paint me the way i used to be
when my heart was yellow lace
and every word was alive.
paint me the way i used to be
and i’ll drown myself in your watercolors.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 12:57 AM UTC
i knew from a young age nothing could love me.
i knew when everything began,
when elemental dust condensed into planets,
when life fought itself into existence
in the waters of a cooling world,
when the first being exulted in being
and i exulted too
and crushed it for daring to live.
watched it decompose in my palm.
rotted roses by plucking them.
i knew from a young age
that nothing survived my touch,
that nothing lived in my hands -
nothing’s the only thing
i’ve ever held without killing.
so see, we’re meant to be,
you and i,
nothing boy –
let me hold you close cause i can’t rot you through,
you with your lack of self
and meaning,
you with your infinite void,
impenetrable ether.
see, we’re meant to be,
nothing boy,
let me swim in your vacancy and you,
you can be my new universe
and nothing will be my everything:
i’ll worship you like an absent father
and love you like an atheist’s god.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy,
i would **** 2000 statues to bring you to me.
i would slaughter a family of worms
to be crushed in your black hole.
i crushed the stars between my thighs,
left the triturated mess
like a promise to the world.
i crushed the stars between my thighs,
but i’ll be so careful with you,
nothing boy.
so gentle you won’t even know i’m there,
like a ghost sighing over your mouth.
so careful you won’t notice me
making my nest in your empty chest,
breathing for you,
pulling air to pool in your lungs.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy:
i complete you
and you empty me.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy,
nothing doesn’t rot -
my gangrene heart can’t touch yours,
pure as it is,
undefiled,
unadulterated,
a vacuum of a heart as empty as an unfilled grave.
they say
there’s a black hole at the center of every galaxy,
in the center of a ring of stars
light drawn to the dark.
they say there’s a black hole at the center
and if they’re right
you’re the last good thing about this galaxy.
stars swarm round you like flies, nothing boy,
you who are made of their
dead brothers,
who collapsed into themselves with the weight of existence,
who imploded with the heat of their desire for you,
who fed their light to your blackness,
nothing boy.
you are made of dead stars and of nothing at all.
you are
celestial corpses
and nihilism distilled.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy.
you’re corpses and i’m rot.
you’re nothing and i’m
the final destination
the last stop for sorry living creatures,
pitiful things that can’t quite
delete themselves,
can’t quite reach you
so i embrace them and soothe their sobs.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy,
i can hold you for more than a few
pitiful sobbing seconds.
i can hold you forever if you let me.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy.
i killed the world but you remain.
i crushed the galaxy between my thighs,
and you, impassive,
pulled the triturated mess into your event horizon.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy,
you have no breaths to steal
but i’ll give you all i’ve plundered.
i’ll give you every last breath, last word, last heartbeat,
and you can empty me like
a bottle of cheap wine.
see we’re meant to be –
nothing boy and gangrene girl,
a love story for fatalists
and nihilists alike.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy,
starcorpse creature, nietzsche’s son.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy -
nothing never rots
nothing never dies
nothing won’t decompose
in my arms.
see we’re meant to be,
nothing boy.
let me hold you close-
you’re the one thing i can’t break.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 12:50 AM UTC
Mud goes so stiff as it dries on the clothes
And it gets in the rifles and ammo
And men live in the mud for day after day
And they die there as the death tolls just grow.
The lads call it Wipers, but we know it’s called Ypres
And we don’t know the language but know mud
And the massive field guns that are firing this way
Causing lots of men to stay here for good.
In two months I’ve not heard the sound of a bird
With the fighting and dying you don’t listen
But I saw a dead blackbird lying out in the mud
And memories of home made my eyes glisten.
I’d rather be back at my home on the farm
Tending cattle and working the land
But I’m lying here shooting at men I don’t know
In a hard ****** war that I don’t understand.
We’ll soon be coming to the end of this year
We were told that it wouldn’t last too long
I don’t know how much longer the men can last out
The spirits willing but their bodies aren’t strong.
We’ve been pounded for hours, we’ve been pounded for days
It seems like so long and it’s so cold
There are men who've got frostbite and gangrene and sores
But it’s the dysentery that makes some men fold.
When will it end and who will make peace
They’re decisions that aren't made at the front
But by men back at home who think they know best
Not by poor dying men bearing the brunt.
©JRW2014
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 4:01 PM UTC
First I was born
Then I began to die
(there's no way out)
(and there never was)
Nursing wounds
Gangrene and obscene
Promiscuous and unwanted
I favor the blessing of the Black Mass
Shrouded in the catastrophe of disillusionment
For the first time in my life
I’m disappointed in your crucifixion
And all the reasons you said you did it for
Antagonistic misanthropy in Maplethorpe grays
Humanity cultivated arctic aspirations
First I was born
Then I found a way out
First I was born
(Then I found a way)
(Away from you)
Oct 10, 2011
Oct 10, 2011 at 11:15 AM UTC
Do you remember?
We've been here before,
it blew our children to pieces.
And we cheered and cried when it was over,
then we beguiled at our peace and tranquility, we envied our own visionaries,
and now we're back here again.
Are you willing to die for what you disagree with?
There can be a different world from this one.
This one that is so well built over time to keep things easy for those that don’t understand
the need for purity and transparency and excitement and wonder.
To keep things the same and treat innovation as gangrene.
Feel the life in the grass,
the freshness that breathy wind gives it,
the air that flows over your skin.
The feelings that turn your stubborn brain into liquid crystal tears,
the mirroring of characters that understand you, that represent you.
With them peace is at our fingertips.
It can be tiring looking for sunshine, but it’s glow will grace us all in time.
Aug 10, 2018
Aug 10, 2018 at 1:39 PM UTC
You've infected my head.
Even in death I write of you.
My muse.
Stomping my head into the earth with every word.
A deadly gangrene.
A poison in my tea.
I lay my head against the curb bracing for the next crushing blow.
I let the infection spread.
I drink the poison down.
Apr 23, 2016
Apr 23, 2016 at 1:59 AM UTC
*oi! Bronson! **** ya matey! i'm a sardine oiled up! that paddy is gonna hang like a dog on a serpentine of a leash's worth of walkies... that paddy's gonna hang and ask for the relay gun at the Olympics going off... paddy was never the bricklayer... paddy always gangrene flex, got lucky in Arizona and New York, forked St. Petersburg and only forked a steak nibble... Bronson settled into retirement just fine, came out a ******* act-tor! pepper the bobby with parking meter fines for his bureaucratic funfair study... sooner or later Jimmy the literate will turn up, and replace Bob the illiterate swine cuffing someone ******* in an alley.*
oh, i'd probably become
an english teacher
and sing fuck-yeah
when the drone army of
Amazon couriers fed us
the next 21 hour trip in
defence against the Koran...
so i guess ha ha is in order.
and with every mythical Mrs.,
you tell 'em about the castration
in the synagogue, and never about the
baritone in the morgue.
Aug 3, 2016
Aug 3, 2016 at 12:12 AM UTC
you took my ****** rags and smeared them with your spit-- taped naked pictures to the wall of that dungeon until all he could see was your body, and your body alone. you loaded the pistol and shot yourself in the foot, when I noticed the bleeding you said it was just a flesh-wound. he finally fizzled your toes from out of your shoe, a dark cinderella-meets-the-prince-in-the-dark, and I saw that the wound was so open and gangrenous that little spritz of dried blood had formed faces and tears on the soles of your torn-and-tumbled canvas shoes.
you tried to say sorry. you pleaded and pleaded and said you'd take pistol-to-head or pistol-to-heart to be rid of the pain of my gargled and gutted reaction. you cried and you cried, our hearts sunk to the bottom of plastic-now stomachs.. but forgiveness is no microwave. forgiveness is a ballpark in steep Illinois summer heat where you drink to stay hydrated, think to stay sane, and write to the titter of tears on your chest.
Now heal your wound, antibiotic the gangrene. Just better the soles of your feet.
I'm already walking and walking and walking 'til my face meets obliterate sun.
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 6:01 PM UTC
It turns out, - like hands, like pages turning, -
That I am more petrified of everything
Than you could ever comprehend.
I suppose it's the waves crashing in my lungs,
Or baron wasteland kissing the tip of my nose,
Even more, it could be the death touch
Whispering its mermaid lures to me inside my heart.
Expectedly it could be the curse of gangrene winding it's way around my toes
As a result of standing stagnant in this town for far too many milliseconds.
But the crippling hunch is I have many places to be, a heart to give,
Myself to mend, myself to mend,
Shard by thumb pricking shard
I am rebuilding who I breathe to be
And with a time span the size of a spec of dust
On the geological time scale.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 6:35 AM UTC
I.
All I know exists between clenched fists.
My hands didn’t come this way.
Everything foreign rubs them raw,
no matter how gentle.
This is how my body looks out for me.
There used to be sand here.
I held on so tight, I lost it.
Now, the sand dwells with two-way mirrors
and fish who need fresh air.
II.
Most days, I’m best left alone.
The handy-woman loosens my screws,
and thinks she’s always right.
On the days I’m a fish out of water,
she sees me as a crying baby.
She must be hungry, and the airplane comes again.
She’s still crying, and the airplane comes again.
I am not enough, and the airplane comes again.
When my belly swells,
she paints a barcode on my arm,
tries to exchange me for store credit.
III.
All that matters escapes me.
I’ve learned more from the vandals
shooting blow darts at the moon
than I ever did out west.
Most days, I doubt that I’m still breathing.
My lungs are worms’ meat.
My lungs don’t know if they need water or air.
Thank God for shallow ends and seltzer.
IV.
These IOUs are legs
my brain can’t recognize.
I clamp them at the knees;
I pray for gangrene.
When the doctors drain the infection,
they say, this can’t be what you want.
This is how I look out for my body.
I’m still searching for a saw.
Jul 28, 2012
Jul 28, 2012 at 11:04 AM UTC
*Surrounded by mud
our feet make love to the surface
the bullets kiss us, the bayonets hug
our intestines.....
The blankets
cuddle with our cold, decaying corpses
we write to our wives, letters that will never be delivered
the wet ground gives our feet an unpleasant present
in the form of gangrene,
the rats make themselves at home,
feasting upon the rotten
flesh of fallen comrades.....
the maggots make use
of newly formed skulks and aged decaying bone
then comes the symphony of artillery....
the roar of gunfire, the marching of tanks
the mighty foot soldiers, and
the majestic golden smoke of mustard gas
the trenches become our unwanted love
and our unholiest of homes......
"The tears do not shed
the blood does not spill, and the soldier does not die"
is the common the battle cry sung upon us
these bitter notes of blind fate forever sing to us
the illusion of life and the irony of war.....*
Jun 10, 2016
Jun 10, 2016 at 9:17 PM UTC
i also wish you'd stop waking me up at
3 am screaming that the "swamp monster"
touched you and turned your limbs to gangrene
slowly rotting your once-peaceful slumber
to the bone.
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 6:17 PM UTC
You've cut ff your feet
to spite your head
Is there nothing left
in between?
is your whole life
blackened
and squandered
rotted and
gnarled
by gangrene?
*Join me, come in.
Cavort with the dead
Join me, come in.
I can't be alone in my head.*
How can you sit
there
with blood on your face
and not feel
it dry to a crust?
How can you sit
there
with gore on your hands
knowing you shiver
from lust?
*Join me, come in.
Cavort with the dead.
Join me, come in.
I can't be alone in my head.
You, too, must feel torment
and torture.
You, too, must be plagued
without cure.*
Where are you going?
to hell and not back?
Did you buy your ticket
to ride?
or
will you walk
into
the bottomless pit
draped with your badges
flesh putrefied?
Heads on lapels like
an Easter corsage
dead lilies like
those on a grave,
a grave that you dug
then
stepped in to forage
to eat as a worm of the flesh.
Flesh young and tender
that flamed with desire
till your curse
extinguished
the fire.
*Join me, come in.
Come into my fire.
Join me, come in.
We'll wade through
the mire
with blood
in our mouths
and our eyes.
Taste of the pain,
the glorious pain.
Like a gift
I give it to you,
offered again and again,
a philanthropist
swollen with bounty,
who bestows what
he has
like a prize.*
May 2, 2017
May 2, 2017 at 6:11 PM UTC
Paused.
The light in the tunnel is blocked.
A shadow emerges in silence,
& all I smell is death;
the stench of rotting carcass
lingers.
Nearer.
The shadow moves - hunched,
& stumbles towards me.
A penetrating echo
vibrates through the tunnel,
a cane shunts around
puddles.
Paused.
There is no light - only deaths
shadow, me & the putrid water
dripping down walls
covered in mould; graffiti
breathing life into this
concrete jungle.
Arrested.
A man stands - his stare,
holds my attention.
He sways; the wall & cane
prop him up.
A fetid smell, exacerbated by
wet gangrene, pollutes the
air.
Paused.
"Son, forgive me."
© Sia Jane
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 12:55 PM UTC
First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, finally the drink takes the man.
Dark wings hover, claws extended
Bat wings
Black lips, and dripping fangs
Clear elixir fluid
Drops
One,
Two,
Three...
On the edge of nightmare
Temperance shattered...
Moderation slit by a fine blade
The veil of normality shredded
Replaced by illusion
Civility cannot withstand
The feral urges that storm the barricades
Tin soldiers in array
Swords rattle and gleam
The sabers obsession is to draw your blood
Their aim is to seek your quick
The beast within
Bleeds a vile and putrid green
Noxious, nauseating
Slimy...smelly
Gangrene
It comes out to howl
Prowl
Stalking prey
You are hunted
Your heart and soul are at stake
Knowing not how slender the thread
The silken cord
With which you cling
To this ephemeral life
Hope fades
Dreams ebb
The tide washes in
You are the sand
Slowly washed away
In a swirl
Eroded from the shore
Sep 8, 2018
Sep 8, 2018 at 3:14 AM UTC
People are not your puppets,
Your puppets for play.
They won't sing,
Sing your pains away
I'm no vantrilaquist dummy
For you to play with, honey.
I'm not a pawn in your game
For you to manipulate with no shame
Don't want to be a part
Of your devious plan.
Don't want to deny myself
Of who I am.
There's a reason it is called,
Called a deadly sin.
Infidelity will ******
****** from deep within:
**** the ones you love,
The one you once loved--
The one you're still loving
Will always question your love,
Thinking she'll be the next loved
Just a part of your past
You'd rather forget
But that gangrene inside
Just won't let.
So keep playing hopscotch with the truth
I'll hang on tight to my virtue
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 11:58 PM UTC
It's been one boring, restless, ***** of a drive through this sunken state. I click the windshield wipers off as they smear verdigris across my polarized vision, the FM stereo crackles and hisses in dissonance
with moaning, squealing brakes. My four cylinder fishtails ever so slightly as tattered tires nick and skid through puddles of *** the cumulus left behind after ******* the sun, which is crying now as it falls to sleep. Driving mechanically, I let my thoughts wander as I meander along I-4.
*You and I, we've never known what it means to perfect our chapters, to get into each little cavity, or between two immaculate ribs. We'd like to simplify all of that to one line, to reduce the dimensions rather than revel in their story. To see with six eyes or live as a termite within the wood grain is really all the same. But you know, we haven't finished yet simply because we are not finished yet. Some of us yet insist they hold on to the rotting shreds of a dying breed, a generation gone gangrene, their fingers in their feces.
But we know how we want it to be. Humanity will be different for you kids, we promise.*
Aug 9, 2013
Aug 9, 2013 at 1:57 PM UTC
I wish my poetry was more real
That I could be more willing to use my pencil as a scalpel and scrape out the gangrene infection left from the pieces of your soul that sit in my chest like shrapnel
We weren't very good at open heart surgery, were we
I didn't care that you cheated your way through med school the way you cheated on the promises you made between breaths as we read each other's minds with our lips
I would give anything to know if it's my heart that is the puppet in this chaos, or if my body is the one being pulled by the strings you wound around my waist before you told me that we couldn't be together anymore
Who is the major player on this stage, anyway
With clouds as curtains and stars as spotlights when we need them most
We are but actors
Living separate lives
We haven't exchanged lines with each other for nearly 6 months
Well
We did
But that was off-book, backstage
Where nobody but the cockroaches and dust bunnies could clap beneath our feet as we realized-
I still love you
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 11:53 AM UTC