She's got red hearts everywhere*
A blush here or there,
Never a hair out of place
She's a girl filled with grace
God given love
From somewhere up above
And I know
I could never compare
To her perfect skin
Scarless but plain
Somehow she remains sane
And I'm lost in my thoughts
With hands bruised and bound
Down to my sides
Bleeding from base to tip
My wrist falls limp
Against his grip
And maybe it's meant to be this way
And maybe I'm supposed to go today
And maybe
I don't want this anymore
Because the memories won't fade
From stained cheek with blood rimmed eyes
And maybe I don't want to look in the mirror ever again and see a dead stare
Looking back at me
Because maybe
I don't want to see ever again
I don't want to feel this pain
I don't want to let this heart beat another day
When all I know is
I could never compare to the girl
Who throws her heart everywhere
But still I wish
I could be something worth jealousy
I know I'm worth a grave
Six feet under ground
Where I will never have
To see a dead gaze looking
Back at me..

“The rest is silence.”"-A. Crowley

I

I will know you only because
you are known to me deep down
beneath the subtle shadows carved
permanently upon your deceivingly
angelic face
sculpted by an artist
nameless to none but the heavy slab of stone
he used to create an ache
I’ve come to want to know as you
whose soft and silent rolling voice
where from there springs the torrents
of a turmoil melting like wax
in the mixed up chasm
of your mind
the destroyer of your smile
the reminder of bad times
that causes me to know you and from where you come
riding in bare-back
jet-black hair flying on
the hated molten roaring
riveted steel furnace
of inner anguish
again
and again
you beautiful deadly diamond black jewelry rose
of unworldly charm and perfected pain.

II

This is how I know you
in the steamy swelter of the nightfall’s
stifling bluish pall
you and I alone somewhere
anywhere
but probably nowhere
between the silken smooth heavenly legs of
here and there inside
the broken smoked crystal chandelier
of an ancient chamber room illuminated by
the flicker of more than fifty slowly disappearing
jutting candle-flames
I know you
because you make yourself known
to me
on the black-satin wrinkled bed-sheets that
we lie
writhing around upon like two
dying dancing angels
being swallowed by the suffocating oil
of a shame we bother created
just like gods
or dancing dancers dancing slowly
dying
in the pallid ***** fuming fog
…dancing with the gods.


you are as I know you
silhouetted in the silence of our
ecstatic shattered sighs
as we fly through lust’s futile passions where
we lie, we lie
we lie…

III

You are crawling across
the one-thousand mile mattress
stalking towards me
starvation’s fire fuels
your steely-sharp brown eyes
leopard-like your lithe,
tiny olive-brown body poised
ready to pounce
ready to strike
arrayed in skin-tight crimson lace
deadliness flashing on your face
your ******* dark and pointy ******* feel
fit for me to fed the song—
I smile—
then with healthy, stealthy fury
you leap
and pin me down
trapping
me between these shiny sheets of coal
and your sweeping feline glowing
perfumed-prison hair
polished glossy ruby fingernails
dig deep
into my massive arms
ivory razor-baring teeth
bite my hips
my neck
my chest
my thighs
you stop just in time
to devour me
delightfully
rocking, reeling in the sounds of us around
the intoxicating scent of your
flaming fountain-***
colognes my livid throbbing burning *****
I yell
I try to scream
I want to cry
…but instead, drift off to dream.

IV

You lie awake
aiting watching and waiting allowing
your imagination and your hands
on a journey to your ever-lingering
flaming fury far beyond the heights of hunger’s call
just as we have done no doubt
without each other
for a long time
in the cold
in and out
up and down
back and forth
body arches
thighs uptight
muscular calves quivering
toenails clenching like an eagle’s talons
on the bed
--lift high your sweet holy offering to the air!

Hands wet and warm fly from the glistening
magic perfect patch of forever music
that makes me want to weep
you scream
I awake
we breathe deep
we go back.
Repeat the scene.

V

Pre-dawn purple painted brush-strokes streak the sky
framed by the window where I know I will find you
in nothing more than a gown of sleek vermillion
light-chamois
that displays the room glow striking at your body’s faint
outline
your slender legs
your precious girlish hips
that golden chain around your waist
Divine
your blushing tearless chiseled cheeks
I arise
and walk behind you
run my trembling fingers up your spine
I still don’t really know you as your sighs compete with
mine
you reach around and lead me away
behind a peeling splintered door
warped and withered with
dismay
where you will teach me how to paint
by spilling your blood in
splatters
upon the floor
in said consequence I
calmly take the blade from
your tiny talking hands
pull your slashed and sliced torn wrists
to my tongue
and slowly lick
with a lingering criminal kiss
the dripping cuts that begin to fade
and go away forever in the day
now that the wounds have disappeared
becoming scarless
bloodless
sere
I can but heal your beaten lost youthful body
although I cannot convince you that
I care.
Daylight here.

VI

I know now that I know now
that I know you
and in the ****
with suntanned bodies wind kiss-hissing
through our hair
we walk side by side
on the blistering shoreline sand
avoiding bits of broken glass bottles
one by one
if we can
slowly strolling to the edge of the
abysmal eternal
emerald omniscient ocean-waves
breaking
ttundering
blanketing our feet
spraying its mist upon
our hands
I stop
you sprint
on diving headlong at the deep
the foamy water roars
and roars
you emerge and approach the shore
standing straight along
beside me
to stare
at a pair of grayish seagulls circling
in the air
squawking songs about themselves
when before the breathing of a minute
one
bird drops dying dead to feed
the never-ending belly
of the sea
the other screeches viciously
mourning
you look
at me
and then I come to know now how to know you
now that you have at last known me
as your part your pink and precious lips
for the first time
we will ever kiss
as you finally cry for
our
reality.

That is not sand left clinging to your cheeks
Just the salty tears we need
To set us free.

Now you can bury you and me.


(Threnody means “funeral chant.”)

I used to loathe when tired, those who erred to disregard the pull of thoughts towards the complexities that make us who we are. Or perhaps the tug they never feel, the stinging ***** within the soul. That scratch that must be raked by nails until one feels they fin'lly "know."

I loathed the hedonist's sweet relief
The gratification and tunneled vision
The scarless frames, the husks they may be,
The innocence of things unseen-
I once would wish that I could be so null to that which mattered most. Its relative, but even still I wished that I was like those folks.

11:36p
8.28.18

Veterans of war show off their scars
Telling their frightening tales of battle
The say " right here, in this very spot
Is where the age old bullet was shot"

But what about the others
The girls with troubling pasts
That haunt their every hour
They sit in the corner clad in black their expressions turned sour

And when the pieces of themselves
Come some what back together
Like the veterans they have scars
Only its from their emotional wars

To the eye their perfect plain and pretty
Another person in the crowd
Another nameless happy soul
No sees, no one helps, there is no one to console

Alone they fight their treacherous battle
Friendships lost, loved ones gone
And when it's done the world goes on
To as if nothing was ever wrong

And if that one is found alone
Crying in the corner
They all question what's the matter
Since scarless is her stature

No one questions
No one helps
She has nothing physical to show
Yet there are scars, only emotional, you know

No bandaid can fix the heart break
And the world doesn't know how
To unchain her from the repeating past
And forever it seems this will last

Your eyes lured me in
I was drowning in your ocean
Your sins are what seduced me
You would kiss every inch of my scarless body
Unaware, that in 1460 days
I would be inundated in them
Due to your violation

Your body
Was my promise land
You confessed all of the pretty things
I wanted to hear
I inhaled you
You were an addiction,
An unbreakable bond

You let your darkness into my life
It seeped in, consuming me whole
It was beyond contagious
You infected me.
I should have put myself in quarantine
Isolated myself from you when I had the chance

I saw the devil in your eyes
So beautiful, yet so dangerous
You stripped the purity from my soul

You got a rush of adrenaline
When you laid hands on me
My scars gave you a sensation of euphoria
Your sick mind made mine ill

You reminded me of how useless I was
Every day I woke up feeling unworthy
Your words left bruises,
Permanently engraved in my soul

You used me
In unimaginable ways
I was manipulated to give you pleasure
I was nothing but an inanimate object in your eyes

You never saw me for who I truly was
Unfaithful was your middle name
You sought thrill in other women
Who weren't me

conversation
Worthy of a hospital waiting room
Your contact leaves my skin blistered

I didn't say it to be romantic
But informative disconnected emotionless your retaliation is the
Balled fist a hand I've studied
I know how the skin lays over that knuckle
Scarless you cross two legs I have known with my hands and my mouth
You turn away as if you didn't hear

I am a really mean person
But that does not mean i cannot be kind
I am absolutely fabulous
But mostly because I'm gay as ****. Girls doe
I am very scared
I am anxious
I am lonely
I am loved
But not by anyone here

I was innocent
At one point
I was scarless
Until quite recently
I was able to do calculus
A few years ago
I was productive and active
But I've lost motivation and energy
Motivation is kind of energy
I was nice
I was quiet
I was good
Back in fourth grade
I was smart
But now not so much
I know lots of random facts
But that's not very useful in today's society
Ugh

You told me I was too good to cut myself,
So I put down the blade, because I wanted to be perfect in your eyes.
But now my chosen method of torture
Is picking up the phone
And scrolling through your ******* Instagram feed
Because seeing how happy you are without me is a scarless form of self destruction.
Because at the end of it all,
I spilled my soul and blood and tears in your name
And mine isn't even worth the waste of your breath.

The rain wears on
your limestone skin
as umbrellas are held
off your center by granite others.

I extend a hand
as if you weren't 20 miles deep.
Advertise a cure
and deliver smoke to gasping lungs under the guise.

In this tenebrific atmosphere
I claim to be brave while clinging to my torch.
Endless succorance performed
and answers given from behind glass and across telephone lines.

I only know of the place
where the pace is kept
to the time of constant mizzle.
Perhaps I could spot it on a map, from far away.

How is one in the Fourth
to help another in the Third?
Folly to believe I could stop the bleeding.
Laughable when the scarless comment on how to suture.

you, with your scarless skin & healthy limbs,
breath unhindered by ash & smoke,
you don’t quite understand
the ways i like to bleed.  i am not my own
anymore.  so many moons have come & gone
since i last belonged to myself.  maybe i’m
a mess of me.  maybe my kisses sometimes taste
like melancholy
& remind you of a pain you’ve long since
forgotten.

but the tides are turning with my name
spelled in sea foam.  this time, i’m no longer
losing.  i can trace my healing wounds
through the rough fabric of my jeans
& no longer try
to cut them back open.  these nights
there is no salty slick of tears
staining my cheeks, no liquor lingering
on my tongue.  winter is passing, & finally
i am thawing.

my palms tremble
with the weight of your presence,
safely held in my heart.  you are
a rainstorm threatening to drown me &
i don’t want to have to survive you.
i have lived enough loss to know i’m ready
for the good days.
you & i are not just sunshine & flowers, but
the thought of you is forever burned into my brain,
always occupying,
always there.
darling, i love you endlessly & know
i’m yours.

Was there a scarless time?

Warm night, spring of '94

Maybe it's all the drugs but

I've never seen such beautiful eyes before.

It makes you wild,
In a sense of nature.
It makes you hallucinate,
In a world of clouded vapor.
You feel trapped,
And almost heartless.
you also feel thoughtless
in a sense of your mind.
It also interfere with what some people
May say,
Your grind.
It’s hard to manage.
It’s hard to control.
It’s painless,
And need none feelings.
It doesn’t care who or
What you are,
But you have to run to get far.
You have to run to catch it.
It makes you go higher
Than a rocket.
It makes you want to
Lock it-
Far away.
The ticks.
The sounds.
It’s unbearable,
By the heart beats
And pounds.
Your sweat drip.
Biting your fingertips.
Biting your bottom lip.
Paranoid.
Your losing it.
The pressure is heartless.
The pain is scarless,
But yet your scared.
Cries trapped in your throat.
Feels like when time fly
Your sorrows are on a float.
No need for a raincoat or a boat.
We’re sinking in with no floats.
Time is still high,
But I’m sinking underwater,
With a weary cry.
The tick and the tock.
The hard bottom of the ocean.
My body-
Hit that rock.
I can no longer hear the ticks.
I can no longer hear my cries.
I no longer have to sit,
And spell the word.
TIME.


                 Marci H.

how do you solve a problem like
grieving?
i sat in a dark room for two and a half years
listening to old tapes of conversations with a dead person.
it was cold and unkind and thick with melancholy
and i couldn't find the door in the blackness
and i didn't call for help
and i didn't try to fight my way out.
it was horrible but it was comforting, somehow,
because i could tell there were other people trapped in other dark rooms with other unshakeable sorrows,
even if i was alone in mine.
and it was getting worse.
i should've been getting better,
adjusting to the lightlessness,
feeling around for the doorknob.
but i was sitting still
(and maybe going blind, too)
and here's the part of the story where everything gets better
...almost.
a ouija board grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards her
and it was the last thing i expected.
and a ghost
my ghost
spelled out his name and said hello
and i have never felt so at peace.
he said he missed me and that he was happy now
and my heart was floating in my body
and i was crying, as always,
but they were the happiest tears i've ever cried.
oh my GOD does it feel good to have your soul quieted
after two and a half years of unrest
and things you never got to say
and times you flaked on plans that you wish you'd kept
and laughs and hugs and
it wasn't all fun and games, when he was alive.
it was talking him down from panic attacks
and praying he wasn't hurting himself anymore
and faith that he would thrive
if he gave himself the chance.
it was the loss of innocence and the search for innocence
all wrapped up in the same two shared bodies.
we both tried our best.
and my heart cracked in a hundred places when he left
how do you solve a problem like a dead best friend?
i still don't know.
but a ghost by his name sent me love through a ouija board and told me to get my **** together,
just like i had told him when we were in the same world.
and it's almost three years
and i miss him just as much as i always have
but i think i can handle it now
at least a little better.
maybe next time i see him we'll be scarless and innocent again,
or maybe we'll be just as ****** up
but there's peace in knowing the reunion is coming,
no matter what form it takes.
.
.
.
for lucas, my heart. see you soon enough.

Depend on the world and your distinctions will
slowly fade into the background- mold to them and you'll
forget your soul. if the majority is all that matters
there will soon be nothing left of the individual.
They tell you they will set you free but they only
want the you that looks good, the you that makes money
the you that says what the rest of everybody agrees on.
They're afraid of what sets you apart. They won't set you free.
Depend on God and strip yourself of every chain
anyone has ever cast on you, throw away every lie
ever told to you, reduce your spirit to its bare bones
let your heart resort to scarless, bleeding love-
God demands obedience and to us that looks like conformity
to us that is scary, "what do you mean I have to give up my
freedom?" but God will break you down so you will see nothing
but Him and you. If you give yourself to Him,
nothing else will matter. So, when the gates of hell
stand against you, and when the world lies and hurts you
and when people tell you who you should and shouldn't be
and when you're told to sit down and shut up and when
they tell you it's "freedom" and "choice" but you haven't seen
anything but the foggy bottom of a glass in a long time
and when the street is cold and lonely and the raindrops fizzle
on your skin, and when the light behind someone's eyes dies
look God in the face, fall into his embrace.
He will tear all the scars from your heart
and you will finally, finally know who you are.

had he not been all those years
writing a review
for the last book
in the world
my father
would’ve been
a poet

there are only so many crows
one can see
outside a laundromat
for the drowned, scarless hawks

so maternally nudged
into the travelogue
of my staying