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Ophélie S Sep 2018
i.


not bad,
i commented to myself as i watched you do your thing
for the first time ever ;
not bad was my way to say
extraordinary
still is today
i have standards, you see and —
well...
they were met when i
heard you say,
"that's only half what
i can do."

let's get this straight:
i was the best at what i do until
you came around ;
it's not like i'm mad though —
quite the opposite 
in fact.


ii.


here's something else:
i have always liked the way your eyes
shot daggers
even when you were smiling ;
a death stare, they named it and, you know,
i won't call them wrong —
i'm rather fluent with the concepts of
death
and staring myself, after all.


ah,
do you remember?
when we spoke to each other —
it was always a sparring of
eyes
rather than words.


iii.


a fact:
you have been called cold
more often than
you have been called pleasant ;
i know  —
it's not like you'd disagree
not like you'd be stupid enough to
deny ;
cold is a comfortable shadow
to hide in,
something people like us
wear as a coat or
a scarf
from july to june.


now,
there's this saying that the addition of
two negative objects
turns them a positive
result ;
i'm not much of a scholar so, honey,
what's on your mind?


iv.


i get it now,
if i'm propellers
you are wings —
rather than a mirror, we're
distorted reflects
a thing evolution knows
a great deal about ;
this yearning is the aspect of you
i'd wish to keep
bottled up ;
"what for?" you'd ask.


no,
yearning is not a thing
i'm a stranger to ;
i've yearned for many things including
strength
sleep
serotonin
and you —
i've been struggling
to make them mine, though
perhaps because i'm never really trying.


v.


that's how you do it:
you take what you want with
clawed hands
accomplish miracles with
thunderous silence —
an entity of cruel fairness,
icy anger but —
what you want is a complicated
thing
with definite shape to your eyes
but blurry to those of
others.


okay,
i'm neither believer nor seer but
here's a little prediction :
the day you are satisfied is the day
hellmouth
shuts down upon us all and
half of me
prays for it.


vi.


about extremes —
some will say grey is a better shade and
though i confess
it does have its charms,
it still has to paint me a picture more striking
than a soul with
adamentine purpose.

see —
i stare as you pass by,
terrific in beauty
beautiful in hardness and
off —
goes my heart, sanity, ego
and shirt.
Fiona Guest Jan 2011
Sometimes, I see the God descend to ground.
Lowered on pulleys, creaking as he comes,
He booms his monologue to waiting crowds,
While they - all certain that this God will make
Things right, will get the parents and the kids to talk,
Will mend the broken marriage vows, will fill
The bank accounts, will take the heartbreak out
Of growing old – they hearken to this voice.
But after, when the dummy-God ascends,
Departs in peace to mechanistic skies,
The crowd must stay to watch the empty stage
Repent its trick of mercy by design.

They shiver as it undergoes its shame -
See Faustus at the Hellmouth once again.
aj Apr 2015
the swarm engulfs my being with love and blood;
your horrific cleansing of amor among life in death sends a shock of terror among the world.

so insidious that the stars hide behind their veil of opaque mist.
little do they know that their pale haze is only a shimmer of anonymity.

the fire-baptism commences, and i can not feel the burning of unholy light.

this must be the end.

my blood turns to ice, my eyes see only streaks of apocalypse, and my mouth is sewn shut by the infernal creatures of purification.

the hellmouth speaks for me now.

the sleeper woke the world and it bled.
the flames of rebirth purged the world and devoured it.
the lover remains comatose and shattered.

seraphim swoop down from a silent heaven to clean the mess of a love too strong for one to bear.

blood oozes out of the ears of those too occupied and diluded to care
jessica obrien Nov 2021
dry and entering a shepard tone;

endless summer, sauntering, and my inner thighs are (yawn) raw from the sauntering.
endless spring, thawing icicles into
endless christmas morning.

this is not lavender, this is brighter;
i’ve underestimated everything.

suckerpunched into the bend of me,
deepening my lean to an acute degree,
like balled fist, like fortress, like fetus: potentialities.

wild chance is a hellmouth
salivating—
“a shepard tone creates the illusion of continuously swelling sound, which can build tension or suspense.”

this is an attempt to emulate a shepard tone through poetry

— The End —